Stream It or Skip It?: ‘The Ranch,’ Netflix’s Decidedly Red-State Sitcom

Here at Decider, we’ve committed ourselves to watching the pilots of pilot season and reporting back to you on whether or not you should see these brand new shows all the way through. We’ve even drawn up a super specific, highly scientific (totally kidding) rating system. Below, we clue you in on everything you need to know about Netflix’s The Ranch, the new situation comedy from That ’70s Show besties Ashton Kutcher and Danny Masterson. As a traditional multi-camera, laugh-tracked comedy, The Ranch is definitely presenting itself as a kind of counterprogramming to the edgier, more forward-thinking comedies that are in vogue today, particularly on streaming sites. With its Colorado setting (technically a purple state, but for this show’s purposes, it’s redder than red) and gruff demeanor, it’s a show that’s wearing its working-class pride on its sleeve.

All ten episodes of The Ranch‘s first season are available to stream now on Netflix. For stream-or-skip purposes, we watched the first four.

A Guide to Our Rating System

Opening Shot: The opening of a pilot can set a mood for the entire show (think Six Feet Under); thus, we examine the first shot of each pilot.
The Gist: The “who, what, where, when, why?” of the pilot.
Our Take: What did we think? Are we desperate for more or desperate to get that hour back?
Sex and Skin: That’s all you care about anyway, right? We let you know how quickly the show gets down and dirty.
Parting Shot: Where does the pilot leave us? Hanging off a cliff, or running for the hills?
Sleeper Star: Basically, someone in the cast who is not the top-billed star who shows great promise.
Most Pilot-y Line: Pilots have a lot of work to do: world building, character establishing, and stakes raising. Sometimes that results in some pretty clunky dialogue.
Our Call: We’ll let you know if you should, ahem, Stream It or Skip It.

Opening Shot: After an opening-credits cover of “Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys” plays over a kaleidoscope of Americana iconography (flag! football! cattle!), a rusty old pickup truck creeps up a dirt-path driveway, and a pair of cowboy boots step out and traverse a back porch before kicking off some dust on the welcome matt. Honestly, this is why we take the time to mention the opening shot. There’s a lot that this show wants to communicate in its first moments, and it’s not really interested in a lot of finnesse. If the song, truck, and boots didn’t already tell you, the gruff voice of Sam Elliott surely will.

The Gist: Ashton Kutcher is Colt Bennett, former high-school golden boy turned third-string college football player (1999 national champions Florida State, FYI), turned adult failure who’s come back to Colorado, to the family ranch, to get his life back together. Back home, he finds his dad, Beau, the gruffest man who has ever lived (Sam Elliott, duh), his brother ,Rooster (Danny Masterson, still trying to get the hang of that whole acting thing), and his mom Maggie (Debra Winger, as turbulently brilliant as ever). The friction between Beau and Colt, father and son, the the engine that powers much of the series.

Our Take: As a comedy? Middle of the road. There are gruff-dad and horny-bro punchlines in this one that you’ll see coming across the prairie from miles away, and that’s not even getting into the show’s dust-covered witticisms about Ugg boots and gender roles. Its saving grace, comedically, is that it isn’t trying too hard. There’s an ease and an amiability to the pacing, and while Danny Masterson still can’t deliver a punchline without going through an entire batter’s-box routine of indication, the rest of the show unfolds with a degree of charm that I was not expecting.

The truth is that the show really comes alive in its more dramatic moments. Sam Elliott is delivering an honest-to-God performance here. You can’t even truthfully say he’s giving a performance that’s too good for the show; he’s so good that he brings the show up to his level. Or at least close to it. As a character, Beau is as close to a sop to red-state values as you’re going to get: he’s a proud rancher who loudly denigrates the idea of “handouts,” who cracks that “global warming’s a bunch of crap Al Gore made up to sell books to Californians.” He’s the kind of character for whom “Obama” is shorthand for “bad mood.” But Elliott isn’t interested in letting this guy be simply a compilation of his own predujices. Even when the joke if Beau’s intransigence (as it very often is), Elliott’s working on another level. And the fun surprise is that Kutcher can keep up with him in these more dramatic moments. As a persona, it’s not always easy to buy him as a natural fit for country-boy (no matter how often we see him with a casual dip of chewing tobacco in his mouth), but even that gets used to the show’s advantage.

Not used to the show’s advantage nearly enough is Winger. She’s one of our greatest actresses, and she’s doing similar work to ground her character as Elliott is, it’s just she doesn’t get as many chances to show it off. I’ll watch her as the fourth lead on an okay sitcom if I have to, but I’d much rather watch her as the lead in something good.

Sex and Skin: You’d think that this would be a non-starter when discussing a laugh-track sitcom, but The Ranch uses its Netflix perch to push at a few boundaries. Like, for example, seeing some of that sweet Kutcher bum as he’s getting into the shower.

Parting Shot: After helping his dad birth an initially stillborn calf (and stinking up his arm in the process), Colt momentarily earns his dad’s respect. It’s not Frank Underwood shoving anyone in front of a train, but this isn’t that kind of show.

Sleeper Star: Part of me wants to say Debra Winger because she needs more to do. Ditto for Elisha Cuthbert as Colt’s old flame, or the massively underutilized (not necessarily by this show but by Hollywood in general) Bret Harrison as Cuthbert’s current love interest. This isn’t a deep cast, but they’ve (mostly) come to play.

Most Pilot-y Line: “If I rode you, it’s because you’re the only one in this family who had any smarts or talent.” Ah, fraught father-son relationships. Where would you be without sentences like these?

Our Call: If this all sounds like a whole lotta not-up-your-alley, it’s probably not, and you should skip. But do you wish country sitcoms like Reba had a modicum of cursing? Do you wish red-state ranchers had better representation on TV? Do you miss that ’70s magic of Kutcher and Masterson? Stream it. It’s not bad.

[Where to stream The Ranch]

Photos: Netflix