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Ray hasn't come home in five days because of Abby bringing Mickey into their home and lives for entirely passive-aggressive reasons, so of course she gets way up into her most Carmela Soprano-type annoying register when he finally does. By the end of the episode he's bought her a pretty dress and taken her to a rich-people fundraiser, though, so she shuts up long enough for him to fuck her with his hand over his mouth. Lovely couple, as usual.
We finally figured out where that loud black-people music door is coming from: A house where black people live, specifically a rapper who has kidnapped Black Justin Bieber and needs Ray Donovan to engineer his cracky mother to sell him to the rapper… just like Usher in real life who purchased Justin Bieber from his Canadian homeland for magic beans. It's even more racist than it sounds. There are two scenes where a bunch of black people get all excited and hop around the room screaming about how cool Ray Donovan is, because you need a hood pass if you're ever gonna be as cool as John Mayer. Which is precisely how cool Showtime is, to like the fifth decimal.
How Mickey spends his day is, first he pretends to hilariously rape his son who was raped as a child, then goes to his meeting for boys who were raped to tell rape jokes about boys getting raped, then he looks up "twerk" videos at a college library, weirdly harasses Lawyer Lee with the twerk music, runs into the (amazing) FBI guy who engineered his release for snitching... and then back to the Fite Club with prostitutes so he can fuck up his fucked-up son even more with the constant sex stuff. You can see where he's coming from, but also: You are not a licensed therapist, sir. Stop helping.
(Avi and Ray are involved in some kind of plot connected to this? Or sending Mickey back to jail? I don't think I randomly lost focus when this was explained, I think I'm just confused by something. But anyway the wonderful FBI guy -- I mean, he's fantastic in a way that I can only describe as Big Love-ian -- has a whole wall of criminals to take down, which happens to include them. So I guess they will face off at some point.)
In other Bunchy news, he finally gets the actual check he's been stressing about this whole time from getting molested, but continues to act out about it and finally balks at Ray being in financial charge of him, which of course is all about Mickey -- Mickey scamming him of course, but also Mickey wanting Ray to stop being everybody's dad. It's pretty gross. Mickey has also told Bunchy about Avi beating up and stapling Other Brother Daryl and the original frame-job that put him in prison, both of which sound pretty bad out of context. On the other hand, Ray has never once pretended to anally violate Bunchy, so I think we're still on the Ray side of all this.
Oh and get this: The priest that Mickey shot in the pilot wasn't even the actual priest, it was his brother. They moved him to another parish, like they're always doing. Mickey acts like this is no big deal, but it seems like a victory for Ray: They are both happy that a priest is dead, but for very different reasons. Mostly, I just want to stop talking about little boys getting fucked. Not because it's something that shouldn’t be talked about, but because it's cheap fucking drama, same as Chloe last week: You need to actually earn your way out of privilege before you can start talking on behalf of other people, and I'm afraid this week's full-on racist outing proved the level of presumption we're working with.
Still, a pretty great episode overall, of a show that makes no bones about wishing it were more grown-up and edgy than it is. Cutest of all is Terry's ongoing attraction to Brooke Smith's housecall doctor, which takes a major step forward when he -- after no small amount of coaching from Ray and the doctor herself -- finally asks her out. They're playing it like he's less hot than he is, but that describes Brooke Smith's entire career anyway, so I guess it's good she's there to catch him. Either way, the performances make it a lot less condescending than it sounds on paper and for that we thank you.
After handing over Bieber's personhood to Usher -- get it, a black person "bought" a black person and Ray Donovan brokered it, and thanks Obama because this is something we can "all" "laugh" about now -- Ray joins wife Abby at a fundraiser for Ezra Goodman's dead wife, where Tasha Yar freaks the fuck out. But that's not even the thing that sends Ezra over the edge: That, of course, would be the sudden appearance of Mickey Donovan, with his horrible face. Ray tries to talk his mentor down (and more importantly, talk him out of blabbing everything for no reason), but the tension remains.
Oh, and just when you thought it was safe to go on an instant messaging program, Conor is presumably still chattin' with Action Tommy and now Bridget is snapchattin' pictures of her ass to Black Bieber. You'd think Ray would have outlawed "chatting with celebrities" on Day 1, but who knows. He's not the most present parent I've seen on TV.
