

The incredible Rectify — aka the best drama almost nobody watched while it was on — has come to an end. I spoke with creator Ray McKinnon, and I have a review of the series finale coming up just as soon as we go to the Village circa 1965…

“I’m cautiously optimistic.” -Daniel

This great show could have ended in so many different ways. A few could have been unequivocally happy, where we race ahead to Daniel’s exoneration and conclude with him either returning to Paulie from his exile as a sympathetic victim rather than an outcast, or see him off in Ohio enjoying a happy life with Chloe and the baby. Most would have been pretty dark: the system refuses to do anything about a case with very strong evidence that someone else killed Hanna Dean, or Daniel simply proves unable to cope in the real world after two decades of torture and isolation. McKinnon acknowledged to me that the last outcome would be the most likely one for a real man in Daniel’s tragic set of circumstances, and it wouldn’t have felt cruel or unfair had he ended the show there.

But audiences form attachments to the characters they spend years watching, just as creators feel the same about the ones they’re writing, and it’s hard to blame either group from wanting things to work out mostly okay for the heroes — nor even perhaps expecting it from a show with a title like Rectify.

So the end result of “All I’m Sayin'” felt warm, satisfying, and true to the spirit of the series without ever tipping over into something too saccharine to fit this cast of characters and their stories. We get to end, as Daniel suggests, cautiously optimistic, while still understanding how much more work there is to do, and how far short of their dreams the characters are likely to fall even if everything goes exactly right from here on out. It’s hopeful, but a realistic form of hope, which in many ways feels more powerful than if the show ended with a real version of Daniel rushing to be with Chloe and the baby(*), rather than the daydream he enjoys while sitting in bed at New Canaan.

(*) Or, for that matter, an ending where the newly-single Tawney turns up on his doorstep and announces she has taken a job at a local nursing home. So much time had passed — for us and for Daniel and Tawney — that a reunion and attempt at true romance never seemed particularly likely, though given how important their friendship was at the start, I can understand any viewers who wanted to see it happen. I was just glad they got to talk on the phone.

That final scene is a fantasy — and one that very much evokes early imagery from the series of Daniel being in a similarly sun-dappled field — but it’s not a wholly implausible one, not anymore. Daniel has stability now: a job that disappoints him, to be sure, but friends whose company he genuinely enjoys, and safe places to both live and work through his profound emotional damage. If the guilty plea gets undone, he’s free to travel as he pleases, and without the stigma he had upon his return to Paulie, and if it doesn’t, there are still ways he could see Chloe if he can work his probation officer effectively. This new life isn’t really the one he wanted, and it certainly doesn’t undo the trauma of the past 20 years, but it’s a far better one than he could have expected when he was living in a cell next to Kerwin — and, as Pickle notes, the fact that he now wants even more is actually a good thing, because he’s in a healthy enough place to have those tricky expectations.

Similarly, things end decently for almost everyone else, save the story’s true villains like Roland Foulkes, who has to watch powerless as the work on which he built his career is so publicly repudiated. Janet and Ted’s marriage seems likely to survive the recent storm. Teddy and Tawney’s won’t, but she is still a part of the family, and he’s come to recognize that they shouldn’t be married, and that most of his adult life choices could stand re-examining. Being a manager at Thrifty Town and dating Billy Harris isn’t what the younger Amantha would have wanted for her future, but it’s turning out to be okay in the present. Jon doesn’t get Amantha, but he does get this enormous, improbable legal victory, and perhaps a reminder that he is well-suited to this field of law. Even lonely Melvin gets absorbed into this weird blended family — Janet: “Welcome to whatever this is.” Teddy: “Enter at your own risk.” — though he has to put in some manual labor at the tire store to seal the deal. None of it’s perfect, but all of it is good enough.