1923 Season 1, Episode 6 is all about character development, giving Harrison Ford, Helen Mirren, Brandon Sklenar, and Julia Schlaepfer their best scenes yet.
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In the wake of the tugboat crash, the next step in Spencer and Alexandra’s fate is revealed. Cara and McDowell begin hiring new Livestock Officers. Teonna covers her tracks.
S1E06 Synopsis
*SPOILERS AHEAD* Full Recap & Observations of ‘1923’ Season 1, Episode 6
Season 1, Episode 6 opens with Teonna (Aminah Nieves) and Hank (Michael Greyeyes) in North Dakota. As his herd surrounds them, Hank has Teonna chose a boy’s name to avoid any recognition. Hen then gives her his son’s old clothes; a young man we’re to meet soon when he returns (note: Hank’s son does not appear in this episode).
The pair then discuss the names of white men, their sons, and their sons after that in turn, and this fascination with passing down names (which then become numbers) directly reflects the John Duttons of our story.
As they go through Teonna’s possessions, she pulls out a bible. Hank reveals he was in a “Christian prison” for a long, long time prior to 1923. Long enough to hear the bible read aloud two full times. He now fears the wrath of a Christian God who “turns cities into salt.”
For this reason, he spares the bible from being burned. But they burn everything else she came from her boarding school hellscape with, then bury the bibles by the creek.
Back in Montana, officers come looking for Teonna at her grandmother’s house (confirming she is, in fact, the grandmother of Teonna Rainwater). As the officers search for Teonna, her grandmother (Amelia Rico as Issaxche) lashes out at one of the officers. He pushes back, and she dies after hitting her head on the wood stove.
Spencer and Alexandra’s Last Tugboat Ride
Out in the vast ocean, Spencer (Brandon Sklenar) pulls himself from the water onto the top of their boat. But Alexandra (Julia Schaepfer) is nowhere to be found. A beating sound rings out from inside the boat, however, and Spencer dives in to save his love.
Swimming throuhg their overturned tugboat, he finds her alive in an air pocket. Together, they dive down, make it out of the boat, then to the surface of the overturned vessel. But Spencer knows they won’t survive without shelter or water, and so he dives back into the boat to carry out supplies. And in the short time he’s gone, Alex has found herself drowning as she drifts away from the boat.
After pulling her up, Spencer reveals that he was able to radio a distress signal for a ship as theirs was going down in 1923‘s Season 1, Episode 5. “They know we’re here,” he reassures Alex.
Hours into their stranding, another knocking comes onto the boat. The pair, still fearlessly in love, joke that this will absolutely be the last time either of them ever rides on a tugboat. And before they know it, the whole wretched thing is surrounded by sharks.
The Yellowstone and Livestock Agents of ‘1923’
On the Yellowstone, Jacob (Harrison Ford) is finally up and walking. As he does, he tells Zane (Brian Geraghty) to get out and “quietly” find a posse for vengeance against Banner Creighton.
In town, Cara (Helen Mirren) conducts interviews for livestock agents with Sheriff McDowell (Robert Patrick). The first we meet makes the mistake of getting cross with the “woman” at the table. So Jack knocks his skull with the butt of his revolver for cursing out his aunt. Eventually, Cara meets a “winner” (Brian Konowal as Clyde) that McDowell judges worthy. But there’s only three candidates they’ve let come aboard. They need twenty, and there’s something very off about Clyde…
Afterwards, Cara stands to look over their ranch with Jacob as they face the future. Roads, electricity, motorcars, and the mines that Donald Whitfield (Timothy Dalton, who does not appear in this episode) is now building to squeeze the Duttons from the Yellowstone…
Yet all Jacob can fathom is vengeance. Cara won’t lose him, however. So she has called the sheriff and all his deputies to the ranch to see Jacob alive. And to tell him of the murders and atrocity Banner Creighton (Jerome Flynn, also no appearance in Episode 6) committed in 1923 Season 1, Episode 3.
Sheriff McDowell, understandably, is livid, and knows Jacob killed all of Creighton’s fellow shepherds. It’s a mess, one that has Jacob fuming if for no other reason than he is being seen in this condition (or at all). His pride has consumed him, and he’d rather exist as a ghost than a beaten, broken man in the eyes of others – especially his old friend, McDowell.
Jacob Gets Back on the Saddle
To prove to himself that he still can, Jacob saddles his horse. But only after Cara has absolutely put him in his place through a moving speech that is Mirren’s finest work (in a beyond-fine show) to date. Jacob has no idea how much the family has suffered as he’s recovered in bed, she tells him as he turns his back to her not once, but twice.
Inside the house, Jack (Darren Mann) is listening for their baby inside Elizabeth’s belly. He’s eager to feel and hear the little one. But Elizabeth (Michelle Randolph) isn’t far along, and so they decide for another round. “You can’t get more pregnant,” Jack smiles.
On the porch, Cara and Jacob are forced to listen to their copulation. “We can hear you!” Jacob shouts before taking his hat off to speak to his beloved wife.
Here, Harrison Ford gives his finest performance in a decade as Jacob explains the leveling of American cities like New York and Boston to Irish Cara. He asks her to visualize all the meadows, tall trees, wildlife, and clear streams that once resided there for millennia. Now, they are all “miles of concrete slabs.”
A fierce conservationist, this is what matters to Ford about 1923‘s powerful story. For his Jacob, this why he wants vengeance. Because city-creating men will do the same to Montana. This is what Whitfield intends, and it’s the fight all other Duttons after Jacob will continue.
Rescue and a Marriage at Sea
(And No, Those Aren’t ‘The’ Whiskey Glasses and Decanter from ‘Yellowstone’)
In the middle of the night, a faint light appears over the horizon. It’s a large ship, and after firing off several shots from his rife, Spencer and Alexandra are finally found, rescued, and safely aboard.
Onboard, they find themselves in the captain’s quarters. Their captain (Joseph Mawle) pours them both whiskey from a decanter and glasses that look similar to those oft-pondered over glasses of John Dutton’s in Yellowstone. But they are not an exact match. Nor have any been that we’ve seen throughout 1923 that Spencer has used. So the mystery continues.
As they drink, the captain informs them that passage for immigrants (Alexandra) to America is horrid, over-logged mess. Recognizing an opportunity to wed Alexandra, Spencer requests the captain do so. Not for her citizenship (which is illegal), but because they truly cannot wait to marry after surviving that damn tugboat.
And so the captain marries them, but not before pulling out a box of rings. Rings that have survived the ship’s sailors. And now they are to be passed on. None of them fit Alexandra’s hands, however, leading their kind captain to remove his late wife’s ring from his necklace and gift it to the young bride.
“I am certain she would approve,” he smiles.
‘1923’ Looks Ahead
After consummating their marriage (multiple times) in their cabin, the new Mr. and Mrs. Dutton make for the deck to observe their heading. Egypt is alight on the horizon, but Alexandra is more interested in her husband’s dreams.
Spencer has a hard time articulating any dreams, however. Instead, he believes the universe has given them sign after sign that they should be apart. The elephant, the lions, the lies, the tugboat… All of it.
But Alexandra pulls him in tight, and lets this scared, lost little boy inside a man’s body know that she will never leave him. Ever. As husband and wife, they are now each other’s shadows. And even if it is the death of her, Alexandra Dutton will now follow Spencer wherever he goes.
1923 returns next Sunday, Feb. 19 for Season 1, Episode 7 exclusively on Paramount Plus.
