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After an FBI contact confirms that Van Miller is after him, Ray sends Avi and that crooked cop to deal with him. A great sequence of Avi drugging Van, and Van's few hallucinatory hours, are a series highlight: Monkeys in business suits, living action figures crawling the walls, it's great. In the end, once he's calmed down, Van calls Ray to tell him he won't be intimidated, which means Ray has to escalate.
Meanwhile, Ezra has fled his brain surgery, and Ray finds him on the street in a hospital gown, trying to buy dogs off a dogwalker: As it turns out, he's afraid of leaving the world without demonstrating his affection for his mistress Deb, after spending the first half of the season doing so many things in his dead wife's honor. It's sweet, and you get the real sense of Ezra and Mickey being the two sides of Ray/Everyman's passionately ambivalent Dad Coin more strongly than ever: However vulnerable Ezra is in his little hospital gown, that's exactly how terrifying Mickey is for Ray.
Leading up to this, though, is the main storyline of the episode: Bunchy's crummy new house. Ray puts his foot down immediately about nobody from the family visiting him and Mickey's new digs, so of course the family immediately finds reasons to be there. Abby takes them décor and shares a pretty heartbreaking moment with Bunchy about all his demons coming out; the kids join the housewarming party -- along with Marvin Gaye Washington and the secretly married Nurse Frances, whom Terry can't quite let go and refuses to confront. (MGW and Frances also dance together, which is kind of epic.)
All effed up on drugs and feeling "punished" by Ray for not coming to the housewarming, Bunchy's last straw comes -- as you knew it would -- when Mickey forces him once again into a sexual situation with one of the Twerk Twins from a while back. (There's also a weird moment early on when Bunchy tells Abby that Ray blames Mickey for his molestation, which seems like is a clue to more things we don't know, like the whole Bridget story.) He ends up trying to burn down the whole embarrassing "shithole," which somehow was the saddest part, and that's when Terry summons Ray to pick up the kids...
But Ray, who has spent all day wrangling Deonte and the FBI agent, has no time for Mickey's (more charming every week) bullshit, and -- stressed over Ezra's deterioration -- puts a gun to his father's head. Alienated and freaked out, the kids won't even look him in the eye, so Terry goes full Middle Child on his ass and takes care of the entire situation, sending him back to the hospital and caring for the Donovan kids himself.
After the surgery a laid-up Ezra finally shows his darker, noir side when he explains they are running out of time, and it's time to kill Mickey, because the Feds aren't backing off. And while Ray has proven to himself he's not capable of taking Mickey out, they both know who to call: James Woods, who pops up in the hour's final seconds with an interesting home life all his own.
Any episode so clearly Bunchy-heavy was going to be important, but the paranoid humor of the Van Miller scenes, and the grace of Ray's complex relationship with Ezra, put this one over the top. The fact that someone in the show's universe has more reason to kill Mickey than Ray -- and that it means adding James Woods to the already legendary Gould/Voight axis -- is a surprise twist that could end up putting Mickey and Ray eventually on the same side. He is a dangerous cat. But on the downside, I can't see Van Miller surviving the season, which is too bad because he is more wonderful every week.
Week: Ray heads to Boston to settle old scores and meet up with James Woods, while back home Mickey steps up his stalking of Sean Walker, that oblivious yoga-panted actor guy that killed the girl to begin with. Abby continues taking care of Ezra's mistress Deb, and it looks like Ray maybe works on reconciling with the fam after this week's dramatically poor showing.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!PREVIOUSLY
Ezra has been hallucinating the Golem everywhere he goes, but it turns out his dementia is related less to the death of his wife and more to the full-on brain tumor he's cookin'. Ray and Avi are on the trail of my beloved FBI agent Van Miller, whose future is looking darker and darker. Poor brother Bunchy bought a sad sack house while out on a sad sack bicycle ride, while other poor brother Terry discovered that his perfectly wonderful lover Nurse Frances is secretly married, with a teenage son. Abby visited Ray's home-away in LA and turned up some disturbing stuff, but Ray was too drunk and distraught to explain himself, as though he would anyway.
THE MARINA
Ray strides out onto the docks, eventually pushing a burly FBI guy named Frank into the water.
Ray: "It is my assumption that you are related to the FBI investigation into my affairs, which directly contradicts the nature of our fiscal relationship!"
Frank: "It is very cold in this water! And I told you, we haven't had shit on you in years."
Ray: "Then who is this adorable man that got my father out of jail?"
Frank: "Uh oh. That's Van Miller. He is crazy as hell, but also like a fox. You are in trouble deep."
Ray: "How deep?"
Frank: "Deeper than this marina you just threw me in, which was very rude by the way! I wish that I could help, but Van's something of a freelancer when he gets going on one of his weird deals."
