The new comedy series is revolutionary in its storytelling. It's also just really, really funny.
If You're Not Watching 'Rutherford Falls,' You're Missing Out
Art is often strongest when it holds a mirror up to our faces, forcing us to see ourselves in ways we were either too afraid or too oblivious to confront. The subtlety at which this mirror is consistently shining in our faces throughout the first season of Rutherford Falls, one of TV’s first Native sitcoms, is a testament to the show’s creators Ed Helms, Mike Schur, and Sierra Teller Ornelas (the first Native showrunner of a television comedy) and its writers’ ability to harness the nuance of the human experience.
It’s also just really funny.
“I feel like Native people have always known that we’re funny,” Teller Ornelas tells me over the phone on the afternoon of the show’s premiere on Peacock. “This was just getting an opportunity for everyone else to see it.”
Jana Schmieding, who was a writer on the show before auditioning for and landing the starring role opposite Helms, tells me over Zoom, “I'm just so filled with the feeling of bringing laughter to my community in the most fulfilling way. I love making audiences laugh. That's like my spank bank.”
The show starts with a car crash—one of many, we learn—into a statue in the middle of the street. The statue is that of Lawrence Rutherford, or Big Larry, the patriarch of the Rutherford family that gave the town its name 400 years ago. It sits in the exact spot where the Rutherfords, in 1638, “brokered a uniquely fair and honest deal” with the Minishonka, the fictional Native tribe that was there first. Despite the statue being a proven safety hazard, Big Larry still stands where it is simply because “it’s always been there.” It’s the push to have it moved that starts a ripple effect in a town that's yet to come to terms with itself.
At the center of the story are best friends Nathan Rutherford (Helms) and Reagan Wells (Schmieding). Nathan is the last remaining Rutherford in town, and we meet him at his best: giving a tour of his very precious Rutherford Falls Heritage Museum to school children with his baby-faced teen assistant, Bobbie Yang (Jesse Leigh, who provides a number of the show’s belly laughs), by his side. The pride Nathan has for his namesake is palpable, and he’s obsessed with preserving history accurately—right up until it clashes with his own deeply held belief system.
The hurdle for Nathan is pushback from the town’s mayor, Deidre Chisenhall (Dana L. Wilson, who has an uncanny ability to make facial expressions feel like dialogue). She sees him as a nuisance—a Rutherford figurehead and manbaby who just won’t budge when it comes to anything he sees as challenging his family legacy. After Chisenhall reminds Nathan that it’s not a great time for people who love statutes, Nathan opines, “Big Larry’s not one of those statutes.”
Reagan, on the other hand, left the reservation after abandoning her fiancé at the altar, earned two Masters degrees, and returned to run a struggling cultural center inside a casino that is often confused for the gift shop. She’s laser focused in her mission to transform the center into a thriving Native history museum (akin to the one her best friend is clinging so hard to), but she’s up against the casino’s owner, Terry Thomas (played so brilliantly by the iconic Michael Greyeyes you almost can’t believe this is his first comedic lead role), who has his eyes on a bigger prize. She also receives pushback from a community that doesn’t necessarily trust her to be the one to take on the task. Reagan’s got a lot of things going on: In what starts as an effort to protect Nathan from bad press, she falls for the smooth-talking NPR reporter with the good shoulders (Schitt’s Creek’s Dustin Milligan).
What follows is the type of whip-smart and playful workplace comfort comedy we’ve come to expect from Schur. But there’s something bubbling under the surface that elevates Rutherford Falls. “I think it shouldn't be revolutionary in 2021 for Native people being seen as human beings on television,” says Teller Ornelas, “but it does feel that way.”
There’s a low hum of a painful history throughout the deeply funny 10-episode first season, and yet Rutherford Falls isn’t heavy handed in its approach. It trusts viewers enough to “get it” and to see the themes of racism and privilege without ever explicitly naming it. “I think the show really tries to explore this idea of what is history,” says Teller Ornelas.
“A lot of Native people are little historians, unfortunately,” Schmieding says. “We see the world through the lens of settler colonialism. We see the world through the lens of having experienced a past that is full of genocide, theft, and oppression, and we have to hold all of those truths. That is just part of who we are. So, it doesn't take much to just explore those issues on screen and in our writing.”
Despite its themes, there are no villains in this story. It’s clear Reagan has always had to work harder than Nathan to achieve even a little bit of success and that their challenges are very different (most specifically, that this is the only time Nathan has ever been challenged). But it’s also clear that the two of them want the best for each other, even if their closeness has blinded both from seeing how they might be holding each other back. It’s only when Reagan’s co-workers at the casino warn her about the power imbalance in her relationship with Nathan that she takes a moment to even consider seeing it herself.
Schmieding is dazzling in her first major television role and perfect at portraying the very particular struggle of finding yourself at odds with someone you really love and care for, while Helms’ Nathan feels familiar as the well-meaning but obtuse white guy. Still, it’s hard to hate him. Perhaps it’s because we know that Reagan sees something in him and we trust her. We, like Reagan, want to believe that eventually Nathan will get it.
As Teller Ornelas says, “[Their relationship] is not black or white. It’s not clean cut. It’s messy and it’s complicated.” Their friendship is one we recognize, particularly after a year where so many of us have been grappling with the complexities of our own relationships and figuring out where we draw a line in the sand.
Teller Ornelas told me that it was her goal to “try to be revolutionary in my storytelling.” And she’s done that here. Where Rutherford Falls shines is in its ability to do so many things at once. It’s a show about history and friendship and capitalism and identity that manages to meld these things together in a way that doesn’t feel heavy. Rutherford Falls is a delight to watch. At its heart, it’s a show that is so incredibly sure of itself that it’s hard to not root for everyone involved.
Rutherford Falls is now streaming on Peacock.
Ramou Sarr is a writer based in Los Angeles.
This story originally appeared on: Glamour - Author:Ramou Sarr
