Critic Reviews

If there’s any downside to this new season it’s that the first half feels stronger than the second half. Returning characters’ personality changes in the first half of the new season are necessary tweaks that help lift the show’s overall mood, which makes “American Rust” more entertaining and less depressing.

In short, you've seen American Rust so many times you can recite most of the lines before they're spoken. And yet… and yet… there's just too much talent stacked up in the cast of American Rust to turn away from it.

“American Rust” could stand to clarify its thoughts beyond authenticity, just as it could certainly seek answers with a little more urgency. But there’s something admirable about its measured, deliberate pace.

There are times when “American Rust” gets things just right. ... Too often, though, we’re mired in wheel-spinning storylines. The great Canadian poet Neil Young once told us rust never sleeps, but “American Rust” takes too many naps.

While the framework sounds like it has all the makings of a twisty murder mystery, American Rust has a maddeningly peculiar way of downplaying just about everything, so there’s no urgency in the three episodes provided to critics.

So far, it is perfectly all right, the sort of series you might watch more with interest than engagement but which may eventually surprise you — for better or worse.

Thanks to some good, understated dialogue – bucks the general mood , ie that this show was not so much written as collaged from odds and ends of other police procedurals. It’s also because Daniels and Tierney remind me so much of David Harbour and Winona Ryder in Stranger Things. Even so, it isn’t great.

At times it definitely was [good], especially the performance from Jeff Daniels as grizzled police chief Del Harris, who suffered PTSD after serving in Iraq, and an even better one from Maura Tierney as Grace, an impoverished, attractive seamstress at risk of losing her trailer home and enjoying said police chief occasionally taking down her particulars.

Big narrative promises have been made – the question is, can the series make good on them as it continues?

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.