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We begin with Ray's horrible nightmare of Mickey fucking first the dead girlfriend he was framed for, then Abby -- whose pinched mean face does not deviate even in dreams -- and then he wakes to a worse one: Marvin Gaye Bieber, driving around the cul-de-sac in a golf cart, totally unattended (and also sexting with Bridget). Today is the day they go to visit the Bel Air Academy, in pursuit of Abby's unending dream of escaping Southie forever.
Which actually turns out to be the point: We see Abby's pain at the way she embarrasses Bridget just by existing, and her inability to tell mother/daughter stuff apart from her class-issues stuff, and how her class is actually an ongoing and very real thing and not just an insecurity, and how much Paramount Stu was actually twisting the knife in the pilot, which I didn't really get at the time. She's a lot less horrible with this stuff actually on the table, is what I'm saying.
On arrival, they're greeting by Stu himself, whose son is if anything twice the choad he is -- signifiers aplenty, from popped polo collar to his obsession with fellation -- and go around being variously insulted and encouraged by various people. Ray's harassed by one guy in particular who, by the end of the episode, ends up so scared of Ray's hulking silence that he pusses out and whines that he was really just mad about some legal thing Ezra did a million years ago.
Lest Abby be deprived of her bitching quotient for the episode, much is made of the fact that Ray is ignoring work for this family day, so of course he ditches pretty early on when one of his bugs is discovered in some movie star's hotel room. His retrieval method -- walk in, pick up the bugs one by one until the male visitor figures out he put them there to begin with, bash some heads, walk out again -- is the most authentically bad-ass thing the show's yet foisted upon us, and it's highly enjoyable.
He comes back to the school with some scratches on his face, only to learn that Conor is following in the Donovan family violence footsteps, and cost both kids at a place at the school. But the real reason is a lot more compelling: In a power play to get in with the shitty prep school boys, Conor provided proof that he and Action Star Tommy are friends, which wowed them all... Right up until Stu's shitty kid told everybody about Tommy's penchant for sex with guys, at which point it became a pretty tainted thing. After a day of bullying, Conor finally knocks him out with a brick, and while Ray sticks up for him he doesn't know he's actually in the right, and so ends the episode worried.
Meanwhile, wonderful Terry is so stressed about his date with the fabulous Nurse Frances that he gets some recipes from Potato Pie, who ends up cooking the meal for himself. So disturbed is he by his good luck that Terry takes time out from his busy schedule of apologizing -- for his apartment, his gym and his life in general -- that he actually invites Pie to join them on their dinner date, all of which Frances weathers with warmth and aplomb. What a keeper. They are both so freaking great.
Avi is dispatched to follow Mickey -- with Bunchy and Daryl in tow -- on a day trip to Palm Springs, since Ray's almost arranged an arrest that will take him back to Boston and hopefully prison. By the end of the episode the Boston Chief of Police has put the kibosh on the operation, but more importantly Mickey's also being followed by that fantastic FBI agent, who confirms in no uncertain terms his endpoint targets: Ray Donovan, Lee Drexel and poor Ezra Goodman.
The trip is to visit Daryl's darling mother Claudette at her new husband's house. He is quite the piece of shit, but understanding about his wife's ties to Mickey, including the half-million Mickey apparently stole for her at some point in the past. She pays him back with a black Cadillac and butt porn, but balks at a rekindled relationship; Bunchy and Daryl fight and bond in the guy's swimming pool. In the end, the brothers drop Mickey off at a gay bar, where he does poppers and dances the night away, because he is a freak and does not give a fuck at all. Or really, because it is funny to watch Jon Voight do poppers and dance his ass off at a gay club.
In the end, we're left with a stronger sense of these characters when we see them in different contexts, since the plots -- especially the procedural ones -- are so paint-by-numbers as to render character and performance almost entirely the point. (Lena, off in her own TV show, is of course vastly underserved by this dynamic.) Ray is still conflicted but loves everybody, Mickey is still two very different kind of animals at once, Bunchy and Terry both get sweeter every second, and Daryl is the only remotely realistic black character, so it's working.
