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While Ray's out in Southie, the mice do play. Marvin Gaye Washington, freaked out by the belated news of his mother's death, gets a lovely "new birthday" celebration from his adoptive father Rekon, which Bridget can't wait to help him celebrate. Abby and Deb get good old-fashioned Sunset Boulevard old-lady drunk, which is adorable and ends with some shoplifting and an arrest. FBI Frank tangles with Van Miller about his investigation, confirming that he's off the rails and looking to bring everybody down. And Mickey threatens Sean into signing him to a development deal, in lieu of the murdering of Sean that he is clearly going to be doing eventually anyway.
Meanwhile, we learn a few interesting facts in Boston. Number one, which I had forgotten, is that Sully is the person Mickey stole the money from in the first place that he gave to Claudette. Sully's FBI's Most Wanted, and has been in hiding and presumed dead for twenty years, but eventually agrees to come to LA and take Mickey out for good. Oh, and the girl Sean killed was named Colleen (of course), and was a momentary rebound during a break Abby's parents forced on the young couple.
So as Ray is working his way through various emotional and mostly violent reunions over in Boston, his household and family are melting down in some predictable but enjoyable ways. (Terry and Bunchy have about five minutes of screentime between them, but at least we get to see Daryll hanging out with them, now that Bunchy can't even stand to be in his house and is shacking up at the gym.) Deb, and Abby plus Deb, continues to be one of the best things about the show, while in Boston, Sully's ancient bitch of a mother is also pretty excellent.
In the end, after picking up Abby at the police station and negotiating a fairly strong peace treaty -- and then home, to get back the trust of his kids after last week's power-meltdown -- it's home to a weeping Bridget, with whom MGW got way too aggressive sexually, and then to grab the kid out of his house, stick him in the car, and drive him to a location that the Donovan women assume will be a murder but I'm guessing is something less permanent but still traumatic, like the house where MGW's mom died or something weird like that.
It's a quiet episode, but one that puts the focus on characters we don't always get to see doing sundry things: Ray dealing with Boston memories and thugs brings out several new colors, we get to see where Bridget's coming from as far as her feelings for MGW (and lovely singing voice), and even Abby gets ample time to explain herself. But between Sully's impending arrival -- and the fact that the Donovans seem to have accepted the violence of Ray's life even more than he does -- one wonders what week, being the anniversary of Aunt Bridget's death, will bring.
Week: Terry tracks down Frances's husband after she shows up with a black eye; Ray and Avi try to reverse Bunchy's bigger purchases; Mickey presumably pervs out on a black woman; Lena has something of a storyline of her own; the war on Van begins in earnest. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
PREVIOUSLY
At Bunchy's ill-fated housewarming, Bridget and Terry made decisions about their respective significant others and Ray scared the piss out of everybody by almost murdering his father. Ray purchased parental rights for Marvin Gaye Washington from the boy's mother, who was then murdered but Ray didn't tell anybody because he was busy retrieving the blood-stained contract. Abby explored Ray's LA apartment and got a perspective on his life that was both bizarre and mostly correct. Twenty years ago, Mickey stole a bunch of money from a guy named Sully and then went to jail after Ray and Ezra framed him for Sean Walker's drug-fueled murder of Ray's girlfriend Colleen. Now Van Miller is trying to use Mickey for a FBI sting, and Ray's off to Boston to track down Sully to get Mickey out of the picture for good.
MORNING
Abby: "So to review, in the last twelve hours you scared the shit out of your kids and now you're off to Boston and you won't tell us why? In twenty years you haven't let us return to Boston because you hate it so much... is this about that dead girl?"
Ray: "It's about a dead girl, but not the one you're thinking of."
Conor: "Are you really going to be involved in something called Steampunk Wizard Of Oz?"
Bridget: "Yes, for I am rebelling in the most awkward way possible."
Ray: "Morning, kids. Hope you didn't have any nightmares about me killing family members!"
Conor: "Whatever, I'm numb to everything. Your daughter is going dork."
Bridget: "I'm not even talking to you right now."
MGW, without knocking: "You knew my 'moms' died and didn't tell me?"
Ray: "I was afraid you would come in my house without knocking."
MGW: "She was murdered in my old house!"
Ray: "How does that make it okay for you to bring a gun to mine?"
He pins the kid to the wall, takes his gun away and crab-walks him all the way back to Rekon's house so they don't have to discuss this in front of his kids. Or really at all.
