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What a taut, complex and darkly funny hour! This show really grows on you. With three episodes to go, it's nice to follow last week's quietly intimate temperature-taking with this little comedy of errors, but even more satisfying in the relationships and characters revisited that make it up, and the narrative momentum it continues to pick up as the ironies and ambiguities accrete. Still not perfect, but between last week and this one it's really setting the bar for itself.
As Avi drives Sully -- and the girlfriend, after all, and the poodle -- across the country toward LA, it becomes clearer and clearer to him that they are both crazy people. This theory is tested and proven when, after her dumb ass calls home and rats them out for no reason besides dumbness, Sully strangles her. To death! (Of all the James Woodsy scenes on this show, this is the James Woodsiest by far.) Avi is forced to dig a shallow grave somewhere in Arizona or New Mexico, and by the time he gets to LA he's just a frazzled nerve.
As is Ray, who figures out that Van Miller has sent Mickey Donovan into a meeting with Sean Walker, wired, and will be getting a full confession on tape... And the assassin he ordered up precisely to keep this from happening is delayed on a road trip. And his FBI contact Frank is pushing back, meaning Lena has to lure Frank's bigamist second family to the office under fake pretext. And fifty other things, all at the same time, all amazing.
The marvelous Tommy Wheeler promised to take Conor to the Kids' Choice Awards tonight, but this morning finds him distraught and as amazing as ever: He's getting shaken down by the Donoverse version of Harvey Levin, who wants to publish pictures of his quickie Vegas wedding to (yep) good old blackmailer Chloe, who has ditched him once again. So Ray has to spend the whole day getting him cleaned up and ready to take his kid on a fantasy date, while taking time out to do Ray Donovan-type fixer violences to Harvey and his bodyguard/boyfriend, and the whole thing is amazing. There's an extended sequence where he just wanders the office in his leather pants with a niacin drip -- giving people backrubs, switching clothes with Lena, being a total trainwreck -- that is simply riveting.
Meanwhile, Mickey is getting the whole story out of Sean Walker while pretending to develop their screenplay, which by the end has them both in tears of joy and excitement -- so much so that when Mickey and Van Miller go back to Miller's basement lair for a debrief, and he learns that Miller's been keeping this entire investigation secret from the rest of the Bureau, he takes a quiet moment to let Van savor his near-victory before, of course, blowing his head off.
Meaning that Mickey has just saved his son's bacon, his own movie deal, and rendered pretty much the entire conspiracy pointless. Which is great, because it means the conflict between them goes back to being about whatever Ray is so damn upset about: Nobody knows about Colleen, nobody knows about Sean Walker, and nobody knows about Sully. It's really just back to being about Ray hating his dad for reasons nobody else can really get behind or comprehend. And by the time Sully finally arrives, even though Ray doesn't know the investigation's over, even he seems fairly exhausted by the whole Sully/assassination thing. Me, I'm just glad the lady and the poodle are dead. Those guys really brought out the worst in him.
week: Bunchy find a priest to beat up, Daryll and possibly other Donovan boys finally find themselves disillusioned with old Mickey, Ezra warns Ray not to throw away his beautiful life (and rather functional marriage) on this vendetta he still can't explain to anybody, and Abby holds Ray's hand through another breakdown, and presumably nobody mourns or remembers or ever again mentions Van Miller.
But I do. RIP, Van Miller. You are my favorite, forever and ever.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!PREVIOUSLY
Ray's pressuring his FBI contact Frank trying to stop Van Miller's investigation before it takes down his whole operation, while also engineering his father's murder: Mickey's on the hook, working undercover for Van Miller to clear his own name. What Ray doesn't know -- and would prefer not to know, frankly -- is that working Sean Walker has Mickey falling back under Hollywood's spell. On the homefront, Ray's working his way back into his children's good graces after a violent loss of control, and his client Tommy Wheeler is off the wagon again.
AVI
Catherine: "Sully has to pee!"
Sully: "Shut the fuck up."
Catherine: "He has old-man issues with his bladder!"
Sully: "Shut the fuck up."
Avi: "We like just stopped."
Catherine: "But he has to pee! You have to stop! I somehow don't understand how being on the run from the FBI works, despite having done it for like twenty years."
Sully: "Shut the fuck up."
Avi: "Shut the fuck up."
Everybody: "Shut the fuck up."
She does not shut the fuck up. She will never shut the fuck up. It is time to pull over again.
BREAKFAST
Ray: "So we're good? I know we haven't talked about how I put a gun in your grandfather's mouth in front of a burning-down house, but since you haven't gotten any piercings I guess we're doing okay?"