Week: Bridget strikes out at yet another posh LA prep school because her parents are trash, Mickey takes Bunchy and Daryl to visit Daryl's mother in Palm Springs, Terry goes on his date, and apparently Mickey's latest murder investigation gets shut down.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!PREVIOUSLY
Mickey Donovan got out of jail early, shot a priest in the head and then headed west to LA, where his sons live: Terry who has Parkinson's and a broken heart, Bunchy who just got his settlement from his diocese back in Southie, Daryll the bastard and Ray the fixer. It's also the home of Sean Walker, a former cokehead blockbuster star who was involved in the murder/frame-job that put Mickey away in the first place and part of Mick's overall plan to encroach on every part of Ray's life until he disappears, which like nearly every Showtime and HBO drama since The Sopranos is really just a metaphor for how much Baby Boomers -- and now Gen Xers in turn -- resent their parents.
THIS AM
Ray returns home with his dossier on the dead priest, and is annoyed by the thug gangbanger music coming from the end of the cul-de-sac as usual, because why don't black people understand that suburbs exist purely so the rest of us can get away from them, Showtime is gross, blah blah. After some teary-eyed review of Bridget's family tree project that is still in play, he goes upstairs to get his shit, where Abby comes jumping out the shadows with her bitching cocked and ready to go.
Abby: "Five fucking days, Ray? When I tell you not to come home and you don't come home, who are you punishing? Your kids, that's who."
Ray: "Actually, I am unpunishing them and everybody else, by not offering myself up to be groused at in front of them, 24/7."
Abby: "How dare you take me at my word? How dare you not give me the opportunity to gloat over hanging out with your dad constantly, the one thing you begged me not to do?"
Ray: "I don't have time for you, you're the worst, here's some cash, buy a dress, get it together for Ezra's benefit tonight, please stop yelling in my face."
Abby: "Don't you treat me like a whore!"
Ray: "I'm not treating you like anything. I'm just leaving, because you're awful."
Homegirl follows him out into the street, still screaming, but the black-people music is so loud it drowns her out. The relief is so sweet that he pursues it all the way down the street and into the house, where they're doing the usual things that white people imagine black people are up to all the time. The only difference is that in this mansion full of 'em, Ray Donovan is a hero. Why? Solely because that would be a swell thing for any man actually watching this to feel while they were watching this: Like black people feel that he is awesome. When you picture Showtime's target demographic, understand that it's all grandpas and John Mayer.
Youth, verbatim: "Whoa what the fuck? Yo RK gonna be buggin' about this."
Ray, naturally: "Where's your father?"
Youth: "Dead, homes!"
Ray, of course: "Lucky you. What aren't you in school?"
Youth: "Don't need no school. I'm gonna be a fucking millionaire."
Re-Kon: "Who the fuck is you and what the fuck is you doing in my house?"
A valid question, since all that has happened so far is that Ray Donovan has walked into his neighbor's house and then begun interrogating the people inside it for no reason. But then: A twist! "Thank you so much for coming into my McMansion and ordering us around, Ray Donovan! Why, what would we do without your wise counsel, Ray Donovan?" Then it gets even grosser.
Re-Kon: "Hold up Ray, yo, I got a job for you. I want to buy the little homey here. His mom's a crack ho and she don't do nothing for the boy. So I want to get him emancipated."
Ray: "So basically you are Usher and he's Justin Bieber, and I'm the honky that's going to facilitate this?"
Re-Kon: "We certainly can't be expected to administrate our own lives, I mean look at me! I'm wearing sports casual attire before five o'clock, when I should be at work."
Youth: (Starts singing, obnoxiously enough.)
Ray: "Whatever, this is not what I was looking for when I barged the fuck into your house like a fucking South Boston thug like I am. I'm outta here. Call Lee Drexler, because one thing we need more of is stories about Jews and black people dicking with each other."
"...And keep the fucking music down."
RK, verbatim: "Word, Ray Donovan. Word."
Kunta Kinte: "2013 looks pretty nasty from where I'm standing. How did this shit make it onto TV? Why is Showtime so aggressively for white people? Usually crappy ones?"
Re-Kon: "Like any black people will ever see this. Don't worry about it."
Now that that's settled, Ray heads back to his car outside his house, where -- like a video game version of real life -- Abby is still circling, bitching endlessly, flying in circles around the yard. Ray just drives away, because that is not how you be married, and she retaliates by gathering up all of his clothing and donating it to a church. "Not punch me right in the face, willya."
