‘Duster’ Review: Asphyxiated by Boomer Nostalgia

With the boundary separating the quality of HBO shows and Max content dissolved; and while Nathan Fielder on HBO attempts to transcend the medium in a Borgesian manner, Duster comes in clutch to neutralize the creativity with its mediocrity: it’s not just a nakedly visible Max content, it’s a C grade expansion of a typical B grade Hollywood movie of 70s into an 8 hour long television show, which can be perceived as a disrespect towards the time of its viewers. The show offers nothing that you haven’t seen hundred times in a thousand different ways; and it sticks to the one way that’s brimful of clichés that any showrunner would discard impatiently. Read our Duster review.

Even though Duster is a throwback to the classic 70’s crime shows – like Starsky and Hutch – it fails to recreate or to put it another way, fails to take us back in time. It dwells in the past to no avail, the bland nostalgia it thrives on happens to be of the worst kind; a nostalgia dictated by the lack of common sense. Of course, it’s the 70s, one of the most fertile decades for music and the show is filled with excessive needle drops ranging from classic jazz pieces to Roy Orbison to George Harrison. The show doesn’t earn any of these needledrops and uses them as a mask to cover its dramaturgical cavities. It ends up diluting the depth of the songs it uses.

The show loosely takes its inspiration from real events: Sylvia Mathis, the first black woman to join the FBI, as a blueprint in creation of Nina. I wasn’t as invested in Rachel Hilson’s depiction of Nina, as I would’ve anticipated on paper, maybe because of a confused direction given to her. It goes for all characters in this show, that none of them are developed beyond their outspoken traits. The show deals with various discrimination issues of the past, the intention is noble, yet this undercooked show isn’t strong enough to summon up the riches to engage with those issues in an impactful manner.

For a surface level show, a protagonist like Jim serves as an appropriate vessel; and for aura-farming Josh Holloway, a groovy foil. Jim, a charming getaway driver who with Nina attempts to stop a powerful crime syndicate led by Ezra (Keith David) (the rest the readers can safely predict). So devoid of personality are the characters in this show that an underwritten Jim could only sustain the momentum for a little while before the cracks ultimately become ultra-visible; its past-tense unable to cope with present day. The entire show has a first-draft energy to it, screenplay-wise.

The stakes in the show never materialize into anything tangible; it ends as weightlessly as it begins, threatening the viewers with another season. Jim’s relationship with his dad has no weight, his relationship with the niece however forms an emotional core that imparts a degree of interiority to the character. Nina and Awan have the most one-dimensional buddy cop chemistry that feels more like witnessing two edgy teenagers contemplating and nagging and bonding over their lunch. Jim and Nina are the anti-Butch Cassidy and The Sundace Kid; the performance itself in dissonance as if the actors are not acting but just assuming posture; or worse acting in two different shows with no overlap.

The groove this show aims for and fails to achieve is simply due to its lack of sauce; the fruits used for the juice were simply rotten. Keith David as Ezra brings an air of assailable dignity to the show; Ezra, composed of an Egyptian syllable Ez meaning rising and Ra meaning sun, a rising sun of Duster who inevitably sets down quick by the downward force exerted by the script.

With the writing shallow as a saucer, this show caters to a section of audience who might actually dig the show, but personally it feels unethical to expand something that used to be a standard 120 minutes B-flick in the past to a television show which ultimately constricts the scope of the storytelling, never capitalizing on characters or situation. However, to those addicted to J.J. Abrams slop, or looking to satiate a certain type of boomer nostalgia, or craving Holloway’s return to television, then Duster might not be for most but it can be for you. It’s a sweet of the past, so naturally by this time it’s stale and hard.

Duster was created by J.J. Abrams for Max as part of his Bad Robot Productions and stars Josh Holloway, Rachel Hilson, and Keith David.

Duster begins streaming on Max starting May 15th, 2025.

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