Rutherford Falls Season 1 [updated]

 2021, Showcase (Canada)/Peacock (US)

There was a dead zone of new TV shows for about a month (well, it's kind of still ongoing), the impact of the COVID-19 shutdown coming to bear, and it seemed like the only new program being promoted was Rutherford Falls.  Whenever I'd turn on the TV, my cable provider's on demand service was promoting it.  I would walk the dog and see billboards and sides of buses showing the same image of Ed Helms and an actress I'm not familiar with sitting on a book in front of a statue.  This one:

It's an image that tells you nothing, unless you're really, really paying attention.  But it's such a plain image, who's paying that much attention?  I mean, Ed Helms is a very subtle comedic persona, he doesn't really stand out in any way.  I used to really like him on The Daily Show, and he's always a pleasant supporting player...even sometimes a pleasant lead, but he's never a draw.  So upon seeing these promotional images (but no commercials, since I watch everything recorded or on demand, I skip past commercials) my mind just said, without any maliciousness, "pass".

They bury the lede on this one, which is that one of the show's creators is Michael Shur, the guy who created things like Parks and Recreation, Brooklyn 99, and The Good Place...in other words, some of the best American situation comedies of not just the past decade, but of all time.  That, to me was the draw, and how did I learn that?  Well, I found myself waiting at a street corner for a light to change, time on my hands, and I actually paid attention to the bus stop poster which kind of subtly announced this.  Upon making the connection, Parks and Recreation specifically was invoked, in that Schur created one of the great goofy small-towns, so perhaps Rutherford Falls would be another such wonderfully goofy, well-populated small towns.  But at the same time, I also realized that Schur, with The Good Place, had bigger thoughts in mind, so who knows where Rutherford Falls might be going... the thought was enticing.

Within the first episode it became clear what the distinguishing factor to this show was, no, not the gentle amount of naturalistic swearing (thanks to being on NBC's streaming service), but the fact that a large amount of the show is centered around the fictional Rutherford Fall's also fictional regional Native American population, the Minishonka Nation.  The show is co-created by Sierra Teller Ornelas (as well as Ed Helms), a Navajo writer known for Brooklyn 99, Happy Endings and Superstore, and for Schur it almost seems a mea culpa to the more off-handed style jokes about (fictional) Pawnee's terrible history with the (fictional) Wamapoke Tribe in Parks and Rec.  It's not that Parks and Rec used Native Americans as the butt of the joke, but its inclusiveness was tenuous.  In Rutherford Falls, the Minishonka are a major part of the cast and the main instigators of the story.

So what is that story?  Well... Ed Helms is Nathan Rutherford, a descendant of the town's founder, and proprietor of the Rutherford Museum, a place dedicated to all things Rutherford.  He's obsessed with his family, their history, and their place in history, as well as the town.  He's undeniably proud of everything Rutherford.  He even sits as an honorary, non-voting board member of the Rutherford Inc., a powerful mutli-billion dollar conglomerate founded by his ancestors and uses the Rutherford name and town's wholesome visage as part of its own image.

There's a statute of Rutherford Falls' founder in the middle of the road downtown, which has been repeatedly crashed into over the years, and city council has proposed moving it as a safety hazard.  The statue was erected on the spot where "Big Larry" Rutherford made a "fair and honest deal" with the Minishonka for the land that would become town -- the "fair and honest" part being of particular pride to Nathan. 

But the issue of moving the statue has stirred up history, a deeper look at the deal that was struck, with Terry Thomas (Michael Greyeyes), owner of the Minishonka Casino, noting that certain terms of that original deal were not upheld, and at the same time Nathan facing the true Rutherford legacy, most of which has been whitewashed out.

Nathan's best friend from childhood, Reagan (Jana Schmeiding), runs the rather vacant, sparsely adorned cultural center in the Casino, and it's evident she is rather estranged from her Minishonka people, in large part due to a "runaway bride" situation.  Reagan winds up having a bit of a conflict of interest when Terry brings a lawsuit against Nathan for violating a hundreds of years old treaty that he values at around three hundred million dollars, and manipulates him into connecting Rutherford Inc.

If I've learned anything from The Good Place, it's that appearances aren't always what they seem, so this isn't just a pleasant small-town-America comedy - although it kind of is that, too.  No, there's a tremendous amount of meat on its sturdy structural bones.  

Nathan is posed in the first episode as our point-of-view character, which usually implies he'd be our protagonist, but that's not the case.  Nathan truly feels like a progressive - his best friend is Native American, his assistant at the museum, Bobby Yang (Jesse Liegh), is a non-binary person of colour, and he winds up (spoiler) in a torrid affair with Diedre Chisenhall (Dana L. Wilson), proudly the first black mayor of Rutherford Falls (also the Chisenhalls are historically the nemeses of the Rutherfords.  Yet, in spite of the people he surrounds himself with, Nathan refuses to acknowledge both his priviledge and his hurtful propegation of ugly, whitewashed history.  He believes the history he's been told, he believes the achievements glories, the traditions proud, his ancestors noble and righteous... be believes in not necessarily lies, but half truths.  So when the other sides of these stories he's been told (and has been repeating for years via the museum) start entering the conversation, he reacts defensively, with stern rebukes.  

