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Rectify: Weird As You

"No hard feelings."

Daniel takes a surreal road trip, while Amantha takes another kind of trip.

This episode made me uncomfortable. I kept wanting Daniel to get the hell out of that ugly trailer before something awful happened. Ugliest trailer ever, for a really ugly conversation between two drugged out people, both of whom had an agenda. No hard feelings? How can there not be hard feelings?

It was obvious that Trey used the serendipity of Daniel stopping by out of the blue to try to set him up to take the fall for George's death. Not to mention that Trey kept trying his best to talk Daniel into believing he actually did kill Hanna, even though Daniel doesn't remember doing it. I loved that thing about Trey looking out his bathroom window every morning and seeing a traffic light beyond the hay field that was always green. If Trey killed Hanna, and I think he did, the light has always been green; he's gotten away with murder for twenty freaking years. And Trey is smart enough not to incriminate himself, even when he's stoned.

It's been suggested more than once that Daniel was convicted of murder simply because he's an oddball. It's interesting that Trey is also an oddball. He said so many strange things during this episode. That weird thing about his second cousin once removed shooting a librarian. Wishing he had a backwards only time machine. I was hoping there'd be something in Trey's ramblings that would reveal what actually happened, but no. Although Trey did refer to Hanna as "a bitch and a slut" and said that he'd had sex with her when she was thirteen. Trey also revealed that he'd had sex with George, and Hanna had had sex with both of them.

Trey called Daniel a psycho killer, and Daniel promptly threw him into a wall hard enough to break the fake wood paneling. Now what?

Meanwhile, Jon met with District Attorney Person at a nicely set banquet table before she offered Daniel time plus ten. Daniel going back to prison is so unthinkable that I was relieved at Jon's reaction; Jon took it as a sign that Person knows she can't convict Daniel. Amantha seemed encouraged, too, which I didn't expect.

How did Amantha getting stoned with her co-worker Alesha relate to the rest of the episode? Maybe it was just that she was getting stoned at the same time that Daniel was, but in much more enjoyable circumstances. Amantha stoned was way cute. I loved the way she and Alesha barged in on Teddy at the tire store to raid the candy machine. Teddy was amused, too.

I was just thinking. If that tire store should be Daniel's, shouldn't it also be Amantha's?

I go back and forth with my feelings for Teddy in pretty much every episode. In this one, I kind of liked him again, and not just because he was nice to Amantha. Senator Foulkes and Sheriff Daggett dropped by to insist that Teddy press charges against Daniel for assault, and Teddy's response was that if he did, it would rip his family apart. Absolutely true. Then Teddy insisted he'd made the whole thing up and it was a mistake, while he looked right at the Sheriff. I'm sure thinking less of the Sheriff for breaking Teddy's confidence, especially such a humiliating one.

I wonder if it's going to come out, anyway. It probably will. This is television. You don't introduce a plotline like this one without taking it all the way.

Bits and pieces:

-- The opener was a strange dream of Daniel in the pecan grove wrapped in a red blanket set to a song about a circus and death. Trey arrived and said, "Uh oh, here comes trouble" before George showed up. Maybe George's body is about to be discovered and cause even more plot confusion.


-- Trey left George's wallet, keys, cell and gun in the trailer. Why? Does Trey now think that George's body will never be found? Did Trey simply want to get rid of any possible evidence that would connect him to George's death?

-- "Did the cops give you grape soda that night?" I am completely at a loss about what that could mean.

-- Teddy said to Tawney that the baby was God's will. No, that's not manipulative at all.

Quotes:

Trey: "Everything that is good between men and women was written in mud and butter and barbecue sauce. Yeah. Paula Deen said that to me in a dream I had one time."
Daniel: "Who's Paula Deen?"
Trey dreamed he was white water rafting with Paula Deen and she touched his hamster. Did he mean an actual hamster or was that a euphemism?

Trey: (to Daniel) "Damn. You twist things around like a woman."

