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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
4
Mixed:
18
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews
Season 2 Review:
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.
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The GuardianNov 29, 2021
Season 1 Review:
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.
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The TimesNov 29, 2021
Season 1 Review:
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.
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Season 1 Review:
With only three episodes to judge, “American Rust” so far, at least, doesn’t seem totally successful at transcending stereotypes, and creating characters who come across as individuals who are caught up in specific situations. As was the case with “Mare of Easttown,” “American Rust” boasts a skilled cast, who help bring dimension to their characters.
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The PlaylistAug 26, 2021
Season 1 Review:
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.
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TV Guide MagazineSep 23, 2021
Season 1 Review:
Chief Del's efforts to protect Billy seem sure to backfire, providing a suspenseful undercurrent to a series that otherwise fails to find a pulse of urgency. [27 Sep - 10 Oct 2021, p.7]
The Daily BeastSep 13, 2021
Season 1 Review:
Daniels’ scenes aside, there’s simply nothing particularly distinctive, exciting or surprising about American Rust, which hews to a formal and narrative template that’s as creaky and gone-to-seed as the trailer homes, pick-up trucks, and steel mills to which it pays such evocative attention.
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Season 1 Review:
All these prestige trappings can’t save American Rust from its fundamental, fatal flaw: It’s hopelessly boring. The series opens on a man crushing up a tablet and painstakingly measuring out a dosage, and it somehow only gets slower from there. What could have been a propulsive murder mystery or a cogent conversation about social issues ends up a snail crawl through a generic town populated by characters whose personalities range from glum to glummer.
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Season 1 Review:
Ruminate upon the inability of Jeff Daniels and Maura Tierney to lighten the slow crush of sadness constricting your brain with each new tragedy presented, be it major or insignificant, and despite their best efforts to create sympathetic, fully rounded personas out of very little.
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Season 1 Review:
This gender-flipped Mare of Easttown benefits from a solid Jeff Daniels as a police chief stalking a killer in a dying, Pennsylvania steel town, but even this terrific actor is not enough to save a dry, dreary, humorless series that stalls when it most needs to accelerate.
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