BREAKFAST
Abby: "With nothing else to bitch about, I'm returning to the topic of you dating that boy down the street. I don't like it! Stop texting!"
Bridget: "Save it, Ma."
Conor: "Can we go to Bunchy's housewarming of his sad gross house?"
Ray: "Firstly you are grounded. Secondly, nobody is going to that house. It claims to be Bunchy's gross, sad house but really it is Mickey's den of iniquity."
Abby: "I can't wait to immediately go to that house then, so we'll have something to fight about."
Ray: "And if Mickey calls any of you again, let me know. He is off-limits."
Everybody: (Immediately calls Mickey on their phones, because Ray's life is tough.)
Abby gets the kids out the door -- with a hilariously adorable and relatable reminder to teen boy Conor to put on his deodorant -- and starts in on Ray about how come he has a dossier on a dead priest and also what is with the handcuffs and bloody mirror in his apartment.
Abby: "And where were you? Why are your pants wet? The marina, huh? You buyin' a boat?"
Ray: "Just the way that you said that was somehow vicious. You are the worst."
Abby: "I am! I am THE WORST!"
She bitches him all the way out the door, and goes on about her day. Surely there's a waiter or pregnant lady she can punch in the face, somewhere in Calabasas. At least until Mickey calls, which should be in about five minutes.
EZRA
Ezra is not really paying attention while the doctor explains his surgery -- a flap in the skull, to zap a spot behind his frontal sinus -- so Deb the Mistress has to explain it to him again once the doctor is gone. The best part is the exceedingly cute Elliot Gould-ishness of this line: "What are they doing? Are they shaving my head? I pride myself on my hair! You know that!" And she's like, "Yes, sweetheart. I do know that." But even then, all he wants is Ray.
This episode is neat because it brings into relief a thing I have been wondering about. When you get the basic idea -- Mickey shows up to ruin his life -- it definitely goes to the Sopranos place that hits the Showtime demographic in its sweet spot, which is to say: Who can't identify with somebody whose parents are a fucking hassle? Baby Boomers have pioneered new ways to resent their parents (and children) -- it's one of their favorite ways of being icky.
But as with that show, and as with Baby Boomers themselves, it's secretly much better than that, because it's more about resenting what comes with the hassle of the parents: The illness, the needs, the sadness, the complicated relationship. And so just like how sad it was when Uncle Junior or Livia Soprano got sick and vulnerable, you have here two sides of the coin: Mickey is everything they hate and fear about their parents' power, and Ezra is the misery and sense of loss. Their sweetness. So my original concern -- is this ripping anything off or are we actually on new ground here -- is off the table, although I still think the show is neither as interesting nor as bad-ass as it seems to think it is. But it's good ground to tread, especially seeing as how we've got a showrunner/creator who is a woman -- not to mention a queer recapper, of a younger generation -- observing all of this from the outside (of certain dynamics).
And, too, you see bits of Ezra Goodman ("Goodman," okay) that are hard along with those that are soft. So much of this show is about the way we take our training in masculinity, whereas The Sopranos took place at a time when the cultural conversation was coming out of a period of being all about this "generation without fathers," Iron John beat-the-drum kind of stuff. It's all valid, I'm not laughing at anybody, but it's interesting to me that Ezra was such a mentor for Ray in the good parts of being a man, and too mentored him in the ways of being a socially validated gangster.
Ray seems to be dealing with two different lives, two different fathers, two different kinds of manhood, but -- like how Big Love was always secretly in part about being married to one woman with different faces -- his journey is defined by them both being true: One father, one relationship, happening in two universes. Maybe if there were another Abby in here we could understand her better. (Or is that Lena? She keeps her trap shut and she's barely ever around, which seems like Ray's perfect wife).
CHEZ BUNCHY
Bunchy's house: Even more appalling in daylight. Poor kid. Of all the boys on this show trying to be men (which is all of them) he's the one with the most right to adulthood and the least amount of tools to get there. This kid is gonna kill me.
Mickey: "Your little SNAP group really come through! Three couches. Gotta give those Snappers credit."
Bunchy: "No amount of couches is going to make this a better decision."
Mickey: "But we can certainly try. Hey, let's spend even more of your money that you feel down to the bottom of your soul is tainted!"
Bunchy: "You know what, it occurs to me that Ray is going to be pissed at me blowing my money on something this stupid. Considering he wanted to help me not do exactly that."
Mickey: "You're right! Let's call his wife up and badger her into getting implicated."
Abby: "Oh boy. What now."
Mickey: "You know how Bunchy is the best? I need you to involve yourself in something that will piss your husband off worse than any bullshit thing either of us has ever done."
Abby: "You got it, buddy!"
