new TV show: The Ranch

[Thorin]

I happened across an ad for The Ranch.  I read up on it a bit, found out it was about cows and related music, and figured my wife CowGirl would probably like that.  So we started watching it.  It started out just average (most shows, the first couple of episodes aren't that great), but then it picks up steam and draws you in.

The show is Ashton Kutcher as a failed football prodigy who returns home to his family ranch in Colorado.  His dad and older brother run the ranch, while his mother runs a bar in town.  Sam Elliot playes the dad; conservative, red-neck, get-up-early, work-hard, drink-whiskey.  Debra Winger plays the mom; liberal, hippie, work-hard, drink-whiskey.  Danny Masterson (Kutcher's co-star on That 70s Show) plays the brother; conservative with a liberal bent, red-neck, get-up-early, work-hard, chase-girls, drink-whiskey.  There's a pattern there...

What's really drawn me in, though, is that the characters actually seem human, with real flaws while trying to navigate their lives.  Bad decisions have consequences, everyone has their own dreams that they're trying to accomplish, and yet they all care about each other.

I've read reviews that complain about The Ranch being white-male-cis centered.  The show is set in a predominantly-white rural town and on a ranch, and almost all actors are white, so they have a point.  At the same time, when actors of colour are used they are not made to be better or worse; the black actor who plays Rooster's boss when he goes to work as manager on the My Little Pony ranch is portrayed as simply the man in charge; when Wilmer Valderrama appears as a childhood friend of Mexican descent, he's an equal to everyone else in the group (Valderrama is a terrible choice to play a Mexican in my mind, his accent sounds wrong and he's a Colombian/Venezuelan American not a Mexican American).

Anyway, now that I've made it through all thirty episodes, I have to say I recommend this show to anyone who wants to watch a show that will draw you into the lives of the characters.  It's on Netflix, the seasons are twenty episodes long, and they release episodes ten at a time.

[Mr. Analog]

What a lot of kids don't understand about tokenism is that's just as unrealistic as a complete absence of diversity.

Of course a lot of content producers and distributors are pushing for tokenism because it gets them free press, it's cheap and it's a desperate grab at the 18-24 demographic who aggressively want to appear progressive.

Sounds like an interesting show, what channel is it on? (oddly enough I think I saw a thumbnail of it when I was removing the "news" box from my Win 10 Start menu today)

[Thorin]

Netflix ... or other means

[Darren Dirt]

What a lot of kids don't understand about tokenism is that's just as unrealistic as a complete absence of diversity.

Of course a lot of content producers and distributors are pushing for tokenism because it gets them free press, it's cheap and it's a desperate grab at the 18-24 demographic who aggressively want to appear progressive.

Sounds like an interesting show, what channel is it on? (oddly enough I think I saw a thumbnail of it when I was removing the "news" box from my Win 10 Start menu today)

Yeah the SJW victim class identity politics crap is running out of steam finally. Seems people are tired of the white knight virtue signalling and baseless guilting/shaming attempts when most of us are pretty damn color blind; what OP said about the non-white characters brings to mind the easy to find classic 60 Minutes clip that says it all -- Mike Wallace talking to MORGAN FREEMAN (aka God/President) about how to end racism.

[Mr. Analog]

Yeah the SJW victim class identity politics crap is running out of steam finally. Seems people are tired of the white knight virtue signalling and baseless guilting/shaming attempts when most of us are pretty damn color blind; what OP said about the non-white characters brings to mind the easy to find classic 60 Minutes clip that says it all -- Mike Wallace talking to MORGAN FREEMAN (aka God/President) about how to end racism.

A lot of armchair activists give up after a while, particularly when they go chasing after their own tails. There's a lot of circular thought that goes into trying to correlate a very specific morality to the entire human race (let alone a specific society). But that's the old story of every zealot ever. Tilting at windmills only wrecking themselves. I expect to see it again.

People with no chill, people who had a coronary over the slightest thing, they were the first to burn out. I can support something without being awake for 3 nights worrying myself to death about it. On tumblr / twitter I've seen two major cycles through the last 7 years; first a wave of positivity followed sharply by a wave of criticism.

[Darren Dirt]

Outrage Culture is empty as it is only reactive... and looking for a reaction. Stop responding and it at the very least seeks out new source of outrage if not dying out completely. Something some feed trolls...

[Thorin]

What a lot of kids don't understand about tokenism is that's just as unrealistic as a complete absence of diversity.

Of course a lot of content producers and distributors are pushing for tokenism because it gets them free press, it's cheap and it's a desperate grab at the 18-24 demographic who aggressively want to appear progressive.

Sounds like an interesting show, what channel is it on? (oddly enough I think I saw a thumbnail of it when I was removing the "news" box from my Win 10 Start menu today)

Yeah the SJW victim class identity politics crap is running out of steam finally. Seems people are tired of the white knight virtue signalling and baseless guilting/shaming attempts when most of us are pretty damn color blind; what OP said about the non-white characters brings to mind the easy to find classic 60 Minutes clip that says it all -- Mike Wallace talking to MORGAN FREEMAN (aka God/President) about how to end racism.