Conor: "I am my mother's son. If you can get me a date with Tommy Wheeler to the Kids' Choice Awards tonight, I'll stop withholding my affection."
Ray: "Primarily I am resistant to that because my priorities lie elsewhere, but I also have a fear that he is going to give you blowjobs."
Conor: "Grow up. He likes trannies. And girls, when he's drunk. I am neither of those."
Ray: "Valid points, all. Don't say 'tranny.' I'll call him."
Conor: "Bullshit."
Ray: "What I hear you saying is, you double-dog dare me."
AVI
Catherine: "[More bitching.]"
Ray: "Avi, why does my GPS say you are stopped in the desert? Because I don't know if you know this, but we hired the FBI's Most Wanted Man to come kill somebody on the other side of the country."
Avi: "I understand the gravity of all of this but I think you're underestimating the bullshit that Catherine brings to the table. Also, it is becoming clear to me that your friend Sully is also 100 percent fucked up."
Ray: "Perhaps you could strap them into diapers so they'll have less reasons to stop?"
Avi: "Your affect is such that I'm unsure whether you're joking. Goodbye."
FITE CLUB
Terry's training Renaissance Man Daryll "Black Irish" Donovan -- and yes, it's a fitting moniker technically speaking, Mickey, but Jeez -- when Van Miller arrives, all in a huff!
Van Miller: "[Pissing and moaning.]"
Mickey: "I'ma go ahead and dick you around because I can."
Van Miller: "[Bitching intensifies.]"
The Boys: "Is this the part where we destroy this exotic flower of a man?"
Mickey: "Yes! Just kidding, no."
Bunchy: "I am nervous!"
Terry: "Don't be nervous. That guy didn't seem like one of us, therefore he is probably a normal human. Like a parole officer or something."
Close enough. Terry's so great. He knows things about the real world but doesn't live there, like a goblin under a bridge. And Van Miller is always trip-trip-trippin'.
Mickey: "I would caution you against disrespecting me in front of my children. For reasons that should be obvious from even a cursory exposure to what I am about."
Van Miller: "What you don't get is how every expression of power you show me just doubles my need to control you. Now listen up, you need to get wired up and visit Sean Walker. This thing is tick-tock."
Mickey: "I am feeling lately like I don't want to compromise my future as a screenwriter?"
Van Miller: "You say that like it's a joke, and then you laugh, but my life may hinge on knowing that you don't actually feel like it's a joke, because you are deluded and weird."
Mickey: "The question is, How deluded? How weird?"
Van Miller: "Not to be rude, but you're fucking retarded if you think he's not totally stringing you along."
The Boys: "Where ya goin'?"
Mickey: "I have an appointment for the kind of futile, coked-up love-in that won't go anywhere, but still serves to drive our entire California economy."
FBI FRANK
Ray: "Frank, you seem to be very useless."
Frank: "Stop lurking!"
Ray: "I have a very busy day of lurking today, Frank. I am here to ask you why Van Miller is still investigating me, even after I gave you that tape my corrupt cop made to discredit him."
Frank: "Why are you here, though? Why would you connect me to you in the eyes and closed-circuit TVs of my job at the FBI?"
Ray: "To scare the pee out of you. I have given you fake evidence of like five different kinds of drug use. What are you waiting for?"
Frank: "For something terrible to happen, I guess. My priorities are not your priorities. You should probably threaten my secret family just in case."
AVI
Sully & Catherine: "Blah blah blah. Heart medicine. Jeopardy. Old people talking about old people things. Bitching."
RAY
Gun Runner: "It sure is nice to be here with you in this motel room selling you guns."
Ray: "Hang on, I have to take a million phone calls in every scene of this TV show."
Abby: "I heard Conor was withholding his affection for an arbitrary reason and you know momma wants in on that shit."
Ray: "I will absolutely get him to the show with his inappropriate chat buddy."
Conor: "Because I also have an invitation to see that new Leni Riefenstahl Batman movie."
Ray: "Abs, I don't want him watching that cryptofascist claptrap. I will get this done."
Abby: "Fine, I will take him to buy a suit. Like a thing a father would do, normally."
Ray: "Suiting him up for a playdate with a bisexual drug addict ten years his senior?"
Gun Runner: "Isn't it so touching, though?"
Ray: "We're not friends. You act like a weed dealer. I am not here to hang out with you."
Gun Runner: "I just love seeing you so much. You're like a movie person in real life. You're like Purple Rose Of Cairo."