BUNCHY
Mickey: "Where is the porn in this house?"
Bunch: "I am a sexual anorexic."
Mickey: "I am a licensed mental health worker! Just kidding, I'm a gross old meddler, here to fuck you up worse and worse!"
Ray: "Bunchy, get your pants on. Today's the day we pick up your check and talk to that money manager about not instantly converting it into total drugs."
Bunchy: "Yeah, Mickey's gotten right up in my head about that."
Ray: "No doubt, but we'll just see about that. Meet me dressed and downstairs in an hour and by no means is our father invited."
THE BIZ
While Avi's lookin' pretty fresh intimidating a priest at St. Josephine's in Boston, Lena watches surveillance tapes of somebody fucking somebody and then acts all "don't be clingy" with whatever lesbian is calling her on the phone, and then Avi calls to say that he can get the priest to identify Mickey as the (recent) murderer for a certain amount of money, and then -- I appreciate this show's intention to be realistic about him rolling calls, except it's always everybody calling him, at the exact same time, which is dumb -- Ezra summons him to the office, interrupting his plans with Bunchy. Ezra says "Feh" because he just keeps getting more and more that way all the time. Hollywood, am I right?
FITE CLUB
Mickey waxes poetic about the "sweet black ass" of Daryll's mother, while Terry teaches him to box. When Ray arrives, Bunchy's balky and vague and not downstairs, so it's a tense scene: Terry and Daryll fighting in the ring getting more and more violent with each other in reaction to Mickey and Ray bitching at each other ringside -- plus just Ray's presence, having recently gotten Daryll stapled and beaten on the street -- and Ray's trying to get Bunchy out of there, just looking sadder and more hangdog the longer it goes on, and Terry finally pushes Daryll to the point of pounding him, so then Ray gets to jump in the middle of it and draw a line between Mickey/Daryll and the Real Family.
...And yet still none of this is as gross as Abby dropping off a bunch of Ray's suits at this St. Vincent's thrift shop, and going on and on about how she does yoga and she's spiritual and just in a giving mood and all this shit, and it's like, the church? Really? You're already in the wrong -- and by far the most off-putting character on this entire show, which, having both Jon Voight and the character he plays on the show, is really saying something -- and you're going to give his clothes to a church organization? And have the nerve to dramatically feel bad about it as you leave the place?
AVI
Gets the guy to say he picked up Mickey at prison and drove him to St. Mary's to kill the priest, but the guy's not interested in going to the cops because he looks very much like an accomplice to murder. He notes Avi's accent and Avi just says he doesn't want to know where he came from. We've seen enough of Ray's methods to know that writing the guy a check is the first option but not the only option.
TERRY
Is getting his shot from Nurse Frances, but sadly Mickey is in there, somehow making Terry's Parkinson's a gross joke while also making it about him: "Did I do this to you? Did I keep you in the game too long? If I did, give me a gun. Blow my brains out right now."
It's not that interesting beyond another chance for Frances to bond with Terry by kicking Mickey out of the room, but in terms of his relationship with Bunchy it's very interesting, this making it all about him and sort of hanging a lantern on his responsibility. The implication that he feels guilty for any of the stuff that happened to his kids hangs over every scene.
Like he's so magnetically attracted to Bunchy's sexual issues that it just makes everything a nightmare -- but he's only actively abusive about it when Ray's around, because it's about fucking with Ray, because he knows that Ray feels Bunchy is still a child in ways that Terry is not. When they're alone, he simply implores Bunchy to stop having sexual issues, and even does drugs with him to find some bungling way of comforting him about it. And then the whole time too, there's dead Bridget right outside the frame.
Frances: "Is that dude for real?"
Terry: "Yeah, he's the worst. Sorry about him. Sorry about my house. Sorry about my whole life."
Frances: "I was a hooker before I became a nurse. Just kidding. Hey, can we try again to talk about your tattoo of this girl's name 'Bernadette' you have tattooed on your solid body?"
Terry: "We are done here! How much money can I give you to make you stop asking me things and being interested in and attracted to me in my shame?"
Frances: "Ray handled it."
Terry: "That makes me feel like Bunchy!"
