Luke Grimes in CBS’ ‘Yellowstone’ Spinoff

At the end of the premiere for Marshals, CBS’ new Yellowstone sequel-spinoff, Kayce Dutton (Luke Grimes) apologizes to his son, Tate (Brecken Merrill). “I fought so hard to get out from under the weight of Yellowstone,” he says of their clan’s storied land, “and here I am, forcing you to live like my family’s lived for 100 years.” But the Duttons’ history need not be Tate’s future, he stresses; the teen should feel free to forge his own path.

Tate apparently takes his father at his word, barely figuring at all in the two other episodes sent to critics. For Kayce, however, it seems to be too late. Marshals frames itself as a new beginning for the character, a chance for him to finally come out from underneath the long shadow of his famous last name. In truth, it’s too enamored of Dutton lore to let Kayce stand on his own, let alone the show around him.

It’s at this point I’ll admit I’m barely familiar with Yellowstone, and thus not the best person to determine whether creator Spencer Hudnut (Taylor Sheridan is credited only as executive producer) does right by its lead or its predecessor in general. The first moments, however, seem like they’d be welcoming enough for a newbie.

When we find Kayce, he’s living out on his ranch, East Camp. Of the kin that used to cause him so much grief, only Tate remains to offer his occasional company. Kayce’s days are spent wrangling horses, and his evenings being haunted by nightmares of tragedies past.

One day, one of the less depressing reminders of said past comes knocking in the form of an old Navy SEAL buddy, Calvin (Logan Marshall-Green, who’s evolved from Tom Hardy clone to Jon Bernthal lookalike). Now a deputy U.S. marshal assigned to Kayce’s wild corner of Montana, Calvin wants his help capturing the men preying on women from the nearby Broken Rock Indian reservation. As the husband of a Native woman, Kayce agrees without hesitation.

Then Calvin asks him to help keep an eye on an anti-mining protest; as a father whose kid plans to attend, he assents once more. Soon enough, Kayce officially joining Calvin’s team of marshals becomes a foregone conclusion — despite the reservations of Calvin’s boss Harry (Brett Cullen), who brings up his long and ugly history with Kayce’s relatives every chance he gets.

Marshals has several of the ingredients for a reliably decent if rarely spectacular procedural, including a cast with promising sparks of chemistry. Marshall-Green is generally likable as Calvin, whose earnest passion for the work and sincere affection for his team make him a leader you’d want to follow. Arielle Kebbel (Rescue HI-Surf) is intriguing as team member Belle, whose own less-than-savory family history makes her sort of like a less gloomy version of Kayce.

While Killers of the Flower Moon standout Tatanka Means probably deserves better than a marshal whose primary purpose seems to be as a mouthpiece for Native concerns and whose secondary purpose seems to be bumbling enough to make Kayce look even cooler by comparison, he’s sufficiently magnetic to endear you to his Miles anyway.

And Ash Santos seems to be having fun as Andrea, a Bronx-born marshal whose favorite off-the-clock hobby is rebuffing cowboys at the local watering hole — not that Kayce would know, since he’d rather go home and eat cold cereal than join his coworkers for happy hour drinks.

Across the first three outings, a familiar rhythm emerges. A straightforward-looking job yields unexpected complications that force our heroes into a car chase or a shootout or, ideally, both. At least once an hour, Kayce kills a guy, but the show is very clear that he had no choice and that while he’s not going to lose sleep over it, he doesn’t particularly enjoy it either. (If some law enforcement dramas at least try to confront real-world issues like police brutality and corruption, Marshals takes pains to portray its characters as unequivocally above reproach; their only mistake ever seems to be not going hard enough on the people pissing them off.)

But Marshals the standalone spinoff takes a backseat to Marshals the reverential sequel. Over and over in each episode, Kayce sets his jaw while people keep trying to tell him all about his own family and by extension himself: how destructive or dysfunctional they can be, how forcefully they used to handle things, how far their power in the region has waned. The few reassurances he gets (including from another Yellowstone holdover, Gil Birmingham’s tribal chairman Thomas Rainwater) that he’s not like them at all, he clings to like a lifeline.

What he is like, though, Marshals never quite gets around to explaining. Maybe it will in due time, as lone wolf Kayce gradually gets more comfortable with his new pack and the series starts to find a voice of its own. But in the first three episodes, he’s defined almost entirely by who he doesn’t want to be (his dad) and how he feels about his history as laid out in Yellowstone (sad, but outwardly stoic).

For existing franchise fans, the show’s indebtedness to its predecessor might be more feature than bug, since it positions Kayce’s story as the next chapter in an ongoing saga. For novices like myself, it’s alienating. If you’ve managed to avoid caring about the Duttons up to this point, Marshals offers no persuasive reason to start now.