'The Abandons' Review: Netflix, Stop Trying To Recreate That Taylor Sheridan Magic

This might sound like an overexaggeration, but Taylor Sheridan might be responsible for the revival of the neo-western genre. Sicario was straight-up a masterpiece. Hell or High Water is one of my favorite movies of all time. With Wind River, he effortlessly blurred the line between horror and western. After the release of Sicario 2, Without Remorse, and Those Who Wish Me Dead, I suppose he noticed a shift in audience interest and went straight to the small screen to produce TV shows at Paramount. Yellowstone was a smash hit, and there was no stopping him after that. He gave us 1883, Mayor of Kingstown, 1923, Tulsa King, Lioness, and Landman, and there are several other projects in the pipeline as well. Hence, it’s no surprise that Netflix decided to emulate his success by ordering a bunch of westerns. Territory was pretty bad and was canceled after one season. American Primeval was star-studded and sprawling, yet ultimately forgettable. And now they have brought The Abandons to our small screens. Is this the one with the Sheridan touch? Let’s find out.

Kurt Sutter’s The Abandons is set in the fictional town of Angel’s Ridge, which is essentially ruled with an iron fist by Constance Van Ness. Constance has two sons and a daughter—Garret, Willem, and Trisha—and her most trusted confidant is Jack Cree. She is one of the richest people in Oregon, but, much like every money-hungry person in existence, she yearns for more, and she has her eyes on a patch of land called the Hollow. Why? Because the Hollow is suspected to have a lot of silver in it, and she intends to mine the hell out of it. What’s the hitch? Well, there are four units living in the Hollow, and their heads are Fiona, Winston, Walter, and Quentin, and they have no interest in shifting base. So, the Van Nesses attack that region on a daily basis, with Fiona’s titular ranch bearing the brunt of Constance’s menace. One day, Willem takes things too far and rapes Fiona’s daughter, Dahlia, who in retaliation stabs Willem in the abdomen with a pitchfork. Fiona knows that if Willem dies, Constance will stop at nothing until the Hollow has been emptied, and yet she kills him and hides the body because at least that shifts the queenpin’s focus from the land to her son. How long the people of the Hollow keep that righteous murder a secret is what forms the crux of the story.

I genuinely don’t understand why The Abandons is a 7-episode-long TV series. The only reason that I can come up with is that Netflix desperately wants its very own Taylor Sheridan-esque franchise. If that’s truly the case, I think Sutter and his team have a flawed understanding of what makes Sheridan’s show work. Since this isn’t a review of the IPs launched by Sheridan, I won’t go too in-depth on this topic. All I’ll say is that this show needed way more plot, dialogue scenes, and peddling of conservative ideologies to come even close to operating on Sheridan’s level. But even if it had all that, I think the writers would have squandered it all because that’s essentially what they did with the subplots they were able to come up with on their own (without copying Sheridan, I suppose). And for what? An awful showdown that could have happened after the first or second episode, thereby reducing this affair from a full-fledged TV series to a movie. At least then the viewing experience wouldn’t have seemed like a colossal waste of time. Even if I ignore my issues with the storytelling, what do Sutter and his writers have to offer? That same old narrative about ego and hubris. The only interesting thing it had going for it was Fiona’s found family, but I suppose the writers themselves didn’t understand the potential of that plot element and didn’t explore it enough.

The Abandons look awful. I am sure a lot of time, effort, and money must have gone into recreating the 1850s. Getting all those costumes, constructing all those buildings, hiring so many background extras, and wrangling so many animals (including, as far as I know, a real goddamn bear) must have been a Herculean task. But, and I am sure those making shows like this know it better than me, there’s a chasm between acquiring all the stuff that’s needed to make a period piece and then presenting it before the audience. If you don’t pull off that second presentation aspect of visual storytelling properly, it won’t matter how much you have spent on production design, art direction, costume design, hair and makeup, and set design because the final product will look cheap. A lot has been said about “the Netflix look,” where every frame looks washed out and devoid of texture. I don’t know if that’s an order that’s come from the board of directors of the streaming platform, if it’s a problem with the streaming platform itself, or if this is just what’s in vogue. Whatever the case may be, it needs to stop because it’s making shows unwatchable. That said, if this is the aesthetic that Netflix’s core audience wants, then don’t listen to the critics; keep it up.

Without beating around the bush, I’m just going to straight-up say what I want to say: Aisling Franciosi is fantastic; the rest of the cast is bad. And yes, this show has Gillian Anderson and Lena Headey, two of the most prolific actors of our time. Nick Robinson, Lucas Till, Michiel Huisman, Michael Greyeyes, and Patton Oswalt are some of the other recognizable faces in this show. But I couldn’t figure out what any of them were going for. I suppose they all wanted to be really stoic, and they just became wooden. I don’t know how many takes they got to do per scene, but I think none of them were allowed to get into the skin of their characters before shooting began. Hence, all you get is a barrage of superficial scenes that don’t amount to anything. Then there’s Aisling, who is running circles around her Game of Thrones alums and pretty much everyone else because she’s just that awesome. She’s so good that I wish she was much more central to the story and not just the romantic interest of one of the supporting characters. All in all, do I recommend giving The Abandons a watch? Hell no. Do I think that Netflix should stop trying to recreate Taylor Sheridan’s western magic? Hell yes; I’ve had enough.