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Ezra hits what he thinks is a person, hides the body in his trunk, and turns up hours later out of his mind at Cedars. While recuperating, he's visited by Mickey Donovan, and in a twist that is a pleasant surprise for everyone -- both men, and the audience -- they form an immediate bond. (It's great, but ends rather abruptly when Ezra starts hallucinating that Mickey is an actual golem of legend.) One of Ray's operatives helps him confirm the accident was imaginary and the corpse was just a tree trunk, but all is not well: Ezra's dementia, as it turns out, is coming from a brain tumor, and he's not long for this world.
Of course, this news -- which sends Ray over the edge into a self-destructive spiral that would make any Donovan proud -- comes only at the end of the episode. First, Ray and Avi break into Van's house, discovering his whole giant plot to bring them down. But worse yet, Mickey and Ezra's whole conversation was wired, a setup by Van Miller that puts all of the secrets on shout going back twenty years, which thanks to Ezra's faulty memory not even Ray gets to know.
Ashley handcuffs herself to the LA apartment's towel rack out of nowhere, and Ray has to leave her there to go slowly crazy while he's dealing with all this other stuff; Lena gets her free before Abby turns up and -- motivated by a pushy life coach's prying questions -- discovers a lot of strange facts about Ray's home away from home. While it's nice to see Lena klonk the shit out of Ashley after so many irritating scenes of her being nuts and creepy, it's that amount of not-nice to see Ray, losing his mind between the FBI investigation and this news about Ezra, finally give in to her wiles.
Bunchy spends his settlement check on a bike and a sketchy new house, where he and Mickey can set up shop for the second half of the season, while Terry's romantic bliss with Nurse Frances is short-lived, as he discovers she's actually married with kids of her own. (These things are all very, very sad.)
Oh, and speaking of sad, Ray heads out to Compton to pick up MGW's paperwork, discovering (and abandoning) the crackhead mother's corpse in order to secure Drexel's bloodstained adoption paperwork. Also in work news, he brings the ugly divorce we saw being investigated last week (the face-scratch lady) to a quick close with some well-timed menace. Actually, it was one of his best workdays ever, if you discount the chilling effect it's having on his humanity, which I guess is what the episode title's actually referring to.
In the end, Ray makes it back to his apartment in time for a quick breakdown, which is immediately interrupted by old Abby, who is just hanging around waiting to pounce on him for answers -- while back home, MGW is getting the Donovan kids trashed like some kind of postmodern Pippi Longstocking. All in all, a record-bustingly trainwreck day for everyone on the show. Except Lena, of course, who is flawless and barely-there as ever.
Week: It looks like Ray gets ahold of Van Miller, which should not go well for any of them. Ray decrees that no Donovan shall darken the doorstep of Bunchy's new house, so of course they all end up there immediately. And it looks like Bunchy starts setting fires? In the end, Ray confronts his father again, but this time it's where the whole family can see them. I don't see Ray getting back in anybody's good graces any time soon...
Want more? The full recap starts right below!PREVIOUSLY
Abby was on her best (if mortifying) behavior visiting a new school, while Ray did his best to keep a work/life balance by only getting slightly carved up while doing his job. In the end, it was Connor's relationship with Tommy Wheeler that Stu Feldman's crummy kid used to get him -- and the while family -- kicked out of consideration for the academy. Meanwhile Mickey took Bunchy and Daryll to visit Claudette in Palm Springs, knitting their little family-of-three closer than ever, and Terry's first date with Frances went relatively well, despite his greatest efforts to sink it. More previously, Ezra's going nuts -- everybody knows it, Mickey's helping -- and Ray got a blowjob from a crazy girl.
MULHOLLAND
I'm presuming. It's very winding and woodsy. Ezra drives very intensely, listening to his old man music, and seems very intent on the road and focusing on the task at hand. Which makes it all the more ironic when a man appears out of nowhere and gets run over by poor old Ezra.
