Thank You, Taylor Sheridan, for Introducing Me to Brandon Sklenar and Julia Schlaepfer on '1923'

Whatever "it" is, they got it

Right before they almost died for the third time. Emerson Miller/Paramount+

I have mixed feelings about the just-concluded Yellowstone prequel 1923 overall — it has some fantastic moments, but the endless suffering its characters experience make it overly unpleasant to watch — but I’m 100% in on the show’s star-crossed lovers Spencer and Alexandra Dutton and the actors who play them, Brandon Sklenar and Julia Schlaepfer.

Spencer and Alex are my favorite characters Taylor Sheridan has ever created. Spencer is a World War I veteran and professional big game hunter who’s the perfect fantasy of Hemingway masculinity. Alex is a witty British aristocrat who yearns for freedom and adventure. They meet in Africa and fall in love, get married on a ship by Captain Benjen Stark, and almost die about eight times in four days. They’re separated in the Season 1 finale, and spend almost the entire second season apart, until the very end, when their reunion made me cry like the guy from the meme. Their passion is all-consuming. It’s the most romantic storyline Sheridan has ever written. It’s an epic, cinematic romance in the style of, and nearly at the scale of, Titanic.

Sklenar and Schlaepfer are perfect romantic leads. Sklenar has hair the color of a racehorse, and Schlaepfer looks like an artist’s rendering of a beautiful woman. They have the charisma and the chemistry that just feels good to be around. They’re both fully committed to their roles — which they had to be, because they get put through the wringer in Season 2, especially Schlaepfer. Pretty much everything bad that can happen to a person happens to Alex. She was probably reading the scripts like “What happened? Why is Taylor punishing me?” I read an interview where she said she sobbed when she read them. She’s a real trouper for enduring Season 2.

Sklenar and Schalepfer should become big stars. They have the talent and the presence. Sklenar seems to be well on his way. He was in It Ends With Us, which was a big movie, and he’s in the new Blumhouse thriller Drop, which looks very fun. Schlaepfer doesn’t have any upcoming stuff publicly announced, which hopefully changes. Maybe the fact that she’s not actually British is throwing casting agents off?

Right before they got attacked by an elephant. Emerson Miller/Paramount+

.I pretty much said everything I wanted to say about the 1923 finale itself in the review I wrote for TV Guide. It’s one of my favorite things I’ve written lately, so please go check it out if you watched the 1923 finale.

There's a line in the finale that might sum up what Sheridan was trying to do with 1923 Season 2. "The parts you wish would end magnify the pleasure," sadistic businessman Donald Whitfield tells Mabel, a sex worker he and his accomplice Lindy are tormenting. "The pain is only for reference." In other words, watching the characters suffer makes their rare moments of victory or love that much sweeter. Does it? If 1923 had stuck the landing better, this would have been an unambiguous "yes." But in the finale that exists, the answer comes down to whether your heart can override your mind, and you can feel the ending in a way that overpowers your thoughts about what you didn't like getting there. It has a flawed ending, but 1923 still made us fall in love with Spencer and Alex, and was it worth it for that?

But I will add that I respect Sheridan’s commitment on 1923 to never being boring. Not every scene works, but every scene takes a big swing. There’s always something highly dramatic happening. If he has a choice between writing an elegant scene that makes sense or a crazy one that comes out of nowhere and makes you laugh at how over the top it is, he’s gonna go for audacity every time. His supercharged writing style reminds me of the title of one of the late rapper Rich Homie Quan’s mixtapes: “I Promise I Will Never Stop Going In.”