We’re at about a half a tank with Duster’s first season, so let’s get a situation report from Agent Nina Hayes. “Breen wasn’t crazy. Whatever’s going on here involves the FBI and CIA, the Russians, and Howard Hughes, and Saxton and Joey and ‘Xavier’ – and whatever the hell it is, it’s a coordinated effort.”  

Go ahead and add another name to your list, Nina, because President Richard “I am not a crook” Nixon (Paul Wilson) has also picked up the Duster party line. 

Not only was Breen not crazy, it sure seems like somebody – the who in “Whatever’s going on here,” maybe Nixon, maybe the still-unseen Xavier – removed the FBI agent from the game board by keeping him hepped up on LSD goofballs. This “permanent fugue state,” as Nina’s forensics guy puts it here in Episode 5, would effectively muzzle Breen from talking about whatever he knew. And with Duster dropping a different kind of corrupt US president on us, and referencing his Watergate lackies’ summer 1972 burglaries at the Democratic National Committee, and bringing all this Washington DC subterfuge around to Cowboy Hat Man (JR Yenque) – “Tricky Dick knows who got lifted,” he says to Xavier from a phone booth in DC – it feels like the thing Nina’s poking might dovetail with Ezra Saxton’s operation in a way she can’t see coming. Hat Man’s also on his way to Phoenix. And while this is not a shock, it turns out Agent Grant in the field office is in cahoots with the mysterious bolo-tied shot caller.

Nina can’t stop what’s coming. But in the meantime, she can use her trademark direct style to recruit criminal lifer Wade Ellis to her cause, and insert herself directly into Sax’s orbit as his new Russian interpreter.

Jim is flabbergasted to learn about another one of Baltimore’s many layers: “I speak Russian perfectly, idiot,” because Nina’s college professor mother made sure she could read Dostoevsky in the original. 

To get in the room with Sax on his upcoming Russian deal, Nina convinces Wade to make the introductions. It’s a great scene between Rachel Hilson and Corbin Bernsen, shot mostly in close-up, as they each game out the other’s trustability. Wade is being truthful – in his long history with Saxton, which we learn stretches back to their time as Marines at Iwo Jima, he’s seen his old friend be ruthless. If Nina’s gonna lie to Sax’s face as “Nina St. James,” Russian interpreter, she’ll need ice in her undercover veins. But Wade also sees the truth in Nina. Despite himself, he believes in this lady FBI agent. With him, her direct style closes the deal on a sharp note of empathy. “I watched Sax rip my family apart. The same way he did yours.” Finding out his old war buddy and criminal confidant put a hit out on his beloved son Joey would absolutely kill Wade, too. But the prospect that Nina is right is its own powerful thing.

There’s a gun on the table, once “Nina St. James” does get in the room with Saxton. Sax gives her his practiced eye. But she doesn’t break, despite being across a Snowbird conference table from the man who killed her father, the criming kingpin she went to Quantico in order to take down. Like with Bernsen earlier, you can see Keith David working the tumblers in Sax’s whip-smart brain. We really like how Duster has built in a “Seen some shit” layer to Saxton and Wade, without having to fully reference it, and it’s expressed wonderfully in the work of David and Bernsen. 

While Nina was convincing Saxton she was an interpreter, getting on Wade’s good side, and even charming Charlotte into giving her acting tips (“A little trade secret Carol Channing taught me…”), Jim and Genesis were crashing the arranged marriage of Daphne (Nicole Zyana), daughter of Greek Sal (Jack Topalian). Genesis and Daphne are an item, despite the wishes of their controlling, underworld rival fathers. And with Jim’s help, Genesis liberates her girlfriend from a forced union with a Greek shipping magnate’s son. “I snuck in to sneak you out,” she says, quietly unzipping Daphne’s wedding dress. 

“You got iron?” Genesis asks a few minutes later – Duster’s pulp touches are just sublime. And as Ike and Tina’s head rush cover of “Proud Mary” soundtracks the scene, she’s soon firing Jim’s glove box-kept silver revolver at Greek Sal’s goon squad. Those guys are chasing them in  a 1971 BMW E3 sedan, “Bavaria” edition, a perfect choice for a henchman vehicle. And when Genesis runs out of bullets, Daphne starts handing her fireworks from the Duster’s backseat. It’s lit!   

It’s the Fourth of July in this episode of Duster. Nixon is on the radio, reassuring his Silent Majority that everything’s great – while he runs criminal games from the Oval Office – and as Jim arrives late to a block party at Izzy’s, he sees her with boyfriend Dave and young Luna, the latter joyfully lighting a roman candle. We haven’t exactly returned to the idea that was subtly floated back in Episode 1, how “Uncle Jim” could in fact be Luna’s biological father. (Remember Izzy whispering “She can’t know?”) But Jim appears wistful as he drives by 70s Independence Day scenes and sees Luna and Iz with Dave. What parts of life did Jim Ellis miss out on, devoting his own to the wheelman’s racket? 

Ike & Tina Turner, “Proud Mary”

Brenton Wood, “Oogum Boogum Song” (An all-timer)

Bobby Darin, “I’m Sitting on Top of the World”

Simon & Garfunkel, “America”

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.