RAY
Avi feels very bad, over his breakfast, about whatever mysterious wrench was thrown into their plan to make sure Mickey's priest assassination gets him put back in jail.
Ray: "I mean, we paid that guy Eddie in Boston a lot of money to make sure."
Avi: "I know! I watched him go into the police station, he made the ID, everything was perfect!"
Ray: "And yet."
Avi: "Oh, here's a picture of him meeting with Van Miller. A man who does not exist on any books or systems available to me."
Ray: "He seems moderately legit, not like one of Mickey's lowlife buddies. I wonder if he has anything to do with Mickey's total murder of a person going away."
Avi: "I guess it would be my job to figure that out, huh?"
Ray's in the car for a good nine seconds before, of course, his phone rings: Ezra is missing and Lee is all manner of perturbed about it.
Ray: "What makes you think he'll answer the phone for me, if not you?"
Lee: "Don't be a joker. I know everybody hates me. Just find him."
Ray: "I guess it's not really a distraction from the task at hand, considering Ezra's all tied up in the original framing that sent Mickey away, and is at the top of Mickey's revenge list. I guess I can see it that way."
BACK HOME
Abby: "Of all the human weaknesses, I hate sleep the most. Six to eight hours a day of not bitching at anybody? What a goddamn waste. Where is your father, I need to get started on bitching. I've got six to eight hours to make up."
Conor: "I'm going to a friend's after school."
Abby: "Wrong. You beat up a boy at a pricy school! You are grounded from everything! You are grounded from headphones! You have ruined Bridget's life."
Bridget: "You are a little asshole. That much is true."
Like she cares. She's more interested in Marvin Gaye Washington, who has just appeared at the back door.
Bridget: "I'm so happy to see you! But go away! You have to get out of here! This is how my parents model affection."
MGW: "My mom is just a crackhead, but I understand where you're coming from because we are both peasants."
Bridget: "We can make out later! I have to go school now."
MGW: "I don't even know what school is! Because I am from the streets and even now am unsupervised."
TERRY
Has progressed to having very grunty sex with Frances! That's exciting. He finishes up and they giggle and cuddle together, and it's so sweet. But Frances can't quit thinking about the Bernadette tattoo, and how her name is always there in your face.
Terry: "She's dead!"
Frances: "Good. I mean, not 'good,' but you know what I mean."
Terry: "What about you, any secret people for me to be weirdly jealous of?"
Frances: "No. I have to go."
Terry: "Can't we just have even more sex?"
Frances: "That sounds good! But some people work for a living."
Terry: "I have a job!"
Frances: "It's just like a saying."
He wraps that big old jungle cat body around her and begs her to come back soon, and she disentangles and heads out the door. Watching Terry Donovan negotiate boy-girl stuff is like watching somebody learn to use chopsticks.
BANK
Mickey: "Last time I was in one of these, I had a stocking over my face!"
Bunchy: "Say that a little louder, why don't you."
Teller: "Uh, this is a check for over a million dollars?"
Mickey: "My boy's a millionaire! Earned it the hard way."
Teller: "Oh right, I see here that it is from the Catholic Church. How grossly insensitive of you. Well, are you sure it all should go into a checking account? You don't really seem to know what you're doing. Also, you thugs look like grifters from the movies."
Mickey: "Bitch, you have no idea. I am straight outta central casting."
Mickey's main goal with this money -- besides having it for himself, we're all led to presume -- is right now to get enough cash to buy Bunchy's way back into sexual health. The effortless simplicity, the Tao of this man: "Got molested? No problem, let's get you a hooker with your molestation money. Poetic." For someone who tish-toshed the "sexual anorexia" thing so vociferously, he seems determined to do what any parent would for their child with an eating disorder, if by any parent you mean any terribly misguided and destructive parent. "Oh, your problem is not eating? Let's just go buy you dinner! Why, what could be simpler."