But what's most appalling is how he sells it, this whole thing -- which is 100 percent true, not that it matters to Mickey -- about how Bunchy's fragile and freaking out and guilty about his entire life and burning through his money as quickly as possible because it weighs so heavily on him. That's how he gets you, you know what I mean?
VAN'S DINER
The waitress tries to be sweet with Van Miller, asking about his new suit and everything, but she doesn't really register with him as human because he is Van Miller and she is just some waitress, so without even a hello he launches into his out-of-control OCD shit -- "I would like the turkey chili, a bread bowl and a Polish sausage, sliced lengthwise down the middle" -- and makes this complicated order and then arranges all his stuff in his weird way, newspaper creased just right et cetera.
Avi sits down to him and orders a coffee, and then things become super awesome as he doses his own coffee with what we'll learn is LSD, carefully follows Van's lead in cream-and-sugaring it, and then at the height of Van's fussiness manages to distract him long enough to switch them. It is hot! I love it when this show is for-real clever.
If there is a season, I hope for two things: More Chloe, and more of this where the stuff is actually awesome instead of just jazz-hands awesome. Like when they switched Deonte and Tommy in the pilot, that was not as great as they thought it was, but this -- or when Ray just waltzed into that hotel room and started grabbing bugs -- is amazing.
Sidebar: my friend Emily blew my mind this week when she pointed out that one of the best characters on my favorite show, The Fosters, is played by the same actor as Chloe -- only Wyatt is a high school sophomore bad-boy(ish) with a tender young heart who plays one of the love interests of the main character. Ten years younger and an entirely separate gender -- and a lot more hair -- but the exact same beauty, and that graceful dignity. Very weird to think of them both at once, and of course a huge testament to the actor because they have literally zero similarities other than that: I know Sam Underwood is having a moment of late, but watch out for this Alex Saxon. He is a powerhouse.
DEONTE, SPEAKING OF
He explains very gamely that the reason he is fucking the young lady in this hotel room in the keester is that they do not know each other very well. Deonte, he is a gentleman.
Whore: "NBA stars gotta be careful, huh?"
Deonte: "I appreciate that you understand and respect my boundaries."
Meanwhile, Van Miller begins to hallucinate at work: His desk, in a neat effect, ripples like water when he touches it. Of course, half the reason this is wonderful is the faces his face makes while this is happening, and the slow-burn of knowing it will only get more amazing.
Lena: "Ray, Deonte is fucking a hooker in the butt."
Ray: "Of course he is. Fatherhood has really matured him."
Lena: "Also, this particular limo driver seems to be linked to a rash of NBA baby mama drama."
Ray immediately calls Deonte to stop whatever he is doing and by all means not to ejaculate, but sadly things have progressed to the point where he has no choice. The gal spits his semen in a specimen jar -- a trick she must have learned at finishing school -- and sets it outside the room in the champagne bucket, where the limo driver has been patiently waiting for it.
(It is at this point that Van Miller, splashing cold water on his face in the FBI washroom, is treated to an adorable monkey in a suit -- complete with laminated badge -- who comes out of a stall, chirps at him, washes its hands with soap, and dries them before hopping away. You know, like how when you take LSD things like this happen.)
On his way (late) to the hotel, Deb calls about Ezra, and Ray promises to get there soon; out in the FBI hallway, Van starts going very internal and -- once the monkey has scampered off into the bright white light of infinity -- starts weirding out his coworkers (including Frank, the big guy from the Marina, who may or may not have assumed that Van Miller was about to have a very weird and/or scary day).
But worry not! The real plan of Ray is to wait in the backseat of the limo until he has secured the semen in the trunk, then strangle him until he opens the trunk, warning him that while NBA semen is the man's stock in trade, certain ejaculating morons such as Deonte Brown are off limits. That seems like a fair compromise.
VAN
Steve the Crooked Cop, last seen investigating Ezra's murder of a tree stump, is the one to pull Van Miller over. It is amazing.
Steve: "Do you have any idea how fast you were going, sir?"
Van: "...100?"
Steve: "No."
Van: "200?"
Steve: "No, you were going three. You seem under the weather."
Van: "I am having a terrible day."
Steve: "Sir, have you been drinking?"
Van, awesomely: "I had... a small amount of orange juice at my home, and one cup of coffee with two Equals and some cream."
Steve: "I'm going to have to perform a few tests, sir."
Van: "...You have an incredible voice. A truly remarkable voice."
Oh, Van Miller. You never disappoint.
DEONTE
While Mickey welcomes Abby, loaded down with Target bags and home décor, Ray is busting down the door of Deonte's hotel room and tossing the chick out.
Deonte: "Ass and mouth, dawg! I protected myself!"
Ray: "Then why do I have in my hand a jar of your semen?"
Deonte: "That is a salient question at any time, dawg."
Ray: "How many kids do you have, Deonte?"
