Finding the funny in toppled statues, race and contested histories
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The Good Place, Brooklyn 99 and
Parks and Recreation – a small-town patriot, played by Ed Helms, finds his whole world starting to crumble when a push begins to tear down the statue of the town founder and his ancestor. Given the heated arguments reverberating around the world in recent times about statues, and whether the sometimes-dubious characters they honour make them unfit for public display, one could assume that the show was ripped from the headlines, written and shot in quick order to respond to the political climate.
The NBC sitcom
Parks and Recreation had a running joke about how the fictional town of Pawnee, Indiana had a long, horrific history of violence against the also-fictional Wamapoke tribe, which lived on the land before white settlers claimed it as their own. Across seven seasons, this was little more than an aside to fill idle moments, something that gave the show’s low-stakes conflicts of local governance a meaner edge that its writers were ultimately uninterested in exploring at length. These jokes often felt like the writers’ winks to a white liberal audience, signalling their shared superficial enlightenment, which the subject of the jokes allowed to go by unchallenged.
‘Rutherford Falls’ Takes Native Americans Out of the Box in Hysterical Fashion
Posted By Jeanette Centeno April 28th, 2021 Last Updated on: April 28th, 2021 2 shares 2
“Rutherford Falls,” Peacock TV‘s binge-worthy new show, manages to do something few ever have: bring multi-dimensional indigenous characters into an American sitcom.
While Native Americans have historically been portrayed as monolithic in American film and TV, “Rutherford Falls” breaks the mold, taking Native Americans out of the box they re so often forced into. But beyond that, the show s just downright brilliant.
Created by Michael Schur (“The Office,” “Parks and Recreation,” and “Brooklyn Nine Nine”), Ed Helms, and Sierra Teller Ornelas (Navajo-Mexican), “Rutherford Falls” is equal parts clever and heartwarming and provides two unique perspectives of the Native American experience.
April 26, 2021 in Film, Lifestyle
“Rutherford Falls” attempts to be more than the average sitcom by initiating a meaningful conversation about Indigenous history but unfortunately fails to live up to its potential. Photo from IMDb.
The premise for Peacock’s new sitcom “Rutherford Falls,” which premiered on the streaming service April 22, sounds great: A descendent of a small town’s white founder is obsessed with preserving his family’s history, ignoring the history of the town’s Native American reservation. Throw in the lead actor and co-creator Ed Helms along with Sierra Teller Ornelas’ fresh voice and Michael Schur’s sitcom magic, and you have the makings of an instant hit.
And, of course, her cultural center
Jennifer Maas | April 23, 2021 @ 4:10 PM
Photo by: Colleen Hayes/Peacock
(Warning: This post contains spoilers through the Season 1 finale of Peacock’s “Rutherford Falls.”)
The last few minutes of the 10th and final episode of Peacock’s “Rutherford Falls” Season 1 take viewers through a real roller coaster of closure and uncertainty, as best friends Reagan Wells (Jana Schmieding) and Nathan Rutherford (Ed Helms) finally make up. Nathan, whose brain is basically broken after finding out he’s not a Rutherford, but a D’Angelo, apologizes to Reagan for only thinking of himself and his desires to uphold his legacy over hers to uphold her Native community’s. And she tells him she is far from fully “getting it” as he thinks she does, and that no one is ever fully in the right over someone else.