Rutherford Falls is a comedy about history, friendship, and identity set in a town of the same name. Fictional Rutherford Falls appears to be the kind of quaint northeastern burg travelers find on maps of colonial sites, and it is also a border town of the fictional Minishonka Reservation. The show begins with a crash—compact car meets statue of historical luminary—that becomes a lever for discussions of who gets to tell history and why, about reconciling historical erasure, and about ways that nostalgia for idealized pasts damages the present.
The show is described as being about two life-long best friends, Reagan Wells (Jana Schmieding) and Nathan Rutherford (Ed Helms), but throughout the show I was struck by how little Nathan seemed to know Reagan. They share a self-described nerdy passion for history and historical and cultural interpretation, but their shared interest seems limited to Rutherfordian histories. When it comes to...
University of California Press