Deonte names them all, proudly -- it's a dumb "Jermajesty"-type joke, but whatever works -- and Ray calls his wife so she can scream at him on speaker while they continue to hash this out: Essentially, how can a man who made thirty million last year keep being so idiotic? Deonte has no real answer. He promises not to be an idiot, but that's not a promise you can make. There's a neat button as Ray's leaving, where the scene cuts just as Deonte answers the phone with a bright "...Babe! Hey!" It's well-acted, and hilariously edited.
VAN
As Deb returns to the hospital room to find that the increasingly spooked Ezra's vanished from his bed, good old Van finally makes it home.
He takes careful steps toward the kitchen, hopping over a hot-lava area, and then down to his lair, which has been lightly tossed: All his off-brand action figures are scattered on the floor, far from their careful shelf at the foot of the stairs. Van crawls on his hands and knees to pick them up and put them back in their packaging -- "oh my friend, my friend" -- and then they start attacking. Slicing with their little plastic knives, riding around on motorcycles, crawling up the walls. It's a little terrifying.
I wonder if part of this is about connecting back to Tommy Wheeler and/or Sean Walker, the action stars in other parts of the show? How amazing would that be if this is all about his obsession with one of them and that's somehow why he hates Ezra and Lee and Ray so much. I am going to think about this forever and ever.
CHEZ BUNCHY
As Abby's setting out a lovely vase of flowers, dusting off the table in her last staging activities, Mickey and the boys come home. Terry isn't sure that Nurse Frances -- last seen going out for dinner with her secret family -- can attend, but Bunchy's more interested in Abby, meaning Ray.
Abby: "I wish we could! It's uh, movie night..."
Bunchy tries to recover, but his chin goes right to his chest. Even Mickey feels bad for him, but in his way expresses this by roughly reminding him to thank Abby for all her hard work in turning this into -- I'd say -- one-third of the shithole it was when she got there. She feels just terrible about it too, you can tell. Of course she does.
She sends the boys upstairs with the rest of the stuff she brought, and when Mickey starts on her about "movie night" she shoots him such a "give me a fucking break" that he laughs and immediately lays off. I love their scenes together, she's such a smart, tough broad with him. Like you can tell how perfect and charming she would be, dealing with the old guys back in Southie. He clowns around, and she rewards him with a laugh.
VAN
Is still under his desk when Avi and Ray arrive. Ray's weirded out by the action figures, and then they turn on the lovely recessed lighting and -- this was awesome, all Van things are awesome -- slide the desk across the floor to reveal him, curled up and crazed.
Ray: "You're having a bad day, aren't ya pal? What's with the toys, Van? You got like a Hollywood fetish going on, or something? You want one of these guys to fuck you? Or like beat you up?"
Van: "Maybe?"
Aww. Oh, honey. Please, please be Tommy Wheeler or Sean Walker! Tommy would just go wide-eyed and run his fingers through his hair like what is he supposed to do with this, and Sean's such an oblivious narcissist he'd probably be down for some mouth-is-a-mouth action and never even lose that clueless, dazed half-smile. Either way, it would be so great. Anything for more Van. And anything to explore this very-LA -- but also very-everywhere -- fact about dudes. You can get away with spectrum-of-sexuality stuff in a Hollywood story, because of Bret Ellis and also because it is true, but try moving that story to say, the South, and it stops making sense. I've got West-Texas stories that would blow your hair back, but I don't tell them because they are impossible to believe.
Anyway, they show him the sobriety video, which was the real quarry here, and snip a lock of his LSD-laced hair to boot. Because what he needed was to look just a little bit crazier. Van promises he's not up to anything -- wall of crossed-out criminals to the contrary -- and Ray crouches down to look into his eyes: "Hold my hands." He does, rather gratefully, and Avi gives him a B-shot, and they leave: When he comes down, they can chat about what happens . They give him an action figure to cuddle, turn out the lights, but do not slide the desk back on top of him, so he rolls over and gets fetal.
they give him a B-shot and leave him there, asking to please call once he comes down.
BUNCHY'S BEDROOM
While Abby finishes up his bedroom -- which is just as little-boy as you'd fear -- Bunchy's still trying to figure out why Ray won't come to his housewarming: Is it because he bought the house? I mean, she's not going to tell him Ray is pissed about that, because there's no point and of course he is -- I'm pissed at him about it, and I'm a real person in real life -- but she does joke around: "Fucking Conor wouldn't shut up about it! He's been texting me all day like Please please please please please."
It's as dorky as you think, and twice as sweet. Anybody but Ray, I just love her so much. She admits there's no movie night, and tries to explain that it's about Mickey. Bunchy sees this as an unfair punishment for somebody else's bad behavior, and Abby's not entirely being indulgent when she half-heartedly agrees, because she thinks Ray's anti-Mickey stance is almost as arbitrary as Bunch does. Then the temperature suddenly changes.
