‘Rutherford Falls’ is so much more than Ed Helms
“Change is bad. Why? Because makes things different.”
So says Nathan Rutherford, played by Ed Helms in “Rutherford Falls,” a new comedy that debuts on Peacock on April 22. That pretty well sums up Nathan, a descendent of the founder of the town the show is named for.
But change is coming.
This sets the stage for the show, which Helms, Michael Schur (“Parks and Recreation”) and Sierra Teller Ornelas (“Brooklyn Nine-nine”) created. It’s a unique comedy in that Native Americans are well represented in front of and behind the camera. That kind of inclusion shouldn’t be unique, but of course it is.
That alone doesn’t make it a great comedy. Parts of it are laugh-out-loud funny, others intriguing. But some of it, particularly the scenes revolving around Nathan, are kind of sitcom-ish dumb.
‘Rutherford Falls’ grapples with a small town’s history
it
Good or bad, it’s important to have other voices involved in the process of making the series – those voices show up in what we see on-screen. When a character says, as a throwaway line, “Vandalize public property and leave a note – ah, to live that white dude life,” it’s both funny and revealing. I’d bet someone who has been made to feel that kind of different wrote it.
As for the change: The statue of Lawrence “Big Larry” Rutherford, the town’s founder of whom Nathan is a descendant, is in the middle of one of the town’s streets, so cars keep crashing into it. Mayor Chisenhall (Dana L. Wilson) wants to move the statue.
Larry, ever oblivious to anything beyond the Rutherford story, is appalled.
“This is not exactly a great time for statues,” Chisenhall tells him.
Moving the statue offends Larry’s sense of history and self – his whole identity is wrapped up in preserving the town’s past and his family’s part in it. Of course, that past is a white past. During a tour of the town’s museum, Nathan tells a group of children about how Big Larry “brokered a uniquely fair and honest deal” with the Minishonka Nation, a Native American tribe in the area.
Not surprisingly, that description will be challenged.
The cast also includes several Native American actors; their characters and stories are far more interesting than Nathan’s, whom Helms plays in a particularly Helmsian performance. Which is to say, charmingly annoying. Which is a far different thing from annoyingly charming.
“Nathan, what are you talking about?” the mayor asks at one point. “What are you ever talking about?”
Jana Schmieding and Michael Greyeyes round out the show’s cast
Reagan Wells (Jana Schmieding) is Nathan’s lifelong best friend. She is a member of the Minishonka Nation and left town to get a master’s degree at Northwestern. Now she’s managing a sad little cultural center located in a room of the tribe’s casino, run with precision by Terry Thomas (Michael Greyeyes).
We learn a little about Reagan’s backstory in the four episodes sent to critics for review. She’s smart, but unpopular among other tribal members, for reasons that are revealed over time. Meanwhile Terrygets his own episode, and it’s good.