TOMMY WHEELER
Is shirtless in black leather pants, on the roof of the Marmont, crying and drinking, with the usual complement of Bret Ellis bikini chicks wandering around and/or passed out all over the place. A bad scene, albeit one he of course looks stunning in.
Tommy: "Oh, that? I'm not going to that. Our universe's version of Harvey Levin is threatening to show pictures of me. Me and my wife. Who has left me."
Ray: "What wife? When did this happen?"
Tommy: "Chloe and I flew to Vegas two nights ago, and got married."
Ray: "Chloe the preoperative transsexual I beat up even though I love her and later paid for her surgery?"
Tommy: "The very same."
Ray: "Tommy, I don't care about any of this. Get your ass downstairs."
I care. I want to know about those 48 hours. Firstly because Chloe is amazing, and also because of course she left him immediately. That's like three real-world headlines in one, between the short-term Vegas marriage and the secret prostitute and the whole sexual flexibility thing. I wish this show was constantly updating us with the amazing twists and turns in the Chloe/Tommy relationship. It seems like a real thrillride.
When he gets there, Tommy is passed out near the front door, and tourists are posing with his body, with props -- including a gas mask that will come in handy later.
Tommy: "On the one hand, I am heartbroken and I want to die..."
Ray: "-- Commit suicide tomorrow. Tonight, you're taking my child out on the town."
Tommy: "Harvey already called me for comment. I told him that we were in love!"
Ray: "He was asking you for money. Nobody cares what you think. Or feel. Or why you do the things you do. We want to see you half-naked, and we want to see you pretending to be somebody awesome, so we can pretend to be that person. At no point do you, yourself, enter into the equation. Despite the constant validation and indulgence and praise we're constantly giving you that seems to indicate otherwise."
Tommy: "That's a ton of mixed messages to be coming from the entirety of America. Maybe that's why I do all these drugs."
VAN MILLER
Van: "Did you know that only one celebrity has been convicted of a felony in over 20 years? OJ got off, Robert Blake got off..."
Mickey: "That's an interesting imaginary fact to base your life on."
Van: "They live without consequences!"
Mickey: "That's pretty valid. Maybe you're right. Too bad neither of us know about Google, or what I call 'the twerk finder.'"
Van: "Sean Walker blinks every time he pulls the trigger in one of his movies."
Mickey: "Is that a critique of his acting or... Oh right, because of him murdering that girl. God, you're nuts."
Van: "Meanwhile you're only like, totally in love with him."
Mickey: "Just test the mic. One-two-three-fuck-you, one-two-three-fuck-you, one-two-three-fuck-you..."
LENA
Lena: "Little normal-looking girl! Would you believe me, looking like a fashion model slash photographer like I do, that I think you have bone structure?"
Girl: "Please do not bother me?"
Mom: "Are you saying she could be a teen model?"
Lena: "With a straight face! Please come to this address so I can blackmail your bigamist father and hold you hostage until he blackmails another FBI agent regarding a murder."
Mom: "I am a relatively subtle version of the LA Mother stereotype, meaning that yes I will do this sketchy thing, but I will act like it's just something fun to do this afternoon instead of that I just won the lottery."
TMZ
Ray: "Harvey, Tommy Wheeler will not be paying you off, but you will refrain from publishing this story."
Harvey: "Wrong. Double wrong, if I'm lucky. Do you understand that these pictures are amazing? He's wearing a tux, Chloe's in this amazing gown..."
Ray: "But this is a favor thing. I let you tell everybody that Sean Walker's child was made with his assistant's eggs, like Michael Jackson's mysterious babies."
Harvey: "That's interesting but not really that fucked up. Also, I got everybody to stop saying he was a Scientologist. And I have a giant muscle boyfriend without a brain in his head standing over by that whiteboard. In the meantime, picture it. He's at Kids' Choice accepting his award, and everybody's phones start going off... It's gonna be like Gossip Girl, bitch!"
Ray: "Hello, muscleman boyfriend. I look forward to running you over with a car in an hour or two. Nobody fucks with my son's big night out."
Tommy has disappeared when Ray comes back downstairs, heading across the street to some bar where he is drunkenly telling boring drunk stories to some ladies who are impressed enough by who he is to overlook the mess that is happening. Either way, it's a story. Of course, by the time Ray gets to his side he's puckishly placed his penis in one of their hands by accident, which occasions Ray paying the chick off -- but, I think, with the understanding that she cannot be silenced and will probably be telling everybody she can find about the time Tommy Wheeler sexually harassed her. Possibly this is his plan, I can't really tell. Maybe he's just paying her off, but considering they already did this several times with Tommy's sexuality -- engineer a louder story, that happens to fit his marketing and public narrative better -- but either way, he gets it done.