Bunchy: "He thinks it's Mickey's fault that I got molested. You know he tried it on Terry? Terry broke his fucking hand. Ray would've done it too, if he tried anything... I was a fighter, why didn't I try to stop him? I thought I wanted it to happen."
Abby: "That's what monsters do. That's how they get you."
But it's like, sometimes you can't think about thinking. You can't feel about feeling. He has all this guilt and shame and the bit of brainwashing manipulation he's talking about, and you can say those things aren't real but of course they are real, on that level. She treats him just right, even touches him in a safe place, but soon enough he's wiping his eyes and laughing at himself. And Abby, not quite gratefully, not quite relieved, returns to finishing up the room.
But if you've ever had a zit, you know this part of it. Where it hurts but not enough to do anything with it yet, so then it's all you can think about. And the more you think about it, look at it, the more ready it looks. Which is how you know this party is not going to go well. This is just the first admission of the encouraging/frightening fact that he's doing the work on his own, thinking about it outside Group, and -- once Mickey adds drugs and drinking and whores, which you know he's going to -- that car's gonna start going faster than Bunchy can control it.
Which, is all this is: we get all confused because of issues of consent and weirdness around sexuality and self-hatred and self-harm and all of these things, but that's part of being exploited that we take that guilt on for ourselves. The truth is that this experience is nothing more than learning to drive a car that just happens to be moving already.
The good news is, if you manage not to crash, you end up driving home. Somewhere safe, that was there the whole time.
DONOVAN KIDS
When Conor gets home, Marvin Gaye Washington is tickling and making out with Bridget on the couch. Conor is in no mood for their shenanigans -- last thing that happened when Pippi Longstocking over here showed up was that he barfed on fifty grand worth of watches and got grounded -- but Bridget's more interested in fighting with him about whose fault it is they can't go to Bunchy's party, because they don't understand Ray's rationale any better than the grownups do. Pippi pipes up and points out that both parents are gone, so why not just go?
I like this portrait of the household, actually. I used to yell at my parents whenever I'd go home because what would happen is, they would tell my little brother to take out the garbage, and maybe he would or maybe he wouldn't, but they would get busy with other things, and then by the time things had gone too far in the garbage department, they would FLIP OUT on him. Now everybody's feelings are hurt. And it's like, "I get that it's annoying, but if you can't hold yourself to the routine how do you expect a kid to change for it?"
Not that they were in the wrong, he was being ADD and a lazy little shit for sure, but the whole thing is like, everybody is now miserable. If you want him to take out the garbage, be present for that happening. Enforcing a rule haphazardly every 4 to 11 days is not going to get you results, it's just going to create friction (and frankly, one more reason for him to ignore you). Parenting isn't politics, it's behavioral science: Do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy?
My parents LOVE it when I drop by and give them these pearls of parenting wisdom, by the way. It is their favorite thing I do. Which, whatever, as long as they're happy -- and the garbage actually gets taken out -- what do I care if they think I'm a dick? (<-- Also my entire Theory of Parenting, pretty much.)
EZRA
Is bothering a sassy dog walker, because he thinks that he is selling the dogs, because there used to be a pet store here on this city street. Is he wearing a hospital gown? Yes. Is his sweet little old-man butt hanging out of it? Not until the end of the scene, but you've got the right idea.
Ray extricates the guy and sits Ezra down to talk about what the fuck he's doing today. Turns out, Ezra's plan was actually pretty cogent: he wants to get Deb a dog -- "I don't even like dogs!" -- because he might die in surgery, and has spent the last five episodes going crazy about his wife's funeral and foundation and all that stuff, while poor Deb has been absolutely fabulous with it. So, he's actually right. He just needed to be wearing pants, and not skipping out on his surgery.
They settle into a quiet, sweet moment, and all you can hear is how scared Ray is and how much he loves Ezra, and it's these moments with Ezra that really sell you on the wholeness of Ray. Like, of course Schreiber is awesome and of course I have a soft spot for Ray's intelligence and his whole White Knight deal, and trying to deal with two dads at once, I'm down for the whole thing. He has an "everybody gets out alive" ethos that speaks very much to me. But it's when you see the way he treats Ezra, or Lena -- or Chloe, really -- you can see who he really is: How neat he could and would be, if people would just stop fucking it up. He's so much closer to his best self than he probably himself realizes.
You know, we really don't spend enough time talking about Ray. But I think that's because he doesn't spend enough time doing much besides enforcing (and being on the phone all the time).