But at times the overarching complexities about Mickey's various crimes -- and the show's dedication to showing us Ray at work all the time -- really just slow things down. It's an actor's show, not White Guy Scandal, and tossing in a few minutes of sleazy Hollywood violence with disposable LA freaks is not enough to make the show -- which has a real heart, and a real brain -- all things to all people. For something so heavily overhyped, it continues to showcase this lack of confidence, which is a shame, because its strengths really do deserve the highest praise. The concept itself is just parsley, a garnish that often somehow manages to overpower the dish.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!PREVIOUSLY
After a week apart, an eventful fundraiser has Ray and Abby on (a very rocky) road to reconciling. Both kids are involved with dangerous celebrities, although in both cases it seems more innocent than Ray might assume. Stu Feldman threatened little Bridget with private-school blackballing, but Ray has engineered a temporary cease-fire. And Mickey's guardian FBI angel, the delightful Van Miller, interrupted the investigation of his priest-murder on day one -- the better to nail Ray, Ezra and Lee Drexler all at once.
DREAM
With an angelic choir singing some hymn, we climb up into a bedroom where Ray is standing, all alone, watching snow fall: A sign that Boston has come to LA. Reflected in the window is his father, fucking a woman doggy-style on the bed: When Ray turns and the music shifts to a Jackie Brown kind of funk, we see the woman clearly: Given the blood running down her temple, I'm guessing it's Ray's girlfriend that Sean killed. Then she turns into Ray's wife Abby, whose pinched mean face is unaffected by the fact that she's getting it from behind by Jon Voight. I wouldn't want that man behind me fully clothed, I can't imagine the kind of internal fortitude necessary to stay in bitchface while all that's going on back there.
Anyway, the usual kind of not-very-complicated dreams like Ray would have, in case you are more able to understand basic things by seeing them rendered in concrete, unironic dream forms. Down in the cul-de-sac, Marvin Gaye Washington does donuts in his golfcart, which would be adorable except that it's clearly pretty early in the morning and so A) he is not in school and B) he remains somewhat unsupervised.
Having never been the child of a crackhead nor the property of a rapper -- yet (to both I suppose, as long as I'm qualifying statements) -- I couldn't tell you which would make me feel more neglected. But I do know that any amount of money is better than no money, and the only people who say otherwise either don't know what they're talking about because they've only been one or the other, or because they are desperately trying to deceive you, or they are trying to deceive themselves. In each of these cases, however, these people are the enemy. Always choose money. It's a tool, just like the internet: If you turn into an asshole, guess what? You were already an asshole.
ROLLIN' CALLS
One of Ray's guys in Boston confirms that Mickey's been identified for the priest killing, and that when they get the arrest warrant they will send it to the LAPD, and then everything will be okay. (Spoiler alert, it will not.) He calls Avi, who as usual is just driving aimlessly around, doing Avi stuff, waiting for Ray to call and point his menace in the appropriate direction.
FITE CLUB
Mickey and Daryll giggle, waking up Bunchy for a road trip to Palm Springs, and he is sweetly confused and scared when he wakes up, and then Mickey says "Let's bounce," because his idiom is that of the streets.
DOWNSTAIRS
Bridget gets a text from MGW calling her "shawtie," which she loves because actually she is pretty tall for her age and if I remember correctly is maybe taller than MGW himself, making it purely a term of endearment. When Ray comes down, she reminds him that they are going to Bel Air Academy's Family Day, assuming that Ray's latest blackmailing of Stu Feldman has removed the private-school fatwa from his agenda.
Ray: "Oh, was that today?"
Bridget: "Yeah. Mom's gonna freak if you don't come. And probably if you do, because that is how she rolls."
Ray: "I have quite a busy day planned, between running my own small business, getting my father thrown back in jail, and other activities of a similar nature."
Abby: "Then get ready for the bullshit."
Ray: "Fine. I will ignore work and my various commitments today, if you promise not to act like a total hosebeast this entire episode, like in the preceding three episodes."
Abby: "No promises. Although I do enjoy getting things I want and forcing you to make arbitrary choices. It demonstrates my value as a person."
She looks amazing in her all-white fancy outfit, and he looks amazing in his form-fitted pajama and t-shirt, and they think about sex and finally she gets him all ready to go.
PALM SPRINGS
Daryll is driving the car and acting super obnoxious, and also driving Bunchy right up the wall. Mickey plays them off each other expertly, and in his usual pervy way: Daryll is a "great kid" resulting from a "great fuck," while Bunchy is the result of a mother who was a "great cook." They laugh at poor Bunchy's scowling face, and then Daryll turns up the music in the car so he can sing along with himself singing on a CD.
