CBS has a predicament on its hands with airing Yellowstone, which was made for cable and wasn’t created for with broadcast TV standards in mind. While language and select graphic shots are fairly simple to cut around, Yellowstone Season 1, Episode 3 (“No Good Horses”) features a huge challenge for the network’s editors. In the episode, Beth Dutton (Kelly Reilly) strips completely nude and takes a dip in a water trough. In the Paramount Network version, Reilly’s breasts and butt are clearly shown and are in-frame for a majority of the scene.
If you think it’d be easy to just edit out the tub scene completely, you’d be wrong. It’s a whole conversation between Beth and her brother Jamie Dutton (Wes Bentley) where she reminds him that it’s the anniversary of their mother’s death. It explains Beth’s demeanor for the whole episode and helps explain why she’s especially upset that their father, John Dutton (Kevin Costner) spent the night with another woman. Furthermore, it goes on to help establish the dynamic between Beth and ranchhand Rip Wheeler (Cole Hauser), who tries to cover her up before she defiantly marches inside while still totally nude.
While they might be able to do some cropping to remove some of the nudity, it’s going to take quite a lot of cutting and clever editing to make the dialogue resonate as writer/director Taylor Sheridan intended. Plus, the bold nature of Reilly’s performance in the scene is one reason Beth became such a fan-favorite so quickly. (We called it one of the show’s best moments back when Season 1 was originally airing.)
It’s worth noting that when Paramount Network uploaded the clip to YouTube, there was some slight cropping done to adhere to that platform’s standards, but it’s likely that even more will need to be done for broadcast. CBS has not commented on how it plans to alter the scene. If local stations aired Yellowstone Season 1, Episode 3 in its entirety, CBS would be subjected to hefty FCC fines.
