When The Rainmaker dropped its first episode, I wasn’t positive what to anticipate, particularly understanding the lengthy shadow forged by the John Grisham novel and its 1997 movie adaptation.
Add to that the excessive bar set by sequence like Goliath, which felt just like the religious evolution of those underdog authorized dramas, and also you’d higher come out swinging.
Excellent news: this one simply may.
“One other Wet Day” doesn’t waste time setting the tone. From the opening scene — literal fireplace, worry, and abandonment — it’s clear this present is reaching for emotional depth and character trauma proper out of the gate.
And the Goliath vibes? Yeah, they’re right here. A slick agency with questionable morals, a scrappy crew of authorized outsiders, and one idealistic new lawyer caught in between.
Meet Rudy Baylor. Contemporary out of regulation college, he’s acquired a coronary heart, a giant mouth, and apparently just one hand-me-down go well with, which is one punch away from being unwearable.
Rudy is instantly likable, if just a little too idealistic for the world he’s simply entered.
His private life provides us some fairly massive clues as to why: he’s dwelling at residence with a mom who’s emotionally frozen in time after the dying of his brother, John. She nonetheless dusts his previous room prefer it’s a shrine.
There’s no father within the image, and the person now occupying that function — her new boyfriend, Hank — is aggressive and territorial, bodily shoving Rudy earlier than socking him within the face.
It doesn’t take a lot to think about the historical past right here. The silence of his mom, the lingering grief, the hardly contained rage in Rudy — all indicators level to a family touched by home violence.
His mom’s refusal to intervene, adopted by her asking him to depart, says greater than phrases ever may.
It’s a damning, quiet acceptance of abuse, and it doubtless formed Rudy and his late brother’s total trajectory. It additionally explains why Rudy, regardless of all the things, remains to be making an attempt to be a very good man — a person with that means.
Enter Leo Drummond, the smug, silver-haired head of Tinley Britt and Rudy’s potential boss. John Slattery performs him with zero heat and most conceitedness.
Should you’re hoping for a sophisticated villain with a flicker of buried humanity, preserve strolling. Leo isn’t Miles Drentell — he’s not hiding a soul behind his smirk.
He believes the regulation isn’t about justice, however about persuasion and energy, and he wields each like a sledgehammer.
Rudy dares to push again, citing actual authorized instances about home violence victims the courts didn’t defend. Leo mocks him mercilessly, however Rudy holds his floor.
For a second, it looks as if Leo may secretly respect his nerve. He doesn’t. Rudy is fired earlier than the day is over.
Sarah Plankmore, Rudy’s fellow affiliate and quasi-girlfriend, reveals some backbone when she verbally cuts down Rudy’s statistics, however loses all credibility later when Leo checks her loyalty within the creepiest approach conceivable.
He drops a french fry on the bottom. She picks it up. He drops one other. She picks it up. After which he tells her he’s “defining their relationship.” It’s not simply humiliating — it’s stomach-turning.
Sarah’s clearly intelligent, with an encyclopedic reminiscence for e-book quotes, however there’s one thing lacking. For somebody so formidable, she’s surprisingly fast to bow her head and kiss the ring.
She’ll doubtless go far in a agency like Tinley Britt, however will she ever be a good lawyer? I’ve my doubts. She doesn’t appear to know the burden of what they do — or why it issues.
Rudy, alternatively, is all weight. His soul is heavy with objective, which is probably going why he was drawn to Sarah within the first place.
She represents an escape, a life untouched by trauma. However there’s no actual future there. Not for the person Rudy desires to be.
After burning out at Tinley Britt, Rudy lands on the backside of the authorized meals chain — an previous Taco Hut turned regulation workplace led by the tough-as-nails Jocelyn “Bruiser” Stone.
She runs a cash-strapped, hustle-based operation with Deck Shifflet, a para-lawyer who’s failed the bar seven occasions and speaks with the twitchy power of somebody making an attempt to win a courtroom argument earlier than lunch.
It’s not glamorous, but it surely’s actual. Bruiser could not have Leo’s polish, however she has a code.
She tells Rudy the reality: these shoppers are determined, the system is rigged, and if he doesn’t have fireplace in his stomach, he’d be higher off ready tables. She’s not unsuitable.
Rudy’s first potential consumer is Mrs. Black, a grieving mom whose son, Donny Rae, died of pneumonia whereas hospitalized, after kicking opioids and making an attempt to rebuild his life.
The hospital’s fast provide of a $50,000 settlement (whereas a movement to dismiss remains to be pending) raises pink flags, and Rudy is aware of it. There’s one thing fishy right here.
And whereas Mrs. Black is as sharp as she is heartbroken, she provides Rudy a brutal actuality test: simply because he’s suffered doesn’t imply he understands her ache.
Nonetheless, she indicators. And identical to that, Rudy is in it.
However nothing’s straightforward. The hospital workers who noticed Donny Ray that evening are gone. All however one — Melvin Pritcher, a nurse now underneath arrest for killing his personal mom. Matricide.
And oh yeah, we already noticed him inject an harmless girl within the neck whereas claiming, “It’s OK. I’m a nurse.”
That is Rudy’s star witness. And in the event you suppose that’s not going to hit uncomfortably near residence, suppose once more.
The story is already circling again on itself in poetic, painful methods. Rudy’s total sense of justice is rooted in his damaged household, his silent mom, and the abuse they endured.
Now he’s representing a mom who misplaced her son and making an attempt to construct a case on the testimony of a person who murdered his. How’s that for ethical complexity?
If the present is wise — and it appears to be — Rudy’s personal previous will preserve effervescent up in surprising methods.
He’s not simply right here to make a dwelling. He’s making an attempt to make peace along with his ghosts. And in contrast to Sarah, who desires to appeal her approach to the highest, Rudy is clawing his approach out of a gap that life dug for him lengthy earlier than regulation college.
There are just a few TV-isms to swallow. Rudy’s dream loft is ridiculous, even with a $5k advance. No broke latest grad resides in an unlimited brick loft with 50-foot ceilings throughout from his future love curiosity.
However hey, it’s TV. We forgive.
What The Rainmaker will get proper is tone. It’s indignant however grounded and stylized with out being smug.
It understands the core of those sorts of tales: the regulation isn’t at all times about what’s authorized — it’s about what’s proper. And that struggle isn’t clear.
If Rudy retains wrestling along with his demons and the present digs into the emotional fallout of his upbringing, this sequence may very well be extra than simply one other courtroom drama. It may very well be a reckoning.
What did you consider The Rainmaker Season 1 Episode 1?
The trailer alone had folks fired up, and now that the premiere has landed, it feels just like the present simply may stay as much as the hype.
Did Rudy win you over? Is Leo already in your “most punchable characters” record?
Drop your ideas within the feedback — we need to hear what you’re loving, hating, and all the things in between.
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