SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers from The Rainmaker Episode 1.

USA’s The Rainmaker is inevitably being compared to the Matt Damon movie—and the TV series unquestionably holds its own. It’s hard to picture a cable drama standing up against a Francis Ford Coppola film, but the series premiere pulls it off with the potential for a whole lot more.

One doesn’t have to be familiar with the movie or John Grisham’s 1995 novel to follow the series, which is a classic underdog tale. Rudy Baylor (played with effortless confidence by Rivals alum Milo Callaghan) is a blue-collar kid who only owns one suit, but gets into two different fights on his first day as a lawyer, which is how fans know he’s a good guy. Rudy soon finds himself on a collision course with the ruthless top-shelf law firm of Tinley Britt, which not only fired him for one of those fights, but happens to still employ his girlfriend. This is the hero’s journey in many ways.

Where the TV series sets itself apart is in how it embraces that classic story arc. Creator Michael Seitzman, who gave the world the most underrated medical drama in history with Code Black, leans into what The Rainmaker is instead of trying to force a reinvention or find a gimmick. The biggest change from the source material is making the character of J. Lyman Stone, better known as “Bruiser,” a woman. She’s portrayed by The Lincoln Lawyer‘s Lana Parrilla, in an absolutely perfect bit of casting. Parrilla is clearly having a ball as the sharp-tongued Bruiser, and making the character a woman opens up a lot more directions in which to take her story across the ten-episode season.

Beyond that, the series premiere is a solid, straightforward hour that does the legal drama very well—and doesn’t feel the need to be anything else. Seitzman and company have confidence in what they’re doing, and that confidence trickles down to the cast. The premiere script is very clear about the purpose of each scene in the bigger picture. An early highlight is Rudy coming to blows with his mother’s unscrupulous boyfriend Hank; the scene is obviously meant to establish Rudy as the guy who never backs away from a fight. And it comes right after Rudy and his mother briefly discuss the family’s tragic history, which explains why he’s that kind of guy. It becomes easy to get on the Rudy Baylor hype train.

Callaghan embodies the underdog with a level of confidence that captures the audience from early on; he never dwells too long on Rudy’s less fortunate circumstances. Longtime USA viewers will be reminded of Mike Ross from Suits, and it’s likely Callaghan will have the same kind of breakout performance as Patrick J. Adams did—both are wiser and stronger than they first appear to be. It helps that John Slattery fully leans into the villainy of Milo’s future nemesis, Leo Drummond. The Mad Men veteran clearly understands that his job is to be loathed; another scene in which Drummond drops french fries just to see Sarah pick them up makes him nigh on irredeemable. And that’s the point—viewers need to root for David to topple Goliath, so Goliath has to be the person viewers love to hate.

Rounding out the cast are Madison Iseman as Rudy’s girlfriend Sarah Plankmore, P.J. Byrne as Bruiser’s “para-lawyer” Deck Shifflet, and Dan Fogler as the creepy Melvin Pritchard, who turns out to be connected to Rudy’s wrongful death lawsuit. The latter is amusing when one remembers Fogler played Francis Ford Coppola in the Paramount+ miniseries The Offer. (Kelly Riker, played by Robyn Cara, doesn’t appear in Episode 1.) All of the characters get proper introductions, with Irreverent star Byrne once again providing the comic relief. What’s great about Byrne is that he’s played the comic relief enough times to know how to dole it out. Deck is funny, but not so funny that he becomes a caricature or a distraction.

Iseman has a harder road, as most of what is learned about Sarah is in regards to her relationship with Rudy. Furthermore, she has to take Sarah from being deeply in love with Rudy to walking out on him within the first episode, and that major shift is one of The Rainmaker‘s weaknesses so far. It will take more than an episode to make the collapse of that relationship believable, and to flesh out who Sarah is on her own. But that concern answers the question of why The Rainmaker TV show exists. The television format allows for Seitzman and company to go deeper into the characters and their relationships than a two-hour movie. They can also add more color because they are hopefully building out a multi-season universe.

In Episode 1, they put their cards on the table to show why these characters deserve to be further explored. Everyone loves a great underdog story, especially one delivered with as much confidence as The Rainmaker. The only glaring issue with the series premiere is its over-reliance on needle drops; the pop music wants to set the scene, and instead just pulls audiences out of it. The writing is sharp enough that it doesn’t need the music to tell the audience what to think or feel. Beyond that, this is a skillfully assembled legal drama without any pretense, melodrama or forced plot twists. The novel and movie versions of The Rainmaker are great, but the TV series immediately does them justice—and has a chance to leave them both in the dust.

The Rainmaker airs Fridays at 10:00 p.m. on USA. Photo Credit: Courtesy of USA.

Article content is (c)2020-2025 Brittany Frederick and may not be excerpted or reproduced without express written permission by the author. Follow me on Twitter at @BFTVTwtr and on Instagram at @BFTVGram. For story pitches, contact me at tvbrittanyf@yahoo.com.