‘The Rainmaker’ Episode 7 Recap – Rudy Takes The Law Into His Own Hands

The Rainmaker takes something of a turn in Episode 7, largely abandoning the main plot for the equivalent of a side quest that neatly ties up Rudy’s ongoing involvement in Kelly’s love life. Naturally, this kind of intersects with the main case in a few ways, not least of which Rudy’s extremely unethical decision to stash her at the home of his client, especially when that home becomes the scene of a murder.

I know Rudy’s technically the hero of this story, but I kind of see Bruiser’s point. He does seem to make calamitously bad decisions on a regular basis, and even though he’s well-intentioned, the law doesn’t work like that. And you can see this particular calamity coming a mile away. When Prince handed Rudy an untraceable revolver early in the episode, I knew that he was going to have to use it. Or someone was, anyway. Chekhov’s gun applies equally to all.

It’s kind of hard to get a gauge on Rudy’s relationship with Kelly, especially in light of the weird one he now has with Sarah. We get a bit more backstory on Sarah in this episode, primarily by learning that her dad is an awful piece of work who knows Leo Drummond personally and secured her the job at Tinley Britt by calling in a favour. I suppose that goes some way towards explaining why Sarah is so willing to compromise her morals to further her career, since she’s evidently trying to make a case for having earned opportunities that have really been handed to her on a platter, but the obvious corruption at the firm clearly isn’t going unnoticed. She wants to hug Rudy when she learns he might be looking at a prison sentence for killing Kelly’s husband, and she even makes a snarky comment about how close he is to Kelly, as though she didn’t just sleep with her colleague.

But she’s kind of right. Several characters make reference to the potential romantic undercurrents of Rudy’s relationship with Kelly, but that angle isn’t committed to beyond her asking him to spend the night holding her after he’s released on bail. That isn’t exactly a platonic request, but it goes no further, and towards the end of this episode, Kelly relocates, so a relationship seems to be off the table for the time being. We’re also now freed from this subplot to focus on the main case, with some of its more potent character work – especially that involving Rudy and Dot, which, to be fai,r is quite strong – being carried forward.

The main upside of The Rainmaker Episode 7 is seeing Bruiser and Deck go to bat for Rudy. After Cliff reveals himself in Dot’s shower like he’s recreating Psycho and attacks Kelly off-screen, Rudy is on the hook for killing him. It takes Bruiser all of five minutes and a visit to the crime scene to realise that Rudy is taking the blame for Kelly, who was actually the one to kill Cliff. Luckily, Quinn, the guy trying to prosecute Rudy, was also the guy to prosecute Bruiser’s father, and she’s able to leverage their relationship to get Rudy cleared and all the charges against Kelly dropped.

It’s all connected, by the way. Her father was convicted on the back of a wiretap of himself and a guy named Prince, who is also coincidentally hired by Leo at the end of this episode to find Melvin, Jackie, and the file she’s hiding (which is currently in the possession of her ex – Sarah was looking for it earlier). Jane Allen, meanwhile, was earlier dismissed by Noonan, but made it very clear that she wasn’t going to let the matter rest and was also going to go after Melvin, so it’s very unlikely he can remain off the grid for long. But who’ll find him first? We’ve only got three more episodes to find out, but I think we could all hazard a pretty good guess.

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