Rutherford Falls Season 1, Episode 8 recap: Skoden

Rutherford Falls Season 1, Episode 8 sees the divide deepen between best friends Nathan and Reagan as Nathan finds an unlikely alliance in town and Reagan accompanies Terry to a Native American gaming conference.

Reagan also gets promoted to associate director at the Running Thunder casino and is excited to use her new position to leverage a better set-up for the cultural center. But she’s dismayed when she learns that many of the other people at the conference were in similar positions to Reagan and wound up getting stuck there, never completing the dreams they had.

On the flipside, Terry is upset when one of the biggest showcases at the conference is a virtual reality set-up where people can become Native American’s in a Lone Ranger-type setting. As Reagan puts it, it’s basically like a “Native American minstrel show.” It’s pretty offensive.

But it does get them thinking about what they should do next regarding the ongoing lawsuit.

Rutherford Falls Season 1, Episode  8 recap: Nathan forges an unlikely alliance.

Nathan follows up on his phone call from Mayor Chisenhall, who has a plan on how they can keep their land, Nathan’s home and Big Larry in his place. Diedre wants Nathan to deliver a moving, motivational speech at the next conference in his final plea for Big Larry to stay put. She’ll pretend to be so moved by his speech that she changes her mind.

When the town sees Nathan and Diedre coming together, they’ll decide they want to be part of that. Then they’ll start doing a bunch of Rutherford family history events and the like to get the morale going, eventually, the town will veto Terry’s plan to purchase the land.

All the political scheming even causes sparks to fly between Diedre and Nathan and the two end up sleeping together. It further encourages Nathan to do something else to get people on his side. Bobbie recommends vandalizing Big Larry, which is exactly what they do. It’s easy to remove and a way to win favor with the town.

But while Nathan is scrubbing the paint off the statue, he notices a tiny inscription he’d never seen before on Big Larry’s arm. He takes it to one of the tribe elders to translate and learns about how Larry Rutherford was actually the start of the legendary Mal-Mer story about a monster with a white face who would eat children’s poop. Ew.

Well, according to the story, Larry treated the Minishonka people really badly. Nathan has a hard time coming to terms with that.

Then he and Diedre meet with Terry and Reagan who have devised the perfect plan for everyone to get what they want. They plan on opening a village called Ye Olde Rutherford, similar to Colonial Williamsburg, with lots of old historical sites, shops and museums. Nathan can keep his home and they’ll expand the casino, adding more tax breaks and creating hundreds of jobs for townsfolk.

Diedre is on board with the new plan, but Nathan isn’t a fan because he doesn’t like that Terry would be buying his land and allowing him to keep on living on it per specific instructions. Hmm, doesn’t that sound familiar!? Nathan doesn’t really see the irony. He tells Terry to shove his deal and walks out.

Rutherford Falls Season 1 is now streaming on Peacock TV.