As streaming services have proliferated, so have exclusive original TV series meant to lure new subscribers. Peacock is trying out that strategy with a new show called Rutherford Falls, co-created by Michael Schur, the influential writer and producer who got his sitcom start on Peacock’s juggernaut property, The Office. For fans of Schur’s work, which also includes Parks and Recreation, Brooklyn Nine-Nine and The Good Place, Rutherford Falls will feel pleasantly familiar. It’s a quaint, quirky and clever comedy sans laugh track, featuring a unique community. But this latest small-town workplace comedy is quietly revolutionary in a way those other hits, great as they are, didn’t aspire to be.
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Rutherford Falls‘ other co-creators are its star, Ed Helms, and Sierra Teller Ornelas, a Navajo TV writer and producer who’s worked with Schur in the past. Half of the show’s writers are of Indigenous heritage, as are all of the actors playing members of the series’ fictional tribe, the Minishonka. This win for representation results in a stronger sense of authenticity and a more credible base from which to make edgier jokes.
Schur spoke recently about the way comedy has changed over the last few decades and challenged comics who fear political correctness to resist lazy impulses to punch down. Though Parks and Recreation was gently progressive, even that series didn’t entirely follow Schur’s own advice. Rutherford Falls, which platformed all of its ten episodes at once, premiered to mostly positive reviews. However, it has a chance to do better than the sitcoms that came before it in two distinct ways. Instead of just peppering in sociopolitical issues with lone episodes about, say, gay penguin weddings, the point of Rutherford Falls is to explore and lampoon America’s awkward and sometimes angry cultural identity crisis. It took a while for what became landmark comedies like The Office and Parks and Rec to get going. Rutherford Falls‘ clear point of view means it’s on a mission from the start.
The central plotline revolves around the somewhat asymmetrical friendship between Helms’ Nathaniel Rutherford and Reagan Wells (Jana Schmieding). Nathan runs the historical society, a rarely-visited museum that’s mostly dedicated to his white, powerful family’s legacy. Reagan is a Minishonka woman who longs to open a Native Cultural Center, the puny prototype of which operates out of Running Thunder Casino. When the town must decide whether or not to move a statue of Nathan’s ancestor, Big Larry, he and Reagan end up on opposite sides of the debate.
Nathan and Reagan’s dynamic is further complicated by an NPR reporter and podcaster named Josh (Dustin Milligan of Schitt’s Creek fame) who arrives to write a human interest story on the situation and develops feelings for Reagan. There’s also the casino’s CEO, Terry Thomas (Michael Greyeyes), who uses Rutherford Falls’ ascension to national news as an opportunity to have the tribe sue the Rutherford family and, more importantly, the corporation that shares their name. Terry, in particular, is played for broad laughs and nuanced commentary. In fact, Rutherford Falls finds laughs at everyone’s expense in a way that it can only do because of its cast and crew’s makeup. There are bits about white pride and land acknowledgments, and the sharpest barbs are pointed at well-intended but oblivious liberal allies.
The impressive thing about Rutherford Falls is that it somehow manages to take on the most headline-grabbing and potentially eye-roll-inducing topics of the day in a way that’s universally funny, actually insightful, but not offensive or divisive. That probably wouldn’t have been possible without Ed Helms and Michael Schur, two talented creators who have likely been those well-intended but oblivious allies earlier in their careers. But it definitely wouldn’t have happened without Sierra Teller Ornelas, Jana Schmieding and Michael Greyeyes, whose comedy and perspectives are finally getting their due.
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