Bunchy is unimpressed, Daryll is defensive about his nonexistent talent and trying to impress their dad, and it's all so terrible to contemplate. Even Mickey is like, "Pretending that Daryll's music is good is exhausting." Then the boys get into a window-raising and -lowering fight with the automatic windows, like children, and you start thinking maybe going on a road trip with these assholes is not going to be a great part of the episode's major plot threads after all.
DONOVAN
Avi notifies Ray of the road trip, and Abby immediately bitches at him for owning and using a telephone, and MGW cracks some joke about Ray purchasing him for the man down the street, and then in the car Bridget and Conor fight about whether or not "Marvin Gaye" is a person or a state of mind or what he is, because these kids these days. Abby and Ray flirt and chuckle singing Marvin Gaye sex music to each other, which freaks everybody out, which they love.
When Abby jokes that the kids were "conceived immaculate," Bridget corrects her, and then realizing that she's pushing on the central bruise of her mother's entire class-based neurosis, sweetly fixes her hair from the backseat. Ray smiles, and Abby tells her to be nervous: "I'm not nervous," Abby says, "You're nervous." And Abby just nods, smiling, with tears in her eyes: If it's that obvious to everybody in the car, and they still love her and are willing to spar with her, then maybe it'll be okay. For some reason that little moment just turned me all the way around on Abby.
If the show knows she's balanced on the head of a pin, that's one thing: Smart, but not perfect. But if Abby herself is aware of just how precarious her position and social-climbing and general self-loathing are, that's a whole different ballgame: That means that she brought a Disney star home thinking she was the winner of the LA game, and doubles the sense of betrayal she'd feel when Ray already knew the girl. Not just as a wife of this man who has secrets, but also as the person who can't even make a famous friend in yoga class without it being some kind of weird stalker agenda. She knows what her shortcomings are, she wants her kids to transcend them, and she knows that she doesn't know when she's breaking the unbroken rules vs. when she's being paranoid about it.
FITE CLUB
Left alone with just Potato Pie and some shiftless semi-pros for company, Terry commits all his energy to flipping out about his date with Nurse Frances, whom he last week threatened with spaghetti. There's an interesting moment regarding Bunchy's SNAP guys: Remember last week when Mickey invited them all to the gym so they could toughen up and think about something other than their abuse? Turns out Bunchy already tried that: "Those sad cats crying in the locker room..."
Then talk turns back to the spaghetti date, and Potato Pie is horrified to learn that Terry is going to use sauce from a jar. It's okay if you bring your lady to your scary one-room hotplate apartment in a building that smells like a jockstrap, apparently, but using Ragu on your gross sad dinner is just beyond the pale according to Potato Pie. And even though Frances has already reminded Terry several times that she's aware of the squalid details of his strange raccoon-like existence, the feeling of somebody showing concern for him is novel enough that he still lets Potato Pie get in his head about it.
PALM SPRINGS
They finally arrive at the Hollywood Modern bungalow of Claudette's movie-producer husband. Neither Mickey nor Bunchy is savvy enough to know whether it's a good thing or a sad thing that the new husband "still hangs out with Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell sometimes," but considering where all these people started out I would say that is a very cool place to end up. As long as you don't have to talk to Kate Hudson, of course.
Van Miller calls to yell at Mickey for leaving town without notifying him, to which obvious thing Mickey pleads ignorance, of course, and Mickey hangs up on him before it gets too far, because he needs to express dominance whenever possible with this guy, because this guy owns his ass and he knows it.
Mickey makes the boys laugh on the way in, gargling mouthwash, and Avi takes pictures of them heading into the house. Mickey's got a little cactus, looks like a penis. Just inside is a cactus the same shape, but as big as a man! It's all very subtle. The second Claudette appears, sweetly happy to see Mickey, he notes that black indeed does not crack, and seems not entirely dissuaded from his pursuit of the lady even as she slips her arm around her husband and smoothly welcomes them all into her home.
