[Warning: The following post contains MAJOR spoilers for The Rainmaker Episode 4.]
Are Rudy Baylor (Milo Callaghan) and Sarah Plankmore (Madison Iseman) finally, fully through? It sure seems that way.
Ever since the two found themselves on opposite sides of the lawsuit between the family of Donny Ray Black and the hospital he died in, they’ve been sniping at one another in small but significant ways. There was the fancy business suit that served as a major metaphor, plus Sarah’s decision to tell her boss about Rudy’s dead brother so they could form emotional leverage against him. This time, it might’ve been the final straw … or tissue, as the case may be.
At the bar where Rudy was still part-timing, he and Sarah broke their no-work-talk rule and started arguing over the missing nurse Jackie Lemanczyk (Gemma-Leah Devereux). That’s when Sarah let it slip that Jackie was a part of the “tissue committee,” whatever that was. (In an earlier flashback, she took her concerns about Melvin Pritcher (Dan Fogler) to a company executive, but she wasn’t happy with the outcome.) That was information Sarah wasn’t supposed to share with anyone, let alone opposing counsel, and she worried it might negatively impact her career if Rudy seized on it. Rudy was torn up about whether to follow that lead, considering Sarah’s pleas for him not to, and consulted with Deck (P.J. Byrne) and Bruiser (Lana Parrilla). Ultimately, he came to the conclusion that this was substantial evidence that deserved to be subject to discovery and went after it, even if it cost him his relationship with Sarah.
Milo Callaghan told TV Insider of the decision, “I think part of him knows [it will cause them to break]. I think he makes a half-hearted attempt to cover for her at one point with Bruiser, and I think that’s his last-ditch effort to really sort of save his relationship. But I don’t know if he’s so much as betraying Sarah as fighting for what he believes to be right and true.”
Elsewhere in the episode, we got to see what happened to Jackie after she was kidnapped by Melvin. She woke up in an empty summer camp that he attended as a child and learned her neighbor was a victim of his, too. (An independent autopsy confirmed she died of an overdose.) Jackie was later kept captive in a trunk with an oxygen tank that very nearly ran out while Melvin was in court for his first hearing. Later, as Jackie tried to flee into the woods, she also found the private investigator, Jane Allen (Laura Campbell), tied to a tree and injured from a stab wound, but still alive.
Christopher Barr / USA Network
Also, Rudy decided to inform Kelly Riker (Robyn Cara) that her husband, Cliff (Fionn Ó Loingsigh), was at his house and threatened him, but she didn’t want Rudy to alert the authorities. She’d been squirreling away money as her own exit strategy, but in the final moments of the episode, she discovered he’d taken her hidden stash of cash. Now what?
The Rainmaker, Fridays, 10/9c, USA Network