Rectify departs from shows that revel in the splashier sides of sexual violence, like Game of Thrones, which has inserted rape into storylines that, in the novels, featured either consensual sex or no sex at all. Another HBO show, Westworld, is centers around a futuristic theme park where female androids are at constant risk of rape. Meanwhile, AMC’s hit series The Walking Dead has used sexual assault to amplify the hellishness of its post-apocalypse, including in one scene where a biker gang threatens to rape the protagonist’s pre-teen son to death.

Though he’s miles away from his old jail cell in season four, Daniel is still unmoored by the horrors of prison. Unlike many survivors on TV, Daniel’s assault continues to impede his ability to relate to other people, particularly women, as well as himself. In the first episode of season four, he tries to tells his counselor, Avery, about the isolation and loss of agency he feels: “If I am dead, then why do I feel so goddamn lonely?” Outlander’s Jamie Fraser is perhaps the only other major male TV character whose rape factors significantly into his storyline, but Jamie is eventually healed by the love of his wife, Claire. Jamie’s capacity to enjoy sex, even after a torturous assault, testifies to his strength and manliness on the show. On Rectify, Daniel receives no such comfort. He is capable only of nervous, furtive attempts to connect with unavailable women, including his sister-in-law Tawney (Adelaide Clemens). In the fourth season opener, he finally connects with a woman who isn’t a family member and begins to cry, in part, from the magnitude of it.

Certainly, other shows offer psychologically resonant portrayals of survival. Jessica Jones features its heroine’s flashbacks to her assaults and shows her practiced attempts to calm herself by repeating the names of the streets she lived on as a child. The Americans’ cold-hearted heroine, Elizabeth Jennings, slowly warms to her husband as she comes to terms with her own teenage rape. Even Game of Thrones gives the young Sansa Stark a chance to confront the man who sold her to her rapist, with her telling him, “I can still feel what he did in my body.” But Jessica Jones eventually gets to snap her rapist’s neck; Elizabeth beats the hell out of hers; and Sansa watches calmly as a pack of dogs tears the flesh from her batterer’s face. The imperative given to women who are labeled as “survivors” is to take their power back and move on—to prove they can be valiant and formidable against any kind of horror.

In some ways, Daniel is freed from the burden of representation, of needing to affirm how tough and stoic his gender can actually be. He is alternately withdrawn and prone to eruptions of violence—and not a righteous violence against his attackers. His target becomes his brother-in-law, Teddy, who represents a kind of uncomplicated masculinity he’ll never enjoy. Daniel’s reactions to Teddy’s taunts about “conjugal visits” are rooted in a visceral sense of shame that many male survivors feel, the show’s creator McKinnon said. “Daniel makes a decision to tell [Teddy] in the most provocative way,” McKinnon added. “He wanted Teddy to feel uncomfortable, to feel dirty, to feel some of [his] shame” by spelling out the graphic details of his attacks.