Rekon: "I guess maybe we should've talked about this as a family. It is hard to receive a text message about your mother's rotting corpse finally being found, though."
Ray: "I respect that, but you need to calm him down. You are a kind of father."
Rekon: "Did you murder her by any chance?"
Ray: "Stay classy, Rekon!"
Bridget: "I'm going to go talk to my boyfriend about his mom's corpse now."
Ray: "Actually you will eat your eggs and go to school."
Bridget: "Actually I get a free 'gun violence against family' pass."
Ray: "Actually you cannot use that for this. Now, everybody just stay away from MGW and Mickey while I run off to Boston."
Everybody: (Immediately starts texting, calling and faxing Mickey and MGW, as is their way.)
FBI
Frank: "Van Miller, I would take any opportunity to come visit your office because you are the best thing about this show."
Van: "Frank, you are gigantic and hot and have a boat. What can you tell me about your case against Ezra Goldman and Lee Drexler awhile back."
Frank: "Wiretapping, extortion, jury-tampering. Criminal justice terrorists! Oddly it did not go very far, due to me being one of the people they extorted which continues to this day."
Van: "I am somehow not aware of that. Now I want to talk about a murder plot involving movie star Sean Walker."
Frank: "Is this real or is this part of your sex games you play with dolls?"
Van: "They are called action figures."
AIRPORT
Avi: "Are you aware that Sully is dead and disappeared over twenty years ago?"
Ray: "Are you aware that I am Ray Donovan?"
Avi: "Valid point. Can you just let me kill your dad already?"
Ray: "No, it has to be more complicated than that for my weird emotional reasons."
Avi: "Fine, I understand that you would rather this murder be committed by an Irish ghost."
Ray: "While I am gone, make sure you and everybody else calls me on the phone."
Avi: "What else would this show ever be about?"
WALKER SCREENING
So in the picture that Mickey gave Daryll to place in Sean Walker's house during the Breach of His Security, you can see a movie-set chair that says Black Mass, which is apparently a movie where Sean Walker -- looking even hotter than he does today, twenty years later -- plays a guy who pretends to be a priest so that he can be getting his vengeance. The last line of the movie is "Amen, motherfucker," is the kind of movie we are talking about. Mickey was a consultant on the movie, due to how he is a Boston Irish Catholic thug, just like is in the movie.
In the last twenty years of Sean's career, it has become something of a Shane Black-type classic and so today Sean is speaking in front of some kind of audience about it. And who is in that audience is Mickey Donovan, Shower-Up In Places & Starer At You.
(In the Boston airport after landing, FBI Frank calls to tell Ray that Van Miller has a witness to the murder plot, so Ray tells him to sit on Van Miller, but you know and I know -- and Frank and Ray know -- that Van Miller is a paranoid FBI spook with OCD, and knows darn well when he is being sat on.)
Ponytail James Lipton: "This minor masterpiece of the '90s action oeuvre laid the groundwork for such films as Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs..."
Mickey: "Sean Walker! Sean! Let me ask a question! I need to ask you a question!"
This is why I am scared of Comic-Con… these people. You know in real life it would be a screamingly awkward neckbeard -- or maybe Poem Girl -- doing this, and the question would be like, "Uh, in the third scene featuring Sean with the AK-47 I noticed he was wearing black shoes and then in the film's third act he was wearing brown shoes" and then either it would be, "So there!" or "Tell me I'm brilliant for noticing this meaningful thing!" and either way nobody could really say anything because assholes like that aren't actually looking for an answer, just attention. I hate that shit. It is more uncomfortable than anything but karaoke. If I go to a movie and there's a Q&A, I'll leave during the credits just in case of getting stuck there with no exit strategy once the lights come up and the awful nerd shit begins.
Sean: "Ray, I just ran away from my own screening because your dad is neckbearding me."
Ray: "Do you have a bodyguard? Are you afraid of talking to crazy old men in a crowded theater full of witnesses? Why are you calling me about this?"
Sean: "There has been a breach! You are fired again!"
Ray: "Shut up and deal, Sean. Come on."
Sean: "Remember that if I go down, I'm taking everybody with me."
Ray: "Nevertheless. Sack up."
