If You Watch One Reality TV Show This Weekend, Make It ‘The McBee Dynasty’
If You Watch One Reality TV Show This Weekend, Make It 'The McBee Dynasty'
We reality TV folks like to wax poetic about the days of yore—when subjects bared it all on screen not because they wanted to increase sales for a functional cocktail MLM, but because they really didn’t know any better. Today, reality stars will produce their own storylines, make Beyonce-level demands of production and work overtime on their image with publicity teams even before they get an official call sheet. But Peacock’s The McBee Dynasty: Real American Cowboys is a nod to ye’ olde days of reality television—a simpler time, when subjects didn’t quite realize what it meant to film your reality and the implications it could have. Here’s what you need to know about the McBee Dynasty before you dive in yourself.
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Who Are The McBees?
There are two seasons of The McBee Dynasty streaming on Peacock. The saga kicks off with Steve McBee Sr., the 52-year-old patriarch at the helm of McBee Farm and Cattle, a multi-million-dollar empire in a tiny town of northern Missouri called Gallatin, made up of townspeople who loathe the McBees and everything they stand for.
McBee’s sons—Steven Jr., Jesse and Cole all live on the ranch. They orbit their father’s every move and do what he says on the turn of a dime. (There’s a fourth son who drifts further from the family business and from the heart of the drama.) The central question looms: when Steve Sr. finally steps down, which son will inherit the reins? Cue the cowboy hats, clashing egos, and plenty of tension fit for prime-time.
Why It’s Reality TV Magic in a Bottle
It’s Yellowstone drama and landscapes meets Bravo chaos. Sure, the McBees care about soybeans and longhorns, but they’re just as invested in blowing up their own lives. These are cowboy-lites: debaucherous, self-sabotaging, and endlessly entertaining, all orbiting around a father whose presence (and baggage) poisons anyone in his vicinity. It’s Shakespearean in its scope.
A curiously massive $105 million investment is the major season one plot device, dangled by an East Coast hedge fund and secured, for reasons no one can quite explain, only through Steve Sr.’s CFO, Galyna (who also happens to be his girlfriend, and once, the housekeeper and “other woman” to his wife of 30-plus years). Keeping Galyna happy becomes a task that proves nearly impossible for a horny, midlife-crisis Steve Sr. who can’t stop getting in his own way. Meanwhile, the family circus barrels forward: “gold-digging” girlfriends, debaucherous nights in the middle of harvest season, sibling rivalries and too many car washes to count. Add in whispers of federal investigation, and you’ve got the perfect storm: crops, cash and cowboys.
Bottom Line
If reality TV has a golden rule, it’s where there’s money, ego and a camera crew, trouble with the federal government is never far behind. So whether you watch it for the soybeans, spurned lovers or the looming shadow of federal fraud, it’s, in my humble little opinion, can’t miss reality TV. (And psst: we haven’t even touched on season two).
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