'The Ranch': Ashton Kutcher's Netflix Experiment
For a while, the new Netflix sitcom The Ranch keeps you watching just on the basis of its unique ratio of familiarity vs. peculiarity. It stars Ashton Kutcher and Danny Masterson, making a That 70s Show reunion you never needed. They play brothers Colt and Rooster Bennett, and co-stars Debra Winger and Sam Elliott are their squabbling parents. So, familiar faces all around.
The Ranch is a sitcom set on, you betcha, a ranch. But then the peculiar nature of this enterprise kicks in. It’s a show filmed in front of a studio audience, a novelty these days in broadcast television and a downright distinction for a streaming service like Netflix, which is trying to offer subscribers something — anything — other than traditional TV. (The Ranch does take advantage of its alternative “network” with its liberal use of four-letter words.) The show was co-created by Don Reo, a pro whose credits include writing for M*A*S*H and Rhoda, and creating Blossom and The John Larroquette Show. He also worked on Two and a Half Men, which is doubtless his connection to Kutcher.
The Ranch takes place primarily on two sets: Elliott’s house on the ranch (Colt and Rooster, thirtysomethings with lowered life-expectations, live with Elliott’s daddy Beau) and a bar (owned and run by Winger’s Maggie, frequented by all the characters). The plots ramble as aimlessly as a cow in a field, picking up punchlines about Beau’s taciturn meanness as a father, and Colt’s dashed career as a pro football player.
The Ranch is a would-be thigh-slapper about men whose dreams have come to nothing, and each half hour is staged like a play. The result is something like Sam Shepard’s True West crossed with a very old TV show like The Real McCoys (you really have to go back to the 1950s to find funny-ranch-hand TV — Green Acres is too upscale to count). This show isn’t very funny — or at least, I didn’t share the studio audience’s enthusiasm for lines like (after Colt helps birth a calf), “That was not the vagina I thought I’d be in tonight.”
Side note: The show has a certain obsession with testicles. One episode’s recurring joke was about Colt having “used your toothbrush to scrub my balls” (this aggressive act is directed against Rooster); in the next episode, Rooster reminded Colt of the time he’d pranked him by “dunk[ing] your balls in my Cheerios.” I would not recommend an overnight visit with this family.
On the other hand, the show’s serious moments are pretty effective. There’s a very hard edge to Beau’s blunt attitude toward his sons, whom he considers failures when it comes to his concept of what a real man is. Colt and Rooster are, in different ways, emotionally wounded men who try and fail to bury their unhappiness in macho chatter. All of this gives a poignant sting to The Ranch’s best moments.
The performances are engaging. Winger is particularly good, thoroughly at ease tossing out sarcasm and wistfulness, and Elliott is close behind her in this regard. It’s interesting to contrast their acting styles with those of Kutcher and Masterson, who remain, essentially, sitcom performers, their primary goal being to hit the right emphases in the punchlines, and to be charming even when their characters are behaving like jerks.
All of which makes The Ranch one of the best studio-audience sitcoms around these days, which may be faint praise when your competition includes Last Man Standing. It’s worth checking out to see if you respond to the familiar, peculiar things The Ranch is trying to do.
The Ranch is streaming on Netflix now.
