In a show set in something like our present, Agent Nina Hayes would be running Jim Ellis, the federal agent’s criminal informant, with a mix of technology and threats. She’d issue him a burner phone, or even a soft-sided earpiece to enable “comms,” and their partnership would flourish as Nina became the voice in Jim’s ear while he caroused an Ezra Saxton cocktail party, or pilfered a flash drive with data on all of Sax’s secrets. Thankfully, because those moves are tired, Duster is not that show. It’s set instead in something like the 1970s, where the comms are as analog as the cars. Remember the pay phone on the stick? The Duster’s even equipped with a CB radio, in a nod to the ultimate energy crisis-driven comms fad of the decade. (Would Jim Ellis, in Phoenix, Arizona, be able to raise fellow rabble-rousers the Duke Boys, in Hazzard County, Georgia?) If a lot of TV today is like the unearthly anodyne hum of an electric vehicle, then Duster is the anticipatory sound of fuel and oxygen mixing in a four-barrel carburetor.   

In Nina’s latest parking garage rendezvous with Jim, she implores him for something more actionable on Sax, and entices him with the forensics on Joey Ellis’s van. The blast was definitively caused by C-4 explosive, not a propane accident. Doesn’t he want to bring down the person who marked his brother for death? Jim says none of that actually proves it was Sax, but Nina says it doesn’t absolve his boss, either. (Here she’s thinking about her own father, who ran a numbers game for Saxton back in Philly, when she was a little girl. When her dad disagreed with Sax, he died in a targeted car explosion, too.) With the urging of his federal agent handler, Ellis arranges it so he’ll be closer to Sax as he drives his boss to a secret meeting in Tucson.

Their drive is full of fast facts. It was Joey who originally purchased the Duster, and it was Joey going to Vietnam that inspired Jim to enlist. (“I couldn’t let him go alone.”) Sax says he’s proud of what he’s built, two generations out from his grandfather picking cotton. “I own my own company” – OK, a criminal enterprise, but yes, he built it and he’s the boss – and Sax’s meeting in Tucson, with a group including an unnamed Russian national, seems to be part of his plans for another level-up. “If this deal happens, we leave ‘em all in the dust.” A rival known as Greek Sal, and the mob families in Las Vegas and on the coasts. We like how Duster is building out the underworld forces that exist in its world, while still keeping it pulpy. If we ever meet Greek Sal, it could be through a deal gone bad that culminates in a creative death blow via pinsetter.  

A flash drive full of dark secrets would really help Jim Ellis out of a jam, though, because while he’s agreed to help Agent Hayes, he’s waffling on evidence of Saxton’s relative duplicity. When they repair to a biker bar for drinks after the meet in Tucson, it sets up a great scene between Keith David and Josh Holloway, with David cutting Sax’s paternalism toward Jim with a boss’s unspoken demand for compliance. “I wish Joey was still here – he was your blood, but I loved that boy like he was my own.” Jim as consolation prize in the Ellis brother sweepstakes. (And check out another cool period detail in Duster, as Sax uses spare change, makes his selection, and pulls the level on a cigarette machine. That’s even more of an anachronism than a pay phone.) Did Sax blow up Joey? And if so, why? When Ellis slips away to make a call to a C-4 supplier hipped to him by his dad Wade – a supplier who doesn’t flinch at mention of “the Joey Ellis job” and Ezra Saxton – Jim is even more unsure of what to think. He’ll tell Nina about the Tuscan meet, and the Russian, and Saxton’s plans to expand. But in the meantime, he’ll also join his boss in beating the hell out of a bunch of racist bikers. Bar fight!    

Obviously, Ezra Sexton and his Snowbird operation is the biggest thing in Phoenix, crime-wise. Which is why it doesn’t feel like the pushback Agent Hayes is experiencing in the FBI field office is only due to its prevailing racism. Abbott’s protestations over her investigation get more desperate as they get louder, and a veteran forensics guy – he’s sucking on a cig, and Duster makes sure you can hear the ’70s filter paper burn – combines warning with the usual bias against her race and gender. “Kid, you gotta drop this case, or you’ll fail. Hard. People like you only get one shot.” To all of this, Nina applies her practiced answer. Fuck these clowns. And with Awan on backup, she infiltrates the psychiatric facility where her predecessor on the Saxton case is being kept.

With a quick change into ’70s nurses’ unis, they locate Breen, the former federal agent. Whether he’s just hopped up on meds or actually sick is unclear, because he would rather hold a blade to Nina’s throat while ranting in rhyme than offer her anything tangible. But he doesn’t seem surprised that a federal agent would sneak into his room just to ask about the Saxton case. And remember, this is the dude whose wife we saw in Duster Episode 2, calling in a marker on Hayes to some unknown figure in a cowboy hat. “My turn is over, Hayes – it’s your turn now,” Breen offers Nina in a brief moment of lucidity. “Follow the numbers.” At least Ezra Saxton operates as a kingpin right out in the open. What the FBI is hiding could be even bigger than the intel she cribs from her CI Jim Ellis.

Otis Redding, “Hard to Handle”

Joe Tex, “I Gotcha”

The Chakachas, “Jungle Fever”

Jimi Hendrix, “Foxy Lady”

Staple Singers, “I’ll Take You There”

Dave Hamilton, “Take Care of My Own Business” (A killer Duster deep cut!)

Merle Haggard, “Workin’ Man Blues”

Betty Everett, “You’re No Good”

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.