Mickey grabs the mic from exactly the neckbeard I was just talking about, and starts into that thing of "I've got a great idea for a movie" that he tried on Claudette's hubby a while back, and eventually out of nowhere he gets the whole crowd chanting for Sean to buy the rights to his ripped-from-the-headlines story about what happened to them. And what is awesome is, it almost seems like that'll do it: Like you think Sean is going to ignore him, but later on they meet up and it becomes this sanctioned transaction of like, if Mickey gets a development deal that's enough payoff to leave Sean alone. Which Ray is not going to like for A) Personal reasons, and B) It is stupid and Mickey is going to kill you either way, so don't be a dork.
REKON'S
Abby shows up to try and be sweet with MGW, because the only thing she likes about him is how he has no mother. But MGW is not in the mood and also seems to assume -- understandably -- that Abby is just as dirty as her husband. He tells her to fuck off and I guess that's when she decides day-drinking is the more sensible course. Once she's gone, Rekon feels all bad for him and decides to throw him a party, just any old party really but one we're going to call a "birthday" party because MGW is a little kid and little kids like birthdays. Is it MGW's birthday? No. But maybe he gets to be a new person now that his mother has given him away and died, and that's the titular new birthday of the episode.
BOSTON
In the post-apocalyptic video game that is South Boston, it is all about drinking and creating the illusion of burliness.
Eddie: "Ray, I'm sorry but I already spent the money Avi gave me to finger your dad on my mom's macular degeneration. She is I guess 153 years of age. The eyes are the first thing to go."
Ray: "It is actually okay because I know that Van Miller put the kibosh on that scheme and so I bear you no ill will, but you don't need to know that. What you do need to know is that I have come to town to find Sully."
Eddie: "The man from whom your father stole all that money years ago? But he moved to Belfast and later died!"
Ray: "Then get out your Ouija board and tell him I'm looking for him."
One thing that is frustrating about Southie is the lack of communication. Everybody should know that Mickey is out of jail, especially Eddie whose entire job was to put him back in jail and therefore it should be obvious that Ray is here to speak to Sully about that twist of fate. Either he's there to say, "Please don't kill my dad from being out of jail," which makes no sense because he put his dad in jail in the first place or he is there to say, "Guess what, you can now kill my dad because he's not in jail anymore." That, and the fact that everybody just seems randomly mean:
Random: "Hey, Ray!"
Ray: "Hi?"
Random: "I am clearly going to beat you up later."
Ray: "I don't really care."
FITE CLUB
Daryll and Potato Pie bitch at each other about the boxing they are watching on TV, because as usual Daryll thinks he's the expert about everything and not only can he sing but also he can tell Potato Pie all about boxing. Potato Pie eventually explains to Daryll that he hates him and that just because they are both black doesn't make Daryll less of a prig. Which is all quite true.
Sean: "Dear Mickey, I will send a car for you at eleven in the morning."
Mickey: "Dear Sean, make it 11;30 for no other reason than I am a dick."
Bunchy is asleep on a cot, because his whole house smells like shame (and now burning), which is very sad, but also very unlucky for Bunchy, whose father is feeling very tickle-happy based on his lunch date with Sean Walker tomorrow. There is much tickling; ah, the tickling of Bunchy. How I wish I could enjoy it as it deserves to be enjoyed, but it just makes me sad instead. Leave him alone, ya crummy old tickle-goat. He needs rest!
Eventually everybody joins Daryll and Pie on the couch to watch the boxing and listen to them bitch at each other and Terry once again is sad about how he had a girlfriend for five minutes and then she broke his heart and then he decided to settle for a married lady, but now his schedule is entirely based around hers, which is in turn entirely based around her entire family's schedule and that's something Terry doesn't deserve to have, because he deserves nothing, because he is the middle child of the most horrible family of all time. (And Bernadette is dead, whoever that is.)
BOSTON
Rollin' calls, as he does, as Ray deflects Bridget's questions about MGW to the point that she has no recourse but to confirm that she wasn't calling to be sweet and reconcile like he wanted, but just to be mercenary and figure out what the kerfuffle was all about. She hangs up, it's horrible, she's her mother's daughter. I mean, like it was going to be that easy to get back in her good graces after the one-two punch of gunplay and beating up her boyfriend over breakfast, but "stay away from Grandpa or things will get weird" is such a self-fulfilling prophecy that I'm starting to feel like even if Ray were wrong/crazy about everything and Mickey were harmless -- which is the conceit here, we're still pretending it could go either way -- it would still be in your best interest to stay away from Grandpa, unless you are okay with things getting weird.