Abby: "Ray, seriously tell me now if you're going to fail as a father and a man."
Ray: "I have what's left of Tommy Wheeler right now in my car, so suck on that."
Abby: "Should this tuxedo have cuffed trousers? I trust your taste. Because I have none."
Ray: "No cuffs! See you tonight."
Ray pours a bottle of water on Tommy's lap to wake him up, and they talk about what Tommy can do today -- right here, right now -- to be less of a mess for the twelve hours. I think about this a lot, like, public appearances and stuff. You have to schedule your crazy times or else you will miss out on a lot -- but the catch-22 of crazytime is that you never know what is going to happen or even sometimes when. (This is why the least stable women carry the largest purses.) So there has to be somebody to pick the person up from the situation and make sure their schedule works out. I think this would be a great job. Especially if you liked, but did not respect, the person involved.
SEAN WALKER
"There are three rules for making a Sean Walker film. I always walk towards danger. Two: I overcome odds not with muscle, but because I care. And three: People feel great when it's over. When they leave that theater they want to fight for what's right."
God, he's tough to take. It's a fun archetype, the action hero pushing fifty and still running around like a little boy, but I mean. Third person.
Mickey: "Right for whom? Like framing a father for murder?"
Sean Walker: "Careful! Rebecca here will think you're not talking about a movie!"
Mickey: "Thing is, I kind of think everything is about me, so I'm not interested in the finer points of fictionalization. The truth-or-falsity is moot."
Sean Walker: "Look, nobody's really guilty in the specific, for that night. Accidents happen. Like, a person could accidentally do a bunch of drugs and then accidentally shoot a woman fully in the head and then accidentally arrange a coverup that puts an innocent but very creepy man in jail."
Mickey: "So you don't ever think about how you shot a woman's brain out of her head?"
Sean Walker: "Not really. At a certain point in one's spiritual development, you process things and you move on. And I've named a charity after her, for victims of genital mutilation in the Sudan. Colleen's Children."
The way that he says this last bit, by the way, is one of the best and most layered line readings I have seen in a long time. For a moment, he is every oblivious movie star that ever sucked and had no idea he sucked so bad. Have you seen House Of Lies? Man, I love that show. It's the opposite of what people think it is. But the closest it ever came to being an Entourage clone was also one of the best storylines, with Matt Damon playing himself as this kind of person. It was just great.
RAY
The doc has Tommy on a B3 drip when we rejoin him, confirming Conor as his guest with his assistant. On his way out -- as Tommy's giggling about his sudden niacin boner -- he reminds everybody in the room that Tommy is going to die of drugs very soon. Nobody involved really cares that much, but it's a nice gesture nonetheless.
Catherine kicks the bitching up an impressive amount, to the point where you are hoping Avi or Sully will simply murder her. ("I'm dying! I'm dying! I'm dying!" she foreshadows in the most excruciating possible way.) But not yet, my pet. First, to keep himself from driving off the road and into the desert and on and on until he crashes into something and the car explodes, Avi allows for a two-hour motel break. I kind of love the amount of credence Avi gives Ray's obsession with this, like, yes it sucks to be yelled at by Ray or have to put the hurt on him, but also you have to trust your own instincts sometimes.
Lena: "What I know about Harvey Levin is that he got new security..."
Ray: "Yes, Derek de la Fontaine. What about this muscles man?"
Lena: "Chip? I think it's his boyfriend?"
Tommy shambles into Lena's area dragging his drip behind him, whining once again about Harvey, and makes a salient point: "I should just ... pay him? I need my career, man. I'm an actor. I have to act. And my agent's just sent me a great script, but the whole thing will fall through if we don't make a deal. So I ordered a check for two million dollars."
The triumph and the tragedy of Tommy Wheeler is that even the people that love him are loving him through the stubborn veil of fiction. I venture to say that I (for e.g.) love Tommy Wheeler and want to help him as much in our universe as one might in Ray Donovan's universe: And that both are equally possible, which is to say impossible. Even Chloe loves him like we do -- through the veil -- and she knows for a fact that he's addicted to her.
Didn't you ever want to invite, I dunno, like Courtney Love or somebody to come stay at your house for a week and just be chill and see if you could fix her? Or remind her what being a person looks like in reality? Dear Brad Renfro: No homo but I think you need a timeout. We associate this idea of dollmakers and broken dolls and savers-of-dolls as being a gendered thing, Ray and women versus the evil men who make the money, but honestly I wonder if Tommy's not most pitiable, the most hollowed-out doll of all.
