Family Business (Season 1, Episode 7)
Premise: After a car bomb targets a federal judge, the marshals protect her family and uncover her husband’s secret role in arming rebels overseas.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 1, Episode 7
- Case
- Car bomb targeting a federal judge
- 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
- Andrea and Fallon bring up the unsolved murder of Kayce’s father, Governor John Dutton, and Tom Weaver jabs that the Yellowstone ranch never turned a profit.
- Music
- Ari Kaplan’s “Revelation” opens the episode, and Adam Sanders performs “His to Mine” at the bar.
- Guest stars
- Christine Dunford as Judge Pauline Ayers, Christopher Stanley as Blake Ayers, Abigail Rhyne as Fallon Ayers, Chris Mulkey as Tom Weaver, Ellyn Jameson as Dolly Weaver
- Director
- Gonzalo Amat
- Writers
- Dana Greenblatt
Summary
The Case
“Family Business” centers on Federal Judge Pauline Ayers, whose valet is killed by a car bomb that she and her husband, Blake, escape unharmed. The marshals guard the family, including teenage daughter Fallon. Kayce and Andrea arrest Clint Gallo, a paroled clinic bomber who once threatened the judge, but while he is in custody a sniper fires into the Ayers home. Blake and Fallon are moved to Kayce’s ranch. Lt. Colleen Park’s officers find fake passports hidden in the Ayers walls, and Blake’s accounts route money through shell companies to Equatorial Guinea, while the FBI says the bomb resembles devices from Africa’s Sahel. Cal begins to suspect Blake wants his wife dead, until Blake slips away and ranch cameras show him being taken by two men.
Blake’s hard drive tells a different story. His medical charity, Chiron’s Care, was quietly shipping weapons to Luis Andeme, an opponent of President Bindong, and explosives Blake supplied built the car bomb that killed Bindong’s daughter. Bindong’s men threatened Blake unless he named everyone who received arms, and he went to meet them to protect his family. Pauline signs a warrant that unseals the kidnappers’ files: Rylan Hightower and Nate Porter, former Delta Force soldiers turned contractors who trained Bindong’s troops.
Kayce and Andrea reach Hightower’s property near Clyde Park, with Fallon along, ahead of backup, and Kayce frees Blake as the men torture him with electric shocks. Afterward Fallon asks whether her father is a monster and is told no father is perfect.
The Team
Dolly Weaver talks Kayce into a horseback tour that ends at a glacial lake. Cal sees Dr. Ginsburg about long-running neck and shoulder pain and a tingling hand, and runs into Belle’s husband, Jared, outside the office. Tom Weaver, recovering from a broken leg, cooks elk for Kayce, explains his high-tech, investor-funded cattle business and offers to buy East Camp. Kayce thanks him for dinner and asks Dolly whether the day was a setup; she says she was caught off guard too.
At the Bullet, Miles asks out Maddie, Cal’s daughter, and she says yes. Cal and Belle stay behind with bourbon; Cal admits he saw Jared with another woman, and Belle says she already knows and keeps the family together for their son, Braxton. A moment follows that is quickly called a terrible idea.
Spoiler, the ending: Kayce confides to Andrea that spending the day with Dolly felt like a betrayal of Monica, and Andrea says her widowed mother eventually made room for someone new. Dolly later apologizes for her father and asks for another ride; the episode ends without Kayce’s answer.
Why it stands out
- Chris Mulkey and Ellyn Jameson return as Tom and Dolly Weaver, who were first seen in “The Gathering Storm.”
- Chelsea Gray also returns from “The Gathering Storm” as Sabrina, who flirts with Miles at the bar.
Themes
- Trafficking and Smuggling
- Belle’s Double Life
- Bombings
- Cal and Maddie
- Cal’s Illness
- East Camp and the Weavers
- Hostages and Kidnappings
- Yellowstone Ties