I'd personally rather take down the patriarchy with a sledgehammer, but butter knives can be useful too.
This post contains spoilers, though I hardly feel anyone minds spoilers in a sitcom.
Synopsis
In this TV show, the failed football player of age 34 Colt Bennet (Ashton Kutcher) returns home to his family ranch, where his father, Beau (Sam Elliott) quite reluctantly accepts him back into his home, to work and live with him and Colt's brother, Jameson (That other guy from That 70's Show - Danny Masterson). Meanwhile their mother Maggie (Debra Winger) lives in a trailer and runs a bar.
If you haven't watched it, just know I don't recommend it. It's a sitcom with rather lame jokes and chewed through subject matter. It does however, interest me from a feminist standpoint.
Butter Knife
Pretty much the very first joke of the show is that Colt Bennet, quite a handsome man, and a football player, comes home wearing Uggs. Naturally, he gets mercilessly teased by his brother for his feminine choice of footwear. This is not the last time that colt is teased for being feminine, he also has a specific routine for maintaining his hair. I vaguely recall him being called a girl a couple of other times too.
Is this sexist, or is this mildly feminist?
Well, it's both. Colt Bennet isn't taking this shit from his brother. He continues to proudly wear his Uggs and take care of his pretty hair. There is a message here that it's ok. Cold Bennet doesn't feel like his manliness is threatened by wearing Uggs. He even retorts to being teased, and pushes back.
But I feel he doesn't push back hard enough. To the uneducated spectator, this is still a man teased for being feminine, as if that's somehow a bad thing. Still, it's nice to see a very manly character (football player) get to express their femininity proudly.
Autonomy
At the beginning of the show, the assumption is that Maggie and Beau are at the very least separated, if not divorced. But it quickly turns out they are in fact still very much married, they just can't stand to live together. They meet, they have sex, they have a relationship.
There is quite a bit of character development between the two. Beau is the stereotypical hard-ass father that doesn't even hug his sons, but as the show goes own, we can see Beau slowly open up. Really slowly.
More importantly though, Maggie insists on her autonomy. She insists on not going back to live with them, until Beau sorts himself out. One time she says "If I move back in with you, I'll get 10% of your attention 100% of the time. The way things are now, I get 100% of your attention 10% of the time." She obviously prefers the latter.
Women
Both Colt and Jameson talk about relationship with women. Colt comments with disdain on Jameson's exploits of women, saying things like "I know how you are with women". While Colt does pretty much the same.
Colt meets his ex Abby (Elisha Cuthbert) and immediately tries to get back together with her. She, however, is dating Kenny, who is according to Colt, not quite up to par, because he was in the band. There is quite a bit of back and forth, until Abby finally asserts that Colt should respect her relationship with Kenny, and he does. However, Abby keeps mercilessly teasing Colt for dating Heather, a 22 year old. Colt asserts that she should respect their relationship too.
At some point, Abby tells Colt to buy Heather a birthday gift, which Heather interprets as a signal that they're in a relationship.
Colt is distraught by this, and decides to break up with Heather, which Abby forces him to do face to face rather than through text.
Heather takes it really well, and tells him they can keep having sex.
Only then does Colt actually get to know Heather, and finds out she's pretty cool too. She does Rodeo and ranching. And they slowly develop into a relationship.
So while the women in this show are ridiculously good looking, they have quite a bit of depth, and aren't there just to be objectified.
Summary
This show sends a lot of mixed messages. Some parts are better, and some parts are worse. The writers are obviously aware that we're in 2018, but they aren't exactly pushing any agenda forward. Rather, they accentuate what we've manage to achieve so far.
I wish they were a little more critical about the sexist behavior of the characters in the show. I wish they dropped a few of the less tasteful jokes, even though the jokes are turned around sometimes.