Which is essentially why Ray just tells him that's fine, go ahead and do what you have to do: Because nothing Tommy Wheeler does or will ever do actually matters.
SEAN WALKER
And then on the other side you have the self-mythologizing of a Sean Walker, who is just old enough to be looking back at himself through that veil. I don't know, maybe it's not maturity or a stage of evolution, maybe it's generational -- there is something very Eighties about recapitulating your authentic experiences back into a spectacle that doesn’t hurt you, like this. You speak so long in script -- the beats, the emotion that people would hypothetically feel, the thematic and symbolic importance of specific actions in the narrative you've forced onto the fragments of our chaos, life -- that your memories become projections on a screen. Pictures of the Floating World.
Sean Walker: "I still remember her looking up at me..."
Mickey: "Before you pulled the trigger? How did it feel?"
Sean: "Feel?"
Which do you think is really more nihilistic? The sort of younger sex-doll drug kind, or the dissociated, arrogant, yoga kind? I tend to side with the Tommy Wheelers and crazy fucking Ashley Ruckers of the world: "I may be a Disney icon without a childhood, or an action star going down in flames, but at least I'm authentically empty. At least I have left myself the exit strategy of stepping back to look at what that means." But once you sculpt it into a reality, into a lifestyle -- once you fake it so real you are beyond fake -- you will always be unknowable: The saddest possible thing you can be.
Sean: "It was the 'worst' moment of my 'life.' I saw this little 'hole' in her 'head.'"
All actors are annoying and magnetic in the same way, but a Sean Walker makes me so much more uncomfortable than a Tommy Wheeler, because those guys are just dead behind the eyes. They've answered a question that shouldn't ever be answered, only asked over and over and over until you die.
Sean: "She was looking at 'me.' And then it just started to pulse blood, just... pulsing and pulsingand pulsing."
Like Robert Downey, Jr. -- we used him up, we're still consuming him, he is a supernova -- but he is every bit as fucking crazy as the day we met. Just now it's juice fasts and sobriety and the 24/7 somewhat-lifelike impression of a human being, that scary dry-drunk equilibrium of somebody who joined AA like it was Scientology and is happy to soak in that for the rest of forever because it's the best they can do: Like Sean Walker, who decided this is a story he's telling himself, and not the truth. That he is just a story we are telling to each other:
Sean: "Special effects'll take care of that! But this isn't about my story, it's about yours."
I mean, doesn't that seem like an old man's game? There have always been both -- the ones that die, the Marilyns, are usually the ones introspective enough to see it for what it is -- but when you look at the nightmares of Hollywood, the clutching at youth and the self-sustaining ouroboros life of being surrounded by Yes Men, that seems like something that started and doesn't necessarily need to keep going. Better to be a careless little fool; better to be a phony, but a real phony.
Justifying yourself to an imaginary audience will kill you every time, because it involves splitting your soul into the observer and the observed, and the observer just happens to hate you and judge you at all times?
Fuck that.
THE OFFICE
Van Miller is shocked -- maybe a little sad but mostly I think validated that one of his crank obsessions is actually working out -- as he listens to the confession. Mickey acting in good faith? Also shocking. You know that I love Van Miller more than almost anything, but you have to wonder about a guy who wants to be a Hater like, as his job. Harvey too, that's another kind. Or the opposite side of the coin.
I mean, I realize that Van Miller is a sexually complex man; but we form complex situations in reaction to the things we love. Second-tier Hollywood -- Ray, Ezra/Lee, Harvey, Miller in a way -- is about distributing the light the stars give off, and in order to be a part of that system you need a certain amount of radioactive sensitivity to celebrity. To love what you hate and hate what you love; to choke on what nourishes you -- and Van Miller is a living embodiment of that central idea, that fame is an aggregate action of turning the things we love into things we secretly hate. "Stars: Just Like Us" is a euphemism for what we really want, which is to rip them all apart. If they really were just like us, they wouldn't matter.
We like to be disingenuous about what we really want, which is to punish them for the power we gave them in the first place. America is to celebrities what men are to women.
Or if it were a cell, the star would be the nucleus and the industry would be the mitochondria and secondary cell structures, managers bringing oxygen and paparazzi carrying waste and lawyers are the leukocytes and every single part resents every other thing and loves it in equal measure, because its survival depends on the other parts. And I guess Ray Donovan would be the chemotherapy, because the whole thing is malignant -- running away with itself far past its ability to support its own growth.
Avi: "I already know what you're gonna say, but we had to stop. For the dog."
Ray: "Are you fucking kidding me? Are they screaming about a shower? Are you at a motel?"
