THERE’S A LOT for Yellowstone to wrap up as it continues the march toward the end of the second part of its fifth (and potentially final) season. While the show could be rushing through things toward an explosive finish, instead it’s taking a slow and methodical pace to make sure everything makes sense.
Season 5, episode 11 revolves around showing us exactly what happened on the night John Dutton died. The episode opens with a confirmation that Dutton without question did not kill himself; some kind of black ops team broke into his house, knocked him out, brought him to his bathroom, and staged a suicide. We suspected that, but now we actually see how it really played out. (We also learn later in the episode that Sarah Atwood was the ringleader of this plan and largely shielded Jamie from it; Sarah also got her brains blown out shortly thereafter.)
Since we, the audience, got to see the truth of what happened, it naturally isn’t long for the characters to figure it out either. So we get a lengthy scene where Kayce abuses his power as the Livestock commissioner to exhume his father’s body and look for proof of what we now know as fact.
Kayce meets with an immediately exasperated medical examiner named Dr. Everly (played by Vinessa Shaw), and they go through a whole process that involves calling a Detective on the phone, choking a guy out, and the initially exasperated medical examiner eventually admitting that she was at least somewhat wrong. They change John’s cause of death from “Suicide” to “Undetermined,” which allows for the investigation to be reopened—and the path for some justice for John’s death opens right back up.
“I’m sorry I missed it,” Dr. Everly tells Kayce. Kayce, ever the stoic cool guy these days, doesn’t blame her: “You were supposed to miss it,” he replies.
Vinessa Shaw plays Medical Examiner Dr. Everly on Yellowstone
The sequence of exhuming and re-examining John’s body takes up a lengthy portion of the episode—about 10 minutes in total—and so it helps that Yellowstone brings in a talented actress in Vinessa Shaw to play the key role of the medical examiner, Dr. Everly.
Shaw made her film debut as a child in the 1981 slasher film Home Sweet Home, but her breakout came in the Halloween classic Hocus Pocus over a decade later in 1993. She would remain a presence on screen throughout the ’90s and 2000s, showing up most notably in Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece Eyes Wide Shut. In that film, she only has a handful of scenes as a sex worker named Domino—but her character and presence in the film prove completely vital to the journey of mystery and desire that Tom Cruise’s lead, Dr. Bill Harford, finds himself on.
She also notably appeared on screen in the Josh Hartnett-led romantic comedy 40 Days and 40 Nights, The Hills Have Eyes remake, and the 3:10 to Yuma remake. Yellowstone isn’t her only TV appearance either; she’s had key roles on Ray Donovan and Apple TV+’s basketball drama Swagger, and, coincidentally, also appeared this weekend on Prime Video’s new Cruel Intentions series.