Bunchy: "So I was thinking, isn't taking a check from the church sort of like, contributing to the church's problems? Or like it's blood money? Or several other overdetermined things?"
Ray: "This is just Mickey saying everything he can to make you not want the money, so that he can have the money. You realize this?"
Mickey, evoked by his name, appears and pretends to anally violate his child. Ray does not find this hilarious. Bunchy is so used to being humiliated it barely registers.
Ray: "Speaking of rape, did you know you shot the wrong priest? Just a random priest. It was the first thing that has made me smile on this whole show."
Mickey: "What? That was righteous vengeance!"
Ray: "No, that was the brother of the guy. They moved our guy out of the parish ten years ago, as the church is wont to do."
Mickey: "So what? If he didn't fuck my son that is standing right here listening to this conversation, he fucked somebody's. Bygones."
Ray: "Oh my God."
Ray: "Come on, Bunchy. Time to see the lawyer."
Bunchy: "Actually, I am going to take dad to my SNAP meeting. I was thinking it would be really helpful for everybody if he could turn it into a shitshow and set everybody's recovery back ten or twenty years."
Ray: "That seems like a rather poor idea."
Bunchy: "Well, you won't ever come with me!"
Ray: "Not the point. Also, how uncomfortable."
Mickey spins it like he's being a good dad -- a better dad than Ray -- but we all know how well this is going to go. Not well, is how.
EZRA GOODMAN
Ezra: "[Screaming at people who may or may not exist, about his wife's ongoing funerary things.]"
Ray: "Ezra?"
Ezra: "THE GOLEM HAS ARRIVED!"
Ray: "Yeah, about that. Maybe we should call a doctor."
Ezra: "Why, are you sick?"
Ray: "I have zero response to that."
Ezra: "Your father has called three times! I didn't answer because I'm not crazy."
Ray: "Keep saying that, sure. I'm taking care of dad, don't worry about how."
Ezra: "I hope he doesn't ruin this ground-breaking I'm having for my wife, the eightieth thing I'm doing for my wife. Alternately, I hope I don't fuck up and invite my mistress again. To be honest though, probably both. I'm out of my mind after all."
Lee: "I am here to give you a handjob, Ray Donovan."
Ray: "Why?"
Lee: "Because everything I ever say is handjobs and blowjobs. I am desensitized. This particular handjob is because your little child-selling scheme has made a client of this child-buyer Re-Kon. I am thrilled to have him as a client!"
Ray: "Why, because you respect him as a human?"
Lee: "No! Because he's a big black trainwreck! Always getting DUIs and things! Took an Uzi into LAX! He's poor with his money. And that means shekels!"
Ray: "Great, whatever."
Lee: "But you have to buy the kid outright from his junkie mom, okay?"
Ray: "I'm acting like that's a certain amount of offensive, but really it's much more offensive than this show seems to understand."
The Show Ray Donovan: "Or am I just very, very grown up?"
SNAP
Mickey turns it into a shitshow. I don't want to talk about it.
MORE CALLS
Ray calls Lena to ask for information on Re-Kon before he buys this child for certain, while en route to his junkie mom's house. Characteristically, Ray is worried that Re-Kon is a fucker of children, because this entire show is about people raping children. Secondly, he authorizes Avi to spend as much money as necessary on this informant linking Mickey to the murder, for the same reason.
Finally, in a plotline not about child rape -- yet -- Terry calls to whine about Ray paying for his therapy, and Ray tells him once again to ask Nurse Frances out because clearly she is into him. Terry finds it very difficult to understand that he is a catch, which is becoming his main deal; the story is concerned that we do not yet know the story with his Bernadette tattoo, but at least if he starts dating Nurse Frances he might talk about it. (And/or something terrible will happen.)
YOGA
Abby realizes during yoga that she is very angry and disappointed with her life, which is what causes her to act like a monster all the time. Thanks, yoga! The yoga instructor assures her she is not a terrible person, which I guess is what he's paid to do. He has one earring and a mullet, Abby, I wouldn't take his word for it. Take it from me, you're pretty awful.
SNAP
Finally one of the SNAPpers snaps from all the fucked up things Mickey keeps saying, and they throw him out. Bunchy sticks around, and on his way out he's like, "For what it's worth, those dudes that raped you will definitely burn in hell. If you would like to come by my family's boxing gym maybe that would help in some way." I'll be damned how he keeps being awesome in the middle of being shitty like this, but it's quite the tightrope act. Once he's gone, they're like, "And what's this about your check, Bunchy?" And Bunchy's just like, "Now that you see what I am working with, you understand that I have 99 problems that are not money?"