Time stood still for him in so many ways, this is just one more, but for some reason it really stuck out here, I guess because his image of their history is itself so weirdly of-its-time -- and because it imprinted on him so hard that even after twenty years in jail, his main goal in life seems to be getting black ladies with butts to twerk at him. The ways in which he is frighteningly old-school, and how that mashes up against the ways he's weirdly ahead of the pack. He reminds me lately of that David Bowie movie where the guy is an alien and doesn't really get it, except for where he totally gets it.
Or I guess Powder would be a better analogy, given this show's obsession with everybody constantly molesting everybody and trying to stop each other from molesting everybody and rehashing all the times that molesting has ever happened to everybody and all the times that it almost did but then it didn't.
BEL AIR ACADEMY
Abby: "I can't quit with how beautiful this place is! In Southie, what we laughably referred to as 'schooling' was mainly just being punched in the face by hobos."
Bridget: "Ah, the old 'hobo punching' story. How about you cool it? The only thing lower class than being lower class is gawking at the fairly normal shit that's currently going on."
Stu Feldman runs up, being all LA Casual about "you don't call, you don't write," which is both ballsy and awkward considering the last time Abby saw him, Ray was breaking his wrist for blackballing Bridget, and the last time Ray saw him, he was extorting money from Stu for covering up Tommy Wheeler's blowjob hobby. (Blowjobby.) He calls his dick son over, because guess what his dick son goes to this school (you can tell he's a dick because his polo's collar is popped; also because he is Stu's son) -- and sends him off to give Conor the campus tour.
Stu: "I'm glad to get you alone, Ray. You know that crazy Disney trainwreck that stalked you, blew you in your car, and is now back dating me? Well, it turns out some of those red flags were not false-positives. Now she's stalking me, if you can believe it!"
Ray: "I can, because she is crazy, but the idea of her going from me, to you, makes me sad for all three of us in a way words can't explain."
Stu: "Will you advise me and maybe save me from her?"
Ray: "It is funnier to say no right now, so I say no."
Abby: "That guy. What did he want this time?"
Ray: "Relationship advice."
Abby: "Haha! But also, how ironic that anyone would ask you for relationship advice. You have the worst marriage, to the worst person."
Bel Air Host, verbatim: "Here at Bel Air Academy on a daily basis we dwell in possibility. We meet our students afresh every day and ask them to step up to the smorgasbord of learning and then watch as they assemble the toolkits for their futures."
Abby: "I am too uncultured and dumb to understand what a load of horseshit this all is!"
Ray: "Just like I feel I deserve your continual emotional abuse for owning a cell phone."
Abby: "So help me, Ray, if you answer that phone call about your father and brothers..."
Avi: "They're in Palm Springs. They are seeing a black lady."
Ray: "Ah. Claudette. Most likely to get money from her, so he can run or otherwise keep himself out of jail. Stay on him. If he looks like he's not coming back to LA, make him come back to LA. Use force if necessary."
Avi: "Why would that be an issue? He's got Bunchy and Daryll with him. Never mind, whatever. Tough guy talk, got it. Gotcha."
PALM SPRINGS
Allan: "I'm a douchy producer, in a laid-back Palm Springs way where I'm from a generation that actually knows things about things and can talk about them over cocktails, thereby making my insufferable ass the least offensive person on this particular show."
There's a lot of host/guest etiquette vibe that goes on at this point, like Mickey can't figure out if Allan is being a dick or not because he's kind of doing both, and they both love Claudette, and it's Allan's house and right now Mickey doesn't have a house, but on the other hand it serves Allan's face better to act like Mickey is a visiting dignitary and not an ex-con on the lam, etc., etc. Mickey trying to prove he's Daryll's dad by barking orders at him -- "Sip that cognac!" -- versus Allan not really caring about Daryll (or Mickey), one way or the other, so it's like these messages sent out into space that never get reflected back to Earth. Which still means that Allan is on top, because Mickey's the one that's trying.
Meanwhile Bunchy and Daryll are playing out the same basic stuff in a junior key, because now this desert paradise will always be where Daryll came from -- it's the way Claudette's life has always been -- and also Mickey uses Daryll in his villainous plots and also Claudette is superior to Bunchy's own mother and also Bunchy is not a functional human being, etc., etc. Daryll is stressed because he hates Allan and probably has a little bit of boy-fantasies about his parents being together; Bunchy is stressed because really he just wants to have fun and be sweet to everybody all the time and live in an imaginary place where everybody is happy.
