“Yellowstone” is one of the most-watched shows on television right now and Hollywood execs can’t figure out why. With network TV and streaming services, viewers have never had more options available to them, which makes it that much harder for studios to create a hit. But Taylor Sheridan’s cowboy drama somehow captured the nation’s attention.
Conservative personality Meghan McCain has a theory why “Yellowstone” is such a huge success. According to her, it’s because the series appeals to the majority of Americans who are fed up with Hollywood pushing a progressive agenda in every single show and movie. That’s one running theory why “Spider-Man: No Way Home” was such a mega hit; because unlike other contemporary superhero movies, it didn’t go woke.
McCain penned a piece for The Daily Mail explaining her thoughts on “Yellowstone’s” popularity. She compared the show to HBO’s “Succession,” a drama which is a lot more typical in terms of entertainment fare these days. It was created by “avowed leftist Adam McKay.”
McCain wrote, “We live in an era where what is considered a critical hit often ends up on one cover after another, winning Hollywood awards many times over, while at the same time barely breaking over a few million viewers.”
She went on to explain how “Yellowstone” is a “bonafide commercial success” but lacks all the splashy thinkpieces, celebrity promotion, and magazine cover stories like “Succession” gets. And the country-Western drama is still breaking records in spite of that.
The former “View” co-host says this all proves how, “the appetite among Americans for tales of the West is still alive and well.”
And while McCain predicts the series probably won’t be nominated for major awards, it is going to continue drawing bigger and bigger audiences by nature of the content.
“The show isn’t woke, it isn’t trying to lecture anyone about everything that is wrong with our culture,” she writes. “It doesn’t portray the elitist perspective of coastal television writers and where they think America should be going.”
“What is critically celebrated in Hollywood and the media is more determined by the values and tastes of television writers, than the tastes of the masses. The dominant Hollywood, left media cohort should be asking: Why does something like this happen?”
She goes on to say how characters on “Yellowstone” are complex and interesting rather than insulting, inaccurate caricatures of Midwesterners.
“A major part of the answer is that Americans love Westerns, and people in the heartland like having their culture, lifestyle and history reflected in entertainment – and not to just have it denigrated,” McCain continued. “Most Americans don’t live in the blue bubbles of urban communities where Hollywood focuses their energies.”
She concluded, “They enjoy entertainment with values that they share and characters that they can relate to – and if that’s something you’d rather ignore as a leftist in media, well, then maybe it’s you who is living in the bubble.”
Interestingly, some “Yellowstone” fans have accused the series of heading in a direction that’s too progressive, including the addition of Piper Picabo as Summer Higgins in season 4. The cast addition was touted as an “Antifa character” when Picabo admitted Sheridan wrote her in to highlight “a story of civil disobedience.”
But even with these criticisms and overall underwhelming reviews for season 4 overall, “Yellowstone” annihilated viewership records. The season 4 finale attracted an incredible 9.3 million viewers.