The current trend in prestige TV is to be topical—to weigh in on contemporary issues, peel back untold history, or metaphorically reflect on the woes of modern life. Max’s new crime thriller Duster has a bit of that in its DNA: It’s interested in exploring what it was like to work for the FBI in the 1970s if you weren’t a white man. But that’s not the primary drive of the series. No, the main point of Duster is to cut loose and have some retro-inspired fun. The result is a premiere that’s confident, a little goofy, and a whole lot groovy.
That might not be what people expect from a series that reunites co-creator J.J. Abrams with Lost breakout Josh Holloway. Though Sawyer is certainly on the brain here, there are no echoes of Lost’s mystery-box structure, nor the genre approach of co-creator LaToya Morgan’s work on Into The Badlands and The Walking Dead. Instead, the series tries to evoke the vibe of a show made in the 1970s, not just set there. That makes it a little bit Starsky & Hutch, a little bit Police Woman, and a little bit Sheba, Baby. In an era when The Pitt has made old-fashioned medical dramas cool again, Duster wants to do the same for old-fashioned action-crime series.
That starts not with Holloway but with Rachel Hilson, who I know from her great work on This Is Us but who has also popped in roles on Love, Victor and Red, White & Royal Blue. Here she plays Nina Hayes, a Baltimore-born Black woman who’s just graduated from Quantico in 1972. An opening speech to her supervisors establishes everything we need to know about Nina. She’s driven, direct, level-headed, and logical, but also fiercely tenacious when it comes to getting what she wants.
The FBI doesn’t have much interest in nurturing or supporting her career. Nina’s supervisors scoff that she was only let into the academy on her third application because J. Edgar Hoover wanted Black agents who could infiltrate radical Black Power groups. But they still reluctantly give her the assignment she requests: a gig in Phoenix tracking down criminal kingpin Ezra Saxton (Keith David). “Be careful what you wish for,” they warn. “Right on,” she replies.
Hilson makes Nina a delightful mix of quiet intensity, pragmatic intelligence, a dash of overconfidence, and some slight social awkwardness. She quickly finds some kindred spirits in Arizona, including Navajo agent Awan Bitsui (Asivak Koostachin), who also faces racial microaggressions, and secretary Jessica-Lorraine (Sofia Vassilieva), who also faces casual sexism. But Nina is singular in her self-possession. One of the best scenes of the episode lets Hilson play some welcome notes of vulnerability as Nina calls her mom to share all her new job anxieties. Yet as her mom reminds her, “You always get down like this, then you get a hold of yourself.”
Naturally, Duster makes Holloway’s Jim Ellis the exact opposite type of person. If Nina is a woman of words and thought, Jim is a man of action and impulse. He’s introduced skidding his cherry-red Plymouth Duster up to a desert payphone to get his latest criminal assignment: pick up a bag from a fast-food restaurant and bring it to Saxton’s safe house. Inside is—shockingly enough—a human heart. Before the show’s title sequence rolls, Jim has bested his rivals in a car chase, blasted The Sonics, and calmly stuck his hand inside a man’s chest to help with an in-home organ transplant. It’s quite the character intro.
A mob driver with a heart of gold, Jim keeps Holloway solidly in the Sawyer mold. Only where that Lost castaway was tortured and prickly, Jim is more playfully charismatic. (He can say “thank you, babe” to a secretary and somehow not make it creepy.) One of his defining relationships is with a little girl named Luna (Adriana Aluna Martinez), who we soon come to realize is his daughter, even though he’s agreed to pretend he’s just her uncle at the request of her mom Izzy (Camille Guaty). That paternal dynamic adds a core of softness to the character. Jim has no qualms transporting thugs or drugging a union man named Bob Temple (Kevin Chamberlin) to get sexually explicit blackmail photos. But he’ll also stop at nothing to make sure Luna gets all the lucky pandas her heart desires.
That sense of sweetness and joy fuels Duster as a series. Though the show ostensibly touches on some dark topics, it approaches everything with a light touch and an upbeat score. This is a world where people earnestly deliver lines like “Sorry to blow your ’fro” and “I’ve got my PhD in seeing through your bullshit.” One of the funniest moments of the episode comes after Jim drives Saxton’s bruiser Billy (Evan Jones) to beat up a source. Just as they’re about to drive away, the bloody victim pops out to thank Billy for going easy on him.
It’s a quirky tone that could wear itself thin over time, but serves as a refreshing change of pace here. In a world where half of TV’s most-hailed comedies are basically just half-hour dramas (I’m looking at you, The Bear), it’s fun to watch an hour-long drama that sometimes plays more like a comedy.
