When they trace the impressive ascent of Netflix into the mainstream of original television productions, The Ranch will not be a major milestone.
The Ranch, whose first 10 episodes drop Friday, April 1, mostly proves that Netflix can round up an impressive cast of stars to perform a retread sitcom with an incredibly annoying laugh track.
We don’t need Netflix for this.
Set in Colorado and ominously introduced with a few verses of “Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys,” The Ranch gives us a broken family trying to keep a broke ranch in business.
Sam Elliott plays Beau Bennett, the patriarch who is deeply rooted in the soil. Debra Winger plays his estranged wife Maggie, who owns a local bar and lives in “my own Airstream,” but still comes around.
Ashton Kutcher plays younger son Colt, a local high school football legend who fell to third string in college and then kicked around semi-pro leagues for years. At 34, he may finally have to admit he wasn’t quite good enough.
Rooster (Danny Masterson, right with Kutcher) is the older son who stayed home to help run the ranch and feels like he has always been invisible in Colt’s shadow.
To hear Beau tell it, though, Colt casts no shadow. At one time Beau may have dreamed his son would become a pro star, but he’s since shrunken Colt down to the kid who abandoned his family to indulge a selfish fantasy.
Truth is, Beau doesn’t seem to like much of anybody, and he spends the first episode proving it.
Much of the episode consists of Colt, Beau and Rooster exchanging insults and accusations.
Beau tells Colt he can’t even commit to one woman. Colt says, “Oh yeah, well, look at you with Mom.” Beau says he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
The harsh talk is punctuated at regular intervals by insults that are also funny, which we know because that ghastly laugh track kicks in.
Along the way we also learn that Beau is a conspiracy theorist who thinks the moon landing was faked and takes every opportunity to inject his political views, like declaring global warming is a hoax conceived by Al Gore to sell books.
Oh, and let’s not forget the requisite sex gags. Colt uses the vestiges of his football reputation to lasso a 22-year-old in a bar and just as he’s about to score, Beau walks into the room and matter-of-factly tells him to get out to the barn and help a cow deliver a calf.
Debra Winger (left, with Kutcher) and the whipped cream, don’t ask.
By the end of the episode, we’ve gotten just enough breaks from all this mirth to learn that a prolonged drought has left the ranch in serious financial trouble.
There’s potential for a certain poignancy here, with the old man bravely trying to plow his way through it, too proud to ask for help. But because so much of the dialogue feels so stilted, his dilemma feels more like just another sitcom setup.
Device or not, the crisis forces Colt to decide whether he should keep pursuing his football dream or come back home and try to help save the ranch, which would mean a few thousand more insults, but could also help him start to atone for some of his mistakes and repair his family.
Gee, how do you think that one is going to play out?
In any case, all this dramatic awkwardness might be more palatable if The Ranch gave us a sense, or even an illusion, that it could really be a ranch.
It doesn’t. The set looks like a bunch of sitcom stages that have been outfitted with ranch trappings, like the aforementioned cow.
It feels forced, as if it’s Ranch Night and Dysfunctional Family Night at the local comedy club and everyone has to think of jokes that can tie those two things together.
Netflix, as we all know, helped popularize the binge option for television viewers. Watching 10 episodes of The Ranch might make John Wayne sell his saddle.