BEL AIR TOUR
The boys are giggling, gathered around the nucleus of a storyteller relating each plot point of the new Tommy Wheeler movie, talking about how great he is, talking about Tommy in his underwear, what a bad-ass, so Conor pipes up.
Conor: "Ahem. Tommy Wheeler is my best friend."
Boys: "Dubious."
Conor: "No, he works with my dad and we're also secretly best friends. I could call him right now."
Boys: "Either way this is going to be awesome."
Tommy: "Little dude, what's up?"
Conor, verbatim: "Just looking for a new school and shit."
The boys are aghast! Impressed! But of course Polo Dick Kid can't handle that, and relates the fact that Tommy Wheeler is a "degenerate homo" and therefore, he will be molesting Conor in the near future. What a Feldman this kid is.
PARENTS
Teacher: "Here are the names of every Shakespeare play ever written."
Abby: "Oh my God, the knowledge. I am amazed by this list of things!"
Ray: "Sorry my phone keeps existing. But the bitchier you are about it, the more likely I am to not even feel bad about taking this call. It is kind of what this show is about."
BRIDGET
Girls: "Going to Aspen and things, stuff. Getting into this school, and so on."
Bridget: "I don't go to Aspen. I live in Calabasas and wear Keds."
Girls: "You're so lucky! You get to reinvent yourself and wear Keds."
Bridget: "I honestly can't tell if you are being bitches, my mom's got my head all turned around. But I like the idea of reinventing myself."
FITE CLUB
Potato Pie: "The dinner I will make for you and Nurse Frances comes from my Aunt Keithie, an ugly woman with tits that hung down to her belly button and was mean as hell. But she cooked so good that she actually got six men to marry her."
Terry: "I don't want one man to marry me, much less six of them."
Potato Pie: "You just train these people to be boxers, and I will help you impress Nurse Frances. A thing you have already done, despite the wreckage that is your life."
PALM SPRINGS
Bunchy dances around Allan's pool while Daryll plays on his phone, twitchy and beautiful and adorable. Daryll just wants to be a mean old grump, but Bunchy's sense of fun will not be denied. He is a man with a mission. Even if Daryll beats his incorrigible ass down, he will not stop trying to make Daryll happy. Eventually they both end up in the pool, Daryll still fully dressed and with "product" in his hair, and Bunchy has never been so delighted. If he can turn his irritation at Daryll's existence into a passive-aggressive triumph and get Daryll on his side at the same time, then everybody will be happy.
He's never had a brother like Daryll, which is exciting to him because he's the baby and has had nobody to beat up on, but this is set against his need to make everything okay. As brothers -- like all pack animals -- have been discovering since the beginning of time, sometimes the best way to get away from the problem of dominance is to dive headfirst into it. Splashing and yelling and giggling and Daryll being charmed by the hefty charms of Bunchy, finally.
ALLAN'S OFFICE
Mickey: "So you're a movie producer. Ever made anything good?"
Allan: "I guess you don't understand what Hollywood is about. I'm rich as hell, is the correct answer."
Mickey: "I have a great idea for a movie. It is about an egregiously creepy man, picture like a Jon Voight type, who goes to jail for twenty years by mistake..."
Allan: "I know this movie. The guy shows up at his ex-girlfriend's husband's house, looking for a handout..."
Mickey: "Spoiler alert!"
Allan: "Our marriage is for real, we don't keep secrets. I know you stole all that money for Claudette, and I know you're here for it. And I am glad to give it up, as long as you vanish afterwards."
Mickey: "Ooh, almost. Turns out I'm not entirely here for the money."
Claudette: "Did someone mention me? And by extension, my ass?"
Mickey: "Yeah! Look at this picture of Ray's family. I am a tumor on them!"
Claudette: "They're so lovely!"
Allan: "I'll give you two a minute."
LENA
Is boredly listening to some lady have cowgirl sex with a man in a hotel room, and one of the (amazing amount of) surveillance devices in the hotel room comes loose over the bed, behind a painting, so she's looking right at it when it dangles down, and she starts screaming.
BEL AIR BUFFET
Abby: "I don't care if that's Lena, I just need you to turn off your phone like I keep saying."
