Melvin Pritcher is a bit of an enigma in The Rainmaker. The series opened with his house on fire, and we later learned that his mom had been killed. He’s being charged for her murder, but he claims he didn’t do it.
Caution: This post contains SPOILERS for The Rainmaker season 1, episode 4.
In fact, in The Rainmaker season 1, episode 4, Rudy manages to ask Pritcher outright in the elevator about his mom’s death. Pritcher continues to say that he didn’t do it, and Rudy believes him. I’m inclined to believe him as well.
While Pritcher is a murderer, he comes across as a bit of a momma’s boy. Sure, he didn’t do a lot to get to her in the fire, but people react differently in emergency situations. Until I’m in that exact situation, I’m not going to judge.
The fact is, all the murders Pritcher has committed have led him to Jackie. They all had a purpose, and the murder of his mom wouldn’t have done that. So, who did kill his mom?
And note, while this is a storyline from the novel that the series is based on, I’m not going into the spoilers from the novel. After all, we all know that adaptations can change the story!
Jane and Ethan seem like the likely suspects in The Rainmaker
My main guess is Jane and Ethan, as they work for Leo’s firm. They have been there snooping on everything involved in the case against the hospital, and while Ethan is now dead, Jane continues to do her job. Sarah wants to know about her, but she’s not getting the answers she (and we) need just yet.
It’s likely that Pritcher was the real target, and maybe the two didn’t quite know that Pritcher’s mom was also living there. Or maybe they didn’t care. They just needed to get Pritcher out of the way, so that less could be tied back to him as the court case went on.
My only stance against this is that Pritcher wasn’t a threat at the time of the fire. There was no need to do anything until Bruiser took on the case and it turned into a threat for the hospital.
Someone at the hospital did it
The other option is that it was someone at the hospital. Jackie told the Tissue Committee what she thought happened to Donnie-Ray, but the Committee didn’t agree. Well, it’s possible that someone in the Committee did agree, but they didn’t want the word to get out. The best option was to fire Jackie and Pritcher, silencing as many people as possible.
What if they still saw Pritcher as a threat? Someone in the hospital could have decided to take matters into their own hands. This could have led to them setting Pritcher’s house on fire, not realizing that his mom lived there as well.
This still doesn’t make a lot of sense, though.
Pritcher’s mom may have already been dead in The Rainmaker
The fact that Pritcher didn’t even try to get to his mom stands out to me. While I’m not here to judge him, it is still odd that he took one look in the room and then made his way outside.
It makes me wonder if he knew that his mom was dead all along. Maybe the fire was a way to cover up her death from other means, whether accidental, by his own hands in another way, or through an illness.
I don’t think that Pritcher killed her, though, even by accident. I get a sense that there is something much bigger to her death. Notice that he never said he would find out who set the fire when talking to his mother’s grave. He made it clear that he would find who killed her, and that hints that the fire was set by him to cover something up.
The Rainmaker airs on Fridays at 10/9c on USA Network.
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