Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Rutherford Falls’ On Peacock, Where Ed Helms And Michael Schur Team For A Comedy About A Town In The Middle Of A Culture Clash

Communities are Michael Schur’s specialty, whether they reside in a small town in Indiana, a Brooklyn police station, or in Hell. It’s a great way to develop multiple characters who can generate stories if the show runs for a long time, and it just lets more comedic voices shine. His new series, Rutherford Falls, is no different. Though this time the community he and co-creators Ed Helms and Sierra Teller Ornelas are examining is the group who used to own the land that their fictional small town was built on.

RUTHERFORD FALLS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A statue in the middle of the street in a town center. As we pull back from a closeup of the statue, a car crashes into it head-on.

The Gist: Nathan Rutherford (Ed Helms) is the historian of Rutherford Falls, a small town in the Northeast; he’s the last member of the town’s founding family to live there and he runs a museum that contains his carefully-curated collection of town history curios, including a diorama of the Rutherford family making a deal with the local Mineshonka tribe.

A charter was signed that led to a statue of Lawrence Rutherford — “Big Larry” — being erected on the spot where the agreement was signed. That’s why the statue is in the middle of the street. Oh, and there are not statues of the Mineshonka because “Copper was expensive back then,” according to Nathan.

Reagan Wells (Jana Schmieding), who’s been best friends with Nathan since they were both kids, wants to preserve her cultural heritage as well. She’s a member of the Mineshonka tribe, and she wants to expand the cultural center in the tribe-owned casino. Nathan supports her, and even makes the signs for the presentation she wants to make to the tribe’s chief, Terry Thomas (Michael Greyeyes). One of the signs shows that most of the people who visit the bare-bones cultural center either think it’s the gift shop or want to charge their phones. She’s nervous but does a good job with the presentation; Terry says no, but wants her to be part of his secret project … in 3 to 5 years.

When Nathan finds out that the town’s mayor, Deidre Chisenhall (Dana L. Wilson) wants to move the statue of Big Larry because of all the traffic accidents, he goes with his assistant Bobbie Yang (Jesse Leigh) to object. He thinks she has no right, but she disagrees. So he tries to get the town on his side, and gets Reagan, still smarting from Terry’s rejection of her proposal, to help.

But she comes to realize, via two of her less-than-industrious colleagues, that Nathan’s using her just like all his ancestors have used hers over the centuries. She persuades him to compromise on the statue, but when he starts making a speech about that on Founders’ Day and finds out that no one cares, he takes back his word and calls everyone stupid people who “don’t get it.” Terry realizes this is his opening to start his mystery project.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Given Michael Schur’s involvement, Rutherford Falls has a very similar feel to Parks and Recreation, though its not as rapid-fire with its funny material.

Our Take: Schur and Helms created Rutherford Falls with Sierra Teller Ornelas, who is the first Native American to run a TV series. It’s refreshingly honest about how, even in cases like the town of Rutherford Falls that supposedly came into being via good relations with its Indigenous neighbors, those neighbors have gotten the shaft from the white settlers for centuries.

It’s why we like Reagan’s story more than Nathan’s. Schmieding, who is also Native American, is a fresh face and voice as Reagan, and we liked seeing her fighting for herself as a symbol of how much she fights for the story of the Mineshonka to be heard. It’s also fun to see someone who got two graduate degrees from a school that Terry called “almost Ivy League” (Northwestern), and be completely frustrated at the lack of opportunity to advance what she knows in her own hometown.

Nathan feels more like a combination of Helms’ Office character Andy Bernard and Parks and Rec’s Lesley Knope: Earnest and a little naive, but also stubborn when he needs to be. It feels like a character we’ve seen from Helms, and from Schur, before. Not that more of Helms on our TVs isn’t welcome (we have thought that way for a very long time), but we would have liked to have seen something a little different than the earnest main character who annoys everyone around him/her with his/her earnestness. Perhaps as the story continues, we’ll see more layers from Nathan.

That’s the part of Rutherford Falls we’re most excited about: The fact that it’s a comedy with a story arc. At some point an NPR reporter named Josh Carter (Dustin Milligan) will go to Rutherford Falls for a story about the conflict over the statue, and, from the season’s coming attractions, it looks like he’ll strike up something with Reagan. We’re curious about how Terry is going to use Nathan’s meltdown to reassert his tribe’s rightful ownership of the town. And we’re certainly excited to see how well a Schur staple — the ensemble around the main players — gets built.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: Terry tells his board of directors, “Today, we launch Operation Running Lightning.” Everyone opens up their binders, and one woman says, “Ohhh, sh–” and we cut to black.

Sleeper Star: Every time Jesse Leigh opens up their mouth as Bobbie, something funny comes out. We hope to see more of them during the first season.

Most Pilot-y Line: None, really, though we’d like to see a statue of Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman be erected in Rutherford Falls, because, well, why not?

Our Call: STREAM IT. Rutherford Falls is a smart comedy that takes a view of indigenous people that most TV shows, even recent ones, have just not made the effort to take. It helps that Helms and Schmieding are appealing leads and have good chemistry as lifelong friends Nathan and Reagan.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream Rutherford Falls On Peacock