Ray: "This is fun being back at school with you! Let's talk in a sexual way."
Abby: "I'm a good Catholic girl. Everything's gotta be over my sweater."
Ray: "We are somewhat off-putting in the way we relate as a married couple."
Random Guy: "Hey, it's Ray Donovan! I am here to be a dick to you!"
Ray: "But why? That hardly seems fair."
Random Guy: "Ezra Goldman's errand boy over here! Your kids gonna run errands here at the school? Pick up the trays after lunch? Extort the other kids's lunch money?"
Abby: "Rude!"
Ray: "Random Guy, I am going to show resilience by not murdering you in front of these nice people."
Random Guy: "Did you know that violence doesn't solve everything? I am rich."
Ray: "I don't even understand what that means. Excuse me while I take a phone call."
They feel poor.
Abby: "On the one hand, I'm glad you're exercising self-control in the face of tremendous provocation. On the other hand, I am obsessed with complaining about your cellphone. What's a girl to do? I guess it depends on whether our children are more important than my agenda to bitch at you 100 percent of the time."
Stu Feldman: "Abby. My therapist said I should apologize to you."
Abby: "I like the tenor of your opening gambit, but would like some context."
Stu Feldman: "I lied about Ray fucking my girlfriend, just to hurt your marriage. But it turns out I was acting out my own guilt about fucking a beautiful young girl half my age because I am a total stud."
Abby, quite gracefully: "Humblebrag aside, thank you for the apology."
Stu Feldman: "I am going to do the opposite of blackballing your kids. Little do I know that my piece of shit son is already engineering a situation that will make all of this moot."
EN ROUTE TO BUGGED SEX SITUATION
Ray: "When did this happen?"
Lena: "Ten minutes? She called the concierge, and then her lawyer. Should I call Ezra?"
Ray: "No. Erase that thought from your mental Post-Its. We don't call Ezra anymore."
This is maybe the best thing Ray has done to date: Just knocks on the door, walks into the room, starts unhooking every single microphone and camera in the entire room which is like a million bugs and things, and the whole time the man and woman are asking questions, asking questions, and Ray just ignores them until he is done and they slowly figure out that he is not their friend, but he's almost done by that time. Then he has to beat up the man, and takes his leave.
Out in the hallway, the woman who is the subject of this investigation is very upset about how she is being surveilled, and what this fornication might do to "her life" -- Is she herself a famous person, or just a cheating wife of a control freak, or what is the deal? It's kind of cool not to know -- and Lena warns her to stop shouting and go back to her room, and the lady is more and more desperate, and ultimately rakes her LA claws down the side of Ray's face, like a werewolf lady. Finally Lena shoves her back in the room with an offhand "Shut up," and they hustle out.
See? That was excellent. No telling or explaining, just a funny situation of them both being total bosses. No more information than necessary. I realize that this is just a situation in place to bring his violence from the inside to the outside so he will feel weird about going back to the Bel Air Academy, but in this case it actually accomplishes what a lot of other scenes have tried to accomplish, simply by existing. Ray Donovan is awesome, smooth at his job, and they are a great team, and this is what his job is like, and these are the people he deals with -- and meanwhile Abby is stressing out in another parent presentation, as Ray is nowhere to be seen -- and that's the end of that. Lovely.
PALM SPRINGS
Claudette takes Mickey out to the garage, explaining her gratitude at his giving her the "head start" (a half-million, in fact) that allowed her to create this life for herself and Daryll in California. It's nice, this revolving-door approach to Mickey's manifold agenda; with Mickey everything is always true. He's here for money, he's here because he's still obsessively in love, he's here because of his three sons, he's here to ruin Ray's life, he's here to help Van Miller take down the Goodman/Drexel axis of evil, he's here to make amends to Bunchy and to Bridget. All true, all in play at all times.
Claudette shows him his old black Cadillac, still in mint condition, and the vintage sound system, and the booty porn in the trunk, and makes it very clear that this is the trade: He can have almost everything from the old life, except for her. He's Mickey, so you can barely see how it breaks his heart, but then he's barely aware of that too. They dance for a bit, but it's not romantic. Time didn't stop for everybody: She's visiting mementoes, dead things from the past, sweet memories. She's not here, now, in the way that he is. And there's no way to explain that to a person.
