Marshals Episode 3: The Broken Rock Tribes Borrow A Wild Tactic From John Dutton Himself

"Yellowstone" expertly blended naturalistic drama with soapy nonsense from the very beginning. The pilot, "Daybreak," saw Luke Grimes' Kayce Dutton and his wife Monica Dutton (Kelsey Asbille) having wholly believable, heartfelt conversations about the inevitable pain of their son moving away from home. It also saw Kevin Costner's John Dutton blowing up entire swathes of land to divert rivers as one grand "f you" to real estate developer Dan Jenkins (Danny Huston). Now, "Marshals" has replayed the same storyline, only this time its the Broken Rock Reservation doing the exploding.

"Marshals" is a strange spin-off: It's basically "Yellowstone" minus Taylor Sheridan and a bunch of important characters. John Dutton is long gone following his controversial death in "Yellowstone" season 5, as is Wes Bentley's Jamie Dutton, who perished at the hands of his sister that same season. But Kayce and his son Tate Dutton (Brecken Merrill) are still there, alongside Mo Brings Plenty's Mo and Gil Birmingham's Chief Thomas Rainwater. So what you have is a show set in the same place as "Yellowstone" featuring many of the same characters, but with a CBS crime procedural veneer.

When you think about it, such a thing seems doomed to never match the success of "Yellowstone." Given that, you might expect the series to do all it can to differentiate itself from the mothership show with original storylines. Doing so would help justify the fact that, with "Marshals," there's still a lot of story to be told about this fictional section of Montana's Paradise Valley. Episode 3, however, with its callbacks to "Daybreak," seems to prove the opposite.

In "Yellowstone" episode 1, Dan Jenkins purchases land near the Yellowstone Dutton Ranch. This leads to a clash with John Dutton after Jenkins suggests a partnership that would see him build on John's land. Meanwhile, Kevin Costner's Dutton patriarch is told that this proposed build will "suck on" the river that runs through his ranch, causing more erosion to his land. His solution is to send out a ranch hand with dynamite to blow up the terrain and divert the river away from Jenkins' acres.

"Marshals" episode 3 begins with the Confederated Tribes of Broken Rock taking a page straight out of the John Dutton playbook. Previously, we learned that a mine near the reservation had been dumping toxic chemicals in a river that flowed through Broken Rock. It's this that led to the death of controversial "Yellowstone" character and Kayce's wife Monica Dutton, and is responsible for several other cases of sickness. So, in episode 3 the people of Broken Rock take it upon themselves to blow up a road that leads to the mine, thereby preventing any trucks from reaching the area and stalling work at the site. What's more, with the road destroyed, the trucks headed for the mine are forced to drive through Broken Rock, where the tribe confronts the drivers, leading to a standoff — yet another aspect borrowed from the "Yellowstone" premiere.

In both "Yellowstone" and "Marshals," then, explosives are used in a dispute over a river and land. To really hammer home the connection, Kayce even tells Thomas Rainwater, "Taking out the highway, diverting the trucks? That's a move my father would have been proud of."

"Yellowstone" set records as one of the most-watched TV shows of recent years. As such, fans will be expecting callbacks on "Marshals." It makes sense to try to tie this series to its hugely-popular predecessor, but the tough part is finding a balance between making the show familiar while also proving that it's strong enough to stand on its own. With episode 3, I'm not sure the writers have done that.

Broken Rock borrowing John Dutton's explosive tactics is a nice little nod to "Yellowstone," and had that been the only connection, it would have been more effective. But the episode as a whole is basically one big retread of the "Yellowstone" pilot, "Daybreak" — except this version is nowhere near as tense and consequential.

"Daybreak" saw the eldest brother, Lee Dutton, suffer a painful fate at the hands of Robert Long (Jeremiah Bitsui), an event that was the impetus for Kayce to rejoin his family on the Yellowstone Dutton Ranch. It also saw Broken Rock face off against the Dutton family, establishing the basis for one of the central tensions of the show. Episode 3 of "Marshals," on the other hand, is a more staid version of that same story. 

It also features a standoff between Broken Rock and the locals and sees Kayce caught between conflicting allegiances. But it doesn't feel anywhere near as consequential or important. As such, not only is the callback to John Dutton's enjoyably reckless yet strategic use of explosives less effective than it could have been, it's hard to shake the sense that, with episode 3, we're witnessing a microcosm of the show as a whole — a less effective version of "Yellowstone."