Living Big Sky: is Montana the last refuge for white people?

Living Big Sky is basically a promo for the state of Montana. A relative newcomer in the genre of real estate porn, it draws its audience from people who fantasize about mountain views and fresh air. The Farm Manager has been binge-watching Living Big Sky, and I can see why. One rustic mountain horse farm after another. Every place has fresh air and mountain views and a rustic homestead. They’re really big on rustic in Montana. We’d head on out ourselves if it wasn’t for the grand-kids. I’m not binge-watching this schlock myself, but I’m binge-adjacent you could say, so I’m kinda following things. After about 12 episodes I enquire, have you seen any Black people yet? The FM is way more progressive than me. She ponders my query for a long moment, and realizes, to her horror, that she has been bingeing on a show that excludes Black people. Relax, I tell her. There’s no Black people in a show about Montana because there’s hardly any Black people in Montana to begin with. You can’t exclude people who aren’t there. A few episodes along, we met our first Black person in Montana. He was a real estate broker selling fresh air and mountain-view horse farms… To white people!