Avi: "They're out of their fucking minds, Ray. Take it easy on me."
Ray: "The thing is that he's a fucking fugitive, Avi. If someone calls in a tip you're gonna have the Feds up your ass so fast you won't even see it coming."
Avi: "Feel free to fly in and take over, dude. This is the worst."
Ray: "Okay. I'm just saying, if you don't you want to get arrested or shot in the fucking head by a SWAT team, you get back here immediately so I can protect you."
Meanwhile, Tommy and his hard-on and his general lack of ... anything ... have decided it's time to flirt halfheartedly with Lena, eventually offering her a backrub while Ray watches from another office, kind of bemused.
Lena: "I'm gay, Tommy. But knock yourself out, my back is killing me."
Tommy: "What're you doing later?"
Lena: "Aw, Tommy. You're married to a tranny."
Tommy: "Don't say 'tranny.' And we split up. And we never judged each other like that..."
Lena: "Are you not also gay? Is that not also why my office is on high alert?"
Tommy: "I don't know."
Nobody does, buddy. It's okay. Those words sacrifice clarity for conciseness, which is useful for a lot of things, but really harmful to internalize. You start living up to somebody else's words, you're done for. He shivers, and androgynous Lena strips off her t-shirt: "That's a good sign," she says, carelessly caring without thinking about it, "That means the drugs are bringing you down." He's grateful for the shirt; it looks great.
Ray: "Terry, do you have any idea where our father is?"
Terry: "No, he went away with a strange man."
Ray: "I know this strange man. How unfortunate for everyone. Thanks."
Terry: "Who is the strange man? He was quite strange."
Ray: "This is one of those things you don't need to be a part of. I mean this."
As Ray is getting put off by Sean Walker's office -- confirming in the process that Mickey is there, and thus wired, and thus more efficiently and effectively fucking things up than ever before -- Frank's secret family shows up with stars in their eyes, so Lena has to stop playing dressup with Tommy and go back to pretending to be a print photographer. "Big smile, ladies!"
Ray: "What the fuck are you doing about Van Miller, Frank?"
Frank: "Well, Ray, I've been thinking about it..."
Ray: "Shit."
Frank: "If I turn Van in to the ASAC it's gonna shine a bright light right up my ass, and that means yours, too..."
Ray: "That is a Condition Yellow concern. They are already up my ass, they are up my ass as far as my ass goes. So if we subtract your pretend worries about my welfare, that leaves us with you chickening out because you are selfish and a coward, and therefore here is a picture of your secret family who is in my office, right now. I am prepared to burn you. Either way, this needs to end immediately. I can worry about finding a new FBI friend tomorrow."
SULLY
Avi screams at Sully for hanging out in the parking lot when he should be hiding his mug, so he goes inside and this is what Catherine is saying on the phone right before he does: "Okay, I love you. Don't worry about me. I'll be in touch when I can. Bye. Bye."
At which point, upon confirming that she mentioned California to her mother during the call, he strangles her to death.
I mean, it's the longest and most powerful scene -- in that Breaking Bad way where if you are down for it it's amazing, and if you're not invested it is very long and very boring, but at least James Woods can do anything because he is magic and makes everything very interesting, just like Gould -- but on paper I can't make it more interesting than that. It is hilarious, and sorry to say that part of that is that she's been so fucking horrible and obnoxious the whole time, which is weird when it's a woman, but such are things: It wouldn't be half as funny if she was just some nurturing softy dumdum, but you wouldn't feel like you were learning anything about him if you didn't know their history and see how irritated he is by having to kill her at all.
We see him get menacing, and she gets scared in a way we haven't seen before but has always existed, and then he transforms into a demon and then he strangles her with the poodle's leash -- "I always hated your fucking mother! I'm too old for this shit, you're gonna give me a hernia!" -- and leaves her on the floor with her shoes poking out between the two beds.
Sully: "Time to go! Oh, um, she's not coming."
Avi: "Hmm. Well, I'd better go check if she's dead, because that won't fly."
Avi: "Ray? We have a bit of a problem. He murdered Catherine, like on a whim."
Ray: "Did anybody see her check in? Good. Take care of it. Dig a hole."
SEAN
"We follow the innocent Boston man as he enters the prison yard... But just as he's about to lower his head and cry, we hear the sounds of a helicopter up above. He looks up... He sees the movie star at the controls. (Me.) It hovers down. He reaches his hand out. Close-up... hand holding hand. Credits roll."
