When it’s the early 1970s, and you’re a guy who needs to steal something from Elvis Presley – and you’re also a guy who looks like Josh Holloway in the seventies – it’s easy for you, with your amber-tinted shades and unbuttoned faux-leather paneled shirt, to hop the fence at Elvis’s Palm Springs pad, grab a flute of champagne poolside, and be chatting with Colonel Tom Parker (Brian Reddy) and a version of Adrienne Barbeau (Mikaela Hoover) in the space of three minutes. In its second episode, Duster continues to have a whole lot of fun with its take on the 1970s, where real world touchpoints mix with stylistic throwbacks to that era as it was on TV.

There are two interesting things about Jim Ellis’s successful quest to heist the shoes Elvis famously sung about. One, it was Izzy (Camille Guaty), Luna’s mom, who told Jim where they were. Her personal history with The King is immortalized in the photo of them together Ellis sees in the Palm Springs pad. (It’s also another wrinkle in Izzy and Jim’s relationship, which might have once been closer than Luna knows.) And two, there is the whole reason why Jim needed the shoes anyway. Duster introduces Patrick Warburton as Sunglasses, a Phoenix underworld heavy and the owner of a bowling alley called Great Bowls of Fire – nice – whose rabid Elvis fandom, perpetual shades, and perfectly-appointed turquoise clasp of his bolo tie belie a murderous reputation. Is this series gonna keep bringing in big names to have a blast overacting a little in supporting roles like this? We’re on board if it does, because as Sunglasses, Warburton’s trademark flair for unique phrasing and enunciation is a real hoot. 

Too bad Sunglasses also gets his head crushed in a pin-setter.

Duster, apparently, will also be a show where acute bloodshed pierces its good-timing veneer. Ellis needed the shoes to pay Sunglasses for his help with getting Sergeant Groomes (Donal Logue), a bent Phoenix cop, off his tail. Groomes witnessed Ellis’s Episode 1 meeting with “your new friend, that colored girl” – another sign-of-the-times moment illustrative of the gutter racism Agent Nina Hayes has to deal with – and charged Jim ten grand for his silence. But while Jim was in Palm Springs stealing the shoes, Sunglasses was meeting with Groomes, a meeting that ended when everyone’s guns came out. Groomes shot Charlie (Peter Murnik), brother-enforcer of Sunglasses, Sunglasses shot Groomes – though he didn’t quite kill him – and when Jim returned to Great Bowls with the blue suede numbers, Sunglasses attacked him in a drunken rage. Which is why Jim was in the desert at midnight when Wade rolled up to ask if his son needed any help burying Sunglasses.

Wade Ellis. And Corbin Bernsen, who plays Wade Ellis with a wizened glee that feels fueled by midday martinis and contrasted with the man’s conflicted soul. Wade is a veteran who parlayed his wartime friendship with Ezra Saxton into a life of crime, but who lost one son in a seemingly targeted hit, and is remarried to Charlotte (a terrific Gail O’Grady), who has re-christened his remaining son “Motherfucker.” (In a great line from Episode 2, Jim meets Gail’s invective with a “Stepmother-fucker” retort.) Wade is happy to help out Jim with his own criminal exploits. Now that he’s retired from the life, it excites him. But honestly it feels too convenient that the elder Ellis just appeared in the desert in the middle of the night. Not saying he’s up to something – not even sure what he’d be up to yet,. Not saying he’s gonna somehow double-cross his only surviving son. But also, we’re not not saying that. For now, we’ll enjoy the scenes with Bernsen and Holloway bouncing easily off each other.

On the Nina Hayes side of things, she and Awan are still piecing together the mystery of her predecessor, Breen. Her own meeting with Groomes, the local cop, was defined mostly by more racist commentary. But he did tell Nina that Breen told him what to write in the report on Joey Ellis’s death. And from Abbott, her superior, she learns Breen didn’t just leave the FBI, he was committed to an area mental hospital. This is not to say Abbott is necessarily helpful. He would rather characterize Hayes’s solid investigative work as overreach by conflating it with his blinkered take on Congresswoman Shirley Chisolm, who in 1972 became the first Black candidate for president from a national party.    

Ignoring Abbott, as is her habit, Nina seeks out Breen’s wife, Evelyn. (And this is another subtly cool thing about Duster – Evelyn is played by the real-life Adrienne Barbeau, who we met the portrayal of at Elvis’s Palm Springs party pad.) The woman is not having Agent Hayes’ questions, no way. She even tosses in a “from the likes of you,” just in case there was any confusion about the racism. The biggest takeaway from the encounter is what happens after Hayes and Awan depart. Eveylyn phones an unnamed man in a cowboy hat, who seems to be in Washington, DC. And that guy assures the woman he will “take care of” Agent Hayes. It’s a good thing Nina packs a switchblade in her boot. We know she plays to win, but there are larger forces looking to stop her progress on taking down Sax.

“All Right Now” is very high up on our mental list of Most Overused Songs in TV & Film. However! Free’s 1970 single is a classic for a reason, and it sounds totally fantastic blasting out of the Duster as Jim puts the pedal down on the I-10 to Palm Springs.

Also featured in Episode 2 of Duster:

Johnny Loftus (@johnnyloftus.bsky.social) is a Chicago-based writer. A veteran of the alternative weekly trenches, his work has also appeared in Entertainment Weekly, Pitchfork, The All Music Guide, and The Village Voice.