Will Ferrell’s new Netflix movie finds him taking on an unlikely role.

From Robert Goulet to Ron Burgundy, Will Ferrell has thrived on embodying a particularly oafish brand of American masculinity, sending up and serenading loveable dopes who don’t realize that their time has passed. Where she wouldn’t have thought twice about walking down a dark alley while presenting as a man, she’s “learning to be a little more afraid of that stuff.” The course she plots with Ferrell takes them from New York City to Los Angeles, with a stop in her hometown of Iowa City, and it leans heavily toward stereotypically American settings: a dive bar in rural Oklahoma, a Texas steakhouse where the 72-ounce cut is free if you can eat it in less than an hour. Steele wants to know if she still fits in these places, which have given her—a person whose core personality Ferrell describes as “Iowa born and raised, 501 jeans, shitty beer”—so much joy, and whether she’ll even still feel safe. “As much as I’ve been in a fishbowl at various times in my life,” he says to Steele, “this trumps all of it.” When Steele takes her first tentative steps into a roadside bar in Meeker, Oklahoma, she leaves Ferrell in the parking lot to see what it feels like to go it alone. But the movie’s intentions are pure-hearted, and you get the sense that a lot of the people Ferrell and Steele encounter on their journey could benefit from an entry-level course.