Rutherford Falls - Season 1

“It’s fascinating to watch Reagan navigate tests of cultural purity.”

Title: Rutherford Falls
Episodes Reviewed: Season 1
Creators: Ed Helms 👨🏼🇺🇸, Sierra Teller Ornelas 👩🏽🇺🇸, and Michael Schur 👨🏼🇺🇸
Writers: Jana Schmieding 👩🏽🇺🇸 (10 eps), Ed Helms 👨🏼🇺🇸 (10 eps), Sierra Teller Ornelas 👩🏽🇺🇸 (10 eps), Michael Schur 👨🏼🇺🇸 (10 eps), and various

Reviewed by Li 👩🏻🇺🇸

—MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD—

Technical: 3/5

Billed as a comedy, Peacock’s Rutherford Falls enters the streaming space with a lighthearted bounce in its step. Exaggerated characters ask viewers not to take anyone too seriously, and the occasional punchline makes its way to the surface. But the humor largely stops there, as creators Ed Helms, Sierra Teller Ornelas, and Michael Schur devote their initial season to building the framework for a social drama.

The small town of Rutherford Falls has split into two factions: Nathan Rutherford (Ed Helms), hugely proud of his family’s colonial past, fights the removal of a statue commemorating the town’s original colonist “Big Larry.” Meanwhile, brilliant casino owner Terry Thomas (Michael Greyeyes) sees an opportunity to sue Nathan for his obstinance, simultaneously funding endeavors that will provide wealth to Minishonka Nation—the fictional tribe he and other characters belong to. Caught in the middle is Reagan Wells (Jana Schmieding), a Minishonka woman who runs a humble cultural center out of Terry’s casino but finds it hard to be at odds with her longtime bestie, Nathan.

This might sound familiar: An arrogant person, usually a privileged white man, is forced kicking and screaming into becoming slightly less terrible thanks to a woman’s exhaustive emotional labor. Enter Nathan and his long-suffering best friend Reagan, and you’ve got yourself a been-there-done-that plot. The first season invests too much energy in Nathan’s uninteresting drama and it simply isn’t fun to watch him stomp all over a Native woman who confusingly supports him, episode after episode, despite his selfish behavior and repeated dismissal of the Minishonka people. It drags the series down, even as Native characters create electricity and attempt to take Rutherford Falls into flight. The end result falls somewhere in between.

Gender: 4.5/5
Does it pass the Bechdel Test? YES

Writers Teller Ornelas and Schmieding provide a crucial female perspective in what is largely a story about a white man grappling with his own legacy and sense of self. Even if Reagan frustratingly defers to Nathan and his needs for the majority of the season, she sees plenty of screen time and can comfortably be called one of the show’s main characters. Although most of her time is spent with men—Nathan, Terry, and love interest Josh Carter (Dustin Milligan)—she has her own career-related story arc and romance, which is great.

In another important role, Deirdre Chisenhall (Dana L. Wilson) is the mayor of Rutherford Falls. But she’s tossed around like a leaf in the wind, political machinations taking place around her as she plays catch-up with every chess piece moved by the Rutherfords and Terry. Already holding very little agency to call her own, Deirdre also gets embroiled in a late-season tryst with Nathan, further devaluing her independence.

Still, the supporting cast feels gender-balanced and it’s wonderful to see Nathan’s intern, people-pleaser Bobbie Yang, played by Jesse Leigh—a nonbinary actor in a role that has little to do with gender and everything to do with their comedic chops.

Race: 4.5/5

Not nearly enough Native content—written by Native storytellers—has been given mainstream exposure, so Rutherford Falls feels like rain on parched earth. Teller Ornelas brings her Navajo and Mexican American experience to the screen and could ask for no better ambassadors than Schmieding, who is Mniconjoua and Sicangu Lakota, and Greyeyes, who is Plains Cree from Saskatchewan. In both cases, Reagan and Terry provide some of the most compelling characters on TV.

It’s fascinating to watch Reagan navigate tests of cultural purity; because she went to college instead of marrying a local boy, much of the Minishonka community has ostracized her. “It’s like crabs in a bucket,” Terry says, painting Reagan’s situation in metaphor. “If one crab starts to climb up, another will always pull them back down.”

Meanwhile, Terry’s daughter and wife provide a multilayered look at a Native family unit. While Terry fights tooth and nail to provide wealth to the Minishonka community, long having learned that money is the only respected currency in white America, his daughter Maya (Kiawentiio) finds his entrepreneurialism tacky. Instead, she wants to give away her beadwork for free, and later does so by donating a medallion to Reagan’s Minishonka cultural center.

In smaller roles, Deirdre is Black but beyond a meh joke about how she never forgets to interject her speeches with a mention of being the town’s first Black female mayor, her character is largely written to be colorblind. No other Black characters seem to exist at all in Rutherford Falls. Similarly, Bobbie is played by Chinese American actor Leigh but their character avoids any discussion of race and is also tokenized. Understanding that it’s a lot to ask a single season—about 4 hours of runtime—to cover everyone and everything, I’d still love to see Deirdre and Bobbie broken out of their silos in Season 2.

LGBTQ: 3.5/5

As mentioned, nonbinary actor Leigh plays Bobbie in a memorable supporting role. But no other ostensibly queer characters exist in the series so far.

Bonus for Body Diversity: +1.00

Schmieding hosts a podcast called Woman of Size where guests discuss body discrimination. In 2019, she interviewed Rutherford Falls showrunner Teller Ornelas in the episode “Making Funny Natives Visible,” and it’s exciting to see the two women go on to, well, “make funny Natives visible” in Rutherford Falls.

On screen, Reagan’s body size is entirely normalized. She’s gorgeous with the cutest outfits, hooks up and gets a boyfriend, and has flaws and insecurities that feel believable for any woman in her 30s trying to go after a dream like running a cultural heritage center. While it’s depressing that such baseline representation remains a rarity, all the more reason to celebrate when a show gets it right.

Mediaversity Grade: B+ 4.13/5

In her podcast interview with Teller Ornelas, Schmieding sighs, “I can’t tell you how many men in comedy I’ve lifted up, and just raised up.” It’s unfortunate, then, that Schmieding’s Reagan does just that in Rutherford Falls’ first season. Nathan sits on her shoulders—sits on the entire narrative, really—and it’s a struggle to shake him off.

The writers clearly have bigger goals than that, and as a viewer I’m chomping at the bit for them to be loosed into material that feels written for now, not for an imagined audience that “can’t handle” a story that doesn’t center Ed Helms. But even with this halfway-there approach, the show has already made an indelible mark in several ways: A writers’ room staffed with Native talent. A “woman of size” whose story doesn’t revolve around her weight, and who gets the guy. An authentically cast nonbinary character, normalized and empowered.

And credit where credit is due, the laughter that does pepper Season 1 feels pure. The ultra-versatile Greyeyes, who can play a brutal murderer in one beat (Wild Indian) and fluidly switch to a freewheeling hippie the next (Wildhood), thrives as cutthroat capitalist Terry. His dryly delivered shade perfectly balances the other noticeable comic: Leigh’s Bobbie who exudes manic energy and Gen Z sass.

Rutherford Falls simply excels most when tapping Native experiences for humor and heart. In fact, it’s the only thing setting the Peacock series apart in a sea of affable sitcoms. I can only hope that Helms, Teller Ornelas, and Schur recognize that and play to their strengths in Season 2.

Like Rutherford Falls? Try these other sitcoms by Michael Schur.

Grade: BLiOctober 27, 2021Great for: Body Diversity, Female/Nonbinary Creator