Rectify Finale: "Cautiously Optimistic"

Hard to keep a dry eye at the end of Rectify's finale, in fact, throughout most of this superbly wrought (and wrote) final episode.

So many memorable scenes ... Daniel and Kerwin going for an imaginary ride in my home town, where I still spend a lot of my time, New York City.   Everyone taking their leaves of everyone ... well, not everyone, but Amantha and Jon, and Ted Jr. and Tawney still not together, and it feels like no one's together, though Janet and Ted Sr. still are, and the family's all together at the end, except Daniel, and he's with them on the phone.

And the conversation on the phone with Daniel and Ted Jr was priceless, and in many ways the most symbolic of the healing, and the moving on to better things. as they both apologize to each for what they did.  And the last exchange between Daniel and Tawney was just right, too.

And, as was clear through this final season, we don't get the pleasure of seeing Daniel 100% cleared and out of the woods and a man totally free of the law regarding Hanna's murder.   But we see him headed in that direction, with his confession no longer bound to govern his life, and the GBI re-opening the investigation.   Daniel says he's "cautiously optimistic," and maybe that's the best we can reasonably hope for and expect in life, whether we've been treated as unfairly as Daniel or not.

Maybe that's what Rectify has been trying to tell us, all along.  And there is a completion in this, just as the title in the opening credits are finally filled in, at the beginning of this very end.   The story feels complete, even if we don't know whether Daniel was envisioning going out to see Chloe and the baby as he lay in the bed, or if that last, beautiful scene in the field was really happening, a year or more or less later.   It doesn't matter, is the story of Rectify, because the way this life is, there's not as much difference as we may think between a vision and a life.

See also Rectify 4.1: Rummy  ... Rectify 4.4: Slow Motion ... Rectify 4.5: Temper ... Rectify 4.6: Shedding the Straw Man ... Rectify 4.7: Teddy, Jr.

And see also Rectify 3.1: Stroke of Luck ... Rectify 3.2: Daniel and Amantha ... Rectify 3.5: Finally!

And see also Rectify 2.1: Indelible ... Rectify 2.2: True Real Time ... Rectify 2.3: Daniel's Motives ... Rectify 2.4: Jekyll and Hyde ... Rectify 2.6: Rare Education ... Rectify 2.7: The Plot Thickens ... Rectify 2.8: The Plea Bargain and the Smart Phone ... Rectify 2.9: Dancing in the Dark ... Rectify Season 2 Finale: Talk about Cliffhangers!

And see also Rectify: Sheer and Shattering Poetry ... Rectify 1.5: Balloon Man ... Rectify Season 1 Finale: Searingly Anti-Climactic

 
another kind of capital punishment

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