CHEZ BUNCHY
Bunchy's kind of bummed out and stressing about the party when Mickey returns -- from the similarly obsolete Radio Shack, aww -- and Mickey swings into a pretty lovable "let's talk about how great Abby is" distraction that ends up heading wicked south wicked swiftly, when Bunchy bristles at the idea that he shouldn't mess up his third day of sobriety by drinking, and then starts drinking.
He does it in such a way -- "I'm old enough to buy my own house" -- that Mickey can't fight him on it without fucking him up further, but you also know that Mickey thinks all of this sobriety and recovery stuff is namby-pamby nonsense, so he wouldn't fight it too hard anyway.
Cut to the kids driving to the party, giggling at their tiny subversion, and when we get back Bunchy's coked up and Mickey's dancing with the Twerk Twins from the other night. They congratulate him on his house, and then we swing to Terry, who is shocked into silence by Nurse Frances's arrival.
He thinks really hard about asking her what the fuck is going on, and then admits that he's just happy to see her. Oh, Terry. Me too, because she is amazing and I love her too, but damn. You know -- especially with her obsessive attention to the Bernadette tattoo -- that he was picturing something pretty close to her real life, sharing that with her. So she's not just lying, she took something away: Just like Bunchy, he wanted something he couldn't have, and now he's stuck with a half-assed shithole version of the real thing. But he loves her, so he'll take it for now.
EZRA
Ray's getting nervous because they can't put Ezra under during the surgery -- I like to think it's so he can shout out the memories and smells they are activating when they poke his brain ("Niagara Falls! A Dodgers game! Grapefruit!"), but I assume it's just to make sure he isn't getting lased in the important bits -- but the nurses ask him to step the fuck off, and Ezra groans that he won't tell them any secrets, and then he's out the door.
HOUSEWARMING
Mickey gamely lets a neighborhood dude into the party in a pretty cool, old-smoking-dude way, and then the kids show up. It's adorable and embarrassing and mostly it's racist.
Mickey: "Holy shit, my beauties are here! Princess, where'd you get the little chauffeur?"
Kids: "What in the serious fuck?"
MGW: "Actually this is my car?"
Mickey: "You're still black, aren't you?"
He says it like it's an apology, like "what's the fuss?", but the whole thing is so randomly horrible and would be so impossible to explain to him that they all pick their battles and keep moving smoothly past it. It's going to be so weird and very cool when the "casually racist grandparent" becomes the exception and not the rule, won't it? What a burden lifted for so many of us, in generations to come. He congratulates Conor on bucking the system -- just like Ray, back in the day -- and they head inside for the worst thing.
Bunchy: "Hey! Look who it is! Your mom said you weren't gonna make it, but I knew you were coming. Hey, you want to hear a funny joke?"
Something about his body language, and the fact that Mickey is standing there owl-eyed, made me feel like I knew what was going to happen, and then it does: He starts showing Conor the "half-nelson, full-nelson, Father Nelson" butt-rape joke Mickey likes to tell, where he pretends to rape his son Bunchy.
I had to hit pause for a little bit, because that is the saddest yuckiest thing in the world. Now, Bunchy is blameless and obviously is fucked up on drugs, and there's a huge piece of this that's just trying to figure out how to be avuncular/paternal with a younger guy: Based on Mickey's example, coming into their lives twenty years after Bunchy came of age but effectively still in the middle of Bunchy's adolescence, you can see how he got there.
Problem is, those boundaries are not hard to understand, and the fact that Bunchy is untroubled enough by Mickey doing this to him that he can do it to another person (Conor's not the last person he'll treat to the "joke" tonight, just the youngest and most horrifying) means that it has fallen into the wrong compartment. Fine, he's on drugs. There are probably lots of SNAP-pers here going through their own shit, maybe this is a joke they would laugh at if they were drunk or sad enough.
But I would say also that there is some less-okay stuff going on here where maybe Bunchy feels a little weird around kids. (Specifically, maybe, young men of Conor's age). Not sexy-weird, just guilty-weird: A lot of people who've been in his situation, or even just accused of being abusive out of nowhere, that it becomes this Unwanted Thought thing. Like, because he's so magnetized to the idea of sexual abuse, it pops into his head whenever it comes up, even with no personal desire to actually do it. Kid = irrational fear of something happening = inability to not think of an elephant.
The third option, we're not talking about.
Eventually Mickey gets weirded out enough that he tries to change the subject, but a very labile Bunchy, in absence of remembering the punch line, picks up Conor over his head instead. This makes Mickey even more nervous, because Bunchy's not so steady on his pins, and you start thinking maybe he hasn't seen Bunch this fucked up and just realized he rubbed the lamp and now has to deal with the genie.
Mickey: "All right, mister, you come with me."
Conor: "This house smells funny."
Mickey: "I know, right?"