Mickey: "Wait, okay. Catching up. My heart has jetlag. You like him, and he's good to you."
Claudette: "Yes I do, and yes he is."
He walks away because that's the right thing to do, and because it's the only way to assert power over her at this point, but I don't think anybody believes Allan won't end up paying for this in blood. Right?
BEL AIR
Polo Dick interrupts the first kind word Conor's received with an impromptu performance of what it's like when Tommy Wheeler sucks his dick, and of course at this point Conor's Donovanity asserts himself and he knocks the kid out cold with some sharp soccer-field implement, smoothly joining the rest of the kids as they head back to the building.
Ray returns, washing his blood off from the hotel attack to a man who turns out to be Random Guy from before. Because Ray operates on a level this man cannot even comprehend, he jumps back with a squeal when he notices Ray, because he thinks he's in a movie about Ray getting his revenge. Ray is caught between wishing they were in that movie, and being ashamed that this is the first thing people think when they see him, and being afraid that it always will be. That the whole reason he has this job and runs in these circles is so eventually people won't think of him as the kind of person who does this job and runs in these circles.
The guy chokes out a fairly understandable explanation for his behavior -- "Ezra, he fucked me so badly on my divorce, I was just running my mouth..." -- and then waits for the punching, but the punching never starts, because that would be Donovan activity and he promised no Donovan activities today, and the scratches on his face are already putting the lie to that one. He even turns at the door like he's going to break his forty-year silence and actually address the guy, but then realizes he has nothing to say, and takes off.
Ray finds Bridget easily enough, toodling around on a guitar in the music room, thinking about reinventing herself as a musician in this new world, and he's so touched by her Bridgety sweetness, her sort of fierce inward-turning Bridgetness, that his heart melts. She likes this place. She would thrive here. Saving Bridget means saving Bridget, just like saving Bunchy; even Abby understands that. When Bridget finally asks about the face he makes a joke about Bel Air cougars, and she relents, laughing.
But then, of course, everything comes to an end: Jamie Feldman's hurling accusations, the Donovans have no idea how far Conor was pushed (and can't, because that would involve his relationship with Tommy Wheeler, which would cause the world to end if they knew about it), Ray's terrified that Conor's becoming a Donovan, Abby's terrified that she will never be classy, Bridget already knows this whole story, and eventually the Donovans just pack up and leave.
Embarrassing, and so sad because it's like this Greek tragedy: How was this going to work out? Awfully, no matter what. And in the way of this show, it was about class issues and violence at the same time. But the irony is that we know it is about neither, but nobody involved in the entire clusterfuck will ever figure that out for sure.
I think partly it speaks, if this show were a huge hit I would say because it speaks on this level to the disparity in both wealth and class in this country, and our American inability to really discern the difference when it matters. The GOP kind of runs on these twinned ideas of saying that the only difference between "them" and "us" is money, so if you have money you won't be looked down on anymore -- but on the other side, the difference between good money and bad money is about elitism, liberals and the educated, which is something you can't buy, or even learn. Hate the people who have more than you, but also vote against your own interests just in case you ever get to be one of them. (With the asterisk being that even then, you still won't.)
So this whole Jew-hating LA culture story hits both beats, because no matter how much money Ray makes or how cringingly desperate they are, dropping their names and going to their yoga, they will never be truly wealthy in the way that matters here... Which is even more ironic when you consider the way everybody who doesn't live in California views California wealth in the first place. New money, looking down on newer money, looking down on old money, while also begging for its approval: Everybody performing for everybody else, like actual self-love ever comes from an outside source. The whole thing is so dumb it's hard to believe how real it is...
...LIKE IN THIS DINER
Where Mickey sit with the boys, after a long day, having a nice evening meal. When Mickey bitches about the waiter running late, Bunchy slowly sneaks a bottle of Allan's wine out from under the table, giving Daryll and Mickey both fits. His impression of Allan gets them going even more, and he gets to be the star for a minute. Mickey toasts them all, the three of them, a man and his young sons; it's the proudest any of them have ever seemed.
