Ashton Kutcher and Danny Masterson — who co-starred in “That ’70s Show” in the Clinton and Bush (2) administrations — have wrangled themselves a new situation comedy. It’s called “The Ranch,” and like their previous sitcoms (including Kutcher’s four seasons on “Two and a Half Men” and Masterson’s “Men at Work”), it’s an old-fashioned multi-camera, live-audience affair.
The venue is novel, however. The series’ first 10 episodes premiered recently on Netflix — which means that words are said that can’t be repeated here, that there are more than the usual number of jokes referencing primary and secondary sexual characteristics and that Kutcher’s bare bottom is fair game for the camera.
Being on Netflix also means that, unlike sitcoms that live in the desperately competitive Thunderdome of commercial television, “The Ranch” can afford to go a little longer between laughs. With episodes that last several minutes more than the 22 usually accorded a “half-hour” comedy, scenes have room to breathe. The extra weight makes the show feel more theatrical than a typical sitcom.
Kutcher plays Colt Bennett, a small-town Colorado high-school football star now in his mid-30s, whose trip to the almost-big-leagues has led him back to his family’s cattle ranch, reuniting him with brother “Rooster” (Masterson), father Beau (Sam Elliott) and mother Maggie (Debra Winger).
His parents are separated (Maggie lives in a mobile behind the bar she runs) but continue to sleep together. His brother, who has remained at home, working hard and thanklessly for their father, resents Colt, as in the old story of the prodigal son. It is the basis for a good third of the jokes launched here.
Colt’s return also brings him into renewed contact with old high school flame Abby (Elisha Cuthbert), whose new boyfriend (Bret Harrison) has “mistake” written all over him, and brand-new contact with Heather (Kelli Goss), far younger, but old enough. And that’s everyone important until Megyn Price, as Heather’s mother, comes along in later episodes, making up in screen presence what she lacks in screen time.
The more-conservative-than-Hollywood milieu in which the characters live is expressed by an occasional swipe at President Barack Obama, guns and tractors, an episode set around hunting, the eating of steak and the dismissal of any male interest in personal appearance or deeper feelings as “girly.”
Beau is wary of government surveillance and an attack by North Korea, and he dismisses global warming as “a bunch of crap Al Gore made to sell books to Californians.” While it is a perhaps less than nuanced portrait of this slice of the polity, it is on balance not a mean one.
For the most part, this is a story of childish men and sensible women, and the series presents a similar mix of lunkheadedness and intelligence, of stubborn adherence to formula and formal ambition. The jokes, when they come, have the familiar pitch and swing of multicamera sitcom humor. But the longer game seems directed toward something a little more naturalistic, with storylines that could as easily turn to drama as to comedy.
If he seems a little too dense at times, Kutcher has a good way with amiable idiots, and Masterson does well with bittersweet sarcasm. Still, it’s Elliott and Winger, coming from outside the genre, who make “The Ranch” feel at least a little bit new.
Each plays with an economy of expression that makes the dialed-down performances of Kutcher and Masterson seem flamboyant. Elliott and Winger’s scenes together, as restrained as they are, rank as the show’s most emotionally resonant.