The hope from the first episode is that Nathan, seemingly progressive that he is, will see his friend Reagan struggling with her Cultural Center and help her out, not just by listening to her speeches, but offering up space in his own family history museum to present the full story.  But that's never on the table for Nathan, because he's not interested.  He's too invested in the lie, the "great American fable", his family name and everything he thinks it stands for to let go of it.  Throughout his legal turmoil he is confronted with his own hypocrisy and rather than acknowledging it, he doubles-down on his ignorance and his white entitlement. 

By way of comedy, Schur, Ornelas and Helms seem to be painting the portrait the MAGA movement in a microcosm.  They are ostensibly stating that how a LOT of Trumpers have manifested is in rejecting awareness to their own failings, whether personally, or historically as a people.  Far too many people want to reject anything other than the fables of "American Exceptionalism", ignoring all the slavery, forced internment, mass murders, abuses, suppression of individual freedoms and rights that were perpetrated on so many cultures and genders in order to achieve such "greatness".  There are people refusing to acknowledge that horrible events even took place, nevermind any ancestral complicity in it. 

Without explicitly saying it, what Terry Thomas is looking for is reparations for what was taken from his people, and what he wants with it is to give back to his people.  Terry has done well for himself via the casino, but even when his actions are sometimes perhaps misguided, he's looking out for others, and a greater good.

Reagan, meanwhile, just wants her 'best friend" to look beyond himself for a change, something that, at least at this particular time when things have come to a head, Nathan is completely incapable of doing.

Everyone around Nathan - his brother, his friends, his mentor, the entire town, the corporation he's loosely affiliated - are all trying to tell him that there's something amiss buried in their past  (or in the case of the corporation, their present...they use the town to project a squeaky clean image when behind the scenes it's ...no good), and Nathan wants it to stay there.  He can't handle it otherwise, his whole sense of self has been invested into a lie.  The Rutherfords are his blind patriotism, and he's willing to burn every bridge to defend the lies.

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This all paints a pretty heavy and bleak portrait of the show, it's season finale airing in Canada next week.  While it would be nice if Nathan sees the light, it'd be too easy, and not very interesting.  Plus I don't think that's Schur's style anymore.  There's no resetting back to zero every episode here like the Simpsons, no, there are going to be consequences.  If Nathan ever chooses to see the light, it's going to take work to get out of where he is.  

This wasn't the direction I thought the show was going, trying to understand at least some facet of the MAGA crowd (while in no way acquitting them of their position).  I was thinking the Minishonka Nation would win back the land of Rutherford Falls in court, and subsequent seasons would be the reverberation across America of such a landmark decision.

This isn't the case though, but it's no less intriguing an exploration.

As I said, it seems heavy, but in reality it's all handled with a rather light touch.  It remains a comedy, and never saddles itself with its weight.  It acknowledges it is there and keeps moving forward.

I should also clarify that Nathan is not the only POV character, just the first.  Rutherford Falls cycles between Nathan, Reagan and Terry.  In fact, the fourth episode is all Terry and it's a really fantastic character profile that cements him as one of the great characters in these late stages of the Golden Age of television. 

Reagan is such a deep character that even 8 episodes in we've barely peeled back any of her layers.  All the tidbits we get that flesh out her past, informing her present show a character evolving before our eyes, connecting with herself and the world around her in ways she'd never thought she could.  She's got that delightfully awkward streak in her that will likely never leave, but it also hides the confidence that is firming up inside.  

I found it quite wonderful how the show developed Reagan's romance with Josh Carter - an NPR reporter who comes to Schitt's Creek on a hunch about the lawsuit - played by Schitt's Creek's Dustin Milligan.  Millgan is like a step or two above Hallmark Movie handsome romantic lead, and how the show handles him falling for Reagan is so natural, it just makes sense.  There *could* have been a narrative about disarmingly handsome man gets together with plus-sized woman, but they don't play it that way, and the fact that they don't play it that way (in conjuction with a few other shows where plus-sized women pair up with lean handsome men) literally is remapping my brain.  I'll get into that more in my Shrill Season 3 write up, but the point is when the entertainment culture can normalize women's bodies of all shapes and sizes and not make it the center of their identity, the rest of culture may follow suit.  Attractive is attractive, attraction is attraction.

Rutherford Falls is just kind of doing it.  They're doing the work.  It's a very entertaining show that explores some complex issues through its storytelling but with finesse, not a hammer.  It also constructs a social reality that seems ideal, but then dares to say "it could be better".  And it can, it can always be better.

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[updated June 7]

So my read on the show -- having watched 8 out of 10 episodes -- was, as Toasty ponted out in the comments (with him having the advantage of finishing the season), pretty wrong.

Where I had thought Nathan would be doubling down on is bull-headed commitment to his sense of self, his identity build around his family, instead the realizations that come to him fracture him instead.  They kind of break him and the veil sort of lifts.  

It's a sweeter resolution but far less daring than I was expecting of the show.  Especially after The Good Place took some incredible swings in its storytelling, I was expecting more of that here.  But they're more of a bunt than a big swing, a little surprising but not as spectacular had they truly turned Nathan into an unintentional right-wing blowhard because of his adherence to his fallacious legacy.

As well, the show comes to resolutions on many of its big swings rather swiftly, which I found surprising, and, again, less daring.  The lawsuit especially seems like it took a 180 in terms of giving Terry what he wanted.  I thought the show was going for a STATEMENT, but it settles back into its character story and story of the town.

It's a good watch regardless, with a great cast and wonderful characters, but it's not as bold as I had anticipated.