RAY
Can't seem to track down Ezra. Which is weird, because if you were Ezra and you ran over a man by accident, would your very first call not be to the very person you employ to get people out of these situations? Maybe he forgot what Ray's job is. (Taking phone calls from everybody all the time.) While he waits for Ezra -- or any other character on the show -- to call him immediately now that he has hung up the phone, Ray packs up a gun and some bullets to kill his dad with. Just the kind of moment you want your substitute dad around for.
THE BANK
Van Miller is waiting around outside when Bunchy and Mickey finally complete their business.
Mickey: "I need to walk around, you're on your own."
Bunchy: "Wait, aren't we going to buy a bicycle now?"
Mickey: "What are you, ten?"
Bunchy: "YES. How many different ways do I need to explain that to you?"
Mickey: "Get your own bicycle, you grownup?"
Bunchy nearly weeps, because that is not the plan -- what's the point of getting a bicycle if your dad's not there to buy it for you, with your molestation money -- and Mickey grabs him for a quick but very gratefully received hug before heading off. I don't know if he's planning a meet with Van, but Avi's still on him and I don't think he has clocked that yet.
THE LA APT
Is staring into space when there's a knock at the door -- nobody's there, which means Ashley is lurking around -- and then tells Conor to just do whatever Abby says, because he is actually in trouble. That part of being a man is dealing with the consequences of your actions. He hangs up, and then nobody calls him, so he calls Conor back to apologize and explain in further detail how the world works, but he's interrupted by the knocking again. The music is like, "This may well end in a firefight."
But of course it's just Ashley. She shoves her way in and shows some bruised ribs, then immediately goes into sex mode, settling down onto the couch and removing her pants forthwith. To his credit, Ray is moderately hilarious as he flees the scene, afraid that he is about to have sex with her, and then of course his phone rings because it has been six seconds.
Tasha Yar calls from Cedars, with the news that Ezra was in a car accident, and he gets his shit because finally something is happening. But where's Ashley? Well, she has handcuffed herself to a towel rack in his backroom, which she flushes down the toilet.
Ray: "Are you out of your fucking mind?"
Ashley: "Clearly. Now fuck me, Ray. Save me, Ray! And if you leave, I'll scream."
He leaves her screaming; turning on the radio before he goes. That's one way to deal.
CEDARS
The person to finally get the memo that Ezra is losing his mind is Tasha Yar, who frankly should have been the first person to notice. "He said he was looking for his cat! He hasn't had a cat in forty years!" Like that old urban legend about the LA lawyer who hasn't had a cat in forty years and then you find out it was a ghost. Or like a vaudeville act: "Then who's been eating all this catfood?"
I am not at the stage in my life where I can really afford to whistle in the dark about dementia. It hasn't happened in my family, my little mom and sweet dad, and so I don't really enjoy that kind of thing. Maybe when you're fifty or you've been through this it would be comforting to see parent-type people acting that way, funny and sad at the same time. But I'm not there yet, so it just creeps me the fuck out.
Anyway, Ezra is doing that, wilding out in the MRI machine, when Ray arrives to calm him down. Afterwards, better moderately, Ezra tries to tell Ray, in a stage whisper, what happened. What happened was, he put the body in his trunk. Of a car he can no longer remember where it is. "Calm down," he says. "You seem tense."
YOGA
A pregnant lady joins Abby after class, and immediately is like, "So what's the deal with you crying in class all the time?" Abby is cutely embarrassed, and just when you start thinking maybe she'll open up or actually walk through the door she's been trying to open for herself, the lady swoops in on a dragon built from wheatgrass and chicanery: "I'm a life coach? So I'm like attuned to people's energies?"
But Abby lives in Calabasas. She doesn't know what a vampire looks like.
DREXEL
Ray: "Lena, Ezra's car was most likely towed off Mulholland [boom!] and I need you to find it, stat. No info at this time about the possibly imaginary corpse in the trunk. That part is need to know."
Lena: "I don't ask questions, I merely take part in the telephone conversations that are this entire show."
