In season three, Jamie Dutton emerges as the most fascinating and pivotal character.
His sister Beth hates his guts and there will never be any forgiveness for what he did when she was fifteen and pregnant. His father John (Kevin Costner) can't stand him and has pretty much admitted that he doesn't love Jamie the way he does the two remaining children, nor the eldest one killed in the premier. (Which has created a lot of speculation from viewers that Jamie isn't a full blooded Dutton.)
Yet for all the animosity aimed at him throughout his life, Jamie seems to be willing to keep being literally kicked and beaten up on by his own family.
He became a lawyer because his father "applied for him" to go to Harvard. Young Jamie wanted to be a cowboy "like you" and argued "you don't like lawyers". His father explained that "words are the swords of this century" and Jamie needed to learn how to use words to help the ranch. So, Jamie went away to college and returned to be a successful lawyer with political ambitions.
In season one, in his late 30s, he was running for Attorney General of Montana. His father got disgusted with his being away campaigning, when the ranch needed him on site for legal issues. John Dutton literally beat up Jamie when Jamie argued that he was going to be AG "for you". John tells him, "I've never known a man more in need of a beating." Sheesh!
In retaliation, Jamie agrees to give a reporter a "tell all" on the dirt of John Dutton, which is the end of season one. Then, in season two, Jamie had withdrawn from the AG race, takes his father's tongue lashing about even considering an article, and is back at home with the family, so he wants the reporter to not run the article, but she's not having any of that. So, when they meet out in the boonies, Jamie ends up murdering her in a fit a rage. He enlists Rip's help in making it look like the reporter died in a drowning accident.
Unlike most others on the ranch, Jamie doesn't view murder lightly and he's a broken man. John Dutton is incredibly harsh and unsympathetic, and says Jamie could have "jumped in the water", as though to suggest drowned himself. Beth hisses at Jamie, "This comes from a place of love: why don't you just go kill yourself." Jamie does take a rifle out to the woods to do just that, but John stops him with lectures about cowardice, so Jamie comes home with him. John then, in a rare moment of relative compassion, tells Beth, "I don't want him to kill himself."
Jamie is then assigned to the bunkhouse to be a "low man" worker, as a way of starting over and to prove himself. And then his former campaign manager meets with him to reveal that she's pregnant with his baby. He begs her to not say anything to anyone until he can figure things out because, "I don't know what my father will say."
Early in season three, John resigns as Livestock Commissioner to prevent scrutiny from all the recent murders, but wants family in the position. Youngest brother Kayce refuses, Beth refuses but suggests Jamie, since "we know what he is. He'll want to please the ranchers, and helping them will also help us." So, John appoints Jamie Livestock Commissioner and warns, "If you betray me once more, you're dead to me." Jamie insists that he can be trusted. His first assignment in the position results in one of his lawmen accidentally murdering two horse thieves, and he has to convince others to "make the lie the truth", in order for his man to not be prosecuted and for no one else to find out. And then, with pressures closing in from land developers, the governor (who is banging John Dutton), suggests that Jamie be moved up to Attorney General and Kayce be livestock commissioner.
So, after all that went on in season one, Jamie ends up as Attorney General in season three. After the swearing in, and his grim father has left, Jamie reveals to the governor that he knows it's because of her, not his father, that he's now Attorney General. So, he's finally getting it that he'll never have his father's love or approval.
So, just when Jamie's finally gotten the position he's been seeking, John finds out that twenty years ago Jamie helped 15yo Beth get an abortion, which was performed at a reservation clinic, and he allowed her to be sterilized. (That really went on at reservation clinics! The price for a free abortion.) So, once again, John Dutton is furious with Jamie for denying him a grandchild via Beth and Rip.
So, what is Jamie going to do? Is he friend or foe to the ranch? I can understand why he doesn't just get the fuck away and never look back, because he's presumably one of the inheritors of a 50,000 acre ranch. And now a development group has offered a price of a half billion dollars for it, and he surely feels entitled to his share. Unlike Beth, who is a smart business woman and knows that selling is one day inevitable, she understands that her father will never sell while he's alive, and since she loves him unconditionally, she doesn't try to convince him otherwise.
Also, we haven't heard any more about the pregnant campaign manager. Interesting that if Jamie does have a baby on the way, then John will have to figure out if he wants to view it as a true heir or an object of disgust. Beth had already threatened Jamie last year that she can't wait to "kill it with my bare hands" any love that Jamie might some day find. (Viewers then didn't know why she hated him so much.)
Ah, such drama! And only four episodes left in season three. I wouldn't have thought that "what is Jamie going to do" would be the question after nearly every episode this season, but he's turning out to be the person that, however beaten down, carries a lot of power concerning the future of the ranch.
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