He's holding Mickey's arm by now, tears in both their eyes. It's what they wanted to happen, both of them; it's what they want to happen now, of course -- Sean pulls Mickey out of the hell they found their way into -- but it's also how they wish it had gone, to begin with. Sean was a tool in a plan, a bystander who solved everybody's problems when he fucked up, and then he was the way for everybody to win. But it would make him feel better if Mickey had won too; less blood on his hands. Less guilt now, out of nowhere. And Mickey, in love with movies all his life, gets to be a part of it.
They dance, and gad about, singing about the movie they're going to make. Van Miller could hear every word, if he were listening; maybe he'd hear the change in Mickey as it happened, instead of finding out too late. I know that I, as a passive viewer, knew the second Sean Walker reached for Mickey's hand that Van Miller was going to be a dead motherfucker in very short order, essentially because he doesn’t understand the kind of person Mickey is, which is a roughhouser and a gambler who hates being told what to do and is stuck in the past. The kind of person who can make himself believe that Sean Walker could be acting in good faith because Mickey deserves a second chance to start over, play it out from the exact moment it all went away.
That's what makes this dangerous for my man Van Miller. What makes it dangerous for Mickey is that Sean Walker also thinks he's acting in good faith -- and will believe it, and in his dream with Mickey, and in the story of redemption they are telling... Until the second Mickey walks out the door, when the phone will ring, or his assistant comes in, and some new shiny object gets his attention.
TOMMY
Down in the TMZ parking structure, waiting for Harvey's boyfriend to come for the check.
Tommy: "Little dude, he's a good kid, Ray. I know you're worried he's gay..."
Ray: "The fuck?"
Tommy: "Or whatever."
Ray: "Honestly this never even occurred to me. My obsessive attention to their sexuality has nothing to do with that, but my own familial issues."
Tommy: "Either way, he's not. He told me he has a girlfriend..."
Ray: "Hang on, I have to do a bunch of awesome fucked-up things in a really quick way."
He puts on the gasmask and grabs a baseball bat, taking out ever security camera in the place, having realized they are not going to play fair once again; by the time Harvey's heavy appears, Ray's back behind the wheel, and he runs him down before threatening a freaked-out Harvey with a baseball bat. Tommy's amazement with all of this is just darling; maybe he'll take Ray more seriously now that he's seen how carefully and sweetly he deals, by comparison, with him. I mean, today he's precious cargo because of Conor, but I've noticed before the sort of exasperated patience Tommy gets out of him.
VAN MILLER
Is very particular, pouring out a frosty beer in a precise way, once they're back in his lair. What passes for joy, which is a good thing for him to be feeling here at the end of his life. I would imagine he is feeling very powerful -- validated -- when he flips on the recording and starts to laugh. But Mickey, he's coming fresh from the end of the whole meeting. A long road, from the beginning to the end, and he was leaving his shit on the side of it as he went. So to loop back around to the beginning, to hear himself betraying a man he's since become convinced could be a brother, is a little bit much.
KID'S CHOICE AWARDS
Tommy: "Thanks, Ray! I had a great day!"
Ray: "Take care of Tommy. Which includes not sharing any of that sick shit you got running around in your head."
Tommy: "Obviously. Hey, little dude! You look slammin'!"
He turns such a charm on Abby Donovan that I had to rewind it several times to make sure I wasn't having a heart attack. That is a lot to have coming at you; I think she even blushes, just from a quick hug and smile, before he reminds her who he is.
Tommy: "You'll never believe how fucked up I was this morning. Gotta hand it to Ray."
Abby: "I probably couldn't even explain it to you if I tried, but that is actually the best possible thing you could have said. I can see now what he was up against today, and that's without the three other problems he was working on all day that I'm not allowed to know about."
Conor: "Okay, we're good again."
Ray: "Anything else? While I've got you here."
Conor: "Yeah, I'm still mad you hit Grandpa."
Ray: "You really like him, huh? Why does everybody fucking love that guy?"
Conor, verbatim: "He's fun. He talks to me."
Ray: "That's a little on the nose, but message received. Taking care of Tommy was taking care of you, but at the end of the day he still got to spend the whole time with me."
The way Conor looks at Tommy, you can see Tommy wanting to look that way at Ray sometimes, a little bit. The way he talks about Mickey, of course a father would want to hear and see that. But then too, he came through for him, and when he pulls Conor into his arms -- yards from the red carpet, everybody watching -- the boy comes willingly, sweetly, without any embarrassment or shame: That's something that couldn't exist between them and anybody else. "I love you," he tells his son, without stuttering or thinking about it, and gives Conor something he never got, and Tommy never got, and on some level Conor gets that, I think.
Abby, nicely in her way: "He stinks of booze, and he's wearing a woman's shirt."