Lee: "And where exactly have you been, Ray?"
Ray: "Oh my God, just your horrible voice is enough to send me into a rage. I shouldn't have come."
Lee: "Ezra is a liability, Ray! Which makes you a liability! And your son is a liability! Why did he beat up shitty Stu Feldman's shitty child? Is he an animal? Maybe I should fire you and hire him, you all look alike to me."
Ray: "You... Realize how cool I'm being right now? Are you done asking for it?"
Lee: "Now that you've asked that, allow me to overextend my bullshit even more by threatening you with termination?"
Ray: "I'm not a guy you fire. And we both know you are bullshitting, so come on."
Lee swallows, realizing how far he just took it, and then conducts Ray into a staging room with a good-lookin' fella... Oh, it's the other party to last week's cheating wife in the hotel. They're meeting today with the lady, the one that scratched Ray's face, and her lawyer, who is Barb the Titular Cougar from Cougar Town, and last seen by us getting exploded from the inside-out by a shapeshifting housefly. Man, that's good casting. If anybody was born to play a ball-busting lady-lawyer in exactly the cartoonish way this show prefers to do things, it was her.
ASHLEY
Perhaps begins to regret her decision to chain herself up in a modernist bathroom without soft surfaces. She addresses herself in the mirror -- "You're in the solution now" -- and then even more chillingly, starts putting Ray's bath products all over herself so she can smell him on her body. Before it can get grosser, she decides the dry-shave her legs, which ends in blood, and then because she is a crazy crazy crazy person, she starts writing on the mirror in her own blood.
LIFE COACHING
Preggo: "Tell me more intimate information about your whole family!"
Abby: "I'm just happy to be talking instead of bitching. I feel like you're really hearing me."
Preggo: "Honey, I'm probably recording every word you say. Now, about your son bashing that kid's head in with a football tee..."
Abby: "Yeah and meanwhile Bridget's perfect. Assuming she doesn't get pregnant on our cul-de-sac."
Preggo: "And what about your husband? A person who I don't know who that is."
Abby: "We met in high school, we've been married for 18 years. Interesting fact the audience didn't know, I was originally friends with his sister."
Wow. That's actually pretty solid information. That means they both chose their daughter's name. I thought it was just a Catholic thing about dead people, but no: They both loved Bridget. I like that.
Preggo: "And he's a good husband? Emotionally supportive?"
Abby: "I don't know what any of those words mean. He left without saying goodbye this morning, that's the most recent thing I resent."
Preggo: "That must have been really hurtful, Abby. Cry for me. DO IT."
Abby: "Are you kidding me right now?"
Preggo: "I have learned that men are very secretive. They crawl into their caves and hide."
Abby: "Yeah, I guess that kind of thing bothers me sometimes."
Preggo: "Like what? Speak clearly and in the direction of my purse. Be specific."
After some great amount of this shit -- and the barf-inducing phrase "heart-centered life" -- Abby finally realizes how much this lady sucks, and grabs her stuff. "I gotta go. You're a nosy cunt."
But you know it got in there, you know how Abby works. You know she's going to eventually turn this nosy cuntiness into an entire new level of bullshit. "Why aren't you leading a heart-centered life, RAY? Why are you hiding in your manhood, RAY?"
BIKE PEOPLE
Some gross Shaun White dude admires Bunchy's bicycle, which he is riding in circles all alone. It only increases his loneliness. While it did seem that we were watching Bunchy ride in circles for a fairly long amount of time, it is also true that you could watch Bunchy ride his bike in circles for however long he felt like doing it and never complain. Especially if he knew you were watching; especially if you could tell him how good he was doing it.
EZRA
Ezra stares at a hummingbird which may or may not exist. He looks great, I guess the hospital visit did him some good. When Mickey shows up, Tasha Yar does her best to get him to put a ring on it, talking about "darling" and "do you want me to send him away," and Ezra just tells her to go away so he can deal with it finally.
