Hidden In Plain View is a bi-weekly column where I help you find great shows buried in the clutter that is modern television. With more than 400 original scripted series on TV in 2015 alone, it is simply a fact that you’re missing out on something great. Previously on: “Mr. Robot” and “Review.” This time: “Rectify.”
A boyfriend is accused of raping and murdering his high school sweetheart in cold blood. There aren’t many other suspects in town, and before too long, the police get him to confess. He is convicted and sent to death row.
Fast-forward 19 years. Daniel Holden’s conviction has been overturned after new DNA evidence vacates his original trial. He is a free man.
Is he guilty? If not, does he know who killed Hanna Dean? Is society safe for everyone else if he is out? Like last summer’s “Serial,” the podcast that swept the country up in its murder mystery story, SundanceTV’s “Rectify” poses many of these questions to its audience. Unlike “Serial,” “Rectify” does not promise any answers.
The questions that creator Ray McKinnon and company are more interested in involve less what is going on on the outside and more what is going on on the inside. How do you bring a son back into your life who was gone for nearly two decades? How do you accept that a brother you fought for confessed to killing a 16-year-old girl? How do you adjust to the way time works outside your jail cell after learning to warp time all those years? How do you find something to believe in in such a broken world?
“Rectify” is much less interested in whether or not Daniel killed his girlfriend and more interested in whether or not he can make it through a family dinner without suffering a panic attack. Plot is often treated less as a necessity and more like a nuisance.
Watching “Rectify” is a singular experience. It makes you laugh. It makes you cry. But most importantly, it makes you care. There is absolutely nothing else like it on television. Paulie, the fictional Georgia town where the show takes place, feels like more of a real place than Los Angeles ever does on “Fear The Walking Dead.” Plot that would be burned through in ten minutes on an episode of “24” take “Rectify” entire seasons. The writing and its accompanying performances capture the nuances and complexities of life better than anything else on television.
In the series premiere, there is an early-morning moment between Daniel (Aden Young) and his sister Amantha (Abigail Spencer) that takes place after a long night of driving around town. They look at the rising sun, their car parked in a field. And Daniel says, “We’re lost, aren’t we?” “Totally,” his sister responds. It plays for a chuckle in the moment, but before too long, it becomes clear that this is what “Rectify” is all about. We’re all just hopeless, wandering through life searching for meaning, trying to deal with the hand we are dealt.
There is another scene in the premiere in the home of Janet and Ted Talbot, Daniel’s mother and stepdad. Janet (J. Smith-Cameron) is in the kitchen preparing dinner when Amantha tells her it is okay to be emotional about Daniel coming home. “For God’s sakes, it’s normal, Mom!” she says.
“How is any of this normal?” Janet says. “How? Nothing about this has ever been normal, Amantha, and it never will be. And I would like to just not talk about it for a little bit. I would like to simply make supper.”
What “Rectify” reveals is that even making supper is not always simple. There is something deeper going on within those simple things, whether it is painting a pool, remodeling a kitchen or even just driving into town.
“Rectify” is a story of how nothing is effortless. And nothing is easy.
Television ratings used to be simple. If a show got good ratings, it stayed on the air. If not, it didn’t.
“Rectify” gets ratings that most networks wouldn’t dare keep a show on the air with. Its (fantastic) third season averaged 160 thousand viewers per episode. FOX’s “Minority Report” had 2.45 million last week, and it is on its way to being canceled. “Rectify” has had pitiful ratings for all three seasons, and it has been renewed for a fourth! There are certainly downsides to this age of Too Much TV, but shows like “Rectify” that get to live on thanks to the extreme segmentation of audiences and the fact that it is SundanceTV’s first wholly owned scripted series are a well-worthy upside. It also undoubtedly helps that SundanceTV is owned by AMC, which has the reigning ratings behemoth on cable television, “The Walking Dead.”
“Rectify” may be low on viewers – to an almost insane degree – but it is high on a lot of incredibly worthy things: beauty, wonder and humanity. If there is a truer reflection of human life and all its subtleties anywhere on television, I have not seen it.
It’s glacial pace and frequent disregard of the story’s central crime mystery render it certainly not for everyone, but “Rectify” could (and should) undoubtedly find a home in the hearts of more than 160 thousand people. For those that find themselves on the same wavelength as this show, I promise you, it will hit you hard. “Rectify” is a show that holds on tight. And it doesn’t let go.
The first two seasons of “Rectify (six in Season One, ten in Season Two) are available on Netflix. Check them out, and let us know what you think.
*For more on how the finances of television work, check out this much more detailed piece by Todd VanDerWerff at Vox.
