‘The Madison’ Episode 1 Recap: “Pilot”

As they fly fish for trout in a western paradise, Preston Clyburn (Kurt Russell) and his brother Paul (Matthew Fox) talk about life like it’s one that got away. Preston can’t stay on the Madison River forever, working to perfect the dextrous, snapping wrist action Paul has down pat. He’ll return to his wife Stacy (Michelle Pfeiffer), his daughters, one married and one divorced, and his riches in New York. But ever since Paul quit the rat race and moved out here, to a patch of underdeveloped land on the river as it heads south from Montana into Idaho, Preston has seen it as a place where life can truly be lived. If only Stacy could join him in this quiet place of rough-hewn beauty. Before they’re too old to do anything but remember. 

Welcome to The Madison, a six-episode series written by Taylor Sheridan in the wake of Yellowstone as the so-hot-right-now creator’s latest endeavor to capture the American spirit in a bottle. And as the series trades sun-dappled fly fishing locales in the West for the bustle of Lower Manhattan, Preston’s daughter Paige McIntosh (Elle Chapman) is finding out she can be assaulted on Fifth Avenue and the city won’t skip a beat. No one asks if she’s OK, but they do film the mugger as he flees with her expensive purchases. As the family’s personal surgeon stitches the cut on her cheek, Paige asks her mother where she can safely walk, if not on a busy city street in broad daylight. “You can’t,” Stacy says. “That’s the whole point.” 

Later, while discussing the mugging and Paige’s options for laser surgery at dinner, the whole point seems to actually be the common ugliness of contemporary society daring to pierce the rarified orbit of this wealthy family. Paige is married to Russell McIntosh (Patrick J. Adams), who works in shipping or finance in some bland but lucrative capacity. But her lifestyle is supported by Preston’s money, who also supports Abigail Reece (Beau Garrett), the Clyburns’ oldest daughter, as she goes through a divorce with her own children, Bridgette (Amiah Miller) and Macy (Alaina Pollack). Stacy suddenly slams her hand on the restaurant table. They have everything they could ever want, but can’t be bothered to consider issues like poverty or racism without detached indifference. They can’t even be bothered to look up from their phones. 

At Paul’s little plot of cabins, Preston is still wondering about life. What’s he got, ten, fifteen good years left? Despite his wealth, what if the best moments are already gone? It’s an existential dilemma Preston has put to Stacy before, but she’s never shared his interest in roughing it out west. And while he has concern for Paige, he’ll stay an extra day, because Paul, the fly fishing expert and Cessna pilot, has surprised Preston with a trip to the Big Lost, a stretch of virgin river – not that Virgin River – in Idaho. They share a beautiful afternoon on the water, and Preston makes one rhythmic fly cast that is absolutely perfect. “I don’t ever want to leave,” he tells his brother. They barely acknowledge the mass of approaching storm clouds.

And this is where The Madison really begins. 

Stacy is at another fancy lunch in New York when a forestry officer phones from Idaho. “I’m sorry to say both Preston and Paul Clyburn did not survive the crash.” Did the Sheridan-O-Verse just kill off Kurt Russell and Matthew Fox? In the first episode of The Madison? As their little plane slammed into Borah Peak? Yes, yes, and yes, and Stacy is devastated as she gathers the family for their flight out west. With Abigail, she identifies her husband and brother-in-law at the Bonneville County coroner, and the fam then drives out to the riverside camp. If you thought people like Paige and Russell were ostentatious blowhards in Manhattan, get a load of them being freaked out by Paul’s lack of indoor plumbing.

“Conveniences have become your necessities.” In a flashback that feels more like a conversation in her memory, Stacy recalls Preston’s words, and pronouncements such as this echo in the journal she discovers in his cabin. And though she grieves, she is also settling into the trappings of his Out West life – wearing his old Simms fishing cap, trying on his boots, and settling into this place so foreign to all of them. “He was right,” Stacy tells Abigail.  “Not the same in pictures. I robbed us of this.”

It seems this rich New York family has forgotten to enjoy sunsets. It seems they forgot to revel in Preston as a person, when there was so much more to know beyond fatherly pep talks or his always open checkbook. And in this way, they forgot themselves. “I wonder who has to die for us to make another meal together,” Stacy wonders aloud; it’s harsh, but we get the sense it’s part of this unaddressed distance that has crept between them. Now that their husband, father, and grandfather is gone, it’s time to honor him by respecting his feelings for this place. Stacy is going to find the pristine valley he wrote about in his diary, the one he named for her. She’s going to bring Preston’s body to be buried there. And in Montana, she’s gonna do what her husband begged her to do for 39 years of marriage. “I’m gonna finally see this place.”

Mad Hits for The Madison Season 1 Episode 1 (“Pilot”):

• With so many fly fishing references in this lead episode of The Madison, Taylor Sheridan makes the homage clear. Stacy gathers the family to watch A River Runs Through It, Preston’s favorite film, and Ep 1 is dedicated to Robert Redford.

• Preston and Stacy Clyburn have bestowed generational wealth on their children and grandchildren, but we don’t exactly know how their original bag was earned. When Paul asks Preston if he loves what he does, his brother says “I don’t even like what I do.”

• “I should be happy he died out here, doing what he loved,” Stacy says of Preston. What he really loved. “Not tethered to some hospital bed. He died living, not existing.” As it gets going, this line feels like the clearest distillation of Sheridan’s intentions with The Madison. 

Johnny Loftus (@johnnyloftus.bsky.social) is a Chicago-based writer. A veteran of the alternative weekly trenches, his work has also appeared in Entertainment Weekly, Pitchfork, The All Music Guide, and The Village Voice.