Mickey: "I'm Mickey Donovan."
Ezra: "I know who you are. You've been tormenting me. Come in."
DIVORCE
The people are, predictably enough, terrible. The man can't stop talking about how ugly she was before plastic surgery -- and therefore how ugly their kids turned out! -- and she just keeps screaming about penis pumps. "Fine, write that down!" he yells, like it makes him look better somehow.
"For Sale: Penis pump, barely used." -- John Steinbeck
Lena texts to let Ray know she has found the car, but the lack of extra information tells us she probably hasn't had a chance to give the car itself a full review, or else there would at least be an exclamation point. Or maybe an emoji, like a tiny picture of a dead man, or a laughing octopus inside a car trunk. XX for the eyes, maybe.
EZRA
Ezra: "I admit, it was a misspent youth. I feel terrible about sending you to jail for twenty years. But Sean shot the girl with your gun, high on your drugs... And Ray said you'd stolen a bunch of money anyway. You'd probably be dead, if it weren't for us."
Mickey: "I am not at a place to be grateful for that. Tell me one true thing, Ezra."
Ezra: "That we all die."
Mickey: "Okay, that was a good one. And I guess you're right, stealing Sully's money was my death warrant. I did it for Claudette, my one true love. I mean, I loved the mother of my four other children, enough to mourn her passing, but I will never be over Claudette. Have you ever fucked a black girl, Ezra?"
Ezra: "Once. At the 1968 Democratic National Convention."
I don't know why that tickled me so much. I guess anything Elliott Gould says is automatically a hundred times better than if anybody else said it. He continues to say -- just as his mistress is bringing in a snack tray -- that he knows about one true loves. His recently dead wife Ruth, if you hadn't noticed, was a big deal to him. To the point where he never really loved Tasha Yar -- she puts down the snacks and leaves. Which is my main thing of not sleeping with married guys, because it's like, He didn't marry you, why are you whining about him not loving you enough? You already knew that.
Mickey doesn't care about that at all, though: He's more interested in the picture of Ray and Ezra, in their tuxedos, back when everybody was young. Not because he missed out on seeing the man Ray became, of course, but because he is still stuck in his twenty-years-ago life, wishing he could be a big shot. Jealous like Ray took his life away. I mean, they did, but not in the way he means now.
DIVORCE COUPLE
Continues to be horrible. Finally Lee asks for a sidebar with the woman's attorney -- who actually loses her composure at one point and tells the husband to go fuck himself -- and they leave Ray alone with the woman who scratched his face. (The man stomped away before.)
Ray: "You know the score here, you know my job. That amount of money you're talking about does not compare to the world of hurt they're going to make me put you in."
Lady: "That makes me act sexy and weird."
Ray: "Stop flirting with me and sign this thing. He already knows you're fucking somebody, but he doesn't know it's his brother. Do you want things to get worse or not?"
HOME
Abby is still crying even after her post-yoga shower. She lights a cigarette in bed, which is very gross and retro of her (I can't even imagine people smoking indoors!) and then stomps around the house some more in her towel.
DREXEL
Lee: "Well, whatever you said worked. Not that I'm feeling grateful, just happy. On another note, I realize that things with Ezra are getting weird for both of us, in different ways. I want you to come to me if you want to talk about anything."
Ray is less than grateful for this olive branch, which sets Lee off again. And the final thing on the docket is, crackhead mom is still holding out on Marvin Gaye's paperwork, so Lee sends Ray out to "finish the job." Good Lord, what can that mean? I hate this gross storyline. I don't mind the Bridget part, but the whole thing of these rich white guys moving dumb black guys around like chess pieces is way too real -- and not entertaining to watch, from their side of the table.
AFTER SCHOOL
By the time they get home, Abby's gone -- pizza money on the table -- and so Bridget, who is not dressed in a fashion befitting a young lady from the class to which their family claims to aspire, invites MGW out for pizza. Conor, denied a trip to the "batting cages," persists in his belief that Bridget is a "fucktard." For a young fellow recently barred from playing Xbox, his priorities have shifted bizarrely pastward.
