Rectify Season 4 Premiere Recap: House Divided

The Rectify season 4 premiere picks up months after Daniel left his hometown, and he’s embarked on an entirely new life in Nashville.

Here we go folks. Here’s the Rectify Season 4 premiere recap. In the spirit of full disclosure, you should know that I’m typing through tears. But the good kind.

Rectify brings on the kind of tears that feel both intensely cathartic and deeply empathetic, and the Season 4 premiere, “House Divided” is no different.

Rectify brings on the kind of tears that feel both intensely cathartic and deeply empathetic, and the season 4 premiere, “House Divided” is no different.

Picking up months after Daniel had to sign the guilty plea in exchange for leaving Paulie, he’s now living in the New Canaan Project. Which is part AA, part home for wayward boys. It’s like a transition for ex-convicts to help ease them back into the society to which they’ve had to pay their debt.

The difference between Daniel and his housemates is that they know how to exist in the world. Even in jail these men interacted with each other, learned societal norms (even if their society was the microcosm of prison) and formed relationships with other people. Daniel doesn’t possess any of those skills. He spent 20 years alone in his cell with only the disembodied voices of the other death row inmates to keep him company.

As Daniel tells “it’s a strange way to exist” – a way that no one could possibly understand. He walks around drawn tight, in a constant state of discomfort and pent up anxiety. His job as a warehouseman is rote and monotonous, but Daniel reminds us that he’s grateful “to have a steady job, finally.”

Everyone calls him “Dan,” and he never corrects them. He’s grappling with his own identity as it is, and this mix up seems like the perfect metaphor for his crisis.  He’s caught off guard when his boss tells him he can leave because he’s finished his work early. He’s even more befuddled when there’s been an error in his work and he must work overtime to correct it. He stares blankly, but you can see him trying to get his arms around what is happening, and how he should react.

Photo Credit: Jackson Lee Davis/Sundance

He is pretending to be a person in the world, and when he tells the co-worker who is annoyed at him for making them stay late, “It’s all good, dude,” it sounds like he’s trying to speak a foreign language.

Daniel’s stillness can make him seem cold. And this doesn’t go unnoticed by his housemates. When Daniel’s roommate, Jesse, fails a drug test, it prompts the other men in the house to confront Daniel. They want him to be a part of their community. In turn, this forces Daniel to confront this in himself.

He tells the other men that he doesn’t know if he’s up for the task of being one of them. He feels ill-quipped and inadequate to “be our brother’s keeper” and especially to the request to “be one of us.” He, quite literally, doesn’t know how to be around anyone. This reads “weird” and “strange,” but it’s really incredibly sad.

Photo Credit: Jackson Lee Davis/Sundance

This talk with the other men leaves a mark on Daniel. As does his brief encounter with a pretty, blond artist named Chloe played by Caitlin Fitzgerald (Masters Of Sex). Caitlin works at a artists’ co-op near Daniel’s warehouse. When he first meets her, he’s bewildered and caught off guard. He won’t even tell her his name, instead replying, “It doesn’t matter,” when she asks.

Daniel and Chloe’s exchange is thick with subtext, and it’s a safe bet they aren’t really talking about the art around them.  Chloe senses something in Daniel. It’s rare to see Daniel through someone’s eyes who doesn’t know anything about him. Her impression is pure, her reaction is genuine, and I’d like to think this is how I’d meet Daniel if I didn’t know he spent 19 years in jail.

Meeting Chloe, coupled with this housemates’ lesson on human nature, prompts Daniel to meet with Avery. Avery is the leader of the men’s group, and is the main source of guidance and wisdom.

Photo Credit: Jackson Lee Davis/Sundance

Daniel quotes the play, No Exit, to Avery, which is about 3 characters forced be together forever. Their sheer togetherness is their hell. Daniel explain, ‘Hell is other people.” But his current hell has very little to do with other people in his life.

Avery listens as Daniel talks about his time in solitary confinement. (And here is where I lost all control over my emotions and literally broke down.) Daniel tells Avery about the deep, deep loneliness he suffered after Kerwin’s death. And reminds Avery (and us) that we’ll never understand how profound that loss is.

With tears on his cheeks, Daniel tells Avery about all those years he spent with himself, with his thoughts, and how sometimes he felt dead. Yet he knew he couldn’t be dead because he was still so lonely.

This is the very first time we’ve ever heard Daniel articulate his sadness, and Avery says as much. He reminds Daniel that it’s good to talk about such things, and it seems like it is. Because soon after, he goes back to the artists’ co-op, introduces himself to Chloe, and reveals his truth to her (well, in part).

Daniel’s whole truth is that he doesn’t know if he killed Hanna Deen. He’s spent so many years thinking that he might have, saying that he did (because he was told to), that he never considered that he might not have killed Hanna. He just didn’t think he deserved to believe it.

Daniel must decide to believe. He must decide to love himself.

Avery tells Daniel to make a decision. To decide to believe. To decide to love himself, and a light goes off in Daniel that has yet been turned on. He looks empowered, and Daniel has never had any power over his own life.

When Daniel returns home, emboldened by his encounter with Chloe, he sits in the room with his housemates as they play cards. At first he just awkwardly lingers around the periphery, but when Pickle invites him to sit down and play. He does.

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Before this moment, Daniel wasn’t sure he could be anywhere, but now, it seems like he’s learning how to.

Rectify airs on SundanceTV Wednesdays at 10/9c