Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | 47 USERS: A- YOU GRADE IT Death & The Donovans
By Jacob Clifton | Season 1 | Episode 11 | Aired on 09.15.2013
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.With lunatic Sully on the loose -- now abetted by the nearly-as-insane Mickey Donovan -- Ray sends Avi to babysit Abby and the kids in Calabasas. Surprise, Abby is a bitch about this and refuses to believe anything anybody says, about anything and everything. Conor gets a bit of a Tommy Wheeler crush on Avi after hearing about his days in Mossad, and by the end of the episode Abby sends the kids off to a hotel with Avi so she can start as much shit as possible with whoever's around.
After charming zero pants off the cops investigating Sean Walker's murder, Mickey calls Claudette down from Malibu for a quick meeting that, as usual, is suffused with equal parts gratitude and regret. Mickey's sad-sack love for Claudette is entertaining and touching as ever, and of course she agrees to say she was with him that night. One less storyline to worry about heading into the finale, I suppose, although that's still only one murder out of like four that he has an alibi for, due to being a crazy, constant murderer.
Given the limited amount of info at his disposal, it's pretty easy to understand why Frank, after discovering Van Miller's (sniff) dead body, assumes that Ray is behind his murder. (Even though actually that makes no sense.) Of course, maybe if Ray hadn't ridden him so hard and so blackmaily the whole time, maybe he'd see sense, but Ray is not his usual loquacious self when he gets Frank's call, thanks to having had the worst day in history.
To wit: Once he's got the babysitter Avi in place, Ray heads out to do (whatever, it's not clear) about Sully and Mickey, and calls to harass Frank again which sets up his finding of Van's body, and then has to drop all of that because Bunchy has just shown up at the Fite Club covered in blood, because guess what, he shot that priest.
Frances is of the opinion that the priest should go to the hospital, but the Donovans -- including Daryll -- decide to go a little bit of a different way. Namely, torturing him for the entire episode until he admits that he's the mad molester that ruined all of their lives. (A plot that has come to dominate at least one episode of every television show in existence, lately; it's like the new "underground fight club" trope). Spoiler alert, he is; shocker alert, he also molested Ray Donovan. Who shoots him in the head, after a protracted conversation about whether or not he's going to do just that.
So yeah. Ray got messed with. It flips the hard-boiled "broken dolly" noir thing around on its head in a brutally intelligent way, which means reversing the polarity of the entire show if you think about it, because everything magnetizes to that one nucleus of exploitation in various forms. I mean, not to say that it wasn't there to be picked up on -- his memory issues, his sexual issues, his obsession with his own children's bodies; his devotion to both protecting the helpless and cleaning up messes like they were never there -- but because we know so little about him and what is ever going on with him, it makes Bunchy's B-story as much misdirection as it is powerful in its own right.
In the end, Ray goes home and admits the truth about this situation to Abby, who saw just enough of the hostage scenario to seriously consider divorce. Although it's the emotional honesty she's been demanding this entire time, the fact that he's too fucked up -- and preoccupied with the eighty other things on his plate right now -- to accept her greedy comfort means she ends up out the door anyway, which is so Abby.
"Oh, you won't let me climb your body like a tree while we talk about how you got raped? Guess that means I'm basically being abused. Abby out!"
Anyway. Ezra's freaking out about all this, so there's now two stressful dads (and two dead priests!) in Ray's life, not to mention the Sullivan threat and whatever retaliation Mickey still has in store. Bunchy maybe will get better from this point forward, and possibly Ray will end up with custody of Sean Walker's test-tube baby in the near future. Which seems like a fine Season Two to me: Just shirtless Ray Donovan, holding a baby, making phone calls and driving around LA and having gruff feelings he keeps to himself while investigating his various scars and tattoos in the mirror.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!PREVIOUSLY
Bunchy thought he spotted his abuser at a church here in LA, which is the kind of coincidence this show seems pretty comfortable with. Mickey accidentally sexually assaulted a lady, and then after they made up about it Sully shot her through the head. But it's okay, because now: Mickey and Sully are friends, Sean Walker is dead, Mickey knows his son tried to have him murdered, and Ray is running out of options. For some reason, his FBI contact won't turn in Van Miller for being on LSD that time, despite many episodes of Ray blackmailing him to do so. What nobody knows except Mickey is that Van Miller -- an American hero and certainly the best part of this TV program -- is lying face-down in his usually tidy basement lair, which is just now very messy due to having all of his blood all over it from his recent brutal murder.
AVI
Shows up looking awesome and scary as usual to protect the house in Calabasas from the hit squad of old dudes that is coming after everybody in their alliance of murder. At some point I would like to know what is so fucking great about Colleen that half of the people on this show were in love with her and are still feeling bitchy about her death twenty years later. They're not just sad about it, they are crazy! Maybe I just don't have the attention span but I can't imagine being that raw this much later, that I would come out of hiding from the FBI and go around killing random movie stars about it.
Avi "So Sully is going to come kill everybody, probably?"
Ray "He's an enigma, Avi. Who can say? But given that he kills people every episode, often for no real reason, that makes me think probably you are correct."
Avi "I foresee your wife giving me no trouble. No asking endless questions, or shrieking in my face like a harpy, or doing the exact opposite of anything I ask her."
Ray "Of these notions you will soon be disabused."
EZRA
Ezra "So apparently I am in charge of Sean Walker's baby."
Ray "Are you sure? That doesn't sound right."
Ezra "I negotiated the surrogacy with his secretary, so I am the mom of the baby."
Ray "Aren't you a lawyer? Can you not fix this?"
Ezra "Not in this episode. Isn't it sad how Sean Walker is dead?"
Ray "Not really, he was kind of insufferable. I'm more worried about how Sully seems to think that he is immune to justice or reality and just goes around like some kind of West Coast George Zimmerman, killing people flagrantly and showing no regard for appearances."