Have any of you seen Rutherford Falls? It’s a sitcom on the Peacock streaming service, starring Ed Helms, who created and produced the show along with Michael Schur (whom you might remember from shows like The Office, Parks & Recreation and The Good Place). Helms plays Nathan Rutherford, who operates a successful museum focused on his ancestor, the town founder. His best friend, Reagan Wells, is a Native American woman who runs a less-successful cultural center about her tribe’s history and culture. The tribe are the original residents of the land where the town is located.
The show is big on Native representation, with Sierra Teller Ornelas, the third creator of the show, a member of the Navajo tribe. Also a some of the writers and characters are also Native.
All ten episodes were released on April 22, and I’ve seen about half of them.
Sounds interesting, but I’m at about my limit paying for streaming services. Is this available with the free version of Peacock, or is it part of the premium content?
Actually, I don’t know. I have Comcast cable so I think I get the premium version of Peacock (although not the super-premium version that is commercial free).
My wife and I watched it. It was sweet and fun. Very good, but not as great as The Good Place. It definitely did a good job of representing native american issues and culture without being shrill or preachy or pedantic about it.
One thing that’s very Mike Schur about it is that, for the most part, there are no bad guys. Maybe the faceless goons from Rutherford Inc. But while Nathan frequently is in opposition to Terry and the mayor (whose name I can’t remember), they both have reasonable viewpoints and motivations for doing what they do.
Definitely worth a watch, and I hope to see more of it.
Mrs. solost and I finally sprung for the $19.99/yr. deal for Peacock Premium and I just finished the first season. Really well done; I liked how every main character is a fully-realized person with good qualities and faults–there’s no ‘dumb one’ or ‘crazy one’ or ‘always annoying one’. And they mostly interact in a realistic way, with perhaps some exaggerated qualities for comedy purposes.
I’ve watched a few movies on Peacock and even with whatever free level of service I get as a Comcast subscriber, the movies are not interrupted by commercials. They show three or four commercials or three or four minutes of commercials before the movie starts and then it runs all the way through. So I find something else to do until the Universal logo appears.
Late to the party but I’ve enjoyed seasons 1 and 2 of this show. I agree with what everyone else said - there’s no crazy villians and everyone is flawed in their own way. I love the Native representation.
I also like how Bobbie Yang is non-binary and quite Queer and nobody seems to bat an eye! In season 2 they are a lot more involved in the plot and still, their gender doesn’t even come up.
If you watch Reservation Dogs and Rutherford Falls and Letterkenny you’ll see a lot of the same Native actors across all three shows!
I just started binging season 2 , and when Feather showed up, I said to myself “hey, that’s Kaniehtiio Horn from Letterkenny, isn’t it?”
(Ok, I did not have her name at the ready, it was more like "hey, that’s that badass Native woman from Letterkenny, isn’t it? And paid IMDB a visit)
BTW, bit of a hijack, but the FireTV app for Peacock SUUUUUUUCKS. It’s constantly freezing and crashing, or I’ll pause a program midway and when I restart it, half the time it restarts at the beginning. And FF/Reverse are hard to use and buggy as well. When we subscribed to HBO Max their app was similarly bad. Arrrggghhh. You’d think these multibillion dollar entertainment conglomerates would get their basic streaming app technology uh, streamlined.
I have a Discovery+ subscription (trash TV y’all!) and used their website from which to stream, and had similar problems. I also heard a lot of people complain about their app.
I switched my subscription to be through Amazon Prime, so I get all the same content, just using the Amazon Prime app and web interface, which sucks in its own way but it is not buggy.
Unfortunately, Peacock is not an option through Prime Video. And even if it was, I think a lot of us bought the super cheap 1-year subscription we couldn’t switch to a Prime Peacock subscription even if it was available.
TLDR Yes! Why are these streaming services sooooo bad??? They have so much money and cost so much they should have their infrastructure in shape!
As I mentioned in a different thread, I thought season 2 was a significant drop in quality from season 1. Season 1 had a compelling main plot, set against an interesting and novel background. Season 2 had the same background, but less novel as we already saw it in season 1, and a much less focused main plot.