"Left alone on a sunny afternoon? Huzzah! I think I'll take my hoop and stick out for a jaunt around the cul-de-sac. Now just where did I leave my shortpants?"
TERRY
Calls Frances's place of work, and learns she is not in fact home-nursing today. His poor heart drops like clearly this is a sign of the coming apocalypse and not, you know, something that you say when by "work" you mean "the whole rest of my life that is not about you." Luckily, he's got her cell number.
Frances: "Hey there, Love God!"
Terry: "I thought you were working."
Frances: "Got off early. Can we get together soon but not today? Like normal dating?"
Terry: "...I guess that we are not in love after all."
What he doesn't know is that she's pulling up at her suburban-type house that a single person would probably not live in. I guess that she is married and has kids, and that she is slumming. Which is horrible because Terry is great in many ways, but also not a huge problem because at the end of the day Terry is a sexy goblin that lives in a shower drain.
RAY & EZRA
Ray has brought a friend -- an off-duty cop, Steve Davis -- to investigate the car and, should it prove to contain a random dead man, fix the problem. I can't imagine being a cop in the LAPD and also being an associate of Ray Donovan. Not because of the LAPD's sterling reputation, but just because it seems like adding a huge amount of stress to your regular amount of stress, and for what? I guess money. It's always money.
Meanwhile, what Ezra and Mickey have been doing... Oh my God it's so great I can't even pay attention to what they're talking about. They've been going around the yard collecting greenery for Ezra to arrange in a vase on the patio. Lilies and a bird of paradise and then, from Mickey, some sprays of tree blossoms. Fantastic. I had a hopeful feeling they would bond, but nothing like this. It's like seeing a unicorn, prancing around at a high-stakes poker game.
It's a story about how and why Mickey came to Jesus in the joint, which involves a man being hit in the head with a stick until his eyeball popped out: At that point, much like the eyeball man, Mickey's perspective changed. He realized that he needed to get the hell out of jail and name every name he could think of.
Ezra: "And you're still feeling that way now? But why must you be the one holding the stick? Why is it danger and violence, even now that you're free? What do you even want?"
Mickey: "To tell you the truth I don't even know yet."
Which is very interesting, but not as interesting as Ezra's thing, which is that he sees Mickey slowly turning into a creature made of rocks and mud and given life: "The Golem! You're the Golem!"
Mickey is concerned, as I think anyone would be when that kind of shit starts up, and Tasha Yar takes Ezra back inside, still screaming about the Golem. (As I think anyone would be, again; to be fair, seeing Jon Voight turn into a mossy monster out of legend is maybe one of the worst things you can see as it turns out. Yikes.)
On the lot, in the trunk of Ezra's car they find a giant log. It pisses off Steve the Cop, and then Ray goes around to the front of the car: You can actually see where Ezra drove into the tree, and put the whole stupid story together. "What was the point of tying me up in this crap for half of this episode?" he wonders, never knowing that it's so Mickey would have the chance and a reason to turn into a Golem.
ABBY & ASHLEY
Are both listening to the same song on the radio -- Carly Simon's "The Right Thing To Do" -- as Abby drives, presumably to the very apartment in which Ashley is boredly dancing around and completing her terrible blood art.
COMPTON
Actually Ray's listening to it too. These are some Carly Simon-listening motherfuckers, it's maybe the one thing I respect so far besides Ray's gravitas and general way of being. He calls Lena to get the car picked up and repaired, and she pushes back when he asks for an extra grand this month for their cop buddy Steve, but doesn't ask for more. The song and the call both end as he's driving up to the crackhead's house, and when he pushes on the door it swings wide. Never a good sign, especially when it's crackheads.
