Nothing about the achingly beautiful television series Rectify needs to be rectified. The product doesn’t need any improvement; only the viewership totals do.
What follows is more than just a review of season three of Rectify, which concluded this past Thursday; it’s an appreciation of a show which deserves (and, one could legitimately argue, demands) a far greater following from American TV/streaming/alternative-outlet watchers.
For anyone who hasn’t seen an episode of the show — or has just caught snippets or trailers — feel free to read the next few paragraphs of background. (You’ll be led to a stopping point before a review of season three, with spoilers and all those things.)
For those 280,000 people (roughly) who have been treated to something special, climb aboard for the entirety of this piece.
Go back to New Year’s Day of 2002.
On that day, the FX cable channel was known for… well… nothing.
Later in 2002, though, The Shield came into our lives. While HBO had The Sopranos — launching this new golden age of television — basic cable finally peeked inside the arena of great television, following the lead of the premium cable channels and giving us unforgettable shows with phenomenal character development and the fresh storytelling which has given television new life. The irony should not be lost on anyone: Television has gotten better in this century, even while the television industry faces cord-cutting, Netflix, Hulu, and other avenues which are making the physical television less central to American leisure.
Oh, there’s still a ton of garbage out there, but consider: There are more high-quality channels (or to use the broader term, avenues for content) than there once were. FX has become a magnet for great television ever since The Shield — in all its dark and complicated psychological power — was unsheathed. It is now one of the must-watch channels in a vast media universe, a place we turn to amidst the sea of mediocrity which lies elsewhere.
The journey made by FX has been retraced by AMC.
Exactly 10 years ago, AMC was a cable network that would simply roll out lots of movies. Then came Mad Men and Breaking Bad, and now, AMC is also in “FX territory,” cranking out deliciously thoughtful programming.
Halt and Catch Fire might flow from Mad Men in the narrow sense that it is a period piece — about a place (Texas) and a time (the 1980s) and a mindset (entrepreneurial drive) — but the collection of characters is very much original. Better Call Saul might be a Breaking Bad spinoff, but Bob Odenkirk and Vince Gilligan, with an assist from Jonathan Banks, have already stamped that show as entirely individual and set apart from Heisenberg’s Odyssey.
Humans offers subject matter that has been introduced in movies and in the larger science-fiction genre many times before, but its plot development in season one (it hurts to see William Hurt’s character die, though) has intelligently raised ethical questions about a fictitious theater of conflict which could greet the human family in the 22nd or 23rd century, if technology advances quickly enough.
Sure, AMC’s most profitable and watched property is The Walking Dead, but the network’s brand is built on the back of intelligent dramatic storytelling. AMC is also a must-have part of a non-sports visual entertainment diet in today’s America.
Aden Young – in the SundanceTV original series “Rectify” – Photo Credit: Tina Rowden
What TV channel (or channels) will follow FX and AMC, joining Netflix (House of Cards) and Hulu as essential landing spots on the entertainment wheel?
Who knows what the answer WILL be?
The answer SHOULD be Sundance Channel, whose first scripted television series is as marvelous a landmark for the network as The Shield was for FX.
SundanceTV’s presentation of Rectify, created and produced by Ray McKinnon, belongs in the same class and category as the other great TV shows of the present day and of this “century of television.”
This next sentence is not a new insight, but it’s always worth repeating when discussing great dramatic television: The purpose of a show is to make fellow human beings — the audience — care about the characters. Television, at its very best — and removed from more serious contexts such as journalism and editorial commentary — is supposed to move the viewer, to leave the viewer a little bit different from how s/he was before sitting down to watch a program. Causing a viewer to cry, or choke up, or laugh not just in response to humor, but humor which underscores the difficulty or wisdom being grasped at in a layered situation, marks an act of enrichment. We’re all trying to live our lives, but we have accumulated wisdom at some points yet can always benefit from a little more.
Great television might not give us that added wisdom every time, but it will always give us something to think about, something which could one day lead to an epiphany and give us a better chance of being greater than what we were.
Rectify is nothing if not that.
The show is as honest and real a human drama as anything else you’ll see. Moreover, with only six episodes in seasons one and three (there were 10 in season two, but that still means you have only 22 episodes to watch if you’ve never seen the show and want to catch up), the show is positioned to slowly tell its story for many more years. (Side note: It has already been renewed for a fourth season next year.)
Six shows a year for the next seven years — if that happens; we’ll see — might be better than 13 a year for the next three. It means four more years of Rectify in our lives. If we, as television viewers, get seven more years of this program, we will be blessed with one of the medium’s true paragons.
If you have read this far but have never seen an episode of Rectify, a review of season three (attached to an appreciation of the show) is next. Stop reading if you’re a full-spoiler-avoidance kind of person, but continue if you actually want to get a sense of what’s going on and then make the journey through the first three seasons yourself, before season four next year:
