Caemeron Crain
1. Janet Talbot (Rectify)
I continue to think that Rectify is the best show that no one has watched—or at least, not enough people have. It’s seriously up there for me, breathing the air of shows like Mad Men or The Leftovers. I guess people think it is slow, and perhaps it is, but that’s because it is a show that is not driven by plot nearly as much as it is by its characters.
The setup is that Daniel Holden has been released from prison after spending 19 years on death row. He hasn’t been exonerated, but his sentence has been vacated—meaning that he could be tried again. And we don’t even know that he is innocent.
Janet is his mother, and of course she believes in him, but the real moments that make her one of my favorite mothers in TV don’t have all that much to do with all of that. It’s when she and Daniel play a word game as they work on the kitchen, or talk about Plato’s Cave in the car, that their rapport as mother and son shines.
I may not be claiming that the mothers on this list are all good, but Janet is. She is the one amongst all of these that I would most want to be my mother. Of course she fell into a depression after Daniel was put away and her first husband died. She probably wasn’t there for Amantha as she could have been. Her relationship with her stepson Teddy is a bit fraught, and she’s probably neglected Jared a bit since Daniel got out, but all of this just pertains to how human she is and how well fleshed out this character is.
One of the most powerful moments occurs late in the series, as Amantha expresses her worry that Janet is disappointed in her for working a job at Thrifty Town, or just in general. Of course, it was Amantha who fought tirelessly to get Daniel out of prison, and so Janet says:
Is that what you feel when you’re around me? My disappointment in you?
[…]
Well that shouldn’t be, because you’re my hero young lady.
I tear up just thinking about it. All of the characters in Rectify are so strong that it’s hard to set Janet apart, but she just seems like such a real person, and the way that she reacts and relates to everything in her life just seems so relatable that she makes the top of my list.
