The Madison knows exactly what it wants to say about grief, and though that message isn’t unfamiliar, the canvas upon which Taylor Sheridan’s characters project and explore their grief takes a unique—and very Sheridan-esque—form: Montana itself. In the final three episodes of season 1, the Clyburns return to New York, where they realize just how much Montana has changed them already. It’s time for this family to figure out where they really belong after such a life-altering loss. Let’s get into it.
The fourth episode begins with a flashback to Preston staying at Paul’s ranch, where he’s rudely awakened by Paul in the middle of the night. I’ve already lost count of how many fishing montages we’ve had on this show so far, but Paul takes his brother on yet another fishing excursion, this time with the moonlight as their guide. After their soirée, Paul mentions that it’s his wife Melissa’s birthday—and the brothers revisit a similar conversation from the pilot episode, with Preston concerned that Paul’s 20 years alone in Montana could lead to a suicide-invoking isolation. Somehow, things ended with Melissa, but Paul apparently meant it when he said “’til death do us part,” which is why he’s opted for solitude ever since their marriage ended. In the next scene, we’re back in the present-day timeline with Stacy, who’s scooping water out of the river and proclaiming, “This is getting harder.” The grief is catching up to her. Luckily, her best friend, Liliana, has arrived from the city, and they have a tearful reunion. Sometimes, we just need our friends! Stacy reads some passages from Preston’s journals aloud—including a gross coffee recipe that includes a whole cracked egg boiling with the grounds. Stacy admits there’s a part of Preston she never knew, and that part resided here, in Montana. Liliana reassures her that the journals are what Preston wants her to know about him now. The good friend that she is, Liliana is handling the paperwork for Preston’s death, and so we learn from her that Preston’s official burial instructions actually did say he wanted to rest in his special spot in Montana, just as Stacy had assumed. Overlooking said resting spot, the besties strategize on how to safeguard his grave. Stacy admits that none of what she’s doing—like wanting to live on this ranch in perpetuity—is rational, but it’s what she needs to get through the day without her husband.
Back at the ranch, a horse and its rider appear in the yard, scaring Russell half to death as he exits the outhouse. But it’s just Cade’s daughter, Kayla (and her horse, Shorty), whom we saw riding around in episode 3. Bridgette mentions that her own horse is at the Olympics in France, and the two girls get along quickly; Bridgette ends up hopping on Shorty and the pair ride off together. (We later see them both riding around on horses at Cade’s ranch). While Abby heads off into town, Russell babysits Macy by analyzing scat trails in the forest together. Macy is mourning her grandfather, too, tearing up when she realizes she’s forgetting what Preston looked like. At the sheriff’s office in town, Van presents Stacy, Abby, Paige, and Liliana with the police’s investigation into what exactly happened before the plane crash, based on recovered flight data. The police play the recording of the plane’s final moments; the women, understandably, all leave that appointment re-traumatized. Stacy walks into the river back at the ranch and screams; she’s frustrated at Preston’s recklessness. Van, who followed them back to the ranch, offers some comforting words: When his wife died, he was equally frustrated with her, as she died in an ATV crash. Still sitting in the river, Stacy tells Liliana that she’s already sped through the denial stage of grief. Despite wearing Chanel pants, Liliana walks into the river to hug her friend. Now that’s real friendship.
Before he heads off, Van shares a moment with Abby, who’s still reeling from that audio clip. She wishes the sheriff had called to ask her on a date, not to deliver horrible news. Hold your horses, Abby! To make up for it, he recommends a bunch of first date ideas. The local saloon? Out of the question. (He’s arrested most of the regulars there.) A museum, café, or pub, perhaps? They’re miles away from any of Abby’s favorite spots in Manhattan. They settle, finally, on a relaxing float down the river, and they share another kiss before getting interrupted by Russell and Macy, returning from their poop adventures. Abby decides to invite the always-bickering but ever-endearing Paige and Russell on her river date with Van. (How kind of her!) Resting on the riverbank, Van and Abby both try and stumble their way through this unconventional dating situation. Abby reflects on her failed marriage and the differences between a pregnancy at 20 in the city compared to in the country, as well as the disposability of some marital commitments. Van shares how much he misses his late wife: She was the love of his life since they were both in the eighth grade. This admission adds some context as to why Van has been acting so shy. Opening up to Abby is painful; he worries it’s almost a betrayal of his late wife. In response, Abby makes a deal to share Van’s heart with the woman he loved and lost. These two are already professing their love for each other, and meanwhile my situationship won’t even text me back? I need to seriously raise the bar.