BRIDGET
Quick call from Ray, just small talk, and then Marvin Gaye Washington -- the Bieber baby Ray is actually purchasing as we speak -- rides up in a golfcart and hits on her, and they are cute teens together because they are both good actors:
Bridget: "It's very nice to meet you, Marvin Gaye Washington."
MGW: "Marvin Gaye -- pause -- Washington."
Bridget: "LOL, gotcha."
CRACK MOM
Crack Mom: "I want to be a good mother! But on the other hand, I do all this crack."
Ray: "Maybe letting him go is the best way to be a good mother."
Crack Mom: "I don't feel so realistic right now, maybe due to crack. Can you see, though, the perspective by which my son has been kidnapped by a rich man?"
Ray: "I am looking into his buttrape activities just to make sure."
Crack Mom: "Did you know that I sang backup for Aretha Franklin and Mary J? These days, mostly what I do is smoke crack."
Ray: "Okay are we gonna do this, or...?"
Crack Mom: "Like how much money are we talking about? Feel free to express it in either US dollars or amount of crack."
ST VINCENT'S
Abby: "Before, I dropped off like thousands and thousands of dollars of expensive clothing?"
Priest: "Yeah? That's awesome of you."
Abby: "Well but then during yoga I realized I should be a better person."
Priest: "A better person even than being this charitable?"
Abby: "Actually the opposite. I want to be such a good person that I steal from your charity right now. Is that okay?"
Priest: "No, what is wrong with you?"
Abby: "Okay, here's thousands of dollars in totally sketchy cash."
MEANWHILE
Mickey pays a teen to get off a public library computer, and then pays him more to google something for him, specifically twerk videos, because black booties. Everybody else is grossed out by him, because he is gross, but as usually he is also awesome. He puts on reading glasses, which is the most adorable part...
But in the corner of the library, mind quietly blown, is my favorite person on the show, that we are about to meet. (Spoiler, it is the FBI guy that got Mickey out of jail who wants him to finger everybody else on the show for the original setup. I am in love with him. He is totally weird and great.)
But Mickey is not only being crass in a library for at least the two reasons of being obnoxious and getting a sad old-man boner, he is multitasking as usual: He calls Ezra and just plays the twerk music on the phone to make Ezra feel insane.
BRIDGET
Understands who knows what percentage of the slang that MGW is dropping in her kitchen, but we know enough about her parents' plausible-deniability racism to know that she doesn't really care. She just wants to date him and piss them off. Which I admire her dedication, because he is annoying as shit in a very realistically narcissistic Bieber way.
He tells her that she is "buggin'," is what we're dealing with. She says her boring life is boring, and he responds that she buggin'.
Abby comes home and does not want MGW in the house but can't say that, but then he finally heads out to get the rest of the groceries, thanks to her weird vibes, and then she bitches Bridget out about it. There is a phenomenal hair-splitting moment where Abby points out that he lives in that house down the block, like, it's not that he's black -- she doesn't see race (unless it's her husband's secret black half-brother) -- it's that he lives in that house down the street. You know, the one with all the black folks.
Bridget: "He's a nice kid, don't be a dick. And by the way, why isn't dad living here?"
Abby: "It is just for business, staying in the LA apartment."
MGW brings the rest of the groceries in, and Abby calms down enough to see that he is very sweet and very young, and has some motherly feelings that she keeps to herself, and then softly asks him if he'd like to eat with them. I like that it wasn't just to appease Bridget, but that she took Bridget seriously enough to look past all his thug signifiers and notice that he is a little kid -- one who lives in a scary McMansion, unsupervised, where they play loud music all day and all night -- and relate on that level: Not like she understands anything about his life, but just coming from her own direction as a mother of teenagers. And as a person who lives to piss her husband off, of course.
LAWYER
Yes to the check, but no to giving Ray power of attorney over the check. $1.4M of Bunchy's (and Mickey's) drugs of choice is a lot of drugs, which any normal person would see coming, which Mickey saw coming and is a well he's taken great strides to poison. As much as I kind of love his unhelpful obsession with pushing on Bunchy's sex bruises -- not to mention the fact that he's so far-future sexually that he honestly can't see why Bunchy can't compartmentalize it, let alone deal with it -- it makes the drug codependency even sadder.
