There’s a reason why Showtime canceled american rust after its first season, with mixed to negative reviews; Aside from the usual stellar performances from Daniels and Tierney, the show felt like a dark work full of people who had sketchy morals and little else in the way of personal characteristics. Despite this, Amazon saw fit to pick up the show and produce a second season, now titled American Rust: Broken Justice.
AMERICAN RUST: BROKEN JUSTICE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Initial shot: A delivery man brings a box to a house. The person receiving the box enters the house and suddenly the glass around the door shatters due to an explosion.
The essence: Four months after the shooting in West Virginia perpetrated and covered up by Del Harris (Jeff Daniels), the people of his old stomping grounds of Buell, Pennsylvania, are trying to put their lives back together. Harris, having effectively covered his tracks, is no longer Buell’s police chief; He returned to the Pittsburgh police as a detective, a position he left at least a decade earlier.
Meanwhile, Grace Poe (Maure Tierney), her ex-husband Virgil (Mark Pellegrino), and their son Billy (Alex Neustaedter) go to a hearing according to District Attorney Sue Herlitz (Emily Davis); They are seeking restitution for his imprisonment, when he was beaten to within an inch of his life while being falsely accused of murdering Pete Novick. Grace is insulted by the small pain and suffering deal Herlitz offers, but she is equally surprised when Billy accepts it.
Billy has been in rehab for his injuries for the past few months and has decided to stay with his friend Isaac English (David Alvarez) to continue working on getting his brain to move his arm and leg correctly. Isaac is pretty much over the Novick incident; He still has the key with which he killed the ex-cop, which he gives to Billy to get rid of. He also went out looking for men to date on an app similar to Grindr. Additionally, he and his sister Lee (Julia Mayorga) have fixed up his late father’s house; When he returns home from his job as a paralegal, his reunion with Billy’s ex is warm, if a little awkward.
Harris investigates the package bomb with his partner, Ángela Burgos (Luna Lauren Vélez), and when he returns to the station, he is interrupted during his briefing by Internal Affairs Detective Ramón Fisher (Kyle Beltrán), who questions him about a shooting that Your ex-partner may have been involved a decade ago. Of course, Harris is incredulous at what he believes is harassment.
After celebrating Burgos’s birthday, Harris speaks with two of his former colleagues, including Vic Walker (Marc Menchaca) and Mike Orr (Nick Sandow); They are in a parallel vigilante organization called The Brotherhood and want to see if Harris is interested in joining again. When he expresses interest, they tell him where to find the weapon he will use to execute his first job.
Grace is questioned by Steve Park (Rob Yang), who was promoted to chief after Harris left, about Harris’ whereabouts on the night of the shooting. There appears to be a discrepancy between what she said happened that night, Harris’ cell phone records, and who a local bar owner saw Harris talking to on the phone that night. As Grace tries to retrieve the porce papers signed by a reluctant Virgil, she sees the bar owner and threatens her to keep her mouth shut. At the same time, Grace wonders why Harris hasn’t kept his promise to return to the cabin they share on weekends, but Harris knows that his attempts to re-enter the Brotherhood serve a greater purpose.
What shows will it remind you of? When american rust released two and a half years ago, we said it was a cross between Easttown Mare and Your Honorand we are left with that.
Our opinion: Nothing about him american rust, created by Dan Futterman based on the novel of the same name by Philipp Meyer, has really changed in its second season. If you leave the first season behind and take American Rust: Broken JusticeThe central murder mystery on its own merits essentially plays out like a fairly standard police drama, with Harris trying to figure out who is killing people in both Pittsburgh and Buell while trying to uproot the Brotherhood people in search of the vigilantes who are. But the implications of the first season are still there, specifically in the person of now boss Park and his attempts to catch his former boss in the shooting.
We already know Harris’ moral and ethical failings, and in season two, we see that Grace, Billy, and Isaac are in that trouble with him; They are all trying to rebuild their lives despite knowing their particular roles in all the deaths that occurred during the first season.
But here’s what we want to know: Will this season be about this new series of murders, with Harris and his new partner Burgos investigating them as if nothing in Buell and across the West Virginia border had happened? Or will what happened in season 1 connect to the case in season 2?
We’re not sure we care what the answer to that question is. Sure, we’d still see Daniels and Tierney in just about anything. But it seems like this story is still pretty generic in nature, with a cast of generic characters around the two stars of the show. It also looks like the two will spend less time together on screen, at least at the beginning of the season, which is not what you want when the best part of the first season was the chemistry between its two stars.
Sex and skin: Isaac has bathroom sex with an apparent stranger at the bar where he meets one of his app hookups. But is this person really random?
Parting Shot: A man making a delivery to the bar where Grace threatened the owner finds a body.
Sleeping star: Luna Lauren Vélez’s role as Harris’ partner Angela Burgos is yet to be determined, but when Harris meets with the Brotherhood detective, they mention how “by the rules” she is. This could be a big clue as to where she fits into this story.
Most pilot line: Harris wishes Burgos a happy 50th birthday and says he’s only 47. He then jokingly curses Vic and Mike for telling him the wrong age. Funny.
Our call: SKIP IT. Despite the good performances of Daniels and Tierney, American Rust: Broken Justice It doesn’t prove that a second season will be a bleaker exercise than the first.
Joel Keller@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and technology, but make no mistake: he’s a couch potato. His writings have appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.comFast Company and other places.