Call number two is Eddie, inviting Ray back to that bar we were just at, where those guys who were there are still there, accompanied not by Sully as Ray was given to understand, but a massive ass-beating. Ray acquits himself well and even manages a low-level snarkiness throughout, but at least one rib cracks.
Drones: "Get the fuck out of town!"
Ray: "Okay, but tell Sully I want to see him first."
Eddie: "Oh my God you are nuts."
Ray: "I just really want to talk to Sully! It is not for anything bad!"
Eddie: "He's not in Boston!"
Ray: "Really because you said he was dead before."
Eddie: "Ah, the lexical cleverness of one Southie thug to another. Will Hunting, you have bested me again. Through semantics."
HOTEL
Ray: "Argh, my rib. Oh well. Better keep acting like the Terminator."
Gary: "Ray, it is your old friend Gary! I used to date your dead sister and now I am here to qualify this episode as The One Where The Hero Returns Home To See That Everything Has Changed and The Answers He Was Seeking Are Nowhere To Be Found. Also, because we are both getting older, I am fat."
Ray: "Can I get you a drink and boredly talk about your family that I don't care about?"
Gary: "I am happy to do that, until you abruptly change the subject to your dead sister."
Ray: "So about my dead sister."
Gary: "Here we go. I don't know why she killed herself. I don't think your father was abusive, but also we are a small Irish Catholic community. If we ever started talking about the abuses that go on behind the various closed doors in our culture, we would never stop. We would all be Bunchy all the time. Boston would fall to the elite."
Ray: "Then here is some money to take your many ginger sons to a Red Sox or a Fenway Park or a Big Dig or the New Kids On The Block or feed them a Cream Pie or a lavish amount of Baked Beans. It also symbolizes my guilt of which there is a wicked lahhhht."
BIRTHDAY MORNING
Rekon brings MGW a birthday cake in bed and sings to him, and it is very sweet. There is a birthday hat, and a noisemaker, and he sings because they are both musicians in the urban demographic, and MGW is a child and very happy, which is how you know something terrible is going to happen. Probably in that bed, knowing this show. Somebody is going to be denied enthusiastic consent in this very bed, Marvin Gaye Washington, you think, before your new birthday is over.
(In Boston, they wheel Mother Sullivan out of somewhere that is probably a church and over to a big black Caddy where the woman and dog we know to be Sully's put her in the car. "Say hi to your mother for me, okay?" is not just a thing Boston people are always saying, but also literally doing, on a constant basis. Saying hi to each other's mothers. For reasons of respect, but also sometimes for ghostbusting reasons. Or that of murder.)
MGW is listening to a song of himself -- about how it is cold all the time because he is so alone -- when Bridget marches her sassy ass all two houses down the cul-de-sac to visit.
MGW: "Your dad thinks I'm a bad influence!"
Bridget: "It is my father who is the bad influence."
MGW: "What about how I am constantly influencing you and your brother to do bad things, though? Doesn't that complicate your reply's logic?"
Bridget: "Longstocking, don't worry about it. What is with this birthday paraphernalia? I thought you were a Virgo."
MGW: "Not anymore, now I am whatever it is right now! Let's go lay down some tracks right now. You can be the oblivious Real Housewife, and I will be the scam-artist 'producer' who is robbing you."
MARYELLEN'S SALON
Mrs. Sullivan's caretaker (the other Mrs. Sullivan) coddles her dog while she gets highlights; Old Lady Sullivan sits under a dryer thinking nasty thoughts. I don't know if Ray notices the other lady with the dog, but considering how the dog is so central to her every appearance maybe I just missed him clocking her. He takes notice of, but ignores, the bodyguard Tiny, who might be one of the Randos from last night that beat him up? Either way, he sits down beside Mrs. Sullivan and flips up her dryer without prelude to ask after her son.
Mrs. S: "Mickey's boy? Mickey that prick, sleeps with a nigger while his beautiful wife was dying?"
Ray: "Yes. Minus the hate speech, but yes. Can you tell your son I wanna see him? Say hi to your son for me, as it were."
Mrs. S: "Go fuck yourself."
Ray: "You're as charming as ever, Mrs. Sullivan. Just tell Sully I got something for him, okay? I'm not leaving till he talks to me, all right? And you take care, Mrs. Sullivan."