Teddy: "It's like Wonka's factory, but with rims."

Daniel: "Lorca was shot on the side of the road a month into the Spanish civil war."
Trey: "Well, my dad's cousin stabbed a librarian in the face three days into 1981."

Trey: "You're like a time machine that don't go nowhere but backwards."

Trey: "Remember you are who you are. That's forever. It's like being an Indian or something."

A frustrating and confusing episode with no resolution. How to rate it?

Billie
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Billie Doux loves good television and spends way too much time writing about it.

3 comments:

  1. I rather liked this episode, although I totally understand why you wouldn't, Billie. In a way I'd be disappointed if Rectify did give us straight answers about all this - it's just not the show's style. I think maybe the point is to show life and human beings in all their complexity and that real life's not that simple. "Peace in the not knowing", and all.

    That said, I wouldn't be surprised at all if Trey was the one who strangled her. And I definitely think he was one of the boys who raped her. He’s slippery as a barrel of eels, and a good liar. And I hate the way he speaks to his daughter and about Hanna, so we can gather he doesn’t have a lot of respect for women. At least George had enough conscience to shoot himself over whatever lies or half-truths he was coaxed into telling the cops. Trey didn't.

    I had no idea Sean Bridgers could be so scary from watching him on Deadwood and Justified! Amazing performances from both of them. That was about fifteen minutes straight of dialogue, and it's never boring.

    The grape soda thing - I took it as part of the manipulation tactics the police employed on Daniel to make him "confess" and the kind of odd detail that he would blurt out apropos of nothing, being Daniel. It was a sad, sweet reminder too, of just how young he was when this happened, young enough to be plied with something as simple as soda. Just a boy.

    One thing that bothers me about the prosecution's case against Daniel - he was found sitting next to her. If he really had killed her, why wouldn't he run? Why would he wait to be found by the cops right there, holding her hand? Presumably all the other boys had scarpered, and we do know for a fact that there were multiple assailants. At the very least, he was left by them to take sole responsiblity for something a group of attackers did. Whethere he was one of them or not remains to be seen, but it's hard to imagine Daniel participating in a gang rape.

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  2. What a terrific comment, Ez.

    I absolutely agree about the excellence of Sean Bridgers' performance. He's got this sliminess and misogyny going on, along with the weirdness. "Weird As You" definitely applies to both Trey and Daniel -- they're both such oddballs. But it just feels like Daniel's oddness isn't evil, and Trey's is.

    I also liked what you said about Daniel and the grape soda. I think you're right.

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  3. "Trey called Daniel a psycho killer, and Daniel promptly threw him into a wall hard enough to break the fake wood paneling. Now what?"
    Now Daniel spends the 10 years plea bargain in prison because violence is never the answer, no matter the provocation. *Strained smile*

    >>"How did Amantha getting stoned with her co-worker Alesha relate to the rest of the episode?"
    I don't know but it was fucking adorable. Teddy was sweet there, and even better in his other scene with the sheriff and Foulkes.

    >>"I wonder if it's going to come out, anyway. It probably will. This is television."
    This is RECTIFY! But... you're probably right. There's no way Foulkes is gonna let it go.

    Oh yeah I completely forgot the opening until you mentioned it. I kinda wish they found a way to do the whole song, because it's really good. I've heard Peggy Lee's "Is That All There Is?" on Mad Men, but Rectify used the one by Dorothy Squires.

    |I know what you must be saying to yourselves
    If that's the way she feels about it, why doesn't she just end it all?
    Oh, no, not me, I'm not ready for that final disappointment
    Because I know just as well as I'm standing here talking to you
    That when that final moment comes and I'm
    Breathing my last breath, I'll be saying to myself
    Is that all there is, is that all there is?
    If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing
    Let's break out the booze and have a ball
    If that's all there is|

    So what the frig is Trey doing? It's even more perplexing to me now than the Hanna murder. He's going to make it look like Daniel killed George? What the hell is his problem?

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