Pop Culture Happy Hour - The Abandons

Episode Date: December 8, 2025

In Netflix’s The Abandons, Gillian Anderson and Lena Headey play two steely matriarchs that face off on the American frontier. But don’t let the spurs and cowboy hats fool you. At its heart, the new Western series is a sudsy nighttime soap. But is that a good thing?See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Don't let the spurs and the cowboy hats fool you. At its heart, the new Western series The Abandons is a sudzy nighttime soap, and that's a good thing. Two steely matriarchs face off on the American frontier. Lena Heedy is the poor cattle farmer who's struggling to hold her found family of good-hearted misfits together. And Gillian Anderson is the rich mine owner with her own brood of obnoxiously entitled offspring. She wants Lena's land and will go to any length to get it. I'm Glenn Weldon, and today we're talking about Netflix's The Abandons on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR.

Joining me today is entertainment journalist Christina Escobar. She's the co-founder, an editor-in-chief of LatinaMediaPonto Co. Hey, Christina. Howdy, Glend. Howdy? Nicely done. The Abandones takes place in the 1850s in Washington Territory. Gillian Anderson plays Constance, the widowed head of the rich Van Ness mining family, but the mines are running dry, and Constance has her eye on a patch of land owned by Fiona Nolan. Another Widow. She's a tough cattle farmer who's adopted a bunch of outcasts. She's played by Lena Heedy. No amount of money or misfortune can move us from this land. God gave us this home. Only God. Take it away. Fiona refuses to sell to Constance, which sets off an escalating series of events as members of both families clash violently.

We should note that there is a sexual assault plot line in the Abandans. We'll be discussing that today. The series was created by Kurt Sutter. He also created sons of anarchy. Both the Hollywood reporter and deadline have reported that Sutter left the Abandons during production because of creative differences with Netflix. NPR has not independently confirmed that reporting. The Abandons is streaming on Netflix now. Christina, what do you think? Oh, man.

I wanted to like this show and I just couldn't. Listen, I would watch Jillian Anderson read a grocery list. I watched her in Tron. Yep, yes. You did that. You put in your time. This was not it. There were so many issues with this show.

I will say it felt like she was stuck in a single note until some of the final episodes when it finally got fun. Maybe when she breaks a little bit and has some fun with one of her hired hands, if you know what I mean. But until then, she was really stuck. But I guess my main issue with this show was it felt like a season two. Like we were supposed to be dropped in. and already care about these people. And I never cared about any of them. And it didn't feel like there was enough stakes.

So, you know, there's this understanding that the land will be ruined if the mine takes over. But we see some shots of the land being beautiful, but we don't see any shots of what a mine looks like. That's true. But the stakes of it never seemed real. The characters never became people to me. me, they remained types. So the whole thing kind of just felt a little silly. The other thing I would say is a lot of shows do this mix, right, of language where sometimes we're in the past, but we're using modern language. And this show did a really, I want to say, strange mix where

sometimes they would talk in this like old-timey, stilted way, and then someone would drop a modern day swear word and it would just catapult into shenanigans. And I felt like this show didn't have any strong direction. It really did not feel like they knew what show they were trying to make. And so it became just a nothing burger of a lot of really nice hats. The hats were the highlight. Really nice hats. Beautiful hats.

Beautiful hats. So many good hats. The hat budget was off the hook. If you leveled, tiny hats, watch. Otherwise, I don't know. Okay, okay. I mean, I think the whole budget was pretty good. I mean, for what we should mention, this show is gorgeous.

It looks expensive. I mean, these landscapes are gorgeous. I kind of was digging this for a lot of the same reasons you weren't. I mean, this show does not go as hard as the previous Netflix Western American Prime Evil, which dropped on streamer in January of this year. That show was very brutal and unsparing, very dad-coded, frankly. And this show kind of wants you to think it's going to go as hard with all this stuff about vengeance and moms protecting their kids, very great tragedy, but it is not that, as you know.

For one thing, this dialogue is so much less layered. It's a lot more of people saying exactly what they're thinking, the moment they think it in its entirety. And there's also the thing that's related to that. That's happening on a lot of streaming shows right now where a character will say what's about to happen. Then we watch it happen. Then in the next scene, someone describes what just happened. And once you start to notice this, you're going to see it every damnware on pretty much every streaming service reportedly, or let's say, the most generous interpretation of this phenomenon, which is everywhere, is that that's the streamers afraid that people are watching with their phones out. and don't want them to get lost,

you cannot possibly get lost watching this show. There's no getting lost. Because, like, on paper, it's a huge ensemble. There's a lot of characters. A lot of BC and D storylines. A lot of Annesses and abandons coming together and clashing and smashing. Lots of different factions. There's bandits.

There's Native Americans. There's townsfolk. There's the military. But the reason you're not going to get lost is because a lot of those tertiary characters don't matter. This is a soap. It's not just a soap. It's dynasty. I mean, it's got dreams of Greek tragedy.

