Rectify · Season 1 · Episode 1 · 22 April 2013
S1E1 Always There
THE MOMENT Daniel's first moments outside the prison gates - a scene that refuses any conventional release-day catharsis.
The premiere establishes Daniel's release and immediate re-entry into Paulie, Georgia in a register that is deliberately unlike television drama's established grammar. There is no plot engine in the procedural sense; the camera simply follows Daniel through a world that has moved on without him while he has not moved at all.
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Rectify Season 1 Episode 1 'Always There' aired April 22, 2013 on SundanceTV as the premiere of a 6-episode debut season that earned 88 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic 82. The Daily Beast called it 'a breathtaking work of immense beauty'; New York Magazine's Vulture praised it as a show 'content to be present' that 'breathes.' Creator Ray McKinnon does not frame Daniel Holden's release from death row as triumph or vindication: DNA evidence establishes reasonable doubt, not innocence, and that ambiguity holds from the first scene. Aden Young's performance in the opening hour - a man stepping into a world that moved on without him while he remained suspended in a nineteen-year parenthesis - operates in a register deliberately unlike television drama's established grammar. There is no procedural momentum, no catharsis scheduled. The show simply follows Daniel back to Paulie, Georgia, and asks the audience to pay the same quality of attention the character deserves.