That’s also the case for Saxton, who straddles the line between cool and scary in that classic ’70s villain way. While we don’t spend a ton of time with the character this week, Keith David is enough of a presence that a little goes a long way. That Saxton built his criminal empire trafficking weapons and drugs and is now known as the “Southwest Al Capone” is an evocative character sketch. And the inclusion of both his son/heir apparent/heart transplant recipient Royce (Benjamin Charles Watson) and his bar-owning daughter Genesis (Sydney Elisabeth) offers more corners of the universe for the series to explore down the road.
Indeed, the idea of Jim as a white lackey within Saxton’s world of Black opulence is a clever contrast with Nina’s story as the only Black agent in a predominantly white FBI hierarchy. And that’s not the only thing linking our two leads together. Though Jim initially turns down Nina’s request to inform on Saxton—who he’s been driving for since he was 16 years old—Nina has an ace in the hole. She pulls security footage that seems to suggest Saxton had Jim’s beloved brother Joey killed in a car explosion. And she’s adamant about taking Saxton down because she thinks he did the same thing to her father Virgil in Philly two decades ago.
That’s right: There are some patented Abrams Daddy Issues in the Duster formula. Jim is only in the crime business because his dad Wade (Corbin Bernsen) served with Saxton in World War II. Jim wants to think of Saxton as family and tells Nina he’s only signing up as an informant to prove his boss’ innocence in Joey’s death (and so he doesn’t have to flee to Mexico and be away from Luna). But when he hears Saxton talk about how much easier it is to kill people than blackmail them, there’s clearly some doubt in his eyes too. And that’s just the kind of doubt Nina can use to her advantage.
Though Hilson and Holloway only share three scenes in this premiere, they’ve got a strong sense of chemistry the show could take in any number of different directions moving forward. Indeed, given all the intros and table-setting here, we don’t really know what Duster will look like as a weekly series or how much Nina and Jim will be regularly interacting. But there’s a ton of potential to the central duo, who feel well-matched in confidence even if they couldn’t be more different in life experience.
The show’s ongoing structure is for next week’s episode to sort out, though. For now, what this premiere has is vibes—whether that’s slow-mo hallway struts, a mob contract literally signed in blood, or Jim’s classic Sawyer-esque nickname for Nina (“Baltimore.”) Duster isn’t great TV (at least not yet), but it is fun TV. That will hopefully make for some groovy summer counterprogramming.
Stray observations
- • An unrecognizable Donal Logue plays the Phoenix police officer on Saxton’s payroll who sees the informant deal go down. We saw him ogling some high-school girls earlier, so we know he’s no good.
- • Other potential troublemakers: Jim’s vengeful stepmom Charlotte (Gail O’Grady) proves more than happy to rat him out at the drop of a hat. And Nina’s predecessor Leland Breen seems to have taken off with a bunch of files related to the Saxton case.
- • Unlike with his previous shows Lost and Alias, Abrams didn’t direct this pilot. Instead, those duties went to Steph Green, with Abrams and Morgan co-writing the episode.
- • We learn Jim signed up to serve in Vietnam two days after Joey enlisted and that he was awarded an Army Commendation Medal for Meritorious Achievement but refused it because he was just doing his job. I have to assume that means the character is supposed to be way younger than Holloway’s actual 55 year age, right? Or did Jim enlist in his forties?
- • Nina’s workplace rivals include Agent Chad Grant (Dan Tracy) and Agent Henry Minor (Jamie H. Jung). Plus Abrams’ lucky charm Greg Grunberg is on hand as Nina’s squad supervisor Nathan Abbotts. I’m curious if any of them are secretly on Saxton’s payroll.
- • In case you didn’t know this show is set in the 1970s, Jim flips past a radio story on the Watergate scandal to listen to Rare Earth’s “I Just Want To Celebrate” instead.
- • I love the runner about fired FBI secretary Diane, who only ate broccoli and didn’t know how to organize anything.
- • Nina is loosely inspired by a real-life woman named Sylvia Mathis, who became the FBI’s first Black woman Special Agent in 1976.
- • I get what they’re going for with Holloway’s hair, but I think they need to refine the cut a bit. Maybe a little shorter? Or more of a Farrah Fawcett feathered look? A bit more volume at the roots would do wonders.
- • Remarkably, this show was first greenlit back in 2020. They shot an initial pilot in 2021 before reshooting it in 2023. Let’s hope the wait was worth it!
