Summary
The Rainmaker gets off to a solid start in Episode 1. The source material remains relevant even decades on, but there has been enough tweaking to create plenty of new mystery.
John Grisham’s novel The Rainmaker has always been popular as an indictment of the legal system at every level, and it’s probably telling that it remains just as relevant in 2025 as it was nearly thirty years ago, when it was adapted into a Matt Damon-helmed feature film. USA’s new version makes some changes to feel a little more contemporary, but the story’s essence – a hotshot big-mouthed lawyer taking on a giant, unscrupulous law firm in a case potentially worth millions of dollars in damages – is very much present in Episode 1, “Another Rainy Day”.
As ever with Grisham’s stuff, there’s more to it all than a court case, which is why this premiere opens with Dan Fogler (The Walking Dead) waking up in a burning building, and ends with him jabbing a syringe into an old lady’s neck. Fogler’s playing a nurse named Melvin Pritcher, who is relevant to what seems likely to be Season 1’s big overarching case, but based on both of these things, it isn’t clear yet in precisely what way. We’ll get back to him in a minute.
In the meantime, though, meet Rudy Baylor. Rudy’s a hotshot young lawyer who, along with his girlfriend, Sarah, is on the cusp of a big-time associate position at a highly prestigious firm. They spend their last day of unemployment offering free legal advice to downtrodden people slapped with parking tickets and the like, so when they’re approached by a woman who claims her son, Donny Ray, was killed by a hospital after he was admitted with the flu and subsequently died from an opioid addiction he had been clean from for some time, they write it off as being above their pay grade. And, given they’re both being hired by the firm representing the hospital, also a conflict of interest.
Like with Melvin, we’ll return to Donny Ray and his mother in a bit. In the meantime, more about Rudy. His brother, John, died some time ago, and his room has been kept as a pristine shrine by his mother, whose boyfriend Hank wants her to move on and repurpose the space as a home gym. This, as well as cracking a window into Rudy’s backstory, is also designed to establish a key quirk of his personality that is reiterated later – he likes a fight. As it pertains to Hank, that’s a literal fight. But when he turns up to his first day at work late and covered in blood and gets into an argument with his new boss, Leo Drummond (a despicable John Slattery), over whether people are really treated equally under the law, we see he can’t resist a verbal spar either.
As a result of this, Rudy finds himself fired. It’s a little weird that a firm based around arguing on behalf of clients wouldn’t relish an employee prone to an argument, especially when he seems to know what he’s talking about – Rudy is a treasure trove of domestic violence facts, which is likely a detail we should pay attention to – but Leo isn’t keen on being stood up to. Later, when Sarah tries to convince him to give Rudy his job back, Leo throws a few fries on the floor for her to dutifully pick up, establishing the dynamic of their relationship. He really is quite awful.
Rudy’s sudden unemployment is where The Rainmaker Episode 1 really picks up, since he’s introduced by the manager of the bar he works at to Bruiser, the partner of a small-time ambulance-chasing firm that works out of an old taco restaurant and pays waitress wages. Bruiser’s only employee is Deck, whose claims to fame are failing the bar exam seven times and consistently folding under pressure. But he’s the one to show Rudy the ropes, which include patrolling hospital corridors and cajoling people into no-win-no-fee cases. It’s unglamorous work, but someone has to do it.
It’s in the hospital that Rudy briefly runs into Melvin, who’s handcuffed to a wheelchair. He’s quickly poached by another lawyer, but he crops up again when Rudy decides to take on Donny Ray’s case to pursue a potentially massive settlement from his former employer. As it turns out, Melvin was one of the nurses who treated Donny. Since the end of the premiere confirms that Melvin is a murderer, it’s clear something is badly amiss here. The dog has a bone.
Unfortunately for Rudy, Sarah is not only working for the firm he’s intending to go to war with, but thanks to a peculiar talent for recalling the first line of every book she has ever read, has found herself on the account of Wilford Keeley, the CEO of the hospital that Donny died in. This means that if Rudy takes the case, he’ll be taking on Sarah directly. Something tells me that their relationship won’t survive this conflict, which is probably just as well, since first impressions of Sarah aren’t great – she’s a trust fund kid who is openly snooty of Rudy’s cheap loft.
There’s more mystery to consider, since a mysterious vaping woman seems to be following Rudy – or perhaps Melvin? – and was at some point keeping an eye on Donny Ray’s mother. It’s impossible to tell for now how all this fits together, but there are enough interesting pieces to suggest that the puzzle will be fun to assemble.
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