...Yep, there they are. One dead dude on the floor, crackhead mom dead in a chair: Apparently, this suggests to Ray that she was mouthin' off about the payout, given that she is not dead from crack but in fact a bullet hole in her chest. Man, I thought her life couldn't get worse! But it did.
Avi: "That sucks but listen! I found Van Miller's address!"
Ray: "I have just enough hope in me to think maybe that will provide a good end to this story. Let's meet up there. I have to see if this bloodstained paperwork is signed."
Good news is, yes. Bad news is, everything about this is gross.
OVER AT HOME
Speaking of MGW, he has a bong shaped like a pistol, and a bottle of Kahlua, and he is dragging the Donovan kids down into perdition! Bridget joins him on the kitchen table and they twerk a little an yike a little, and Conor keeps drinking.
Marvin Gaye Washington is kind of like Pippi Longstocking in a lot of ways.
AT THE OFFICE
Lena hilariously/angrily calls to warn Ray that Abby's there, so I guess we're dealing with that, and he's like, "On my way. Oh, and can you please cut the girl free who is handcuffed to my towel rack?"
VAN MILLER! & RAY & ABBY
Was recording the entire conversation between Mickey and Ezra. In which Sean, Ray and maybe Drexel were all named. That's fascinating. Van tries to get it on the eyeball-popping stick metaphor -- "I'm the one holding the stick" -- and as usual, Mickey tells him to fuck off and just stomps away, which never fails to be delightful because Van always makes the greatest faces when he does it. I am just about tired of not seeing Van Miller all the time.
Meanwhile Avi and Ray search Van's house. Interestingly, he's got a Tommy Wheeler action figure that perches all alone on an occasional table, which is interesting on several levels. Ray stares at it forever, until Avi summons him down to Van Miller's crazy basement where he does his weird Van Miller rituals, with the foamy beer and the jacket and everything.
Over at Ray's office, Abby starts going through whatever files are on top, which in this case is Avi's stuff relating to the Palm Springs trip. Boring! She starts going through his desk drawers, which is kind of astounding that she feels like she can do that. She sees the dossier on the dead priest, doesn't find that interesting either, and then sees the extra key to Ray's secret apartment.
Downstairs, Ray is perturbed by the wall of criminals that includes him and everybody else, and Avi wonders exactly how crazy he's going to go.
BACK HOME
Bridget: "What does it mean that my father bought you?"
MGW: "Something about my mom being a crackhead. It's not racist, but in another worse way it totally is."
Upstairs, Conor is trying on his dad's clothes and watches when he suddenly starts barfing pizza and Kahlua everywhere.
LA APT
Ashley: "You're hot! Have you fucked him?"
Lena: "I know, I'm hot. It actually gets boring hearing that."
Ashley: "Don't cut me loose! He'll be really mad at us both."
Lena: "Change in plans, you need to come with me right now to meet up with him."
Ashley: "But I haven't finished my gross blood art! I'm taking this deodorant."
Out in the hallway, Ashley suddenly decides that Lena is lying and -- not that she's in terrible danger, which I hope to God she is -- but that she needs to stick to the plan of never leaving his apartment. Lena slams her against the wall by her hair, and explains the new situation that they are in: If she doesn't shut up and stop acting crazy, she will punch her in the head. "You can't hit me!" Ashley giggles, "I have epilepsy!" So Lena punches her in the epilepsy, and she goes sprawling.
I do not support violence against women in real life, because humans don't, and I think that in our entertainment it must be very meticulously earned if you're going to go there. I don't think having your androgynous lesbian assistant do the punching is necessarily a buyback. But none of that stuff matters, because whatever my feelings are about gender and violence in general, I very much do support the shutting up of stupid fucking Ashley, however that gets accomplished. Hit her again, hell. One to grow on.
FRANCES'S HOUSE
In his attempt to fuck everything up as quickly as possible, Terry shuffles down her street with a bouquet in his hands, just in time to see -- and yes, her husband and teenage son -- drive away in her car. His heart is broken, of course, but he only had to cross about ten lines to find this out, so it's kind of on him. I sure hope nothing absolutely terrible happens that might change our perception of Terry Donovan!
