Michelle Pfeiffer is a gorgeous griever. “The Madison” makes the most of that with cinematography that lingers on her face as if it were part of Montana’s sun-kissed natural beauty. As New York society matron Stacy Clyburn, Pfeiffer seamlessly shifts through all the colors of inconsolability, from sallow brooding in one moment to red-faced weeping in the next, moving into verdant laughter a scene or two later. One imagines series creator Taylor Sheridan lapping up all that emotion like the thirsty elk Stacy’s husband Preston (Kurt Russell) watches from the window of his riverside cabin.
Cities are squalid crime hives that need to be tamed or abandoned in the Sheridanverse, whereas small towns and Western vistas are quaint canvases fertile with possibility. On this, both urbanites and exurbanites agree.
Preston is a corporate titan living out his lion in winter phase. One gets the sense that he made his money the old-fashioned way, which is never specified. Not that it matters. What’s important is that Preston is a man who values land, space and freedom, ensuring that at the same time, his wife and daughters want for nothing. But although New York life made him wealthy enough to afford a car in Manhattan, he’d rather spend his days fly fishing in the river — the Madison, in Montana. Not the stinky Hudson. Ew.
The tragic heart of this six-episode hankie-soaker, at least the one it wears on its bespoke sleeve, is that Stacy and Preston never share a cabin getaway. Stacy, being a Manhattan lady who lunches, loves her 24-carat gold creature comforts too much to join Preston on his Montana fishing trips because he never installed an indoor toilet. She comes to regret that decision when a phone call interrupts lunch with her best friend, and on the other end is a forest ranger informing her that the single-engine aircraft in which Preston and his brother Paul (Matthew Fox) were flying lost its battle with a mountain. Suddenly, Stacy must confront that cabin and her dread of defecating in an outhouse.
Much has been said about the singular way Sheridan writes women. They’re either scrappy wolverines like Beth Dutton on “Yellowstone,” or table-flipping, insatiable sexpots like Angela Norris on “Landman.” “The Madison” is Sheridan’s way of proving he understands that women can also, on occasion, be normal, grounded and sensible humans.
And as wives go, Stacy Clyburn is the equivalent of a bottle of expensive single-malt scotch, a la Macallan No. 6. She holds a patrician bearing that comes naturally to Pfeiffer and a kind of full-bodied humanity that makes the actor an ageless romantic lead. Since Pfeiffer never played a Hallmark holiday mom (just one for Prime Video), Sheridan casts her to lead his version of those movies, allowing Stacy her nostalgia while letting her pop off a few F-bombs as part of her mourning process.
(Emerson Miller/Paramount+ ) Michelle Pfeiffer as Stacy Clyburn in “The Madison”
Stacy comes to find tremendous solace in making one’s coffee over a wood-burning stove instead of waiting in line at the local café. Sure, the closest grocery store may be leagues away and, yeah, the freezer is stocked with elk meat instead of ice cream. The affection Stacy and Preston shared over nearly four decades of marriage makes “roughing it” worthwhile. It plays out mostly through her memories of soaking in her New York apartment’s architecturally impressive tub as Preston phones her from his supposedly simple Montana shack, which, let’s be honest, would command hundreds of dollars a night on some vacation rental site.
A bit of rustic discomfort is a small price to pay to place hundreds of miles between herself and a city infested with spoiled billionaires and holier-than-thou trust fund leeches. That also describes Stacy’s children, but since Preston was their father, Stacy has to bring them on her somber country mission too.
Since it’s unlikely we’ll ever afford a riverfront property, the dazzling cinematography on “The Madison” scratches that itch. This is simply his pitch for escaping New York, but in a genteel manner.
“The Madison” adds to Sheridan’s oeuvre by following the same urban flight fantasy that Hallmark was known for in its Candace Cameron Bure era. He is the master of the manifest destiny soap opera, after all. Most of his shows represent some version of this exodus. Cities are squalid crime hives that need to be tamed or abandoned in the Sheridanverse, whereas small towns and Western vistas are quaint canvases fertile with possibility. On this, both urbanites and exurbanites agree. Few appreciate the luxury of space and the great outdoors like apartment dwellers with thin walls. Fewer can afford much else, let alone purchase hundreds of acres of unspoiled wilderness.
