Rudy Baylor (Milo Callaghan) won the biggest case of his life last season, and “The Rainmaker” opens Season 2 by showing how little that win has actually paid him. “Dear Uncle Rudy” aired Friday, October 16th on USA Network. The Great Benefit verdict is stuck in an appeal, so the money is not in the bank and the firm still works out of a former taco joint. Rudy is famous now, and the clients who call want his face more than his judgment. Then a birthday card arrives from a juvenile detention center, and the season finds its real case. It is a smart way back in for a show that has already run out of book.
Season 1 used up John Grisham’s novel. It ended with Rudy beating Great Benefit for Dot Black (Karen Bryson) and losing Sarah Plankmore (Madison Iseman), who used his late brother’s memory against him at trial. There is no second book to lean on, so showrunner Michael Seitzman is writing past the source from here. USA has ordered 10 episodes and describes the new fight as one “where the lives of hundreds of children hang in the balance.” The first season became the network’s most-watched freshman series in seven years, which means the pressure to do it again is real. Warning beyond this point there are spoilers for “The Rainmaker” Season 2 and the ending of “Dear Uncle Rudy.”
Rudy is famous now, and the clients who call want his face more than his judgment.”
The win changed Rudy’s mail more than his bank account. Letters from would-be clients pile up at J. Lyman Stone and Associates. Nabisco hires the firm to go after a competitor selling knockoff Mallomars, and it picks this firm because of Rudy’s name. Rudy argues the cookie case in front of a jury. TV Insider reports that Nabisco settles for injunctive relief soon after his opening statement. Meanwhile another firm is courting him with the promise of a partnership. Rudy wants the same title at home, but Bruiser Stone (Lana Parrilla) refuses to give it to him, and she is right. He has one real case behind him.
Deck Shifflet (P.J. Byrne) is the one who reads the mail. A birthday card arrives addressed to “Uncle Rudy” from a 12-year-old named Victor Suffredes (Asher De Land). Rudy has no nephew, and Victor’s first letter never made it out because the guards intercepted it and beat him for writing it. So he bought a card and hid a coded message inside. TV Insider reports that the code runs off a dollar bill’s serial number and spells out “Help me.” Deck cracks it and will not let it go. That is also why the episode carries its title.
The facts of Victor’s case are ugly. He hacked his school’s computers to Rick Roll the screens, then pleaded guilty because he was promised leniency. The judge sent him to juvenile detention for three years anyway. His mother is dead and his stepfather, Chuck Lawson (Barry O’Connor), wants nothing to do with him. When Rudy and Deck meet Victor, it is plain that the guards have been hurting him. Rudy takes the case, and this is the show at its best. Last season he fought a healthcare giant for Dot, and now he is fighting a detention system for a kid with nobody in his corner.
The first legal move fails. TV Insider reports that Rudy’s appeal is denied because Victor has no guardian to sign for him. Bruiser hands him the workaround: file a civil suit instead and ask the court to appoint a guardian ad litem. Rudy knows exactly who to ask, and Dot Black is back, this time standing up for somebody else’s son. It is the right call for both of them. Dot already beat a corporation once with Rudy, and she knows what it costs to lose a child. Callaghan told UPI that for Rudy, “money is just currency.”
Sarah is where Rudy was a year ago, only worse. She is out at Tinley Britt, where the FBI was closing in on Leo Drummond (John Slattery) when Season 1 ended. Now nobody will hire her. Her career is radioactive and she is leaning on her parents to stay afloat. Sitting with them, her mother asks whether Sarah has ever stopped to ask where she went wrong. So Sarah goes to the bar Rudy now runs and apologizes for what she did to him in court. Rudy answers with two words. “We’re closed.” Deck overhears the whole thing.
That is the scene people keep bringing up, and Callaghan gives the credit away. “A lot of people have said to me that that’s their favorite scene and I think that all I did was look at Maddie and be with her and she really carried that,” he told UPI. Iseman told TV Fanatic that the apology is meant to stay murky. “You never really know Sarah’s intentions.” TVBrittanyF’s Brittany Frederick felt the same pull and wrote that “it actually hurts when Rudy doesn’t accept her apology.” The show wants the audience split on Sarah, and it gets there in one scene.
Bruiser gets her own mess. Her ex-husband Tom (Austin Nichols) shows up at the office asking for help. He coaches a minor league baseball team, and his star pitcher is caught up in a gambling scheme over a thrown game. Tom is in it too, and the trouble is serious enough to put both men’s lives at risk. Bruiser takes the case, and her retainer is his new wife’s expensive handbag, which she simply walks off with. Parrilla told E! News to expect “a more vulnerable side” of Bruiser this season. On this evidence, the ex is how they plan to get there.
The episode saves its real villain for the end. Amanda Vonn (Merle Dandridge) is a powerful attorney Sarah idolizes, and Amanda turns her away earlier in the hour. Then Amanda hears about the lawsuit over Victor’s detention and learns that Rudy is the lawyer bringing it. She changes her mind and calls Sarah. The job has nothing to do with Sarah’s talent. Amanda wants Rudy’s ex across the aisle from him, and Sarah needs the job too badly to turn it down. The premiere ends with the two of them headed for the same courtroom again.
The early reviews are warm. TV Fanatic’s Jasmine Blu opened hers with “Gosh damn, it’s great to have The Rainmaker back.” The doubts land on Amanda. Ready Steady Cut’s Jonathon Wilson called her “an adequate replacement for Leo Drummond by essentially being him, just a female version,” and Frederick wrote that “Amanda is too much like Leo.” That is fair on one hour of evidence, but the difference USA is selling is scale. Its own synopsis says Amanda’s agenda “may be hiding a shocking international conspiracy.” If that holds, she is a bigger problem than Leo ever was.
The premiere works because it puts Rudy back where he is strongest: with a client nobody else wants, against a system that thinks it already won. Byrne told E! News that Deck now goes looking for people who are being bullied. “He likes to punch a bully, and he’s got the two best weapons in the land to stand next to.” Callaghan told the same outlet that Rudy starts the season lost, hoping that a promotion, a girl or money will “heal the hole in his heart.” Victor is the answer to that, at least for now.
The risk is repetition. Sarah against Rudy under a new boss is the spine of Season 1 with fresh paint, and it only works if the show gives her somewhere new to go. Slattery is also back as Leo this season, and Richard Kind joins as Deck’s estranged father, so the past is not done with anyone. The case is the reason to stay. One boy in one detention center is the start, and USA is promising hundreds. Episode 2, “Cards Up,” airs Friday, October 23rd.
What Do You Think? Is Sarah’s apology to Rudy real, or was it the first move in Amanda Vonn’s game? How many more kids like Victor are inside that detention center? Will Tom’s gambling trouble drag Bruiser into real danger before Victor’s case even reaches a courtroom?
See you on the next binge!