Liminality and the unbeloved, making fun of Hollywood royalty behind his back, wanting and hating him in equal measure. What's the score? Conor beat up a shitty kid, but wrecked his parents' chances of getting them into the school. Bridget, as usual, is stoic about their ongoing familial humiliation because she feels like a changeling. Daryll has hated his mother's world his whole life, and is so desperate to fit in he'll do whatever his dad wants. Bunchy is elated by the freedom of being away from under Ray and Terry's watchful eyes, and of course as usual is blind to the cost. And Mickey, by virtue of being a time-traveler, is at once both completely warped and completely on target in his perceptions of this world and the world in general. I say Mickey and the Boys win this round. They're so far out of the Bel Air sequence they're somehow ahead of it. So far down they're on top.
Van Miller: "Fancy meeting you here in this restroom!"
Mickey: "That's kind of a gay thing to say, or be true."
Van Miller: "You really need to think of me as your PO and tell me when you're leaving town."
Mickey: "You need to think of me as a sad old bear with one trick, which is bluffing. Give me more money."
Van Miller: "Sometimes I feel like you want to fuck this up and go back to jail."
Mickey: "Sometimes I wonder. But don't say that out loud."
Van Miller: "Endgame is, I want Ezra and Lee and Ray. Our desires are parallel."
HEADING HOME
Kids: "I am so sick of trying to figure out if we are poor or not."
Abby: "Your face! I am concerned, on the way to bitching at you about it."
Conor: "Hey Dad? Is Tommy Wheeler really a pervert?"
Ray: "Oh my God I hate today."
FITE CLUB
Terry: "Sorry about the smell. Men come here a lot, all the time. And they're disgusting."
Frances: "I don't care. You look nice."
Terry: "Thank you."
Frances: "Okay now is the part where you compliment me."
Terry: "You look nice or whatever."
Frances: "Sometimes I feel like you want to fuck this up."
Terry: "Sometimes I wonder. But don't say that out loud."
Potato Pie, proud as an auntie, sneaks around "cleaning" and watching Terry go down in flames. But when she compliments the cooking, Terry glitches out and demands that Pie, who made the food, join them at the table. Frances loves it, because Terry is like something that crawled out from under a bridge and he's mesmerizing.
Frances: "Nice to meet you, 'Potato Pie.'"
Pie: "You too. Terry really likes you."
Frances: "I know, don't tell him. What is with your name?"
Pie: "Long boring story. I like sweet potato pie, essentially."
Frances, sweetly: "This is a really fun date we are on with Terry!"
THE BUGGY WHIP
Mickey sees a club on the way back into town, and decides he wants a nightcap and to dance our his various frustrations. The boys recognize that it is a gay club, but as cheeky sons are wont to do, they don't tell him that. They just give each other side-eye, giggling and singing along with Daryll's music, refusing to tell him what kind of bar they're at. Avi is amazed by this latest development, and the boys squeal off into the night, laughing. It's pretty adorable.
My dad went to a gay bar once, with his best friend whose son is gay and took them to the gay bar. At first I was very jealous that he went to a gay bar with someone else's kid, and then I realized that I would rather die, literally, than go to a gay bar with my father. I asked him how it was and he said, Not that crazy.
BACK HOME
Staring at Conor, worried, Ray gets the call, finally, that the whole Boston operation is suddenly shut down. The Chief of Police of Boston himself has shut it down, somebody got to somebody, it's all over. Ray calls Avi and tells him to get the hell away from Mickey and don't worry about bringing him to LA, because finally they've done something Ray has to understand unmistakably means that the whole thing is falling down around him.
And at the Buggy Whip, Mickey dances among the shirtless and the shiftless and the be-strapped and elderly, all the gays of all the stereotypes, to the Heavy D version of that old song from a couple weeks ago, "Now That We Found Love." It's clever, and a beautiful bookend, but then too there's the excellent image of Mickey, mysterious Mickey, having a ball all on his own. Dancing with whoever comes along, doing poppers on the dance floor, but always in his own world. His sad little world he takes everywhere with him, like a snail.
Ray's world is porous, with LA evils and Boston evils and history and drugs and the constant threat of sexual violation leaking in all the time. But Mickey's a time-traveler, he dropped out of the sky. So far down he's on top: When he wants to dance, he gets to.
WEEK
Mickey finally confronts Ezra, a yoga classmate wonders about Abby's marriage, Disney Girl turns back up in the house, and Lee makes it clear that if Ezra goes down, he's taking Ray with him. It looks fairly stressful, to be honest.
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.