NBC passes on Rutherford Falls team sitcom about Native community center

As noted by Deadline, the untitled project was one of three comedy pilots NBC ordered this year, alongside Tracy Morgan and Daniel Radliffe’s The Fall And Rise Of Reggie Dinkins—in which “A fallen football player star seeks redemption and a chance to restore his tarnished reputation” which is somehow not Hulu’s Chad Powers—and single-camera cheerleading comedy Stumble. (Both of the other pilots have since been picked up to series.) Ornelas, for her part, has a pretty long history with the network and with Universal TV; even outside Rutherford, she came up as a writer and producer on Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Superstore, and is a consulting producer on St. Denis Medical.

It’s disappointing news, in so far as Rutherford Falls (which Ornelas co-created with Mike Schur and Ed Helms), was a funny, smart look at people attempting to come to terms with America’s history (and present), with a ton of focus on indigenous representation. (Also: Just a lot of very funny jokes.) It’s also hard not to note that, with Reservation Dogs going off the air back in 2023, we’re pretty much back down to just Dark Winds when trying to name U.S.-produced shows with any sort of Native presence in their cast—a genuine bummer to consider.