"most of us are pretty damn color blind"

Quite the opposite, most people exhibit unconscious biases in their day-to-day lives.  This has been studied in some detail: https://advance.washington.edu/liy/sites/advance.washington.edu.liy/files/Unconscious%20Ethnic%20Biases%20in%20Higer%20Ed.pdf.  Being "colour-blind" (actually "race-blind") requires conscious effort.  This likely has to do with natural tribal tendencies, where distrusting the outsider improved one's chances of staying alive, and while our brains quickly and instinctively put people who look like us but speak other languages into the outsider pot, our brains do that even quicker with those who don't look like us.

That said, Mr. Analog is spot on that tokenism isn't the way to fix this.  All tokenism does is shine a spotlight on the fact that there's an "outsider" included in the show.  The key, really, is to show realistic settings with realistic people who react in realistic rather than stereotypical ways.  For the show setting in question, redneck ranchers in Colorado, mostly caucasian actors is realistic (although, again, Valderrama was wrong for the Mexican role).  If the show was set in Mississippi, then there should be a large minority or even majority of african americans, depending on what part of the state.

[Mr. Analog]

The key, really, is to show realistic settings with realistic people who react in realistic rather than stereotypical ways.

^ this here, exactly

Outrage Culture is empty as it is only reactive... and looking for a reaction. Stop responding and it at the very least seeks out new source of outrage if not dying out completely. Something some feed trolls...

Also this. First Rule of the Internet: don't feed the trolls. I see a lot of peers get in real trouble with this because rather than just tossing out crap anonymous comments they respond to them, they let things get under their skin and eventually go nuts as more and more people start picking at them. Everybody has @%&#ty opinions, pick your fights...

[Thorin]

Unconscious racial bias is further touched on in this article: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/07/opinion/nicholas-kristof-our-biased-brains.html?mcubz=2.  After reading that, I want to amend my statement about the key.  Not only should shows be realistic in their demographics based on what area of the world they're presenting, but also we should in our every day lives consciously interact with people of any colour as if there was no colour, to show our children how to act properly.

[Thorin]

Outrage Culture is empty as it is only reactive... and looking for a reaction. Stop responding and it at the very least seeks out new source of outrage if not dying out completely. Something some feed trolls...

Also this. First Rule of the Internet: don't feed the trolls. I see a lot of peers get in real trouble with this because rather than just tossing out crap anonymous comments they respond to them, they let things get under their skin and eventually go nuts as more and more people start picking at them. Everybody has @%&#ty opinions, pick your fights...

Yeah, especially now that there are people across the world being paid to intentionally troll and obfuscate to advance the hidden agendas of various nations and states.

[Mr. Analog]

Outrage Culture is empty as it is only reactive... and looking for a reaction. Stop responding and it at the very least seeks out new source of outrage if not dying out completely. Something some feed trolls...

Also this. First Rule of the Internet: don't feed the trolls. I see a lot of peers get in real trouble with this because rather than just tossing out crap anonymous comments they respond to them, they let things get under their skin and eventually go nuts as more and more people start picking at them. Everybody has @%&#ty opinions, pick your fights...

Yeah, especially now that there are people across the world being paid to intentionally troll and obfuscate to advance the hidden agendas of various nations and states.

That's for sure!

[Darren Dirt]

Blind in actual practice for actual things that matter. Not talking abput initial gut feelings or unspoken thoughts etc I am talking about making major decisions on personal actions based on surface identity grouping assumptions = not the common default for folks.

Otherwise nobody would get anything done because we would so compartmentalize ourselves from all other tribal divisions.

Edit: whether conscious effort is required or its a basic attitude, its all about as you said, how people INTERACT with others "as if" no obvious reason to dismiss/avoid them... most people in daily actions that is the case, and over time that becomes more the cultural norm. So long as there isn't one vocal party loudly but dishonestly complaining about being a victim of the other etc. cf. Mr. Freeman.

[Thorin]

Yeah, I get the feeling you didn't read the actual study I linked, which specifically says that when making major decisions (like whether to hire this person or that person) people do show racial bias even in groups that are typically considered highly egalitarian-minded.  That is actually the common default for folks, according to the evidence.

One of the interesting points in that study is that it's not necessarily white/Caucasian that is always seen as the instinctively preferred race.  In China, yellow/Chinese is the instinctively preferred race.  In most of Africa, black/African is the instinctively preferred race.  Etc.  Typically, the preferred race or ethnicity is the one that is the majority in the locality the person lives in, from babies to seniors.

Anyway, it appears this thread is losing its original purpose, to suggest a new tv show that might be worth checking out, and is instead mutating into a thread of people complaining about people complaining (doubling intentional).

[Darren Dirt]

Complaining is fine.

It's complaining about complaining that I like to complain about.




The Ranch sounds interesting -- the best drama is where characters go on a ride of life challenges and along the way make decisions that you can totally relate to and imagine also doing if you were in their shoes.

Why I find Breaking Bad and Community equally top quabity television.