'Yellowstone' creator Taylor Sheridan says he's not surprised critics hate the show: 'It has no plot'

Appearing on "The Joe Rogan Experience" earlier this week, Sheridan said the show was "designed" for critics to hate.

• The "Yellowstone" cocreator appeared on "The Joe Rogan Experience" podcast this week.
• He said that he didn't think the series — now in its fifth season — had a "plot."
• He added: "It's not surprising that critics hate it because it's designed for them to hate."

"Yellowstone" cocreator Taylor Sheridan appeared on "The Joe Rogan Experience" podcast earlier this week and spoke about why he believed critics "hate" his Western drama.

During their discussion, which also saw them touch on veganism and "woke" comedy, Rogan heaped praise on Sheridan for his work on the "Yellowstone" prequel dramas "1883" and "1923," which focus on the ancestors of the family in the show.

This prompted the writer to reveal how the two spinoffs differ from the flagship series — namely, that he thinks they have more of a concrete plot than "Yellowstone."

While he said "1883" was "me growing up" and "taking a look back at history"," in comparison, he thought "Yellowstone" was the "punk rock me. "

"It has no plot, really," Sheridan said, adding that the central premise of the series was: "Don't take my land, I want your land."

"In that, I have a lot of opportunities to poke fun, but also kind of point out different points of views, and kind of really study a way of life and a world. There's a lot of defiance in the way I do it," he added.

"It's not surprising that critics hate it because it's designed for them to hate," he continued.

Rogan expressed his surprise that this was the critical reaction to the series, but Sheridan explained that many critics were "confounded by its success" and pointed to the fact that "The New York Times have done multiple, multiple articles where they're doing this essay on 'Why is this shit so popular.'"

One NYT opinion piece published in August 2022 referred to the show as "a conservative fantasy liberals should watch," while another from November 2022 labeled it "a big, trashy, addictive soap."

Others have also been critical of the show.

Tressie McMillan Cottom, a writer and associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said on NPR's "Pop Culture Happy Hour" that the show left you with "a cycle of violence and very boring sex over and over and over again."

A piece by TV critic Darren Franich in Entertainment Weekly also suggested that Sheridan had "a weakness for wannabe poeticism" in his dialogue.

"Everybody gets one portentous line per scene," Franich wrote.

Despite this, "Yellowstone" is one of the biggest shows on television. Its fourth season finale averaged 13.1 million viewers, the most of any regularly-scheduled entertainment series last year, Variety reported.

It was announced last year that season five would be the show's last following a rumored falling out behind the scenes between Sheridan and actor Kevin Costner over scheduling.

Matthew McConaughey is reportedly in negotiations to star in a new spinoff to the show.