Drama
Dutton Ranch
In ‘Dutton Ranch’ on Paramount+, Beth Dutton and Rip Wheeler move their small family and ranching business to Texas—and trouble moves with them.
Ben Reilly’s just trying to make an honest living. He’s not looking to save the world or clean up New York: He just needs cash to pay his assistant and buy his next slug of whiskey.
He’s no hero. Not anymore. Not since his girl, Ruby, died because of him. And whatever made him special, he keeps it well hidden these days.
“Ruby once told me that with great power comes great responsibility,” Ben recalls. “Well, she was the greatest responsibility I ever had. And I failed her.”
But sometimes, that great responsibility comes calling again, whether you like it or not. And it’s calling for … the Spider.
Spider-Man’s Peter Parker and Miles Morales are nowhere to be found in this alt-version of New York City. But the Big Apple is still as rotten as ever. A gangster called Silvermane has the city by the throat, and he’s enlisted a host of superpowered individuals to help him close his grip. That begs for someone with arachnid-based superpowers to come to the rescue. But Ben—a.k.a. the Spider—has no urge to spin new webs.
Ben’s more urgent concern is nightclub siren Cat Hardy, who walked into his office and offered Ben a job. Seems her bodyguard, Flint Marko, has gone missing. And while Ben and Flint have had their differences, Cat wants Ben to find him anyway.
“You’re an investigator,” Cat purrs. “Investigate.”
Ben would rather not. Everything in him, including his painful Spidey-sense, tells him to steer clear of Cat, of Silvermane, of the whole sordid business. The more dangerous things get, the more he might need to return to his old web-slinging ways.
But Ben needs the money. And maybe, deep down, he needs to help. Maybe he can put his great powers to work for a great purpose one more time.
Spider-Man Noir has been on the case in Marvel’s comic books since 2009, though many might’ve been first introduced to the character in 2018’s delightful animated film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.
Into the Spider-Verse was a Plugged In favorite—winning both PI’s and our readers’ vote for Best Movie for Teens during our Plugged In Movie Awards. Nicolas Cage voiced the character in that Spider-Man movie, and one might’ve had high hopes for the Prime Video series as he returns to fill Spidey’s alt-universe gumshoes.
Alas.
Make no mistake, Spider-Noir has its merits. The series sinks you into a depression-era New York and leans heavy into classic noir films of the 1940s and 50s: The grizzled private eye, the dirty streets, the shadowed corners you find at every turn. In a nice touch, Prime Video even gives you the option to watch the show in black and white.
But while the monochrome noir movies of yesteryear were certainly edgy for their time, they still had to adhere to some broad suitability standards: Sex was merely hinted at. Violence was reliably bloodless. R-rated profanity? No such thing—at least, not on the silver screen. Those flicks felt grittier than they actually were.
Spider-Noir abandons such standards and betrays the family audience first introduced to the character in Into the Spider-Verse.
Sexual winks and asides sully the script. Harsh language fills the television speakers. Most startlingly, Spider-Noir is quite bloody, containing scenes of torture and even sexual assault. A man’s throat is cut, on camera, in the very first episode, and blood gushes from the wound.
Spider-Noir bears a TV-MA rating (the equivalent of an R-rating for movies), and it boasts of it. But that content doesn’t elevate the story: Rather, it limits who will see it.
With great power comes great responsibility, Spider-Man says across a host of different universes. But that goes for TV shows, too. In Spider-Noir, Prime Video abdicated its responsibility to superhero-loving families. And from where we sit at Plugged In, that’s incredibly disappointing.
(Editor’s Note: Plugged In is rarely able to watch every episode of a given series for review. As such, there’s always a chance that you might see a problem that we didn’t. If you notice content that you feel should be included in our review, send us an email at letters@pluggedin.com, or contact us via Facebook or Instagram, and be sure to let us know the episode number, title and season so that we can check it out. )
It’s been five years since Ben’s girlfriend, Ruby, died—a death that would’ve never happened had Ben not been moonlighting as a superhero named the Spider. Ben has left that alter ego behind (much to the chagrin of journalist Robbie Robertson and the rest of New York) and works as a private eye these days. Currently, he’s working a couple of cases.
First, Ben’s been hired to track down a guy named Addison. Who’s behind the hire, and why? Ben doesn’t know at first—but he quickly learns that Addison’s no average Joe: He’s got superpowers, and that makes him of interest to Silvermane, New York’s most notorious gangster.
But Ben must also follow singer Cat Hardy to a mysterious rendezvous, too. The man paying Ben’s fee claims to be Cat’s husband, though Ben doubts that’s true. And when he discovers Cat in the same hotel room as the city’s mayor, the investigator has even more reason to doubt.
A man is tortured by Silvermane’s goons. They believe they’ve beaten the blood-covered victim to death until Silvermane runs a knife through the man’s hand (the camera treats us to a closeup), jarring him awake. The victim’s throat is soon sliced open, and blood pours from the dying man’s wound.
Another person is shot to death: We see his body in the morgue, his bare chest riddled with bloodless bullet holes. Ben is knocked off a skyscraper, but he saves himself before hitting ground. A scuffle involving plenty of fisticuffs (and a two-by-four) lead to one of the combatants getting knocked unconscious. A character can set himself on fire and shoot flames. In flashback, we see how Ruby died—chained inside a car and sunk in a body of water.
A man tries to force a kiss on a woman. The woman resists and slaps him: The guy tries to punch the woman in retaliation, but he’s prevented from doing so. Someone is knocked unconscious by a car door. In flashback, we see the Spider fighting a number of bad guys, using his fists, feet and spiderwebs as many try to gun him down.
Ben and his assistant, Janet, engage in a conversation that involves some ribald double entendres (and slights for Janet’s husband). Ben meets a married woman at a bar who suggestively tells him that her marital status has “never stopped me from having a good time.” (Ben hands her a card and suggests to her that, if her husband ever begins to suspect she’s philandering, he should hire Ben to investigate.) Cat wears a tight gown on stage.
Ben smokes cigarettes, as do a number of other people here. Characters drink and make light of how much they do. When Janet tells Ben that she made coffee, he asks if she has anything stronger—then asks her to pour the liquor straight into his coffee cup.
Characters say the s-word five times and hurl a number of other profanities, including “b–tard,” “d–n,” “h—” and “p-ss.” God’s name is misused three times (twice with the word “d–n”), and Jesus’ name is also abused three times. A surprised man utters the names of the entire Holy Family.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
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