And, you know, there's some Romeo and Juliet in there with two houses alike in dignity with Fiona's son and Constance's daughter doing the Star Cross Lovers thing. But this show, this is the reason I liked it more than you did. This show is smart enough to give us the reason why we're watching. You do not cast Heady and Anderson and then just have them kind of glower at each other from across a great distance. No, you give them scenes together to trade barbs and make veiled threats and be all stoic and resolved, which, again, Anderson kind of goes hard. really leans into the stowoken result. But you get these flashes of vulnerability, like maybe a quivering lip. And we get a hell of a lot more of those scenes than I was expecting.

Several per episode, that's what this show is, right? It's Crystal and Alexis on the frontier. That's how you pay for all the other stuff with the kids and the bandits and all that stuff that I didn't care about. Do you see where I'm coming from? Yeah, I guess so. And I do want to say I did appreciate that they didn't just have white people, which I feel like a lot of Westerns still do even modern ones. like good points on that. And it's interesting on some of the descriptions of the show.

It talks about like a conflict between the haves and the have-nots. And I did not think that that landed. It did not feel like a meaningful class critique as beautiful as the show was and as clear as it was on like, these people have money and better clothes and a way, way better house. You know, but like what does that mean on the frontier? It felt really unclear to me. And I mean, it was so soapy. It couldn't make any broader points, I guess.

And to me, also, the soap didn't work because I didn't care about them. Okay. No, good. But let's talk about this frontier aspect, because that's the one that I struggled with the most. Like, I do have a question for you because the inciting incident, the real story trigger here is an act of sexual assault. And that sexual assault happens long before we know these characters. We haven't had a chance to individualize them or characterize them or actually see them as people. So it can't help but feel like anything but what it is, which is just a plot point.

It's fuel for the storytelling engine. And this is 2025. That approach can't help but come off as lazy and cliche and forced. And I would add gross. It felt gross to me. Absolutely gross. So here's my issue. Narratively, that's a nerd.

Narratively, that's a non-starter. It made me kind of want to not watch. But historically, right? I don't want to say it's accurate. I don't want to say it's justified. It's not. But, I mean, it's historically plausible, right? I mean, the Old West was a brutal place.

Am I given this show an out that I shouldn't? Yeah, I think so. Okay. I don't think it deserves that out. And, like, there's other ways to show brutality and different ways to manage that particular aspect. I think starting off with that, particularly, as you mentioned, before we've gotten to know the characters. Right. Does not make any sense.

And it puts you in a place where because the characters, I would argue, don't really become people. ever, that it's all just for a kind of pulpy entertainment and sexual assault does not work as pulpy entertainment. I don't think so. And I want to say in terms of Netflix's Lady Westerns, there was, in comparing this show to Godless from 2017, that show, it had too many white people, but it had more interesting things to say about gender and the West that this show doesn't even approach, really. Right. Okay. We talked about the soapiness of this show, and I want to make it clear.

When I'm talking about soapiness, I don't mean it's arch or it's camp. This is not lust in the dust. It's not camp until the last few moments of the last episode, and I think you know what I'm talking about, which tends to bleed over a little bit. But what I mean is it's structured solidly, as far as I was concerned. Soaps are plot-forward things. Things happen, and they get heavily foreshadowed. So you know they're going to happen.

but part of the satisfaction of watching a soap or nighttime soap or whatever the hell this thing is, is watching events slot into place. I think this season builds to a climax. I think the tension ratchets up and then explodes. I was there for it. But one thing we do have to give listeners fair warning about is that the climax does not get resolved. This is a climax without any kind of denouement. There's a big question about our characters that hangs over the series about the fates, their ultimate fates. I was okay with that because, again, the climax did what it.

needed to do, it delivered on like a cathartic release of tension. I don't know. At that statement, we don't know if it's going to get a second season. I would still tell people to watch it, given that we don't know what's going to happen because I was satisfied by that increase in tension. I'm going to guess you have a different opinion. I mean, so the whole ending to me, well, I do think they did a good job, perhaps, with some of the pacing and the plot elements, and there is a big showpiece ending with a fire,

just really going for it, that whether it resolved or not, I wouldn't have changed my opinion about the show. It doesn't end in a way that is unsatisfying or more or less satisfying than the rest of the series, because you really have to care about these two matriarchs and their conflict for the show to work for you. And for me, neither of them seemed particularly believable. Jillian Anderson's character was really one note. Her peer there was more conflicted, had both good and bad. But that didn't come together to me in a way that felt like anybody I've ever met.

It felt like TV soapy silliness sort of trapped in this like Western, sometimes gritty, sometimes not unsure of where it's going type of show that just didn't coalesce into anything other than a lot of quick moving plot points. Okay. So if we can summarize, I think we're coming at this from two different places. I'm coming from a place of seeing the flaws and giving a lot of slack. And you are coming from a place of having standards. I mean And I think both are valid. I think yours is probably more valid than mine, but now it's time for you to tell us what you think about the amendment. Settle the dispute.

Find us on Facebook at Facebook.com slash PCH. And that brings us to the end of our show. Christina Escobar, thank you so much for being here. This helped a lot. I mean, I go into every show wanting to like it. This one, no. You have nothing to apologize for, especially when it comes to this show,

which is what it is. This episode was produced by Carly Rubin, Kayla Latimore, Mike Katzif, and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy, and hello, come in, provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Glenn Weldon, and we'll see you all next time.