Christmas at the Ranch: Cowgirl, Take Her Away

There has never been a believable cowboy in a made-for-TV Christmas romcom. Wearing clothing that’s curiously clean and unwrinkled at the end of the day, their faces caked in makeup, these down-home characters with chiseled jaws model looks that were cheaply assembled in the aisles of Kohl’s. Christmas at the Ranch, a lesbian take on Hallmark and Lifetime’s seasonal offerings, strikes a blow for equality by treating Amanda Righetti’s rancher, Kate, no differently.

The rebellious daughter of wealthy Kentucky horse breeders, Kate has toiled for several years at Hollis Hills, a farm on the verge of bankruptcy after Meemaw Hollis (Lindsay Wagner) refinanced it under usurious terms to pay the medical expenses of her now-deceased husband. Meemaw and grandson Charles (Archie Kao) make such a big to-do about Kate repairing a fencepost on her own—a task less arduous than assembling a baby gate or IKEA shelving—that it’s easy to see why the farm is insolvent. Everyone’s too busy bringing each other warm beverages and exaggeratedly tipping their hats to actually work.

With foreclosure looming, Meemaw and Charles try desperately to lure prodigal granddaughter Haley (Laur Allen) home from her high-rise perch in the city, where she’s the overworked VP of operations at an energy drink startup. “Ivy League education, years of corporate-climbing, and now I’m having a meeting about the crab tweet,” she mutters during a wacky-hijinks office crisis. On the rare occasion she isn’t agonizing over numbers and presentations, Haley browses dating apps after a year of singledom.

A doomed encounter with Masonry (Kelly Bartram), a vapid social media guru who immediately mentions astrology, naming ceremonies and intention-setting, is played for broad laughs. I contend the spelling of her name was a missed opportunity—Maisonreigh, or something similarly incomprehensible, might have been a nice touch. Kate, too, is lovelorn, living in such isolation that her dating app rarely locates nearby women-seeking-women. “All I want for Christmas this year is someone to share it with,” she says to herself, and Meemaw enters the frame as she exits, looking strangely powerful, like a secretive lesbian-matchmaking Gandalf.

If you have seen one film of this nature, you have seen them all. Screenwriters Christin Baker (who also directed) and Julie Anton don’t deviate from the hallowed holiday romcom formula, which means Haley and Kate will first meet in favorable conditions that quickly worsen, before finding themselves in circumstances that challenge their preconceived notions. They will fight their mutual attraction like children fighting sleep, for no particular reason except the genre demands it. And they will do so chastely, even as Meemaw (with a little help from the late Papaw, whose deer stew recipe is an unusual aphrodisiac) does her best to whore her granddaughter out to the ranch hand.

This is family-friendly fare, so the sex-starved women play by the same rules as Hallmark couples. When a series of ludicrous contrivances force them to share a bed in Kate’s Spartan cottage, there’s no Brokeback Mountain tent encounter, only a power struggle over the blankets. (I almost named this review “Even Cowgirls Get the Blueballs.”) And, right on cue, new self-sabotaging obstacles arise just as they enter the “then somebody bends, unexpectedly” stage of warming up to each other. Haley’s unresolved childhood trauma—involving the death of her parents, which necessitated a permanent move to the farm—spurs her to again turn her back on Hollis Hills.

One of the more maddening aspects of Christmas at the Ranch is Meemaw’s passivity in the face of her grandchildren’s stress. She is steadfast in her conviction that Haley will save the day and everything will turn out fine. We know, of course, that she is right—there’s minimal suspense over what will happen or how Haley will succeed. But it is worth considering how her serene acceptance of helplessness might have shaped her granddaughter’s stubborn, overachieving character.

It is folly to read too deeply into fluffy holiday films (unless it’s A Smoky Mountain Christmas, which must be deconstructed like Shakespeare), so I don’t honestly suggest psychoanalyzing the Hollis family dynamics. If you want to overthink lesbian subtext in Westerns, you can always consult Johnny Guitar or Calamity Jane’s “Secret Love,” as we have done for generations. Christmas at the Ranch may have an ephemeral plot, but the cast is lighthearted and likable. Best of all, gay viewers aren’t asked to squint and read between the lines for glimpses of ourselves, and there’s none of the closet-case hand-wringing that marred Hulu’s Happiest Season.

Click here to browse our growing collection of holiday movie reviews.

Streaming and DVD availability

Christmas at the Ranch isn’t currently available on DVD, but you can stream it at both Amazon and Tubi.

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Cranky Lesbian

Cranky Lesbian is a disgruntled homosexual with too much time on her hands. Click for film reviews or to follow on Instagram.

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