Like, if you gave a person all the authentic desire to connect with his children, but then took away every tool he had to do so, he would be left with this deadbeat-dad arsenal of like, porn and drugs and wine coolers and candy. Whatever makes you like me and is cheap and addictive, so that you will act like a person who loves me long enough for us maybe to get to know each other and actually love each other. Doesn't that seem so real to you? That secretly nasty thing of "See how the bitch ex-wife makes you do your homework? Daddy doesn't make you do your homework."
"Ray Donovan has character, reputation and stern affection on his side, but I've got all the money we could ever spend on being naughty. Who's the better dad now?"
Bunchy: "You think I can't take care of myself? You treat me like a kid!"
Ray: "Uh..."
Bunchy: "I am a very sexy Benvolio of forty, Ray!"
Ray: "You are high right now, kiddo. Come on."
Bunchy: "I have issues!"
Ray: "Let this be one less, idiot."
Bunchy: "I don't need your help anymore. My real dad has an Xbox and an airplane and all the twerk porn you can want and we are going to do bath salts!"
Ray: "You're going to die. That man is going to kill you. Nobody can keep up with him."
Bunchy: "We owe him!"
Ray: "For… what."
Bunchy: "I don't know but he says we owe him!"
Bunchy: "Did you really beat up Daryll and staple things to his body?"
Ray: "No. I paid someone to do that."
Bunchy: "Did you really frame him for murder?"
Ray: "I don't want to talk about it. Please just let me do this one thing for you without him fucking it all up."
Bunchy: "I don't even want this money!"
Ray: "Then why are you being a fucking pain about it."
I wonder if I would feel so conflicted if it wasn't Benvolio. I've been pretty sure Dash Mihok was the perfect specimen since I was in my teens -- I mean, that's a long time. Even with the chapped lips and the 99 problems and being a grownup, it's still a tough call. The character is undeniably a big deal, him and Terry both, but I wonder if it was somebody else -- like somebody I hate, like what if it was Michael Rapaport who is like the Grody Universe version of Dash Mihok -- if I would hang on it quite so much.
In Love & Rockets they called these boys polar bears, that always stuck with me: "So cuddly and cute in his cage, but when you want to get close enough to cuddle him, he tears you apart and swallows you whole." As here, the violence is (mostly) metaphorical -- Bunchy's too passive to do anything at all -- but the idea is the same: You will be pulled in by an addict or a person stuck at one point in time by their trauma, and by the time you realize what you're looking at and what you've walked into, you're done. Event horizon.
Nobody else is cute or cuddly -- I guess Terry is, but that's not his story at all -- and so you have this thing of watching Ray watch Bunchy being manipulated, and he has no choice but to also be manipulative, which is gross to watch. But not as gross as remembering that there's a third adult man in this relationship, being infantilized by all of this. Kept in his cage. It's like circumstances conspire to keep the abuse cycle going and everybody just babies him and he can't man up because that would let too much stuff in, but at the same time he is carrying everything for the rest of the family -- keep your eyes on him whenever Mickey and Ray interact; the visual is Terry's Parkinson's, the shaking, but the same shit is going on inside Bunchy, which is maybe worse -- and that part, they all let slide. It's easier for everybody (including Bunchy) to deal with Bunchy as an incomplete person, because he keeps the whole caravan going that way. God help us if he goes the way Bridget did. (Probably that's why she did it; the daughter always carries it -- if she exists -- but now that's on Bunchy too.)
Anyway, I love Bunchy even when he's in total junkie mode, because he's a polar bear: He's a boy and he's a grown man at the same time, and Mickey coming back into his life is giving him the right kind of anger and the right kind of responsibility to become a man if he can do it right, and he doesn't have any of the shit in line to do it right, so he's not going to. As a rape survivor they want us to love/pity him in this gross tragic way, but that's not remotely the actual tragic thing about him.
It's not the fact that some sad piece of crap pressed pause on his life: It's that he knows how to turn it back on, and he can't do it.
VAN MILLER!
