Prestige television heads back to the heartland of the country with Showtime’s “American Rust,” based on the 2009 novel by Philipp Meyer. Given it’s a program about a Pennsylvania cop facing personal and professional conflicts in a small town, comparisons will be made to HBO’s superior “Mare of Easttown,” even if there’s less mystery to this drama, despite violence again being central to the storytelling. Showtime and the producers of the show will likely grow weary of being compared to one of the best shows of 2021, but they might hate even more the potential comparisons to “Hillbilly Elegy,” the 2020 film that drew criticisms for exploiting the economically downtrodden and painkiller-addicted corners of our troubled country—our critic went as far as to call it “an absolute crock of shit.” A couple of talented actors here elevate “American Rust” above that level of poverty porn, but there’s a similar lack of veracity, a sense of screenwriting tourists using the troubles of ordinary people without giving them nearly enough depth or empathy.
READ MORE: The Best Television Of 2021… So Far
Jeff Daniels, always good and often great, imbues Sheriff Del Harris with just enough truth to elevate it above the aforementioned crock. The lawman of Buell, Pennsylvania, a Rust Belt town that has seen its major industry shift from manufacturing to opioids, Harris is a good man who has seen bad things. A vet with some drug addictions of his own that he’s trying to slowly dial down—the show opens with him crushing pills and weighing them to take off a small percentage each time, per doctor’s orders—Harris has started a relationship with a local named Grace Poe (a wasted Maura Tierney), who works in a seamstress shop when she’s not helping her son Billy (Alex Naustaedter) figure out where he’s going in life or dealing with her drunken soon-to-be ex-husband Virgil (Mark Pellegrino). In the premiere, it looks like the Poes are going to lose their trailer, and it’s revealed that Billy had to give up a D1 athletic scholarship for some reason. He’s one of those kids who appears to have been handed a lifeline out of the Rust Belt, but he didn’t take it, a decision he will likely come to regret.
The love of his life definitely took it, but even she can’t escape. Lee (Julia Mayorga) didn’t just get out of Buell, she ran far away, first to Yale and then into the arms of a husband, but she clearly left part of her heart in Pennsylvania and can’t quite quit Billy (although Naustaedter gives such a bland non-performance that it’s hard to tell why). Her brother Isaac (David Alvarez) has his own connection to Billy, amplified after a violent event leaves a former cop dead. Isaac steals money from his ill father Henry (Bill Camp) and rides the rails out of town, literally.
All of this family drama swirls around two violent acts. The series opens with a startled Harris arriving at a crime scene before flashing back six months to reveal a turning point in his life, the night that Billy got into a brutal fight. Impacted by his feelings for Grace, Del pulled some strings, getting Billy probation instead of time, but it didn’t really work out the way he expected. Now, it appears Billy may be in the center of something even worse. Will Del protect him again? Does Billy even really need protection? Del jumps to conclusions and makes some decisions that he won’t be able to take back, blurring the line between his professional and personal lives.
Daniels finds a nice lived-in quality for Harris that actually amplifies how much of that is missing from the rest of the show. He finds the tone of a good man who has had some sad chapters in his life, and there’s an immediacy to his performance that’s believable. However, with the exception of a few truthful beats hit by the always-great Bill Camp, he’s the lone standout in “American Rust.” The biggest problem is what could be called poverty poetry, wherein characters sit around and spout deeply lyrical, insightful things like “I had this feeling maybe people aren’t supposed to live like this” and “everybody in the holler is on one thing or another”—insight no one verbalizes about their own lives in the real world. It’s the kind of over-writing that’s constantly calling attention to its themes, amplifying the sense that this is a show that’s not interested in people stuck in the Rust Belt as much as wants to use their situation for escapist drama. A project like “American Rust” needs to feel genuine or it feels exploitative, and the writing here tends way too often to the latter.
There have been many great pieces of fiction and television about people on the edge of poverty, those who use addiction to get them from one day to the next. It’s not hard to believe that Meyer’s acclaimed book captures the people of Buell with nuance and texture that an adaptation just doesn’t allow. “American Rust” is at its best when it does step back from commentary and even plotting, letting actors like Daniels and Camp deliver back story through body language or a hesitant line reading, conveying the difference between men like Del and boys like Billy—the former knows what it means to be trapped in smalltown America while the latter is going to learn the hard way.
There are just enough of those moments for fans of the cast of “American Rust” to check it out, but anyone looking for another “Mare of Easttown” is likely to be disappointed. To be fair, Showtime only sent three episodes for review, and the writing could develop and dig deeper in subsequent episodes, transcending its superficial set-up. The only question is if anyone will still care about the people of Buell by the time they do. [C]
“American Rust” debuts on Showtime on September 12.