Co-created with LaToya Morgan (TURN: Washington’s Spies), Duster is the first television or film project J.J. Abrams has written since Rise of Skywalker in 2019, and boy, is it mediocre. It’s one of those shows that languished in production for years (Josh Holloway was cast back in March 2021), had filming disrupted by the writers’ strike, and finally premiered with the appropriate level of fanfare, which is to say: very little. I suspect it was part of Max’s previous strategy to court broader audiences. It feels more like a USA Network series than an HBO Max one.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing — it’s watchable and occasionally mildly entertaining — but if the goal was “elevated basic cable,” it never quite reached “elevated.” For a show about a criminal syndicate driver teaming up with an FBI agent in the ’70s, I expected more action and car chases. Instead, it mostly meanders across eight episodes and only sort of gets interesting in setting up a second season, which seems unlikely for a series that never generated any buzz.
There’s no trace of the typical J.J. Abrams puzzle-box structure. It’s a straight-up buddy show. Holloway plays Jim Ellis, a driver for a criminal operation led by Ezra Saxton (Keith David). Rachel Hilson plays Nina Hayes, a young Black female FBI agent in an era when someone like her was treated with equal parts curiosity and hostility. She targets Saxton because he murdered her father when she was a child, and recruits Ellis to inform by convincing him that Saxton also killed his brother. Inside the FBI, Hayes is paired with another outsider, Native American agent Awan Bitsui (Asivak Koostachin), who’s similarly shut out from the agency’s old boys’ club.
The show largely consists of missions designed for Ellis to gather evidence against Saxton without blowing his cover. Hayes facilitates these operations while her boss, Greg Grunberg’s Nathan Abbott, exasperatedly tosses out lines like, “You’ve got three days to get me evidence,” or, “Build the case by Friday or we’re shutting it down.”
The missions themselves aren’t particularly memorable, aside from a couple of novelty episodes, one involving Elvis Presley’s blue suede shoes, another with Hugh Hefner and the Nixon tapes. The attempts to root the plot in history mostly come off as cheesy, especially since the Watergate break-in wouldn’t even dominate a full day of news in today’s political climate.
Holloway and Hilson are both solid, though their chemistry falls short. It’s the veterans — Keith David and Corbin Bernsen (playing Ellis’s father) — who occasionally inject some life into the series. But despite the classic cars and the clouds of dust they kick up across the Arizona desert, Duster never becomes a show you want to watch; it’s the kind of show you watch because it’s on.
For the curious, here’s a brief rundown of how the season ends (SPOILERS): After being captured by Saxton, Hayes and Ellis ultimately take down the operation. Saxton hands Hayes over to a crooked FBI agent in his pocket, but she survives long enough for Agent Bitsui to arrive and shoot the agent dead. Meanwhile, Saxton plans to hand Ellis over to a rival criminal organization but changes his mind at the last second to save his daughter’s life — Ellis’s father had threatened to kill her if Ellis didn’t check in on time. A shootout ensues, Hayes and Ellis escape, and nearly everyone else dies, including Saxton, who throws himself in front of a bullet to save his son, whose heart transplant in the pilot was arranged by Ellis.
Turns out, Saxton wasn’t pure evil despite the pile of bodies he amassed over his career. He refused to sacrifice his daughter, he saved his son’s life, he only killed Hayes’s father because he was an informant, and he didn’t actually kill Ellis’s brother.
That’s the show’s one genuinely interesting twist: Ellis’s brother faked his death and has been running a shady operation within the FBI. That’s the hook to keep Hayes and Ellis teamed up for a potential second season. Also, Ellis had an affair with his brother’s wife, Izzy (Camille Guaty), and he is actually the father of her child (not the brother). She also has cancer, which keeps Ellis from skipping town. For what it’s worth, Izzy also manages to blackmail her union boss (with pictures Ellis secured from Saxton) into getting health insurance for women truck drivers.
Oh, and Izzy’s boyfriend is played by Matt Lauria from Friday Night Lights, although he’s completely unrecognizable with the mustache, which might be the most interesting thing about Duster: that tiny jolt of recognition every time he pops up.
No word yet from Max on a season two buy given the lack of buzz, the mediocre reviews, and the fact that it never broke into the Nielsen top ten suggests that a season two is likely a longshot, particularly as HBO Max rebrands (again) back into prestige television.
