Starring: Josh Duhamel, Minka Kelly

Director: Various
Released: 2025

Mood: If you love the drama and don’t really care if it’s the most riveting or original drama. 

I’m not exactly sure why I started watching Ransom Canyon, or why I finished it. I blame a bunch of unwelcome life events for getting me down and weakening my already questionable taste in television. 

Ransom Canyon’s first season is touted as a romance-fueled drama about three ranching families, which sounds exactly like my mug of beer. I love stuff that has sharp dialogue, comedy, melodrama, and a lot of entertaining plot twists and tension. Hell on Wheels did a great job in those areas, and my hope was that Ransom Canyon would be similarly electric but in a modern Western setting. 

Well, it’s not. 

There’s an IMDb review titled “A lot of watching for nothing satisfying” and I wholeheartedly agree with that sentiment. Here’s why. 

Ransom Canyon’s first episode throws a TON of characters and sub-plots at you in short order:

• Staten Kirkland (Josh Duhamel) is a handsome, wealthy rancher and widower
• He has a thing for his deceased wife’s hot best friend, Quinn (Minka Kelly)
• He has beef with his former wife’s brother, Davis (Eoin Macken), also a wealthy rancher, also handsome, also with a thing for Quinn
• Davis’s football player son Reid (Andrew Liner) is dating cheerleader Lauren (Lizzy Greene), but she’s also dating a guy named Lucas (Garrett Wareing)
• Lucas’s brother Kit (Casey W. Johnson) is a troublemaker with a heart of gold
• Lauren’s dad (Philip Winchester) is the town sheriff, and ends up investigating the suspicious car accident that killed Staten’s son
• Mysterious drifter Yancy (Jack Schumacher) arrives at the ranch of wealthy old dude Cap Fuller (James Brolin) looking for work
• A pretty young thing named Ellie (Marianly Tejada) is suspicious of Yancy on Cap’s behalf; I legit couldn’t figure out her relationship with Cap, they probably said it in the first episode but there was WAY too much going on

Staten has serious baggage, what with his wife and son dying a year apart, everyone trying to buy or steal his ranch, and his habit of housing and employing troubled teenagers who remind him of his boy. This makes Staten aloof and quick to throw a punch. Apparently these are sexy qualities.

Josh Duhamel has to say the lines he’s given, so I can’t fault him for how ridiculous Staten comes across at times. Duhamel does fit neatly into the setting, giving the character the obligatory gruff smoldering and occasional warm dad vibes. 

Quinn is such a brilliant pianist that she is begged to audition for the New York Philharmonic, and when she doesn’t show up for the audition someone literally flies to her city to give her another shot. When she’s not taking chances away from musicians who care enough to show up, Quinn can be found leading on men she doesn’t actually like, and abandoning the employees at her dancehall to handle the aftermath of a violent tornado because she’s in a weird place from cheating on her boyfriend.  

Minka Kelly is clearly gorgeous, but what she does here is entirely one note and a weak point for me. Whether she’s angry, challenged, sad, pensive, or horny, Kelly’s always within a few degrees of one level. This lends zero chemistry to Quinn’s relationship with Staten, like you don’t buy that these two have lusted for each other since highschool. And it makes the whole relationship with Davis feel flat and pointless because every moment they’re on screen together is an obvious sham. 

Eoin Macken is also solid as Davis, but it’s clear from the first episode that he’s not supposed to get the girl AND he’s not supposed to succeed in his plans. So whenever Macken delivers a sincere, heartfelt moment, the audience already knows not to buy it. Again, it’s the writing. 

The strongest performances come from a small selection of the supporting characters. 

Reid is a tormented rich kid who desperately wants to impress his dad – or any other adult male figure. Andrew Liner gives him layers and levels and a realistic relatability that the other teenagers are lacking. 

Casey W. Johnson caught my attention from his first scene as Kit, and held it through each of his memorable moments throughout the first season. He stands out from everyone else because he has the “it factor.” His performance makes Kit feel like a young Daryl Dixon from The Walking Dead. You get the darkness and sweetness, all rolled into one highly watchable character. 

Jack Schumacher manages to add depth to the man-candy visual treatment of Yancy through the way he emotes and controls a scene between his lines. And of course, James Brolin is highly entertaining as Cap. It’s too bad his screen time was limited – just like Tatanka Means’s character. You have ONE native guy in the whole series and you only trot him out as pining for a pretty girl?! 

Ransom Canyon doesn’t do well on ratings platforms. But it does bring the soapy drama, and it’s not terrible. I don’t hate it. It just didn’t stand out in any of the categories it was trying to hit, and compared to all of the other modern Westerns I’ve watched in the last two years, it ranks the lowest. 

The show kind of half-ass blends a few themes like high school football, cheerleading, ranching, running a bar, and the family politics of ranching families. These all work great in other shows that devote more focus to them, but in Ransom Canyon the plot is splintered in so many directions that nothing effectively grabs you. 

The Ranch does comedy and family politics better, and that’s not even one of the bold dramatic TV series comparisons that Ransom Canyon has drawn. This is definitely no Yellowstone. Do not try to reallocate your love of Rip and Beth to this – you will be disappointed. 

Some of it feels almost painfully forced. The tornado arc reminds me of the Glee school shooter episode. It tries to go deep, but because of its general upbeat glossiness, it ends up making life-and-death events seem trivial. 

There are also some improper horse handling practices, but I won’t go into those other than to say that you should NEVER hold a horse’s lead rope or lunge line coiled like that, or you risk losing a finger. 

There’s nothing thrilling here that you can’t miss, but at the same time, it’s definitely binge-able in a short period. You could get really into Ransom Canyon, if you wanted to. I just don’t know why you would.