Both Mrs. Sullivans stare, as Tiny manhandles our bruised hero out the door, and I guess the wife makes a decision that this isn't going to stop and perhaps now that she's had a look at Ray and his intentions, it would be okay for Sully to break cover like just this one time.
Did I mention he's supposedly the FBI's #1 Most Wanted? Yeah of course he is, that's what makes this so difficult for Ray, finding him in the exact place he has always lived. This show likes to go big, but the details can get lost.
LUNCH W/ TASHA YAR
Deb: "These houses we're looking at, do you like them? Price range okay?"
Abby: "Maybe if one of his secrets is secret money, which of course it is."
Deb: "Do you honestly think moving will change anything? They shot a laser in my boyfriend's brain he's still a selfish prick."
Abby: "I'd consider it a victory if he just lost the LA apartment. It's so fucking weird and slutty and gross, like it was decorated by some old slut."
Deb: "That'd be me!"
Abby: "Sorry. But I mean… I found a handcuff."
Deb: "Just one single handcuff? Is that like a kinky Zen thing?"
Abby: "I was thinking maybe they torture people there."
Deb: "I don't think we should talk about that. Here's a drunk joke about how we are the ones getting tortured! By these men who are from Mars!"
Abby: "I am very, very lonely in Calabasas."
Deb: "Honey, grow up. I've been lonely twenty* years. Everyone's lonely."
*(Random echo? Or meaningful? Everything is either three or twenty years with these people and we still have no idea what the Deb/Ezra situation is or has been or what it has to do with the Donovans or why she is so up in their lives all the time. Maybe Ruth had something to do with the...? Nope, lost it.)
Abby, awesomely: "In Ray's apartment, that huge photo of Marilyn Monroe. Why is that art?"
Deb: "It's about celebrity and deconstructing the myth of fame. I'm full of shit, though."
More drinks! P.S., the correct answer is that Marilyn is where the vectors of Dead Bridget, Ray's White Knight sexual fetish and LA's cultural agenda of exploitation meet: She was simultaneously a victim, a hero, a trainwreck, and party to her own self-destruction; her life played out on every global stage, from the political to the artistic to the literary to sports to Hollywood culture itself; and in every iteration of herself she was the embodiment of both sexuality and victimization, either because she was treated like an idiot or because she was treated like an object. She's Ray. It doesn't go further down than that: Save me or fuck me, but either way answer the question inside yourself.
Abby: "Ray randomly went to Boston -- a place our kids have never seen, a place from which I'm forbidden -- for secret reasons. He says it's about Mickey..."
Deb: "Love that guy! He turned into a golem at my house just the other day."
Abby: "I know, right? He's rough but adorable. On the other hand, he killed Ray's girlfriend once, so that's a little iffy."
"Ray started fuckin' her after my parents made me break up with him -- they were mortified that I was with a Donovan, wouldn't let me out of the house -- so Ray took up with this girl Colleen. And Mickey killed her, that's why Ray hates him. Sometimes I think Ray's still obsessed with that dead girl."
Wrong dead girl, but okay. Thanks for the download, halfway through the season. Hey, now let's get drunker and drunker and weirder and weirder until we end up in jail!
Deb: "Tell me about it! Ezra named the dog RUTH."
Abby: "It's not even a girl dog!"
Deb: "I KNOW! And for such a little thing it's got a huge dick. Ruth. Ruth's got a big dick!"
It's times like these you realize that the world really is unfair when women like Abby and Deb are treated as though they're of lower class, just because of the men they love.
CEMETERY
Ray goes to the graves of his mother and Bridget -- who, I don't know the rules really, but should she be in this cemetery? -- and has a silent moment or two of contemplation, which differentiates from his every other scene in no way. Then that dumb dog appears and, like a white rabbit, leads him back to the younger Mrs. Sullivan, who wordlessly -- my God, the drama -- conveys him to a church and beckons him inside. These people.
Sully: "Raymond. Heard you got your own family now. Son. Daughter. But thanks to your prick father, I don't got no family left. He ratted 'em all out. They all went to prison. My son Jamie got stabbed, my brother Robbie got that fucking AIDS..."
Ray: "Yeah, I was sorry to hear about that. But also, I am not on my dad's side. Duh."
Sully: "Why are you here? Why did you videogame your way past the gauntlet of random Irish thugs that I kept launching at your head?"