Ray: "Yep. He'll be fine."
THE OFFICE
Frank calls Ray to tell him it's going down, which is a huge relief for Ray and would be a huge relief for us, if we didn't know Van Miller was clearly about to die, so Lena sends the mom and daughter -- bored, conked out on the couch -- and gives them her regrets: That last-minute photo shoot's been canceled. They can go. Mom's pissy, but goes easy enough, and nobody ever figures out what was really going on.
Avi arrives with the poodle -- Sully's already at his motel so I guess he didn't want the poodle -- and hands it off to Lena, who like all right-thinking Americans hates poodles, and thus hands it off to Tara and her mom, as a sort of consolation prize. It's a kind of neat little bow on the whole situation: As everything gets wrapped up, even the dog gets a pass out of the story, and everybody's happy.
SULLY
"I said to myself on the drive, if LA looks like this, I'll fucking kill myself! But now that I'm here, it's nice."
There's a pushmi-pullyu moment where Ray keeps trying to keep everybody safe (including Sully) and Sully's stubborn-old-man thing is ever-present and Ray keeps being like, "Yeah, but this is LA and you've been in hiding for a million years so maybe give a thought to what I am offering you, such as a car and many guns," but which for Sully is not about specifics but about the general narrative in his head: Free of Boston, of hiding, of his mother and his horrible girlfriend, and back in the saddle, he will be damned if some whippersnapper tells him what to do. It's irritating, especially if you hate old people and their bullshit; it goes on and on forever before Ray finally gives him the time and date (Black Irish's first fight, of course). But again: James Woods.
VAN MILLER
Van: "I got it all worked out, I even already know the judge and prosecutor I want..."
Mickey: "And they think they can put Ray away for life?"
Van: "I guess so. They're both known for their punitive flourishes. Especially with people like him."
Mickey: "Letting that one go for a second. What does your boss think?"
Van: "I just want to be very clear that nobody knows about my personal obsession or the evidence we just garnered, or any of it. I think I'm bragging -- that the reasons we have never been able to get Ray in all these years are nothing to me -- but really I'm just kind of telling you to murder me."
"At the Bureau, lazy people are always sticking their names on good work. Not this time. Who's got the stick now? Hmm? Who's got the stick now?"
And then he is very dead, brains spattered across his wall of targets, and suddenly all the problems are solved. Ray's whole shitty day didn't even need to happen. Which is great for an act-break, because think about what it means: He's constructed like eight different elaborate scenarios supposedly to protect Ezra who is dying, and his larger operation, and now all that's left is: He wants his father dead.
But finding Mickey appalling most of the time doesn't mean Ray's right about anything; in fact, if you told me how darling I would be finding him, two months ago, I would tell you that you are ridiculous. He's been a study in unraveling menace, and the vulnerabilities and loneliness that lie underneath it. I mean, there's a 50/50 chance he's a coiled viper and Ray will summon it with his cruelty, or even that Ray will turn out to have been right all along, and the dude is just straight crazy, but the deck couldn't be more stacked against those things at this point, which is like... Awesome, because it raises the stakes impossibly high by pretty much leveling them.
Because what are the stakes now? Without Van, Mickey doesn't even really have leverage going the other way, which means the only thing they are really fighting about is old shit. Bridget, hazily remembered abuses, and all of Ray's demons. Right before he shot Van Miller, he asked about putting Ray in jail: Was that because he still bears him animus and wants to punish him, or because he never did and wants to protect him, or because in that moment he weighed the options and wanted to be with Sean Walker more than he wanted rid of Ray?
The Sean Walker conspiracy is fine, the entire FBI thing doesn't matter, Frank's family remains undetonated, and Mickey's got pretty much everything going great -- and not in a way that really affects Ray's life in any way, now that we're back in charge of Bunchy's money -- so everybody's hands are clean (including the two murders Mickey has committed since he got out of jail, but you know what I mean) and the question we've been asking all season becomes the only question left:
How much of this is Ray?
2 WEEKS
When Ezra counsels Ray against letting Mickey poison his wonderful life, does Ray take that to mean getting over himself, or going through with the murder? Abby starts putting the plot together, but probably nothing else knowing her. Ray bonds with Daryll, presumably to get on his dad's nerves, and Bunchy goes looking for a priest. See you in two weeks; have a great Labor Day. Three episodes left!
JACOB CLIFTON is a freelance writer and critic based in Austin, Texas. He currently recaps Ray Donovan and Mistresses for TWoP. Jacob can be found online at jacobclifton.com, Twitter, and Facebook, as well as a regular column for Tor.com, Geek Love.