‘The Madison’ Review: Michelle Pfeiffer Is the Vibrant Heart of Taylor Sheridan’s Wonky Ode to the Countryside
The TV trope of city mice out of their depth in the (far superior) country is as old as that TV chestnut “Green Acres.” Remember the theme song where manly husband Eddy Albert threw down the gauntlet: “Land spreadin’ out so far and wide; Keep Manhattan, just give me that countryside”? Meanwhile, his pampered wife Eva Gabor responds “I just adore a penthouse view; Da-ling I love you but give me Park Avenue.”
In Taylor Sheridan’s latest series “The Madison,” his aspiration is less the corny “Green Acres” than the high drama of “A River Runs Through It.” The first episode launches with Wall Streeter Preston Clyburn (Kurt Russell) fly-fishing with his brother Paul (Matthew Fox) near the latter’s Montana ranch. The two manly men have a rock-solid relationship as they banter about which flies to use, share fraternal wisdom and bag trout only to release them back to the wild.
If there was any doubt of the obvious reference, later in the same episode Manhattan Mama Stacy Clyburn (Michelle Pfeiffer) curls up at a luxury Montana hotel with her two daughters and two granddaughters. She decides to watch a movie — and her on-the-nose choice is that gorgeous weepie “A River Runs Through It.” We are not talking subtly here in the Sheridan universe.
Sheridan infuses the series with big-name, mature talent better known for their movie work (see Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren in “1923”). He bets the farm that Pfeiffer and Russell will spark in an age-appropriate marriage heading into its 40th year.
Seeing Pfeiffer return to dominate as the Madison matriarch is a big draw. As someone who always wished the actress would headline a version of Catwoman after co-starring in “Batman Returns,” I’m well aware of the claws retracted behind her feline beauty itching to be released.
Pfeiffer’s still as gorgeous as a Montana sunset, as stunning as a Manhattan skyscraper. The role calls on her to struggle with grief and privilege while luxuriating in true love and mothering grown indulged daughters, while tending to spoiled granddaughters generated by this perfect union. She rages. She cries. She calls people out. She throws back booze. And wades through the adversity life has given her, pulling the rug out from under her magazine glossy urban life.
Russell is a good match as her husband. He’s got solid-as-a-tree down cold. Add to that, charm to burn playing a man who has never been insecure for a day in his life. His true loves are his wife, his girls and the wilderness. The problem is — no one in his female-dominated family shares his love for the outdoors, or is even open to indulging him for some portion of the year. Selfishness is a core sin of the Clyburn women.
Living in Sin City East, the women and girls have the deck stacked against them from the first. Manhattan just has to be bad for Montana to be such an obvious tonic for lost city souls. Early on, a random mugger in a hoodie punches younger married sister Paige (Elle Chapman) in the face. He rips the designer bags from her manicured fingers and leaves her wailing (something she does a lot) in the middle of the sidewalk. So, there’s not much tension in the Manhattan vs Montana debate, even as audiences might feel the urge to punch Paige’s pretty, pouty face in frustration throughout the six episodes.
Paige, once the entire family flies to Montana in a chartered jet, is also the butt of a recurring outhouse joke. A lot is made about the ranch’s lack of indoor plumbing. And, to torture the city bitches even more, there’s a hornet’s nest just inside the rim of the wooden hole within. This makes for a hearty prank on the city princess, who goes to the bathroom and exits screaming, stung in her privates. But really, no respectable mountain man, not Paul, not Preston, would let a hornet’s nest remain in the outhouse. Am I wrong to want some veracity?
Not in the Sheridan nation where Manhattan shrink Dr. Phil Yorn (Will Arnett) tends to the traumatized Mrs. Clyburn by drinking expensive scotch with her during their first session. They graduate to tequila. Yorn namedrops his alma maters (Dartmouth and Harvard) while welcoming her unbridled hostility as, perhaps, the first rip-the-Band-Aid stage of healing. While Arnett charms, his character seems to honor no doctor-patient boundary and his practices are an odd figment of the creator’s imagination.
Whether in Manhattan or Montana, both places seem to be fictional baloney. Pfeiffer, Russell and the cast do their best, but it’s a challenge to act believable in such an entirely rigged reality. There’s no essential problem with Sheridan’s insistence that we have to return to get back to the land.
But that liberating journey to free our souls must be authentic for this trope to have any weight. Sheridan’s new series aims for something resonant but falls short, generating more grist for the “Yellowstone” mill.
“The Madison” premieres Saturday on Paramount+.
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