Rectify Season 1, Episode 5 ‘Drip, Drip’
Directed by Romeo Tirone
Written by Ray McKinnon
Airs Mondays at 9pm ET on Sundance Channel
‘Drip, Drip’ opens with Daniel Holden unable to sleep. It’s 3:14 in the morning, so he sneaks out his window and starts walking down the road, where a scrubby-looking man picks him up, and asks him for help with a project. He says yes, and the two proceed to steal some goats. They then sleep in a truck, look at a statue, and wrestle in a field before they drive back to town and Daniel gets dropped off at his stepfather’s business. Before he gets dropped off, he stares incredulously at the unshaven, pot smoking man in the driver’s seat, and asks him a simple, silly-sounding question about the stolen goats:
“Are you going to run them off a cliff – like swine?”
Now, without reading the Bible, understanding who The Stranger is or what Daniel is referencing with that question may not be clear. The 3:14 reference is one we might expect: a lot of Rectify deals with the idea of salvation, and Daniel’s impending baptism (and ‘salvation’, the topic of Job 3:16) is certainly an event that weighs heavy on what happens in the first ten minutes, until Daniel arrives at the tire store. The Stranger is essentially the Devil, and he’s wrestling with Daniel (and God, supposedly) for control of Daniel’s soul, both symbolically and literally (as we see them wrestling in the field).
The swine reference is to a Biblical story about Jesus sending 2,000 demon-possessed pigs to their deaths in the sea. See, good ol’ Jesus arrived in a farming town once to see a demon-possessed man discarded by the town, deemed crazy and worthless, left to his own devices and internal horrors. Jesus saved the man by scaring the demonic spirits, who then transferred themselves into the swine, jumping off the cliff to their deaths.
The devil certainly holds some power over Daniel still – he’s able to over power Daniel during their wrestling, showing just how strong the presence of ‘evil’ can be in a human begin, whether innocent, guilty, or a little bit of both. Daniel also accepts payment from The Stranger, which not only confirms that the experience was real (he asks the stranger right before he leaves: “was this real?”), but that the devil’s influence is easy to succumb to, if only for a few moments. But Daniel isn’t led completely by the Stranger, whose ominus red wagon filled with goats leaves Daniel standing in front of the store, mesmerized by the (also red) decoration outside the tire store.
After the opening scene, the focus shifts ever so slightly from Daniel to those around him, particularly Ted Jr., who just can’t believe Daniel’s getting religious to go after his wife Tawney, who insists she sees the light in Daniel, that he’s going to be saved, because of all the unjust things that happened to him. It leads to this fascinating dichotomy between intent and belief with all three characters, as they attempt to do something or embody a certain principle, only to find it’s nowhere near as black and white as one might expect.
Daniel openly admits to having feelings for Tawney, revealing a darker, damaged side of Daniel who can only express himself awkwardly – or nothing at all, as he stares inside Hannah’s room earlier in the episode, looking at how nothing’s moved since the day she last stepped foot in it. Is Daniel getting baptized for himself – or partly for Tawney? He can’t go through with it until he sees her watching, and last episode dug into how he views her as the Beatrice to his Dante, helping him in his journey through purgatory (prison life), hell (getting out of prison, having everybody hate or question him, spending a night with the devil), and finally, into heaven, where Tawney believes the warm embrace of God is waiting for him.
This interesting juxtaposition of expressed motive vs. intended motives is really interesting, and it extends to Tawney and Ted Jr. Has she thrown herself into her religion, desperate to see something magical in a man that she’s simply attracted to? Their sex life certainly isn’t going well, and they’ve both been presented with temptations in recent weeks that they’ve rebuked, revealing their biggest strengths and weaknesses (as well as expressing the wide gap in their religious dedications).
Who is right and who is wrong? Can a killer (who may not be a killer) be forgiven? ‘Drip, Drip’ presents a lot of these questions – and they don’t reach for answers or definition, allowing the idiosyncratic interpretations of scenes to provide definition and debate not found in most of the spoken dialogue or expressed actions, right down to Daniel choking out Ted Jr. in the final scene. Who is wrong and who is right in that scene? This week’s Rectify proves once again those answers have major overlaps, showing us that Daniel both is and isn’t as peaceful-minded and morally righteous as we might think him to be.
Other thoughts/observations:
– there are a few images that could suggest that The Stranger is Jesus rather than the devil, depending on how events in the Bible interpreted Anybody read him as Jesus instead of the devil? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments section below.
– The Stranger: “Not all who wander are lost.”
– the baptism scene – as all scenes are on this show – was beautiful, from composition, to editing and scoring. Is Daniel’s baptism a rebirth for him, or a temporary distraction from the feelings he has for Tawney?
– I think Daniel was seeing Kerwin when he appeared in his cell. There’s no distinct time period given, and Kerwin’s comments about coming through the wall seem to suggest he was already dead. Either way, he talks to him about the pluses of dying, that you can grieve your own death, because you already know when it’s going to happen.
– I hope Ted Jr. isn’t dead. He’s a pain in the ass, and I kind of like that. Like every character, he’s a masterful balancing act of endearing and annoying personality traits.
– there’s an image shown of Daniel bleeding out of his stomach, as Wendall stands on the wall, cuffed with blood on his hands. Not much to parse out of it, but it’s a disturbing little image that will surely come to light in future episodes.
– Amantha’s spent her whole life fighting to get her brother out of prison – now he’s out, and she doesn’t know what to do. Her biggest fear? Having to send Daniel away to a mental institution.
– Amantha doesn’t like her step-brother, making sure Ted Jr. got a nice piece of Tawney’s monkey bread during his visit, to let him know that she brought it over. Burn!
– Daniel: “I’m not even sure if I’m alive.”
— Randy