Terry and Bridget bond over the fact that their respective SO's want to dance, and they do not want to dance, and then -- Heavens to Betsy! -- Nurse Frances and Pippi Gaye Washington head to the dance floor together. It's eye-burningly awkward, which is part of the point, but also extremely wonderful, which is the main part of the point. She really can generate chemistry with anybody, can't she? Like if you thought "This is going to look like an old white lady and a little black kid," you'd be right, and most shows that's what you'd get, but not necessarily in the context of the actors: This is fully and perfectly Nurse Frances -- not Brooke Smith -- cracking herself up trying to Dougie, if you see what I mean. The director caught it just right.
Which is good, because in the background, Bunchy has remembered the joke, and is trying it out on one of his guests. And over on this side, Mickey's doing the "first beer, don't tell your dad" stuff with Conor, followed by extremely crude dick jokes I don't even have time for. He knows enough to know when he's made Conor uncomfortable, though, and is pretty apologetic in his Mickey way, so it works out.
HOSPITAL
Deb's still waiting for Ezra when Ray gets off the phone with a determined Van Miller, who tells him to go fuck himself, which is just sad for everybody. Even Ray is like, "Dude, why? Dang it." He's helpless to help Deb, who is freaking out, but Abby's got her well in hand.
I like how Abby's always so special with Deb. More and more she seems like a maternal figure in some ways -- or at least like a sexy aunt -- to Ezra's fatherly influence. Like, who knows how embroiled she's been, historically, in the Donovans' lives. Was Ruth even a factor, or was it always Deb? The shadow side of Ezra's life, for his adopted son. Abby sure treats her that way, but then we never met Ruth. Maybe it was always awkward, when Ruth was alive, caring about them both. I'm intrigued to think about it, especially because Abby never gets to spend time with women (or being nice, to anybody at all).
HOUSEWARMING
Of course all it takes is a second alone before Mickey introduces the idea of Cinderella taking Bunchy upstairs to "christen" the house -- just like he did with grandma, he tells a delightedly grossed-out Bunch -- and send them upstairs.
So just as a rando is handing Conor a joint downstairs, Bunchy's up there when his Cinderella blowjob turns into a Father Deadguy blowjob, and he freaks out. Cinderella, who seems painfully uninformed about the particulars here, is offended and leaves, and a horrified and embarrassed Bunchy responds to this sudden painful moment of trauma by sobbing and, once his breathing has settled down, setting fire to a Red Sox (Boston, maybe even "sox" = "sex") banner on his wall, and watching it burn.
Downstairs, Terry and Bridget discuss their love lives. Is Frances his girlfriend? He thinks about it: Yeah, that's what she is. That's also all she is, but it's the compromise he can handle this week.
Terry: "What about MGW?"
Bridget: "I think so?"
Terry: "Yeah. He seems really smart."
Bridget, awesome: "Oh my God, honestly? I think he's the smartest person I've ever met. Mom called him ghetto! So offensive! (PS I love it!)"
Terry: "What the hell do you think your dad was, when she met him?"
Which is hilarious because I'm sure it's true, but Ray has adjusted to life so much better than Abby -- who is, let's face it, kind of a pit bull -- that you can barely imagine the class-violating Lady & The Tramp story that ensued. Don't you imagine her with giant mall hair back then?
Anyway, Bunchy comes downstairs looking dicked up, and after a while they realize that the house is on fire, and half the family knows immediately what has basically happened, between the look of him and the fact that he bought a disposable crack den with a hundred couches in the first place.
"Let it burn," he begs Mickey. "Just let it burn," he cries.
There's an evacuation, but it's much too leisurely for Bunchy, who stands in the middle of the living room with tears pouring down his face, screaming, "Just get out, all of you! Get out of fucking my shithole!"
Which again, to me is the saddest part for reasons I'm not sure I can explain, but like: As long as Mickey could keep Bunchy afloat on the idea that this was a palace and somewhere they should be grateful to be living, and Abby could pretty it up and talk about how nice it looked, and everybody could just pretend he was a grownup now, it would be okay. But the second he reveals that he knows what an approximation, pretense, façade the whole thing was: Like he bought a broken bicycle that everybody has been indulgently pretending is a Ferrari... Oh, that just broke my heart. I didn't want him to know.
OUTSIDE
Terry, in his sweetly unassuming way, calls Ray and buries the lede.
Terry: "Uh, Bunchy got real upset, about something, and there's been a small fire."
Ray: "Of course there has. Why is this my problem?"
Terry: "Oh, the fire's under control now, but... Hey look, Conor and Bridget are here."
When Ray pulls up: Mickey's looking worried on the porch, Frances is tending to a balled-up Bunchy passed out in the yard -- his yard -- and Terry still looks beautiful and strong in his little sweater. Ray immediately starts screaming at Conor to get in the car, the better to get domestic on the grownups, but Conor's too stoned to deal, so Ray tosses him in the car and straps him in.