The episode comes to a close with Stacy trying to fly fish for the first time, based purely on instructions she found in Preston’s journals. Remarkably, she seems to be getting the hang of it. And in our last scene, we see the family warmly laughing around the dinner table when Liliana breaks down, piercing through their joy. She realizes how much Preston would have loved to see the family together like this, in Montana. The only thing Stacy does in response is refill everyone’s wine glasses—and announce the burial is happening tomorrow. It’s burial day when we open the penultimate episode of The Madison. Cade and Van have somehow been tasked with digging up the plots, which they have to do the “old-fashioned way,” i.e. with shovels, since getting a tractor up the river valley would be next to impossible. Meanwhile, the rest of the family is sinking deep into their grief. Liliana gets back from a shopping trip in Bozeman, where she found a Donna Karan black dress for the burial and some coffee creamer. (I like this diva!) The girls have also asked her to arrange a flight for them out of Montana that night. Stacy half-heartedly agrees to host a wake back at their Manhattan apartment, so as to give Preston’s New York friends and community a chance to mourn, too.
All wearing LBDs except for Stacy, “the girls and Russell” head to the grave site. (The distance between the ranch and this particular hill is unclear—but obviously within walking distance.) Cade and Van greet them there in suits and cowboy hats, and Paul and Preston’s bodies soon arrive. A man accompanying the bodies asks where the preacher is, and Stacy realizes she hadn’t thought to get one. Oops, they’re winging it! Mercifully, the friendly man delivers a prayer for the group, and the burial pretty much ends there, a bit unceremoniously. (Stacy walks off on her own.) Abby, in contrast, approaches her uncle Paul’s casket to tell him, “God damn you for taking him from us.” Harsh! The caskets are then buried, at last. There’s something of a post-burial wake at the ranch afterwards with some drinks and bites. A neighbor says Preston and Paul told tax assessors the ranch was mobile so they could avoid paying property taxes on them. (Maybe that will help Stacy make it her new home?) Out for a walk after the burial, Abby breaks the news to Van that she’s leaving Montana (she’s out of outfits, after all), but she would like to come back. Van refuses to even step foot in New York, so Abby moving to Montana is the only path forward for this relationship. But after rejecting a kissing advance, Van lays out the reality of his life to her: He makes $52,000 as a sheriff’s deputy; he has $12,000 in the bank, with plans to spend half of it on a horse; and October is elk-hunting month for their winter food. His reality is tied to his class constraints. He insists on knowing her daily routine, which is basically just pilates and therapy. Abby and Van live very different lives. As much as their chemistry is crackling, and the mutual attraction is there, there’s a compatibility issue. The farewell doesn’t end well—a breakup before they were ever really together. There goes our fated love story!
At this point, we all head to New York on a swanky private jet. Back in the old apartment she shared with Preston, Stacy practically drowns in the silence, whereas in Montana that silence was peaceful. (She turns on the news on their multiple televisions so that it’s not morbidly quiet.) She recalls when Preston would take his wedding ring off before his trips to Montana, worried about losing it in the river while he fished. In the present day, she sees the ring, waiting for him to get back. Stacy stops by her new therapist Phil’s (Will Arnett) office for a desperately needed session, but she doesn’t respond well to his therapeutic method, which she finds patronizing. “If you by chance have happened upon any information that might assist me in mitigating the desire to claw my eyes out with a fucking spoon to get rid of the pain, I would appreciate that,” she says, in a great line delivery from Pfeiffer. He switches up the approach here: A whiskey is much-needed. The helpful advice he does provide is this: The pain of loss will always be with her, but time will lessen its agony. She considers her next steps: If she moves to Montana alone, will she miss her daughters? Overall, the rest of the session goes well. I also think this is one of the few therapy scenes we’ve seen in a Sheridan series!