And yet, most city dwellers would rather bloom where they’re planted. The tradeoff for tight quarters is proximity to conveniences and culture not generally found in far-flung places. Since it’s unlikely we’ll ever afford a riverfront property, the dazzling visuals on “The Madison” scratch that itch. This is simply Sheridan’s pitch for escaping New York, but in a genteel manner. The Clyburns do not fly coach, and while they own at least one horse, it’s in France, attending the Olympics. This is not a joke.
(Emerson Miller/Paramount+) Kurt Russell as Preston Clyburn in “The Madison”
Still, Sheridan has long been convinced that critics don’t get it. “I don’t understand why they’re still employed,” he once huffed to Joe Rogan. “I mean, what is the purpose that they serve, other than speaking to other completely disconnected supposedly highbrow people that live in congested urban areas?”
Harsh, and somewhat accurate, it pains me to say. Anyway, the part of his diatribe about congested urban areas and highbrow people is why I cited that quote, because it is an unobstructed view into his mindset. Stacy’s problem with New York life, and particularly how its version of 1% living shaped her children, is why Preston’s cabin becomes the start of her “Walden”-style unburdening. City life has hardened her daughters and granddaughters in all the wrong ways and made them too soft in others.
In this drama’s first episode, Stacy’s intellectually vacant child Paige (Elle Chapman) is traipsing down Fifth Avenue, minding her business between dips into designer boutiques, when a mugger socks her in the face and steals her shopping bags.
To right-leaning viewers, I’d imagine this realizes their largely baseless fears about city life, with unhinged criminals lurking around every corner and respectable ladies being treated like prey. Painting cities as degenerate hellscapes made selling their occupations by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the National Guard a lot easier. That’s not Sheridan’s doing, to be clear. But his worldview certainly validates this populist misperception.
Say what you will about what Sheridan’s other series telegraph about a woman’s wants and desires — at least this one understands why most of us, regardless of where we live, would rather be stranded in the middle of nowhere with a bear instead of most guys.
New Yorkers, in the meantime, might have fallen out of their chairs while watching the same scene. Paige is comedically irritating, the kind of lamebrained chardonnay liberal who claims to “see no color,” then later spews racist complaints when one of her Montana neighbors’ non-white children comes to visit on horseback. Also: What kind of dingus gets mugged on Fifth Avenue?
(Emerson Miller/Paramount+) Beau Garrett as Abigail Reese and Michelle Pfeiffer as Stacy Clyburn in “The Madison”
Say what you will about what Sheridan’s other series telegraph about a woman’s wants and desires — at least this one understands why many of us, regardless of where we live, would rather be stranded in the middle of nowhere with a bear instead of most guys. No bears were harmed in the making of “The Madison,” and the only male characters worth knowing are either dead or rugged, chivalrous cowboys.
To wit: Stacy’s eldest, Abigail (Beau Garrett), is a divorcee who spends her days shuffling between Pilates sessions, therapy, coffee dates and dropping her daughters off at various rich girl hobbies. Her ex-husband isn’t good for anything, so when she meets a Madison River Valley sheriff (Ben Schnetzer) who is gentlemanly and gainfully employed, she’s smitten. He’s also a widower who lost his wife not to some boring disease but in a way that only a real spitfire would go, by flipping her ATV.
He vows he’ll never visit New York, and she refuses to give up her annual vacations to Italy. It’s all very “Green Acres” (“Fresh air!” “Times Square!”) until you realize that for the women of “Sex and the City,” this would be the dream. He’s not saying she can’t go to Italy, after all, just that she’d be doing it without him. Oh well!
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Sheridan says there’s a lot of defiance in his work, one reason shows like “Yellowstone” and “Landman” are seen as red-state coded, and why the resentment shading the version of New York seen in “The Madison” aligns with his brand.
But it’s also an accurate depiction of the internal head versus heart battle plaguing city rats and country mice alike, even if its philosophy favors exurban trepidation about places like New York and other larger metropolises. Sheridan recently told Glamour that he had a love/hate relationship with the city that plays out in “The Madison” through Preston and, eventually, with Stacy. In leaving New York, she falls in love with Preston and his precious land all over again.
Through Stacy’s fetching sadness, we come to know that maybe a certain motivational speaker was right. Ambitious city women start out thinking they’re going to grab the world by the tail, pull it down and put it in their pocket. Sheridan is here to tell us we’re more likely to find out that all that striving isn’t going to amount to jack squat. We should just accept that we’re better off living in a van – er, cabin by the river.
“The Madison” is streaming on Paramount+.
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