TV Talk: ‘American Rust’ showrunners on season 2 twists, season 3 prospects

NOTE: Spoilers for the end of season two of “American Rust” are included in this column.

It’s been a little more than a week since the binge release of all 10 episodes of season two of filmed-in-Pittsburgh “American Rust: Broken Justice” and so far it’s unclear if Amazon’s Prime Video will pick up the series for a third season.

Data on viewership of season two is hard to come by, as it often is for streaming series.

On Prime Video’s own Top 10, “American Rust” is, as of this writing, the No. 4 most-watched Prime Video original series and sits at No. 8 among all Prime Video programming behind No. 1 “Invincible” (released March 14), “Road House” (released March 8), “Musica” (released March 13), “Ricky Stanicky” (released March 7), “Minions: The Rise of Gru,” “Judy Justice” and “Reacher”.

The best case for renewal I found was Parrot Analytics reported demand for the show was rated in the “good” range for the past 30 days with 6.1 times demand compared to the market average, a demand level that just 8.6% of shows in the U.S. market achieve.

That sounds promising.

On the other hand, I’ve seen zero buzz for the series on social media, it didn’t show up in the Whip Media Top 10 streaming originals chart for March 25-31 (of course, it was only released on March 28) and the show’s second season was generally ignored by critics.

Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes only list two reviews for season two (one of them was mine), compared to 22 on Metacritic for season one, proof of the old adage, “You never get a second chance to make a good first impression.” (In fairness, there were a few more reviews I found online that the review aggregator sites missed.)

The show’s second season proved to be excellent TV, significantly more entertaining and faster-paced than season one without sacrificing the attention to character detail.

Just as Del Harris (Jeff Daniels) protected Grace Poe (Maura Tierney) at the outset of the series, in the season two finale Grace saves Del by murdering Buell, Fayette County, police chief Steve Park (Rob Yang) after Park gets Del to confess to his role in the deaths in a West Virginia cabin at the end of season one. But loose ends remain: Del’s Pittsburgh Police partner Angela Burgos (Luna Lauren Velez) has Park’s dossier on Del and Buell cop Hannah (Rae Geddy), who appeared to witness Grace shoot Del, wakes from a coma.

Isaac (David Alvarez) learns his new boyfriend, Russell Wolfe (Christopher Denham) is actually a hired killer who murdered his sister, Lee English (Julie Mayorga).

A time jump 10 weeks later reveals Del left the Pittsburgh Police and is now sheriff of Fayette County. A final scene at Del’s cabin shows Del, Grace, Isaac and Billy Poe (Alex Neustaedter) toasting the future. But crooked cop Ramon Fisher (Kyle Beltran) is hiding in the woods outside the cabin taking aim at those inside. When Billy goes outside with his gun in hand, a shot gets fired and the screen goes black.

I chatted with “American Rust” season two co-showrunners Adam Rapp and Dan Futterman about season two reactions and prospects for a third season. They noted that none of the cast is signed for a third season, so if the show is renewed some plotting would depend on which actors agree to return.

Q: Since we talked last have you gotten a chance to pitch or set a date to pitch Amazon Prime Video executives on a potential season three story?

Futterman: We haven’t been invited so I think that’s something that remains very up in the air.

Q: Have you heard anything from Amazon about viewership?

Futterman: Nothing

Q: When you heard about Amazon’s plan for a binge release, what did you think of that choice?

Rapp: I loved it because I think [with] season two what we set out to do is burn through more story more quickly and, I say somewhat cynically, [have] more bodies dropping. We wanted to lean into the faster-paced thing we started to head toward at the end of season one and I think [the binge release] lends itself to that experience. My sister watched it all in half a day.

Q: Did Amazon offer reasons for why they thought a binge release made sense?

Futterman: No.

Rapp: They just told us they were considering it and then yeah, we’re gonna, and then said, “We’re gonna release season one [at the same time],” which I thought was really cool cause season one through Showtime was released on a weekly basis and now you can sit with it all at once.

Q: In season one, Buell cop Steve Park is pretty much a straight arrow. In season two he’s Javert from “Les Miserables” with a side of creepiness making those crime scene dioramas. Tell me about how the character evolved the way he did in the writers’ room?

Futterman: To my mind, this is how a straight-arrow behaves when they see what they believe is illegal behavior, deeply, morally wrong behavior. And it’s also how some straight arrows behave when they’re suddenly given power. That felt fun and exciting to explore with Steve Park. What happens when that guy ends up becoming chief of police? He gets the badge and he gets the driver’s seat in the car. And where does he go? It’s fun to take a virtuous character into darker territory. We wanted to go home with [Steve]. We wanted to go look at his house and look at his basement. And we just kept asking interesting questions. And I think we did interesting things with it.

Q: How did the decision to kill off Sue Herlitz (Emily Davis) early in season two come about? Was that a necessary plot turn or was the actress’ availability limited?

Rapp:She’s amazing. She’s so game to do anything. I really love Emily. It was, again, let’s take some big swings. Let’s cut some heads off and put them on pikes. This is going to sound really silly but the one thing that I think works beautifully about “Game of Thrones” is that they’re not afraid to kill people you start to feel a lot of things for and did so brutally. And I feel like there was something about that for our show that gave us some pleasure.

