The Ranch part 5 featured an unexpected new character played by Last Man Standing favorite Nancy Travis.
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Travis stops by for for episode 7 of part 5 and plays Karen, the estranged sister of Bennett matriarch Maggie (Debra Winger).
After an awkward encounter between her and Rooster (Danny Masterson) that results in the latter inadvertently taking some romantic passes at his aunt, she’s greeted less than warmly by Maggie.
“What the f— are you doing here?” Maggie coldly asks.
Karen then spills that she needs to have a vital conversation with her, but Maggie is not having it. In her pushback, we start to get a picture of what kind of person Karen has been in the past.
“You haven’t returned any of my messages, and we need to talk. It’s important,” Karen says.
Maggie replies, “Yeah, it’s always important, and it usually ends with me giving you a bottle of clean urine.”
Karen is then forced to spill the beans: She has cancer. However, Maggie remains stoic towards her sibling.
“I have cancer, and the doctors say it doesn’t look good,” Karen says.
Maggie replies, “I’m sorry for what you’re going through, but the answer is still no.”
While this may come off as unreasonable, Maggie then tells Rooster why exactly she has no interest in communicating with Karen in any form.
“When my dad was dying, she went to the bank, cleaned out his account and ran off to Pensacola with a drummer,” Maggie says. “We couldn’t even care for my dad’s hospice care. … I don’t owe her anything. She’s a s—y sister.”
To top that off, we soon learn this is not the first time Karen has told her family she has cancer. She apparently conned the family out of cash before with a breast cancer scam.
“The last time you had cancer, the whole family got together and gave you every penny we had,” Maggie tells Karen in a later conversation. “Turns out the cure for breast cancer is on a beach in Ibiza.”
Karen insists that she is dying and urges Maggie to bury the hatchet and embark on a cross-country trip with her. However, Maggie says that “not every relationship should be fixed.”
However, Maggie does have a change of heart and later agrees to go on the trip.
All episode of The Ranch are currently streaming on Netflix.
Photo Credit: Netflix
