“Rectify” Reached Its Conclusion: The Top 25 Shows of 2016, No. 6

Throughout its four seasons I have heard Sundance TV’s Rectify described in ways that I have never before heard where a TV series is concerned. Those descriptions have included the words “tone poem,” “existential,” “meditative” and “mesmerizing.”  It has been fun watching critics try to out-review each other when writing about this show; in fact, their intellectual exhuberance reminded me of their thoughtfully frenzied response to The Sopranos. Thing is, in its own way Rectify has been every bit as important to the changing definition of television as was The Sopranos at the turn of the Millennium (when the perpetual changes began in earnest), even if its overall viewership has been exponentially less, likely ensuring that it won’t be remembered by nearly as many people as HBO’s historic crime drama.