The best thing in the “Rainmaker” Season 2 trailer is a letter, and it is read aloud by the child who wrote it. “Dear Mr. Baylor,” it begins. “I need a good lawyer. I don’t belong in this place. Bad things happen here. Real bad. Please help me, Mr. Baylor. Sincerely, Victor.” USA Network put the full three minute trailer online on 9 September, and that letter is the whole season in eleven seconds: a kid in juvenile detention who has worked out that the only adult who might listen is a lawyer he has never met.
Season 2 premieres Friday 16 October at 10pm on USA. It is six episodes, which is worth saying out loud because Season 1 ran ten, and a legal drama losing four hours between seasons usually means a tighter case rather than a bigger one. On the evidence here it means both. The show is still adapted from John Grisham’s novel and still run by Michael Seitzman and Jason Richman, and the trailer is a full one rather than a teaser, with a proper structure and an actual joke at the end.
It opens on the hangover from the last finale. Rudy Baylor (Milo Callaghan) is being told to cheer up. “You won a giant case,” somebody says. “It was everything we wanted.” Rudy’s answer is the flattest line in the trailer and the one that sets the year: “except the money.” Warning beyond this point there are spoilers for the “Rainmaker” Season 2 trailer, the two cases it sets up and where Sarah ends up standing.
That letter is the whole season in eleven seconds: a kid in juvenile detention who has worked out that the only adult who might listen is a lawyer he has never met.”
Bruiser reads the letter and hands it over with “I think this kid needs you,” and the trailer cuts to a van marked MEDFORD JUVENILE DETENTION, which is the kind of production detail that tells you the show intends to spend real time inside the building rather than gesture at it from a conference room. Rudy turns up asking “where’s Victor,” gets “who the hell do you think you are,” and answers “I’m his lawyer” with the specific satisfaction of a man who has waited his whole career to say it in a doorway.
Then comes the sentence the season is built on. “That boy played a prank,” somebody says, “and a judge gave him three years.” Three years. For a prank. Rudy’s reply, to Jocelyn “Bruiser” Stone (Lana Parrilla), is “there’s a lot more going on here, Bruiser,” and of course there is, because a disproportionate sentence handed down by a single judge is not a mistake, it is a business model, and Grisham has been writing about exactly that for thirty years.
The second case arrives at Bruiser’s own front door in the shape of her ex-husband, who introduces his situation with admirable economy: “I got underwater with some bad people. I need a lawyer.” Deck Shifflet (P.J. Byrne) does the maths for the audience and gets the trailer’s best laugh out of it. “So we have two cases. Your ex-husband’s and Victor’s. I don’t know how we went from a whale to two fishes, but here we are.” A beat later, somebody asks the question everybody in the room is thinking: “wait, am I a fish?”
The complication is Sarah. Madison Iseman’s character turns up where Rudy does not want her, and the exchange is the sharpest writing in the three minutes. “Sarah, what are you doing here?” he asks. Her answer is a list: “I lost my job. I lost my boyfriend. I did not do this to hurt you.” His is a correction rather than a comeback. “You didn’t hurt me. You hurt a 12-year-old boy.” That is a much better version of the ex-partners-on-opposite-sides trope than the show had any obligation to write, because it moves the stakes off the romance and onto the client inside two lines.
Sarah is working for Amanda Vonn, played by Merle Dandridge, who is the season’s actual antagonist and gets an introduction built entirely out of other people being nervous about her. “Amanda, why didn’t you tell me it was Rudy Baylor?” Sarah asks, and Vonn’s answer is that it is precisely why she was hired. “You thought I would rattle him.” “Seems it worked.” Sarah’s warning is the one line in the trailer that functions as a promise to the audience: “you don’t know Rudy. He won’t give up.” Vonn’s own pitch for herself is colder: her clients are extremely wealthy and willing to do anything.
From there the trailer stops being a legal drama and starts being a thriller. Somebody has been snooping. Somebody says “we found the evidence.” Somebody else, in the flat register of a person who has done this before, says “this mess needs to be cleaned up.” And then the exchange the marketing is clearly proudest of: “do you think Amanda is capable of murder?” The reply is “I think under the right circumstances, everyone is,” which is a good line, though it is also the sort of line a trailer will hand you out of order and out of context, so treat it as a mood rather than a plot point.
Rudy’s own turn lands last. “It’s a corrupt system that they control,” he says. “I’m going to take them all down.” Somebody, off camera, immediately punctures it: “for the record, I like angry Rudy.” That is the show telling you it knows exactly how earnest its lead is and intends to keep undercutting him, which is what kept Season 1 from curdling. The tagline underneath is straightforward enough to be quoted on a bus: it is not about the fight, it is about who you fight for.
The particulars: six episodes beginning Friday 16 October at 10pm on USA, with Milo Callaghan, Lana Parrilla, P.J. Byrne and Madison Iseman returning alongside John Slattery as Leo Drummond, and Merle Dandridge, Austin Nichols and Richard Kind joining for the new season. Slattery gets very little trailer time for a man who spent Season 1 as the immovable object, which either means Drummond is being held back or that Vonn has taken the job of chief obstacle off him. The show is created by Michael Seitzman and Jason Richman from Grisham’s novel.
The trailer then does something almost nobody does any more, which is keep going after the date card. Deck is being told, in escalating pitches, that he is not taking the bar exam again. “Guys, I’m not taking the bar exam, it’s all way too stressful.” “I already tried, he’s not going to listen.” “Absolutely not.” “No, no, no, no.” And then, from Deck, the inevitable: third time’s a charm. If you have read the novel you know exactly how funny and how sad that running joke is, and putting it after the premiere date is a small, confident piece of trailer editing. Everything before it says this season is about a boy who got three years for a prank. That last gag says the show still knows what it is.
What Do You Think? Is a six episode order a sign USA is tightening the show into a single strong case, or a sign of less confidence than the Season 1 numbers deserved? Does putting Sarah on the opposing side work better than another season of her and Rudy circling each other, or is it too neat a way to keep her in the story? And with Amanda Vonn set up as somebody whose clients will do anything, does Leo Drummond still have a job in this show, or has the series found a villain it likes more?
See you on the next binge!
