Are we in for a new age of scripted basic cable television? Given the successes of the old age, which threaded its way between broadcast and premium cable TV, a little bolder than the former, less pricier than the latter, making up what it lacked in resources with invention and charm — producing such shows as “The Detour,” “Halt and Catch Fire,” “Lodge 49” and “The Closer,” to name just a few of my favorites — I’d be all for it.
Premiering Friday on the USA Network, lately devoted to sports, reality shows and reruns, the legal drama “The Rainmaker” is the first fruit of an intentional return to the network’s self-styled “blue sky” era, when its slogan was “Characters Welcome” and “optimism” in storytelling was a stated goal. “Psych,” “In Plain Sight,” “Monk” and “Suits” — whose recent success after being recycled onto Netflix would seem to be a factor in this turnaround — were among the series born in that period.
Based on John Grisham’s 1995 novel, faithfully adapted by Francis Ford Coppola into a 1997 film starring Matt Damon and Claire Danes, the TV “Rainmaker” has been kitted out with some new and altered characters and a novel focus, and in order to keep you on the hook across 10 episodes, it stirs in a case of arson and a serial murderer. (And surely some additional complications — only five episodes out of 10 were available for review, so even though I wouldn’t tell you about what’s coming later, I couldn’t.) Serial killer notwithstanding — nothing drearier than a serial killer — the nuts and bolts and girders and panels of a USA show are here — colorful characters, one part comedy to one part drama, a mystery to solve, and just a tiny bit of sex. (This is basic cable, remember.)
We meet hot-headed good guy Rudy Baylor (Milo Callaghan) and his cheery girlfriend Sarah Plankmore (Madison Iseman), both not long out of law school, both yet to take the bar exam, at a legal-aid event, providing free advice to the sort of people who could never afford a lawyer, wouldn’t know where to start or maybe just want someone to listen to their stories. They meet Dot Black (Karen Bryson), who is very much not over the death of her son while in a hospital whose name I can’t recall but for my own convenience will just call Bad Hospital. Badspital. That the hospital — the Badspital — has offered her $50,000 while their motion to dismiss is still pending, sets Rudy to wondering what they might be trying to hide. Anyway, Dot, whom we’ll see again, finds the offer insulting and also needs an apology.
Rudy and Sarah have both been hired by the 800-pound gorilla law firm Tinley Britt. On their first day, he arrives late to work — and bloody, having gotten into a fight with his mother’s shiftless, but large, boyfriend. He proceeds to get into another fight, abstractly, with senior partner Leo F. Drummond (John Slattery), who fires him. (In the novel, Rudy is merely laid off in a merger — not so dramatic!) Moaning to friend and bar-owning sometime boss Prince Thomas (Tommie Earl Jenkins) that he’s been turned down by every other respectable firm in town, Thomas suggests “a not so respectable one.”
John Slattery stars as Leo Drummond, a senior partner at Tinley Britt, the law firm where Rudy is hired and subsequently fired.
(Christopher Barr/USA Network)
Here things depart significantly from the text, and the fun begins.
Rudy is delivered to the law offices of glamorous Jocelyn “Bruiser” Stone (Lana Parrilla) and associates, located in a partly converted Mexican restaurant — though past the receptionist the only associate in sight is “paralawyer” Deck Shifflet (P.J. Byrne). A purely comic character, Deck has failed the bar seven times but has many useful skills and qualities, not least a flexible sense of professional ethics. He insists on calling Rudy “Boo Boo.” It takes him a minute to realize it, but Rudy has found his people.
Gender flipped from the novel’s J. Lyman Stone, Bruiser (when not in court) favors animal prints, plunging necklines and short skirts. “I only need three things,” she says. “Kentucky bourbon, a bloody steak and a man who won’t spend the night.” You get the picture.
But there’s more to her than that. When Rudy, who has been with Deck trolling the Badspital for clients, suggests he wasn’t cut out to be an “ambulance chaser,” she also has this to say.
“You know where the term ambulance chaser came from? It was used by white shoe firms in the ’20s to crap on any lawyer that wasn’t a member of their club. When the contingency-fee law was enacted, small firms rose up full of attorneys who were just like their clients, the ones on the Statue of Liberty, the tired, poor, the huddled masses — those same people are our clients now, and if you think you’re better than them, you’re not. You are them.”
It’s good to know someone still takes Emma Lazarus seriously.
Among the figures Rudy and Deck encounter at the hospital, or the Badspit — oh, never mind — is Melvin Pritcher (Dan Fogler), whom we have seen in the series’ opening scene, escaping a house fire that kills his mother. There are several things to say about him that probably constitute spoilers, so I’ll just note that though Melvin is quite unpleasant, Fogler is very good.
With Sarah working for the Empire and Rudy embedded with the rebels, their relationship has been engineered by the writers to be problematic, possibly to break down — though each does seem to be trying. (They’re good kids.) She’s got a trust fund; he’s doesn’t own a suit of his own, dressing rather in one passed down from a dead brother. They’ll wind up in court opposite one another like Tracy and Hepburn in “Adam’s Rib,” for Tinley Britt is defending the hospital from Dot, who has become a client of Bruiser’s firm. Their future together is also potentially complicated by Kelly Riker (Robyn Cara), a woman who lives in Rudy’s building who is obviously being abused, and Drummond’s smarmy lieutenant Brad Noonan (Wade Briggs) — of course he’d be named Brad — who has been assigned to weaponize Sarah against Rudy.
Callaghan gives off a scintilla of Matt Damon vibes, but is his own Rudy, keeping his naive idealist free from leading-man tics. Parrilla finds the balance between Bruiser’s sauciness and seriousness; Byrne plays the clown adeptly; and Slattery, a boss again after “Mad Men,” softens his villainy with some Roger Sterling insouciance.
Developed by Michael Seitzman and Jason Richman, it’s a very watchable show — serial killer passages notwithstanding. There’s nothing fancy in the execution — it’s the opposite of stylish — but everything’s clearly defined and dialed up a step past normal into that space we call entertainment. Welcome back to the blue sky.