Mickey, "helping": "Ray Ray, take it easy! If you're angry at me, fine. He's just a little boy. Look, I'm sorry I didn't go to more of your football games..."
Even he, I think you can hear it, knows that was shittily blasé enough to get a response. But of course, there's always the huge part of this story where Mickey wants to tempt Ray over the line, into doing something -- maybe anything -- that will prove Ray is scum and/or ruin his life, so maybe that's what this is. Maybe he wants to get shot, hell -- he certainly taunts him about it before Ray drops him.
Either way, Ray's got him on the ground -- hard -- with a gun to his head by the time Bridget gets out of the car so MGW can get the hell away from the shockingly ghetto scene that is occurring, and maybe because she thinks (correctly) that she's one of the few things that will snap Ray out of it.
Several tense moments later, though, the scared kids balk when Ray tries to take them home. He's too scary, too big, too loud. There’s a gun to Mickey's head. And once again, Ray looks like the crazy one. (You spend the whole rest of the scene, even with everything going on, waiting for Jon Voight's sly little smile, in fact, from the ground. FWIW there isn't one, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen). And then Terry steps up in a big way, ten feet tall, with a bark so Fite-Club severe that Ray jerks to a halt.
"Stop. Raymond, I'll take them. Frances has got a car. We'll get 'em home. They'll be fine. But you've got to calm down. And you gotta get out of here."
Ray knows, he knows intellectually but his body also hears, that Terry is right. The kids won't even let him touch them, and flow into Terry's arms the second they can, weeping, and Ray, embarrassed, leaves. He's never looked so much like his dad.
HOSPITAL
When Ezra wakes up, it's with Ray watching him in the dark. Everything about it is beautiful, even if you didn't know about the night Ray's had -- how grateful he must be, not just to be there when Ezra wakes, but to be somewhere good. The second Ezra's eyes open, he knows he's there and says hello.
Ray: "How you feeling?"
Ezra: "Happy to be alive, darling."
I don't know how men of this age do that, say shit like that without it being weird or funny, but I know I love it. One of the things I love best that my dad inherited from his dad, actually, is when he calls us "baby" or "honey." He doesn't even know he's doing it, I think, but it's such a strange effect: There's nothing weak about it. It makes you feel very safe, like there wouldn't be a fight even if you wanted one.
Ezra: "So what's on your mind, Raymond?"
Ray: "I don't know. I don't know anymore. [He really doesn't! This scene is beautifully written.] My father."
Ezra: "Eh, he's been causing us trouble since he arrived You'll handle it!"
Ray: "It is to the FBI point. I'm out of moves."
Ezra: "Oh dear. Okay, well... We're gonna have to kill him."
Ray, ashamed actually: "I mean, he's still my father. I just proved I can't kill him. I haven't been that out of control angry this whole show, and I still couldn't do it, not even to save everybody at that party."
Ezra: "Hmm, I get ya. So then who hates him more than we do?"
JAMES WOODS DOES
Sully and his wife watch America's Funniest Home Videos, cracking up at even just the opening credits, with a dog on the bed. They love the shit out of it. Remember that, in the late '80s/early '90s when that was a thing people did? I always thought people probably still did, somewhere. I guess in Boston.
My favorite thing, this is a weird way to go out this week but I think about this a lot, is how straightforward the theme song is of that show. Like the whole point of the show was capturing that moment in our technological evolution when everybody had a video camera and things would happen during other things. Like we still have that on YouTube but it's memes, because the point is that it's all bite-sized moments.
Fast-forward twenty years, and even the debates we used to have -- "that one was obviously fake, he was just doing this to be on TV" -- don't make sense. Like when you're watching a YouTube of a talking baby or a goat that screams, does it cross your mind to think, "Oh my God, they just did that to be on YouTube." No, because we're past that now. The crazy idea of people sending in "art" tapes to that show. Think about it.
And then the self-obsession they're marketing to, not to make yet more fun of Baby Boomers but it's one of the funniest things about the song, my emphasis: "We've got laughs from coast to coast / To make you smile / A real-life look at each of you / To capture all that style / You're the red, white and blue / Oh, the funny things you do! / America, America / This is you ... You might be a star tonight / So let that camera roll!"
I mean, how fucking adorable is that. It's like the Flintstones song or something, just explaining exactly what they're selling you and how it's gonna taste. As if the self-involvement people complain about with Twitter or Facebook is any different from the cam -- ...what did they call them? -- camcorder boom of the 1980s. I just love it, un-ironically I have affection for it: "America! This is YOU! Watch yourself watching yourself watch yourself! All on TELEVISION! You get to be INSIDE IT! Watch!"
ANYWAY, WEEK
James Woods. The End.
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.