The Madison starts viewers off with three episodes in hopes of getting us hooked. Season 1 only has six episodes, season 2 is already approved. This is a family drama that moves between the bustle of New York City and the open skies of Montana.

The Madison stars Michelle Pfeiffer and Kurt Russell. Taylor Sheridan created the series. I don’t usually watch Taylor Sheridan creations. He’s notoriously bad at writing women characters. The Madison features a family of five women characters! Is he trying to redeem himself? It’s even a woman director for all six episodes: Christina Alexandra Voros.

Stacy (Michelle Pfeiffer) is the matriarch. She has two spoiled daughters. The eldest, Abby (Beau Garrett), has two daughters of her own: Bridgett (Amiah Miller) and Macy (Alaina Pollack). Abby has a contentious divorce under her belt. Stacy’s younger daughter Paige (Elle Chapman) is married to Russell (Patrick J. Adams).

Taylor Sheridan didn’t get off to a great start with these five women characters. But Michelle Pfeiffer showed up for her lead role in a series with the attitude that she was going to be spectacular no matter what, and by golly, she is. We’ll have to wait and see if the other women characters will turn into humans.

Spoiler warning

Kurt Russell as Preston gets killed in the first episode. He and his brother (Matthew Fox) died in Montana in a small plane. But don’t worry, Kurt Russell is around in flashbacks.

Preston, Stacy and the family lived in NYC. But Preston loved Montana and went there often to fly fish with his brother. We are expected to believe that in 40 years of happy marriage, Stacy and the kids never once went to Montana to see the place their dad loved so much.

When Preston dies, they all head for Montana. They find three cabins, a barn, a beautiful river, spectacular mountains, and kind neighbors. They have running water and electricity but no indoor toilets. It’s an outhouse for the tenderfoot New Yorkers.

The story looks at what Stacy decides to do with her husband’s remains and what the family does about the beautiful land he left behind. Stacy makes it clear she wants him to stay in Montana and she plans to stay there too, indoor toilets or not.

Future episodes promise lots of gorgeous Montana scenery, lots of flashbacks to the great love story between Stacy and Preston, and lots of subplots involving the daughters.

In three episodes, Taylor Sheridan already gave us a woman beaten and mugged on a New York street, women who can’t stand each other and have violent fights, a divorced woman throwing herself in the arms of a good looking sheriff five minutes after meeting him, a woman’s bare butt covered in hornet bites, and Michelle Pfeiffer being flippin’ spectacular.

The question is whether to keep watching. I probably will, even though I expect to be annoyed some of the time. Let me know what you decide to do about The Madison. It’s streaming on Paramount+.