Ashton Kutcher's hero trades football dreams for life on a cattle ranch.
Note - this is a review for the first season of the Netflix Original Series The Ranch. I'll discuss basic details about the plot, characters, etc. but avoid any major spoilers.
I'll say this for Netflix's lineup of original comedies - even when they're not very good, they tend to pack a hefty amount of star power. The Ranch is definitely not a very good show, but its roster both in front of and behind the camera is nothing to sneeze at. This cowboy-flavored sitcom was created by Two and a Half Men producers Don Reo and Jim Patterson and features a partial That '70s Show reunion thanks to stars Ashton Kutcher and Danny Masterson (both of whom also serve as producers). It's mainly the solid cast that saves this half-baked dramedy from being entirely forgettable.
At its core, The Ranch is a sort of love letter to the version of America that only exists in pickup truck commercials and Country pop radio. It takes place in the fictional Colorado town of Garrison, a place where everybody is honest, hard-working, hard-drinking, staunchly conservative and incredibly folksy. Kutcher stars as Colt Bennett, a former high school football star who returns home to his family's cattle ranch after his dreams of going pro are finally dashed for good. There he immediately butts heads with his mischievous tomcat of an older brother, Rooster (Masterson), and his gruff, implacable father, Beau (The Big Lebowski's Sam Elliot). Right away, Colt discovers that the family ranch has fallen on hard times, and the three Bennett men will have to put aside their differences and pull together if they're going to make it through the season. Rounding out the main cast are Debra Winger (Terms of Endearment) as Maggie, the Bennett matriarch who runs a local bar, and Elisha Cuthbert (24) as Colt's ex-girlfriend Abby.
Aside from the ticking time bomb that is the ranch and its many financial problems, the tension among the four Bennetts forms the bulk of the drama on the show. Colt resents being a 34-year-old, washed-up athlete forced to live at home. Rooster resents being forced to stay behind and tend to the ranch while his younger brother spent 15 years chasing his football dreams. Beau resents both his sons for being lazy, immature screw-ups and his estranged wife for choosing to live in a trailer rather than at home on the ranch. Needless to say, there's plenty of family drama to go around in these initial 10 episodes.
Tonally, The Ranch is one of the more bizarre TV comedies I've ever come across. The first time the laugh track kicks in it becomes clear that Reo and Patterson have cooked up a full-fledged network sitcom with all the trimmings. The humor and characters are very broad and straightforward. While there's a loose arc to these ten episodes, there's a minimal sense of progression from one episode to the next. Characters will learn an important lesson about being honest or growing up or making compromises in one episode and then go back to being their old, careless selves in the next.
Given those traditional sitcom trappings, it's incredibly bizarre when the show abruptly transitions into darker territory. Characters will randomly curse on a whim. I nearly did a spit-take when Beau greeted his wayward son by glancing at his Ugg boots and inquiring, "What the f***s on your feet?". It's as though the writers periodically remembered that they weren't writing for network TV and didn't have to worry about content ratings, so they slipped a few F-bombs and one gratuitous butt shot into the script just for the fun of it. The show also has a tendency to get surprisingly dark now and then as it explores Beau's dire financial straits and his efforts to salvage his fraying marriage. In those cases, the eponymous laugh track will utterly vanish for minutes on end. That's not to say these more dramatic intervals are lousy viewing. They tend to be much more memorable than the show's simple, repetitive brand of comedy. But The Ranch often plays out like an awkward, ungainly fusion of a family-friendly sitcom and a grim stage play about the plight of the American working class.
Kutcher and Masterson are both enjoyable as brothers, best friends and rivals. Both actors are essentially playing older, hillbilly versions of their characters from That '70s Show. Kutcher is still a dimwitted ladies man who prides himself on his appearance, and Masterson is still the cool delinquent with a bit of a chip on his shoulder. Their rapport translates nicely from one show to the next. But there's also something a little sad and even creepy about the two brothers, both of whom have reached their mid-30s and still spend most of their free time guzzling alcohol, courting women barely out of (or still in) high school and wiping their testicles on each other's toothbrush. They often come across as characters who should be written as 10 years younger than they actually are. It would be one thing if either Colt or Rooster experience much in the way of growth over the course of these ten episodes, but they end the season in almost the exact same state they begin.
Abby is also a disappointment given how little Cuthbert is given to do in the role. Predictably, the show focuses on the romantic triangle among Colt, Abby and her current boyfriend, the safe, dependable Kenny (Bret Harrison). But that subplot feels halfhearted at best, and Abby's role mostly consists of driving her truck to and from the Bennett ranch and making fun of Colt for dating a ditzy 23-year-old (played by The Young and the Restless' Kelli Goss).
When Sam Elliott's mustache commands, you obey.
Elliot and Winger deserve the lion's share of the credit for making The Ranch as tolerable (and occasionally even enjoyable) as it is. Beau is basically Ron Swanson in a cowboy hat. He's cool in a very quiet, dignified way. He mistrusts the government, the Internet, banks and basically every other facet of modern society besides football. He's proud and self-reliant to a fault. He wields a god-tier mustache. Beau is a very broad, stereotypical character in many ways, but Elliott's stern gaze and smooth baritone give Beau a sense of legitimacy and charisma. It's easy to understand why Beau's sons bend over backwards to make him proud no matter how often he insults them, or why Maggie remains drawn to her husband at a point long after most couples would have signed divorce papers. Elliot's strongest moment comes at the end of the third episode, when his character reminisces about returning home from Vietnam and learning how to transition from being a soldier to being a rancher. Eliot brings a sense of class to his role that the writing doesn't necessarily warrant.
Similarly, Winger often steals the spotlight as she plays the loving but very no-nonsense Maggie. Winger conveys a real warmth but also a sense of weariness and longing for the life that should have been. There seems to be the skeleton of a much better show here, one that ditches the laugh track and focuses more directly on Beau and Maggie's rocky romance. Again, The Ranch is more compelling in those sporadic moments where it becomes a character drama rather than its efforts to serve as a crowd-pleasing sitcom.
It's also disappointing that a show that takes place in rural Colorado and deals so heavily in the subject of cattle ranching has such a boring and claustrophobic look to it. The Ranch is a traditional multi-camera sitcom, with all the filming being performed on a series of indoor sets. 90% of the show unfolds in one of a handful of locations - the living room of the Bennett house, the barn, inside Maggie's bar or in or around her trailer. A few quick establishing shots of grazing cattle or mountain vistas take care of the rest. A character might occasionally refer to "riding fences" and whatnot, but don't expect to see anyone actually riding a horse. It's pretty rare to even see one of the Bennetts interacting with a cow. When it comes to scope and set design, The Ranch is anything but ambitious. That's just one more way The Ranch will have viewers wishing it had been conceived as a fundamentally different show.
The Verdict
In many ways, The Ranch is the sort of safe, predictable sitcom one wouldn't expect to find in Netflix's lineup. The broad humor and straightforward characters don't do much to help the series stand out in its first batch of 10 episodes. But the talented cast frequently makes the most of the limited material. And when the show abruptly veers into darker territory, there's the sense that The Ranch has the potential to be much better than it actually is.
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