Futterman: It also puts Grace in the hot seat because at the end of the first episode, there’s some suspicion that she must have been involved in that killing given her most recent interaction. And then here’s another one that seems like it had to have been her as well. So these decisions come out of both whats interesting story, whats surprising story, but also how does it affect our characters.

Q: Whatever happened to Billy’s former cellmate who he and Virgil (Mark Pellegrino) stabbed? Did he survive?

Futterman: They bled him out. We wrote the result of that. And then we decided to reveal that in a different way. If we were to get a season three, that would be revealed in an interesting way.

Q: Would there be a lot less of Pittsburgh in a third season than there was in season two with Del now sheriff of Fayette County?

Rapp: I love Pittsburgh. I love shooting there. I love the character of the city and the outlying areas. We went to ‘New York’ for one episode and a bit of another and I think that was the only time we did that this season. I mean, we have stuff that’s set up [in Pittsburgh] really well. We know the area, our scouts are terrific there. I don’t see why we wouldn’t write Pittsburgh again. I can’t answer that because we don’t have a [writers’] room…

Futterman: I think that we have a lot of unfinished business in Pittsburgh. So [Angela played by] Luna [Lauren Velez] is still there. If she’s available and willing, we would absolutely have her back. She’s just so good in the show. Detective Fisher, [actor] Kyle Beltrans character is, at least at the last moment, still around. There’s potential prosecutions to happen. There’s arrests to be made and so I think we’d both love to incorporate as much of Pittsburgh as possible.

Q: We know at least one of five characters likely died in the final seconds of season two when Fisher had his sights set on Del, Grace, Isaac and Billy and Billy went outside with his gun in hand. I know you won’t tell me but do you know yet who among those five will return?

Rapp: I have certain ideas. They change and shift sometimes. Some of them go from being injured to being fatally injured, depending on how much coffee I’ve had in the morning. I think we purposely didn’t want to answer that question without really discussing it intensely, but I think I’m sure we both have pretty strong ideas about who survives, who doesn’t, what the shape of things are at that point.

Q: How could the show continue without Grace, whose character seems so integral to Del and his story? Can you imagine the show without Grace in it?

Rapp: It is hard to imagine, therefore we don’t.

Q: Was the decision to kill off Lee English a story choice or did the actress want out?

Rapp: She did not want out. She’s a lovely actress and lovely to work with. There was nothing about that decision that was about her abilities or her work ethic or anything like that. We wanted to challenge ourselves to not be afraid to kill a few of our darlings. And I think the best shows that I’ve seen on TV kind of do that. They do that rigorously. They do that without apology. And she’s the beating heart of season two in some ways, and she’s in a very fragile place. And we slaughter a lamb there, but I think sometimes that’s worth it.

Q: Del’s new partner Angela still has the deceased Chief Park’s dossier on Del’s role in the West Virginia murders and Buel cop Hannah appears to wake from her coma. How far into the future do you intend to continue playing the fallout from the events of season one?

Futterman: We have not discussed that. This would be a conversation we would have. A lot of these things are actor-dependent. And so first we would need to figure out who’s available, who wants [to come] back. The series of strikes put a lot of shows, a lot of actors and writers in a very strange position in that no matter how much they wanted to continue with the show, they have mortgages to pay, rent to pay, food to buy. So people have to do what they have to do. If were lucky enough to get the call, like, “Hey, let’s try to put this together,’ we have to have these conversations and then figure things out from there.

Rapp: Luna is someone were very interested in giving a lot of [story] real estate if we were to get a season three. And I think that dossier is a dirty bomb in some ways. I think there could be a lot of potential for that object and the force of her discovery. What does she do morally? What does she hide? Does she bury it? Does she whistle blow? What’s going on here? That’s something that feels like it has a lot of narrative force. Maybe some other things don’t. And I think we would have to assess where’s the dead weight. What’s gonna push us in the future in a good way? And what’s gonna create more conflict?

Q: Since the start of the series, Del has ridden the line between ethical and unethical behavior, particularly when it comes to protecting Grace. In season two, Grace becomes a murderer to protect Del. What were the conversations like regarding this choice for her character? Was it controversial among the show’s writers?

Futterman: It was not. Nor was it a controversial decision when we talked to Maura about the plans. I think that we left with a very strong feeling [that in season one Del had] done something very, very powerful for her. And [there was] this feeling of she needs to pay him back for what he did for a couple of different reasons. One, simply emotionally, but then also to prove to him her feelings for him, that she was not just using him. So there are a lot of drivers going into that and it felt natural.

Rapp: [It’s] the love story of I’m gonna prove to you that this was not usury that there was real investment here. And I think that pays off.

Q: So many characters on “American Rust” address other characters by their first and last names, especially when it comes to Grace Poe. Rarely does anyone say “Grace,” they almost always say, “Grace Poe.” How come?

Rapp: Rhythm, sometimes it just sounds good when you’ve got a lot of consonants popping out of the mouth of an actor. It’s also nice to remind the audience what their name is, especially if they’re starting a show on episode four and then they come back and I always think it’s nice to organize the information really well for the audience so that they’re really in on it. I try to do that with most of my things, but I just love the way these names sound.