Is such a dreamboat, speaking of things that are awesome about this show. He is played by Frank Whaley, who wrote Pulp Fiction and is always lurking around whenever something awesome is going on, and he's the FBI agent who got Mickey out early, and is now stalking him, and has like all these mental problems and generally brings, like, feelings of Big Love to this show. I don't know how else to describe it. He's weird in that New Wave, Art Brut, Pee-Wee, Cyndi Lauper, post-punk, Gary Panter, LA Story way. Like watching David Lynch do the weather, but it actually holds your interest.
Mickey is, of course, reading Moby Dick (aloud) when Miller approaches, which is so low-level literary we're not even going there, and introduces himself as the guy who ultimately was the recipient of Mickey's stoolie activities in the joint. He slides Mickey a little money, intimates that his services will continue to be required and they are after bigger fish, etc., and then he's off. Man, I would do a Midnight Run with that dude anywhere, I don't care. He is great.
(Me: "What is that movie where the two guys have to go somewhere and one of them doesn't want to go there, and maybe one is a cop? They cross a state line or into a country? There is a train I think?"
He: "That's every movie. That is a genre of movies."
Me: "It's like, Don't Go To Mexico or something like that."
He: "No, seriously. You just described the entire 1980s."
(Ten minutes I'll never get back.)
Me: "...Okay, who is the guy I hate even more than Albert Brooks?"
He: "You're thinking of Charles Grodin, the movie's called Midnight Run, you're welcome.")
Miller: "Please do less crimes, or more sneakily if you can't handle that."
Mickey: "I want more money time. All the money!"
Miller: "Okay bro, whatever. LOL, keep making demands on me."
MORE CALLS
Ray okays fifty grand for the witness, I guess dipping into his double-dip scheme from a couple weeks back, and then Lena calls with confirmation that Re-Kon is the one person on this show who has never been involved in sexual misconduct with a minor, and then everybody heads to Ezra's latest thing -- including Abby, for whom a limo has arrived. Because she is tacky, this is the greatest thing that has happened in her whole life. Because she is Abby, she still finds a way to be pissy about it.
THE THING
Abby looks freakin' amazing when she arrives. It's a dedication for an ovarian cancer treatment center. But first, Ray has to meet Re-Kon in his own trashy limo, where he is dressed in an entire Yeti, and kick the hoes out, and then have a serious talk about fatherhood because Re-Kon is going to be a father now. Like, school is important, and you also have to avoid drugs. Except for the reefer? No, including the reefer. And most important, nobody must fuck him. Ray Donovan will not stand for people fucking kids, I don't know if you are aware of that aspect of his character but he is staunchly against.
Ezra's mistress (Tasha Yar) is at the thing, and she is getting crunk, so that's good.
Ezra: "Mickey called me, it's stressing me out!"
Ray: "I cannot have this conversation with you again. Trust me."
Ezra: "Until time we have this conversation, then."
Abby: "Ray, fuckin' how dare you send a limo? With a driver?"
(Both she and Bridget underscore the fact that the limo has a driver, as if there are limos driving themselves all over LA, picking people up at random.)
Ray: "I can't even take the time right now to decipher your problem with that."
Lee: "Jew stuff! Racist stuff! Jewy racist stuff!"
Ray: "...Hang on, Tasha Yar's off the chain."
As Ezra delivers some demented/befuddled tribute to his dead wife at this huge black tie event, Tasha Yar sharks through the crowd shouting incendiary shit about the wife, her own affairs, their marriage, all of it. Not moving too fast, but also moving too fast for anybody to take her down. It's amazing. Finally Abby tackles her, in a smooth awesome way, but it's too late: Mickey appears in the back of the room, freaking Ezra into silence in a way Tasha Yar could've only hoped.
Ezra: "I see this center as my legacy, Ruth would want that. A legacy is important. Especially when you've done terrible things not to be spoken of. There's a price to pay for the wrong that we do. A terrible price..."
Ray: "So clearly my dad is here somewhere. But where?"
Lee: "Let's say a quick random prayer and clap, everybody!"
He ushers Ezra off the stage and Ray beats it outside, but Mickey is gone: Only Tasha Yar is there, barfing daintily in the bushes while Abby takes the sweetest care of her. Ray is moved by this to a certain extent.
A DINER
Terry has a nice shirt on; Nurse Frances is eating alone. He blurts at her about how he paid Ray back, and she's happy to see him. She welcomes him politely, reminds him to act normal, and he gives that a shot. It's a bloodbath, but he's Terry so you get why he gets the long leash. He is a delight. A grunting delight in a nice clean shirt.