Ray: "The worst part was your bitch mother. I mean, I can handle some cracked ribs, I'm married to a marathon hag myself, but seriously that old woman is just the worst."
Ray: "Aaaaanyway, I want you to kill my father."
Sully: "That's kind of awesome! But did you know I am the Most Wanted?"
Ray: "I know! That's gotta be a hassle. Good thing the entire FBI is not as good at finding you over twenty years as me after less than one single day."
Sully: "Were you planning on flying him here?"
Ray: "No, I want you to come with me to LA."
Sully: "I haven't even been to the dentist in twenty years, I'm not gonna..."
Ray: "So what, you just live in this creepy church? Come on, it'll be great. You get a little sun, do a little job and pick your stop. I can set you up wherever you want to go. Dubai, Maldives, Vietnam, anywhere that doesn't extradite."
Sully: "I can't go to those places! I am super racist!"
Sully: "Why not just kill your own father?"
Ray: "Because that's horrible?"
Sully: "Why me?"
Ray: "I want the last person he sees to hate him as much I do."
Mrs. Sullivan yells that the damn dog will only "make" (ugh) for Sully, so they break up their portentous meeting and talk about setting this up later, and Sully reminds him to visit also the grave of Colleen, which Ray seems less interested in doing.
MOVIE LOT
Mickey: "Movie star babbling! Rock Hudson with the AIDS! Doris Day should be black! Butts and titties!"
Sean: "I... okay, sure."
Rando: "Sean Walker! Let's do lunch!"
Sean: "You got it! (Asshole.)"
Finally they get to business: Stupid oblivious Sean Walker is so stuck in the movie-bubble world of his dumb life that he thinks acquiring the rights to Mickey's story is the same thing as escaping the consequences for the actual story, in which he did a bunch of Mickey's drugs and then murdered Mickey's son's girlfriend and then framed Mickey for all of it. Mickey is content to let him believe that. One quick mob of Japanese schoolgirls dressed like a joke about Japanese schoolgirls later, they've shaken hands on getting Mickey back into the movie business!
MGW
Bridget's got a nice voice on her, especially if you like that white-girl soul thing they were all doing a couple years ago, so she sings a couple of lines of "Ain't No Sunshine" over and over while MGW says the same few words over and over and that's called music now. Thanks, Fergie.
SHOPPING W/TASHA YAR
Abby: "Ray likes nice things. Nice clothes. Where we are from, a strange wasteland full of churches and bars called South Bahstan and that will get you gay-bashed. But I think metrosexuality is sexy. Just one of the many ways I am better than my roots and peers."
Deb: "It is fun drunkenly spending mob money with you. I do enjoy it. Let's buy five thousand dollars' worth of the ugliest shit we can find. Doing that is all we are worth."
Abby, and honestly: "Fuckin' Ray. I hate him all day and when I get drunk all I do is think about him."
Deb: "Doesn't Ray buy you things?"
Abby: "Never the right thing..."
She tries on these gross leopard chunky plats and Deb pressures her to buy them and then -- because things were actually going right and getting honest for once -- Abby drunkenly decides to run out of the store wearing them. Deb's minorly horrified, but also drunk enough to join in the sisterhood spirit of acting like a dillweed, so she gamely joins the chase before falling into some massively yikes yoga-pantsy splits about half a block down the street and then pissing herself laughing, with which part I do actually agree. At some point you just have to laugh in the face of shame. When the guy is about to catch you and you find yourself peeing a little bit, just keep laughing. When they cuff you and put you in jail, you just keep going, because either way it's going to be fine and at least you won't slip into the k-hole of what happens when you are quiet or contrite. Deb's finest hour, really.
FBI
Frank: "Hey Van! I love how we're taking down this affiliation of LA mobsters and all that, but can I quickly run off with all your files?"
Van: "Uh, no. You know me, I am not cool."
Frank: "Can I have your wire tapes?"
Van: "Also no. Also, you are obviously in the employ of Ray Donovan, yes?"
Frank: "Whom?"
Van: "Oh man. Oh, look at me. Isn't my face red."
Frank: "Speaking of your face -- and your paranoia -- how about your LSD meltdown last week?"
Van: "I think it was just allergies!"
Frank: "Whatever, Van. If you don't want my help fucking this up for you, then I'm going to go about fucking this up for you some other way. Because my allergy, Van Miller, is to the deceitful."
