The Rainmaker Season 1 Episode 4 Review: Rudy Faces an Ethical Dilemma

Though it has some solid developments and suspenseful moments, The Rainmaker Season 1 Episode 4 is more of the same when it should be taking bigger swings. 

What’s been working so far on the adaptation is the development of the case Rudy Baylor is working on and all the details that surround it, but now that we’re four episodes in, and it’s still that same case, it’s easy to start losing interest.

That’s saying a lot, considering there’s a murderer on the loose and Rudy’s life is essentially threatened by not one, but two situations. It’s not that the show needs to adopt a more procedural format necessarily, but a faster pace or a few more cases mixed in would do a great deal to keep the story moving.

The conflict between Rudy and Sarah is also increasingly uncomfortable to watch. While it started as a way to have this complex dynamic that helps explore who Rudy is as a person, it’s becoming harder and harder to imagine what their relationship might have been like before they finished law school.

In this case, it’s the sort of conflict you’d expect from two people in a personal relationship working opposite sides of a case.

Sarah accidentally lets information slip when she’s visiting Rudy at the bar, and he’s faced with an ethical dilemma because of it — do what’s best for his client, or do what’s best for her.

The fact that he does what’s best for his client says plenty about what kind of lawyer Rudy is, and what kind of lawyer he wants to be. Meanwhile, Sarah is working in a pretty toxic environment that wants her to be, well, the opposite.

All of that said, the fact that this remains a story about underdogs still makes it enjoyable to watch, as does Rudy’s continued ability to prove he’s more capable than people think he is. He and Deck make a great team, too.

The details of the case when it comes to Jackie and Pritcher are also being revealed to the audience bit by bit.

Jackie, it turns out, has been afraid of Pritcher for a long time, and as he holds her captive, he shows himself to be even more terrifying and unsettling than he was in the first few episodes. 

Jackie almost gets away, but only as Pritcher nearly kills another victim: Jane Allyn. She gets herself to the hospital, though, just in time before she collapses from her injuries.

Rudy’s neighbor, Kelly, is also an important part of the story. Rudy is concerned for her after an encounter with her abusive husband, and he wants to help. She has her own plans to get out of her current situation, but at the end of the episode, she finds that the money she’s been putting away is gone — and her husband appears in that moment, angry.

That leaves the audience on a cliffhanger until the next episode, and it’s plenty to keep us interested in what will happen next, both from that and from the case itself. Those storylines, however, likely won’t be enough to carry the entire season on their own.

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The Rainmaker airs Fridays at 10/9c on USA.

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