Frances: "So this is about the money."
Terry: "I dunno. It is what it is."
Frances: "That's a nice shirt for a business transaction."
Terry: "I'm a clean man."
Oh, honey. She's dealt with you naked, she knows that and more. Also, that is the saddest thing. He's always so depressed about his surroundings and thinking he's depressing and a wretch and his house is dirty and his body is weird and his gym smells like butts and it's like, "I know. I already know those things. They are fine, they are not as bad to those of us without a vested interest in thinking you are gross, which is everybody on earth besides you."
Frances: "Oh, honey. This isn't how it's done."
Terry: "WHAT."
Frances: "Asking someone for a date."
Terry: "FINE."
He disappears offscreen, leaving her hanging, and then abruptly jumps back to the table.
Terry: "YOU LIKE SPAGHETTI?"
Frances: "Yeah."
Terry: "GREAT."
And then he's gone. It's adorable, and not in a pathetic way. Like, she laughs to herself, but it's not at his extent. She just gets to go on a date with Terry Donovan: Despite the many obstructions, that gets to happen now. It makes me wonder about their roles growing up. Like Ray was probably the enforcer and Bunchy's still the baby, so maybe Terry was the Gross One or at least the Weird One and he still doesn't know that this has made him into a wondrous jungle cat of a person. I can see Mickey really hammering that one home when they were little: He barely pays attention to him now, when he's clearly the best thing these assholes have got going.
LIMO
Avi: "Okay, the witness guy is talking to the cops and so it's really happening now."
Ray: "Thank goodness. What a load off. I hope that doesn't get radically fucked up in one second."
Tasha Yar is asleep on his shoulder; he and Abby grin at each other. It's not fully okay, but it's sweet. It's an opening. week is Abby's finest hour, by the way, so I feel okay about the amount of bitching about her this week.
FITE CLUB
Bunchy at least hides the check when Mickey comes home, bearing two black strippers with butts -- who know how to twerk, he clarifies -- and one of them is named Cinderella, and this is how Mickey shows his love. I find that so fucking compelling, I really do.
HOME
And as Lena continues being weird to some lesbian we'll never meet and doesn't even exist off the page, probably, Ray follows his wife into the kitchen and does all his sexy Ray stuff and eventually she gives in -- "I'm still fucking mad at you, Ray" -- in a particularly Abby way, like, she's certainly not going to let you get the impression you are cool or okay or anything. Bridget takes a picture of her butt for MGW, and it's adorable because being a teenager is a funny experience, while down the hall Ray is fucking Abby without even taking his briefs all the way down, and she's been waiting long enough that he has to cover her mouth up with his hand while he does it. Very grownup.
Or maybe he just doesn't want to fuck their kids up, knowing Ray.
BUT THEN
Van Miller goes down into a secret basement full of secrets, with a single lamp and a beer and a glass and a gun and his jacket over the chair just right, pours it inexpertly, sucks off the head, and then goes to the fake-panelling to the side: Pictures of maybe twenty criminals, some with red X's some without, and the last three are Lee, Ezra and Ray. So I'm guessing Mickey's witness is going to clam up pretty soon. Mostly it's fun to watch Van Miller gulp his beer and not have to think about Ray fucking his wife with his hand over her mouth, because that is kind of awful.
WEEK
So Mickey's got the upper hand in a secret way, but also has Bunchy by the balls and is helping drive crazy Ezra even crazier, which is interesting because he's the substitute dad for Ray -- the substitute dad for everybody else -- but also, like Ray and Sean, directly responsible for the jailing itself. The bulk of the episode itself, though, is the greatest: A road trip with Bunchy to Palm Springs to visit Daryll's mom, more Van Miller, and a lot of webs drawing themselves tight: Ray's job effs up a visit to a prestigious private school, Lena proves she is not just a hologram or an invention of Ray's mind by leaving the office and interacting with other people on this television program, and Terry and France go on their date.
JACOB CLIFTON is a freelance writer and critic based in Austin, Texas. He currently recaps The Killing, Pretty Little Liars, Ray Donovan, Mistresses, and True Blood for TWoP. Jacob can be found online at jacobclifton.com, Twitter, and Facebook, as well as a regular column for Tor.com, Geek Love.
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