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Marshals · Season 1 · Episode 10

Playing with Fire (Season 1, Episode 10)

Premise: A rockslide wrecks a prisoner bus guarded by Andrea and Belle, freeing three inmates and leaving Belle to care for her estranged mother, while a barn fire leaves Garrett badly burned.

Air date
Season/Episode
Season 1, Episode 10
Case
Prison bus escape and hostages
Starring
Kayce Dutton (Luke Grimes), Pete “Cal” Calvin (Logan Marshall-Green), Belle Skinner (Arielle Kebbel), Andrea Cruz (Ash Santos), Miles Kittle (Tatanka Means), Maddie Calvin (Morgan Lindholm)
Yellowstone ties
Escaped convict Neil Lamb is a former Yellowstone hand who wears the ranch’s brand, remembers Kayce leaving for war, and recalls Lloyd taking the Yellowstone hands hunting in the mountains where Kayce finds him.
Music
Jelly Roll’s “My Cross” and Josh Ritter’s “Where the Dream Ends” play during the episode.
Guest stars
Riley Green as Garrett, Brenda Strong as Samantha Clarkson, Sterling Jones as Neil Lamb, Ellyn Jameson as Dolly Weaver, Chris Agos as Derek Rivers
Director
Darren Grant
Writers
Dana Greenblatt & Lyle Mitchell Corbine Jr.

Summary

The Case

“Playing with Fire” finds Andrea Cruz cleared for duty two weeks after her captivity with the Cleggs, and Cal assigns her and Belle Skinner to escort five pretrial inmates by bus from Atkins to Rexburg. At the prison a sixth passenger is added at the last minute: Samantha Clarkson, a state inmate wanted at a meeting with federal prosecutors. A rockslide hits the bus, killing the guard and driver, and three prisoners escape. Andrea and Belle tend the injured with advice from Derek Rivers, a gynecologist stripped of his license for abusing sedated patients.

Cal and Miles Kittle trace two escapees to a general store in Corwin Springs, where a shopper recognizes one, Shawn, and the pair take everyone hostage. When Shawn threatens a woman, Miles offers himself in her place, and the gunmen are brought down in an exchange of fire. Kayce Dutton leaves the hospital and tracks the third escapee, Neil Lamb, into the Madison Range. Neil, a former Yellowstone ranch hand who carries its brand, says he knows Dutton family secrets that could earn him a plea deal and offers to forget them if Kayce helps him reach Wyoming. Their standoff carries into the next episode.

The Team

At East Camp, Kayce has asked Dolly Weaver to bake a birthday cake for Garrett, his and Cal’s old SEAL teammate, who has been working with the ranch’s horses. A faulty space heater sets the barn on fire, and Garrett is badly burned rescuing the animals. At the hospital, where staff call him Mr. Garvey, trauma surgeon Dr. Roberts finds the burns worse than they first looked and operates. Cal admits Garrett’s presence is complicated for him, having recruited him into the Teams before, as Kayce puts it, taking that career away. Coming out of surgery, Garrett says he saw Roner, a dead teammate, and asks Kayce to pass an apology to Cal.

On the bus, Belle keeps her distance from Samantha, a mining executive convicted over the 2007 Nye mine disaster, who blames the company’s CEO, who paid victims himself and then hanged himself; Belle reveals he was her father. When Samantha develops a hemothorax, Belle balks until she tells Andrea that Samantha is her mother, then drains the blood with a needle under Rivers’s coaching. Samantha apologizes and learns she has a grandson.

Miles, now dating Cal’s daughter, Maddie, hears from Cal that the job tends to wreck relationships.

Spoiler, the ending: Neil tells Kayce he need not solve the problem the way his father would have. Cal, who has had Kayce’s phone traced to the mountains, comes upon the two of them and demands to know what Kayce is doing, and the episode ends there.

Why it stands out

Themes

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