Joining Debra Winger, Danny Masterson, and Ashton Kutcher, Happy Endings star Elisha Cuthbert has signed on to the cast of Kutcher’s new Netflix series, The Ranch. Cuthbert will appear as a love interest for Kutcher’s character, Colt, who returns to work on his family’s ranch after realizing that there are only two things you can do in life when you’ve been saddled with the name of a kind of horse. (The other, of course, being to star in a 3 Ninjas movie).
Despite having names that are just similar enough to each other to be vaguely irritating if you look at them for too long, Kutcher and Cuthbert have never worked together before—with one telling exception. You see, Cuthbert is one of the lost souls known as the Punk’d, those who once fell victim to one of the prank-mad Butterfly Effector’s puckish schemes once upon a time. The actress appeared—unwittingly, as all her damned brethren must—on the MTV show’s seventh season, back in 2006. Now, we’re not saying that all of the events of Cuthbert’s career since then—her appearances on 24, the cancellation of Happy Endings, the death of One Big Happy—have all been part of an elaborate long-con to get her in Ranch-ready position to take revenge for one moderately amusing mid-2000s goof. But we are saying that that is probably what’s going on here. (In Punk’ng circles, this is known as “The Prestige.”)