Watching the worst things on Netflix, so you don’t have to
Regretflix: The Ranch (TV 2016)
The Ranch sees everyone’s third-favourite Steve Jobs, Ashton Kutcher, reunited with Scientology poster-child Danny Masterson in a by-numbers American sitcom with some proper grown-up swears.
Oh, finally. What’s it about?
Fisting cows and stuff. Kutcher plays a hotshot quarterback and laydeeez-man, because it’s not a vanity project without the vanity and it’s not an American sitcom without a tired archetype. He returns to his hometown for a big semi-pro football try-out, and ultimately finds out that his family ranch has been overtaken by a strangely exuberant and possibly quite drunk studio audience.
Go on…
He also wears a backwards baseball cap as an homage to the great poet Fred Durst.
Try harder please.
Fine. Well, it’s a Netflix original which means it has one of those arty title sequences that for some reason reminded me of The Littlest Hobo. It seems to be trying to mix some relatively mature elements for a sitcom, like a dysfunctional family and um, swearing, with a laughter track that’s like being gang-jollitied by a bunch of drunk clowns.It’s presumably there to denote jokes, but I didn't catch many so realistically it just fills in the pauses. The overall effect is that of those weird sitcom-esque flashbacks from Natural Born Killers. Or a fairly well put together school play, if your assembly hall happened to be a pretend ranch.
Sounds fantastic. What happens?
The first episode sees some family arguments, some partial nudity, and a dramatic climax that involves Ashton Kutcher shoving his arm inside a cow’s vagina and giving mouth-to-mouth to a calf. You can add your own distasteful punchline to this, I'm going to at least pretend to be the bigger person.
Got any trivia?
Yes, seeing as you ask. According to Wikipedia Danny Masterson once stared in an advert for ‘Swift Premium sausage’, which also sounds like a load of dick — so I guess he has previous. On a positive note, his physical transformation into Zach Galifianakis is really coming on and there’s a lot of money in the lookalike industry these days.
Any other positives?
It’s relatively short. In actual minutes that is. We all know time is relative, and to be honest I feel like I've done a short and unjust stretch behind bars. But it did end eventually.
Verdict
I actually quite wanted to like this, but ultimately I regret watching it in the most basic sense; with the knowledge that it is now stored in my brain, with the potential to come back and haunt me at my most vulnerable moments. My fear is that years from now, during a long train journey or a period of half-enthused intimacy, this will force itself back into my consciousness and ruin everything that otherwise peaceful moment would have had to offer.