REKON'S / FITE CLUB
As Bridget is blurting out that she is in love with MGW, causing a makeout o'clock, Mickey is charging in to brag to his sons about having reentered the movie business. He narrowly bypasses a sudden Van Miller attack basically by jumping over him like a Mario Brother and then he's in the clear. Upstairs, he pretends to be a choo-choo train, which the disconcerted men eventually realize they have no choice but to laugh indulgently at him about, because somehow he has gotten in charge of all their lives.
ROLLIN' CALLS
Sean: "I don't mind telling you that I am doing an end-run around your plan to take care of my problems by creating infinitely more problems for myself and for you."
Ray: "Sean, please don't make yourself irrelevant. You are already such a fucking hassle."
Sean: "I will do it! Because I am an idiot!"
Frank: "You know how Van Miller's off the reservation? He is off that area around the reservation now. He is Where Be Dragons. Van Miller is not on any map. Van Miller is off-roadin'. I'm out of moves."
Ray: "Hang on, I'll send you his DUI tape. Right now I gotta pick up my drunk wife from jail. Guess somebody's feeling neglected."
MGW
Goes for the beej after some makeouts. Bridget and the beer inside Bridget think momentarily they are up for it, but then -- either out of her parents' weird sexual repression or because she is a smart young woman who knows her own mind, but either way she does an impressive job with this situation -- backs out. He tries first to guilt her, then daddy-issue her, then just straight-up tries to physically force the issue and things get super fucking ugly. She gets the hell out of there, crying because he is an asshole, and he just sort of feels horrible and rapey all alone.
HOME
Abby's drunkenly bitching and simultaneously acting like a sex kitten on the way home, showing off her gams and her hideous shoes in a way she knows will catch his eye. They laugh about it, but also are both very turned on. As Frank's watching the tape -- and giggling to himself about how awesome Van Miller is -- they bust into the foyer, where she talks about how "bad" she's been today and whatever is gross, and then she goes upstairs to get some Icy-Hot for his broken ribs, where she finds a sobbing Bridget.
Downstairs, Conor gamely makes room on the couch for Ray, even taking off his gamer headset and headphones, demonstrating that they are cool. But when he mentions that Bridget's upstairs -- having come from Marvin's "all screwed up" -- zoom goes Ray upstairs. Conor, I like the way he works. Like, he doesn't really care, but he also thinks to mention it. And then it's just him, in the middle of the chaos, playing his game.
Abby: "He attacked her, Ray."
Bridget: "It was my fault, he didn't mean it, etc. Got carried away. Whatever I think is going to keep you from literally killing him. Also, you are a liar and you lied about his mom and you are not a helper of people, but a hurter of people and also I hate you, and also because it was the last thing he said before it started, I kind of blame you for pushing him over the edge, however nonsensical a grown-up would know that to be."
Well, you know that the thing Ray fears the most is that people will get exploited, particularly children, particularly his children, so although on one level she's exaggerating the danger zone based on having seen him almost murder his own father execution-style yesterday, it is also true that if he were going to kill a kid it would probably be from the person forcing blowjobs on his children. (Tommy Wheeler, listen up.) I'm glad she got out of there okay and I think she should not be seeing him anymore and that he should get some help with understanding boundaries, but I don't know that shooting him in the head is a rational or appropriate step.
But there's a little bit of a question there. Or at least enough of one that -- by the time he's jerked MGW off his couch and tossed him in the car, with Abby upstairs keeping Bridget away from the window just in case -- they are going somewhere and it is possibly a place from which MGW will not be returning. But the little guy's never looked so young as he does in the backseat -- confused at the severity of what's happening, but thankfully not that confused about what he did wrong -- whimpering, "Where are you taking me? I didn't mean to hurt her, Mr. Donovan, I swear I didn't! Today's my birthday, Mr. Donovan, please! It's my new birthday."
WEEK
Sully, having said goodbye to his awful mother, arrives in town. Lena has a fight with her no-cat-having girlfriend and helps Avi with the Van Miller situation. Mickey meets, presumably, an aging black starlet at a spa. Ray and Avi go after the predator that sold Bunchy his house, Terry goes after Nurse Frances's possibly abusive husband, and everybody gets super weird for Bridget’s deathiversary. And hopefully MGW lives to see the inside of a therapist's office/actual home?
JACOB CLIFTON is a freelance writer and critic based in Austin, Texas. He currently recaps 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.