Later, back at the apartment, Stacy gets a call from Russell: Paige is inconsolable with grief. The family rushes to the couple’s apartment, and Abby arrives with the ingredients to Paige’s ultimate comfort dessert: three scoops of rocky road ice cream in a glass of milk, topped with chocolate chips. It’s nice to see Stacy be in a place where she can be there for her younger daughter—even if her guidance is more along the lines of, Everyone you know will die eventually! That disgusting cup of sugar seems to be hitting the spot, at least. Crisis averted, Stacy and Russell grab a drink around the corner at the nearest no-name dive bar. The bartender brings them Irish car bombs, and Stacy pushes Russell on the future of his marriage and his desire to raise kids in the suburbs. Apparently, he had a lot of respect for Stacy and Preston and their marriage. It’s interesting watching both of them realize they’re trying to figure out their future in real time. And just like that, we’re at the finale! This season has flown by courtesy of the three-episode drops and a six-episode season in total. We open with yet another flashback: Paul and Preston chatting back at the ranch. Paul is drunk and existential about the absurdity of human life. We find out that Melissa is not Paul’s ex-wife but, rather, his late wife: She was hit by a car and killed. God, everyone on this show has lost someone! Back in the present day, Liliana is setting up flowers for the apartment memorial. Stacy walks out and promises to be back when the wake is over, and decides to stop by a café for chai with “milk from an udder.” (If there are two things Sheridan likes to take shots at across all his shows, it’s pronouns and alternative milk.) She throws the drink out immediately, though. Her New York routine doesn’t suit her anymore.
Across town, Paige arrives at her office, only for her insensitive boss to reassure her that she can take all the time she needs to mourn…after Fashion Week, naturally. Later, she overhears her coworkers talking about her father’s plane crash—and their gossip includes some very rude commentary about his carbon footprint. Paige opts to approach this colleague and—in a wild echo from the pilot episode—clocks her right in the face. Honestly, she deserved that! Elsewhere, Abby is having espresso martinis and dishing about her Montana fling with her girlfriends when she gets a panicked call from Paige. Apparently, the punched coworker is pressing charges. We next get to see Van back in Montana, where he’s pulling over a young couple having sex in their car when he gets a call from Abby. She convinces him to speak to the New York police while Paige is handcuffed, but there’s nothing Van can do all the way from Montana except tell her that Paige desperately needs a lawyer to navigate this. Stacy arrives on the scene, aghast. When did her daughters turn into “pugilists”?! Stacy takes it upon herself to try and talk the coworker out of the charges. Turns out, the woman’s father also died—of cancer—so she has some idea of what Paige is going through. In the end, she drops the charges, and Paige walks away with a violation for disturbing the peace. (Oh, and she’s fired from her job, obviously).
At another therapy appointment with Phil, the whiskey comes back out. While they further unpack Stacy’s layers of grief, she compliments his cheekbones. Are there vibes between them? He tries to encourage her to attend the apartment memorial, but she struggles to put words to how she really feels about it, which leads to lots of “fuck you”s. The real emotion underneath it all is terror: that the mourning period will end, and that afterward, all that will be left in its wake is Preston’s glaring absence. Ultimately, she ends up inviting Phil to the memorial. Sure! Why not? On the car ride to the memorial, Russell is looped into Paige’s punch drama, and we also finally meet Abby’s ex-husband, Dallas, who’s pretty much exactly as expected from a recent divorcee. At the wake, everything is a bit awkward and stilted. Abby grabs two vodka gimlets and discovers Stacy hiding in her bedroom. Phil gives Stacy some encouraging words to get her to join the gathering (she insults him in return), but she still slips out of the party. Poor Liliana thought all of this would actually help her friend grieve! Stacy ends up hailing a cab, whose driver she asks to drive south with no fixed destination; she even left her phone at home. We can probably guess where she’s going, but Abby panics and calls the police to file a missing person’s report. Her mother has been acting erratically. What if she’s a danger to herself?
Back in Montana, Cade is tracking down some missing animals who escaped the ranch’s enclosure. His search brings him all the way back to Preston and Paul’s graves, where, of course, he finds Stacy. She’s passed out next to her gun, but she’s alive. She’s a mess, having arrived from New York with just the clothes on her back, guided only by the intuition that she needed to be as close to Preston’s body as possible. This serves as a bit of an abrupt ending to the season, but it marks the official beginning of Stacy’s new phase in Montana. I highly doubt she’s going back to New York after this. Maybe it really was Phil’s guidance—his permission to leave her home forever—that helped her make the final decision. And there we have it: the conclusion of one of the most touching Sheridan shows yet, albeit one much more sparse in plot. No one was murdered; there weren’t even any major crimes! Instead, Sheridan has delivered a simply thoughtful and non-judgmental character study of a grieving widow, with a powerhouse performance by Pfeiffer. What will we see from her next? Will Stacy finally install plumbing at the ranch? Filming has already finished on The Madison season 2, so hopefully we won’t have to wait long to find out.
