Created by JJ Abrams and LaToya Morgan, Duster (HBO Max) features Josh Holloway as a crack crime syndicate wheelman and Rachel Hilson as the boundary-breaking FBI agent with a plan to bring his bossman down. This is all taking place in Phoenix, AZ, in an idealized version of the 1970s, which not coincidentally was an era of small screen entertainment that fetishized cars. So is driving around and looking cool behind the wheel of a roaring muscle car enough to evade the law and stay alive? Holloway’s Duster driver is about to find out. The eight-episode series also features Keith David, Corbin Bernsen, Donal Logue, Gail O’Grady, and Abrams regular Greg Grunberg.
Opening Shot: “We don’t take requests. We’re the FBI, not an FM radio station.” The uptight federal squares who say this to Nina Hayes (Hilson), a new agent fresh out of Quantico, are not accustomed to pushback. That’s their problem.
The Gist: With the 1972 death of J. Edgar Hoover, its longtime director, the Federal Bureau of Investigation finally relaxed its exclusionary policies toward women and people of color. And as the agency’s first Black female special agent, Nina knows racist, sexist pushback is just part of the game. But her determination sees her through to a position in the Phoenix field office, and she doesn’t waste any time digging into the biggest criminal case in the Southwest: the wide-ranging criminal enterprise of Ezra Saxton (David), which includes bribes, shakedowns, assaults, and even murders. While Nina finds an ally in Awan Bitsui (Asivak Koostachin), a young agent of Navajo ancestry, the white male establishment – a group that includes Grant (Dan Tracy) and Abbott (Grunberg) – would rather impede her investigation than support it.
Like we said, that’s their problem. Undeterred, and to get at Saxton, Nina targets Jim Ellis (Holloway), his best driver, a guy with a streak of cocky charm even more powerful than his red 1970 Duster’s meaty 340 V8. Besides a stint in Vietnam, Ellis has been doing drops for Sax since he was 16, content to be the most eligible bachelor layabout in Phoenix while he conducts light crime and spends time with his little niece Luna (Adrina Aluna Martinez). Luna’s with him when Ellis exchanges an envelope full of cash for a mysterious duffel bag, passed to him through the drive-thru window of local fast-food hotspot Nacho Con Dios. And she’s riding shotgun when a couple of griping rednecks chase the Duster in their AMX coupe. Ellis just slams a Sonics 8-track into the Duster’s dash and laughs with Luna as they handily evade the hicks.
Ellis’s dad Wade (Bernsen) goes back with Saxton to their time together in the Second World War. And Ellis’s late brother worked with Sax, too. So it’s a family-type bond that Agent Hayes is messing with. But as she gathers evidence with Awan – and continues to wonder why the Phoenix field office wasn’t more on top of the Saxton case – Nina sees flipping Jim to criminal informant status as key to her investigation. So what if it’s her second day on the job? She confronts him with her plan. “You got a set of onions, and I like it,” Ellis tells Hayes as his grin shifts to a frown. “But I don’t like threats, and I ain’t no snitch. Door’s to your right.”
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? All six seasons of Lost stream on Netflix, if you never caught up with JJ Abrams’ six-season opus, its breakout role for Josh Hollway as Sawyer, its gigantic and generally stellar cast, and it wild writing swings, which drove national conversation in the mid-aughts. The Emmy-winning Hulu miniseries Mrs. America tracked the 1970s cultural and political debate around sex discrimination and the embattled Equal Rights Amendment. (And featured an incredible cast including Cate Blanchett, Rose Byrne, and Uzo Aduba.) And like Poker Face with Columbo, Duster channels the energy of a bygone small screen era, when shows like Mannix presented a guy with antihero tendencies who was always in cars – for Joe Mannix, it was often a Plymouth Barracuda – that became characters themselves.
Our Take: The fact that Josh Holloway’s age as Jim Ellis is never exactly mentioned feels significant to Duster’s whole thing. The actor looks great with his Arizona tan and chestnut locks, and his easy smile might as well be part of the upgraded trim package for his vehicle, just like the Duster’s black power stripes and two-tone tweed interior. But is he 30? 50? It doesn’t really matter. Duster isn’t so much interested in creating a full legacy picture of its setting, and chooses an articulated “1970s” instead. Ellis is an archetype – the enviable, sleek, and burly human embodiment of a muscle car – and Special Agent Nina Hayes is his perfect foil, someone equally confident, skilled, and willing to do what she needs to, not what the establishment would tell her to.
In this way, the era that emerges in Duster feels more like a TV version of the seventies, and that’s totally cool with us. It will allow for more fantastic car chases and crashes. It can combine broad social commentary with distinctly satisfying comebacks. And it can move the action forward with a charged impatience that makes for a very entertaining watch. Let’s gas this thing up!
Sex and Skin: Sure, both, if brief. The nudity in Duster feels calibrated to the sexual revolution and other social movements at work during its time period.
Parting Shot: It seems like there is always somebody watching in this less populous Phoenix of the 1970s – something for Jim Ellis to keep in mind as his run-ins with Agent Hayes become more frequent.
Sleeper Star: The supporting characters on Duster already feel fully realized, like Asivak Koostachin’s talky eagerness as Awan, or Evan Jones as Billy, one of Saxton’s enforcers. “See that?” Billy says to Ellis, his eyes beaming. “I just beat the shit out of him and he’s thanking me. That’s how good I am!”
Most Pilot-y Line: The ’70s signifiers Duster drops into the writing are obvious but also pretty fun. Like “She makes a mean mug of Sanka,” “Far out, man,” and “Fondue! You can dip anything in there!”
Our Call: STREAM IT! Duster knows exactly what it mainly is, which is a terrific vehicle for Josh Holloway. Rachel Hilson’s chemistry with Holloway is also a win, and sets up a wily criminals-and-cops yarn that delights in period references and music cues and exalts in the kind of car-as-character hero shots that defined a previous TV age.
BLURB