Even Michelle Pfeiffer can

Taylor Sheridan’s shows tend to be about cultural spectrums, the ghosts that fill a past, a place, a business, a legacy. In the case of “The Madison,” his new six-episode series for Paramount+, the spectrum is literal. The show is about a family’s grief after an unexpected loss.

That pain extends to two settings: Manhattan and the Madison River Valley. In New York, Madison is an avenue for luxury shopping, a stereotype of everything that is wrong with urban elitism (read: liberalism). In Montana, the Madison is a sun-dappled, trout-filled river that meanders through the mountain landscape, symbolizing the greater meaning and purpose found in experiencing a natural place (read: traditionalism).

While this culture war dichotomy and moralizing will be familiar to fans of Sheridan’s shows, the problem in “The Madison” is its lazy directness and how it overlaps with its female characters to turn them into caricatures and undermine their stories.

In the show, New York City exists solely as a superficial trope, and this one-dimensional representation makes it impossible for the city’s stories to effectively counter those of Montana. This is problematic because, unlike Sheridan’s other shows, “The Madison” focuses primarily on the women in a family. Because these women are reduced to how they embody the stereotypical representation of the city they come from, they lack the complexity necessary to hold the center of the show, and the plot is uneven as it oscillates between the two places to tell its story.

This problem is clear from the beginning. The pilot episode begins with the family’s exorbitantly wealthy patriarch, Preston Clyburn (Kurt Russell), fly fishing with his brother Paul (Matthew News). Preston isn’t catching any fish. The problem, his younger brother tells him, is his wrist. There is too much action.

Emerson Miller/Paramount+

“Stop trying to hail a cab on Fifth Avenue,” Paul says. Of course, the city, where Paul’s wife and daughters live, is always the problem.

This becomes clear when the scene cuts from the siblings casting in the river to Paige (Elle Chapman), Preston’s youngest daughter, gracefully walking down Fifth Avenue in heels while making a work call. Out of nowhere, they punch him in the face and steal his Brunello Cucinelli shopping bags. She falls to the sidewalk and no one in the cold, selfish city even stops to help her up, but a voyeuristic man takes a video, of course.

In shock, Paige immediately calls her mother, Stacy (Michelle Pfeiffer), who tells her to go straight to her private doctor.

“I’m going to look like a battered wife,” Paige complains, as the doctor sews up her cheek.

This insensitive comment is when Sheridan’s misogynistic lens and lazy writing become as clear as the water rushing through Madison’s rapids.

The current of its tropes gains strength after a family tragedy forces the women, Stacy, her eldest daughter Abigail (Beau Garrett) with her two daughters, and Paige with her husband Russell (Patrick J. Adams), to visit Montana. There, they stay in cabins that are so close to the river that there is no septic system, so they are forced to use a latrine and gather food from the garden and eat meat that comes from animals with hooves.

For lack of a better expression, women are fish out of water whose urban (again, read liberal) mores make it difficult for them to acclimate to a world of gluten and indigenous peoples who call themselves “Indians.” Women are ridiculous because their way of life in the city is ridiculous.

Abigail is reduced to a trust fund divorcee who has never had to support herself or build a meaningful life. Their days consist of Pilates, therapy, cocktails and complaining, and their children are sadly elitist. Paige, the supposedly strong daughter, works, but she’s just as spoiled, and her husband meets her demands because he’s not traditionally masculine enough to stand up to her like the beer-drinking cowboy Cady (Kevin Zegers) or Sheriff Van (Ben Schnetzer) they meet in the valley. For the most part, Paige appears to be sexualized, which goes hand in hand with the way Sheridan has been criticized for portraying his young female characters. Paige’s hypersexualization becomes more obvious when she is stung by hornets while using the outhouse and spends an entire episode face down with a swollen butt and an itchy “kitty.”

Emerson Miller/Paramount+

The only female character with any real complexity is Stacy, and this is less because the writing gives her agency (repeatedly, her actions are receptive rather than active) and more because Pfeiffer’s performance is messy and captivating, fleshing out the supported source material.

In one scene, she sits on the porch talking to her oldest daughter, excited because she has a “very small window to be reckless” and make decisions that feed her heart instead of her head. This is the most interesting line of the show. How does grief change one’s priorities? How is absence transformed into presence and a force that moves you to create meaning in your life instead of one that consumes you?

Stacy’s examination of these issues and the way she navigates them with her daughters is what makes the story interesting, but it’s not enough to make it feel like a balanced show. Instead, the first season, which takes place over the course of about a week but lacks the realism to make this period ring true, feels like a prologue to a larger story waiting to be told in which Stacy and her daughters become real people.

Because “The Madison” has already been renewed for a second season, it is being given the opportunity to tell that story. The question is whether the show can use this space to correct its shortcomings and give its female characters more agency to discover who they can become both on Madison Avenue and along the Madison River.

“The Madison” is streaming on Paramount+. The first three episodes are available. Episodes 4-6 will air on March 21.