BUNCHY'S HOUSE
Even though he has a million dollars, Bunchy is still not comfortable enough as an adult man to go through the proper channels, so he's visiting quasi-teardowns in the middle of the night with a realtor who does not seem, um, at the top of his field. This is exactly the kind of shit Ray was talking about. First a bike, then a two-story house with a giant living room and no security system. At this rate he'll be broke by morning.
It is astonishing how much this show has managed to make all three of these boys... No, Mickey too. Even Abby. This whole family so heartbreaking. It's like they snuck it in while pretending to be a silly show about silly things. That's the best way to do it, probably. But I sure won't forget Terry and Bunchy Donovan any time soon.
EZRA
As Ezra's sitting down to a tureen of soup, presumably not made for him by the multiply-jilted Tasha Yar -- and thus probably containing a glove, or an uncooked potato he imagined was leftovers from a Sunday roast -- Ray enters without prelude.
Ray: "Everything is going crazy and we have many problems. Van Miller's basement..."
Ezra: "Your father visited and you know what? He's kind of great. I like him a lot."
Ray: "What on Earth did you talk about?"
Ezra: "Life, love..."
Ray: "Oh my God. My patience with your bullshit is at an all-time low. I need you to hear me when I say again, Tell me every fucking thing you said to him."
Ezra: "I literally cannot. As it turns out, I have a brain tumor and it's killing me."
Well, that takes the wind right out of Ray's sails. What an inconvenient time for cancer.
LATER
Abby investigates the cave, the bachelor pad, the shrine to Marilyn and broken dolls -- while back home, Bridget and MGW make out on her bed. Abby sees the handcuffs and the beginning of Ashley's blood art, and is mystified. Conor grunts and wigs out on the floor of Ray's closet, maybe having alcohol poisoning.
Abby checks out what's under the sheets of Ray's bed, which is not something I would do, and then picks up the stack of pictures on the nightstand: Bridget, Bridget, Bridget. All those lost and broken dolls.
Mickey's riding the bike around the gym when Terry gets home: They're drunk, celebrating Bunchy having bought a sketchy house in the middle of the night. Terry is in no mood!
RAY
Drunker and drunker at a bar, Ray is bummed out by the news about two dead crackheads in Compton that ne didn't report. Bummed enough that he's feeling sort of nihilistic by the time he heads over to Ashley's, fucks her without very much affection, and then stumbles back to the cave, where he drinks even more and thinks about the hilariously on-the-nose symbolism of a contract covered in blood. Like a mirror.
A wristwatch plus some overblown music plus drinking way too much adds up to him breaking down in sobs. When she comes around the corner, looking every bit as put together as he does torn apart, his face instantly recovers, back into that cold front he always gives when somebody, even her, can see him. Back to the Golem.
"...Who the fuck are you, Ray?"
But she doesn't want the answer, she just knows the lady told her to be afraid. She doesn't know that the more she tries to answer the question, the more he's forced to follow along behind, erasing it. He almost got rid of it, tonight; the weight. Van Miller gave us something new to fight, Mickey Donovan is worth killing to save his little brothers, but nobody warned him about the cancer. He was afraid of the dementia because it was taking Ezra away, but at least that was natural age: This is uninvited death, coming at an inopportune time, smearing misery across his life as it goes.
WEEK
While Avi and Ray continue looking for information about Van Miller -- and Abby tries to figure out what all the weird stuff at the LA apartment and office were about, and whether the dead priest is related to Bunchy's problems -- Bunchy and Mickey set up house. Ray immediately bars the whole family from going over there, so of course they immediately head over there, and it seems like this actual try at moving his household out of his house snaps Ray into action: The trailer ends with a gun to Mickey's head, with Abby and the kids standing by in horror. Pretty good stuff, looks like.
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.