Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | 23 USERS: A- YOU GRADE IT The Long Walk
By Jacob Clifton | Season 1 | Episode 12 | Aired on 09.22.2013
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Abby's gone somewhat clinical by the time we rejoin the family at their hotel hideaway, snapping at Bridget and hiding her head in the sheets. But once Mickey -- tossed out of the apartment by a radically improving Bunchy -- shows up looking for comfort, she shifts into high gear and puts all the blame on Mickey. That part's not exactly true either, but it sends him packing off to rejoin Team Sully and hopefully get out of the country... Or so it appears.
The Donovan boys themselves are also still reeling from last week's various revelations and murders. Terry and Frances discuss the death of Father Danny, and she reactivates his Parkinson's like whoa by intimating she'll probably be going to the cops. Bunchy, meanwhile, has a brand-new haircut, big-boy shirts and a whole new attitude about attempting to be an adult. But the priest's late death will hang over them all.
After chasing Creepy Old Eddie into traffic and retrieving those stolen Fite Nite funds, Ray spends the episode trying to track down a quickly devolving Sully. By threatening Tiny -- who is sick of Sully's shit, especially after Sully beats him with a shoe that still has blood on it from this hobo he stabs to death -- and then calling in a tip to the FBI and the news, he's able to funnel Sully to FBI Frank's boat. At this point Sully double-crosses Ray, shoots Avi and prepares to make off with all the funds.
However, after a stiff talking-to from Abby and an even more bathetic showdown with Ray -- in which it's revealed that his entire beef with Mickey stems from his tacitly allowing the boys' sexual abuse in the first place, and that Ray has planned to murder his father since he was ten -- Mickey truly has turned a new leaf. He bows and scrapes for Sully just long enough to get ahold of Frank's gun, then shoots the FBI's Most Wanted through the head. Tiny runs off into the night, Mickey tries once again to get Ray's approval, and eventually he has to go live on Terry's cot.
Heading away from her Mickey confrontation in the opposite direction, Abby realizes that Ray is right about everything and that she's been pretty insensitive to the shit that he has been dealing with. Not that he didn't raw-dog some Disney chicks and kill a priest or two, but on balance, she has probably given him more shit about the things she shouldn't than she's refrained from discussing the stuff he needs her counsel on, if you see what I'm saying. (Bridget gets a similar breakdown from her new heroine Lena, who is painfully underwritten and masterfully played as ever.) Anyway, she leaves him a lovely message summoning him to the hotel, and we end the season on two ultimately very similar tableaux:
Mickey sits in the Fite Club with a pocketful of Sully's cash, surrounded by almost all of his sons, drinking whiskey and watching boxing and being generally unfit for anyone's company but each other... And the Family Donovan, stretched out on beach chairs at a luxury resort -- Ray's tux covered in blood, Conor's tummy aching from too much breakfast, Bridget reading the fucking Bell Jar and Abby finally resting in his arms -- on a lonely, lovely shore that looks almost exactly like the end of the world.
A quietly noir and darkly humorous ending in which all the loose threads eventually get tied off, with a heaping helping of undergirded emotion and some pretty dynamite characters. Sure, there are mysteries to be solved and consequences to be evaded, but Frank's Newspaper Hero stance in front of Sully's ambulance tells me those could probably all be swept aside by next season. And the sexy, mute, titular man-golem at the middle of it has a lot of living to look forward to, considering he went through about ten years of therapy in the last two episodes alone. It was uneven and it was several different shows over the course of its season, but in the end it was a good deal subtler and wiser than it began. I'm just glad I was as wrong about Mickey as the rest of them were.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!PREVIOUSLY
Mickey shot Van Miller but forgot to tell anybody, so FBI Frank was left on autopilot to stop an investigation that is no longer happening. Then, Frank found Van's body and assumed stupidly that Ray got nervous and killed him. Mickey shot a priest but it was wrong priest but then Bunchy shot the right priest and then Ray shot him for good. Hmm, who else did Mickey shoot? Everybody… everybody is dead. He and Sully killed Sean Walker, which is the last loose end anyway, but also leaves Mickey with nothing fun to do.
Sully's man Eddie made off with a lot of money, screwing both Ray and Sully over. I'm not sure anybody knows that yet but either way Ray now has two major problems (in addition to his two imaginary problems, the other one being that Mickey is not actually so bad). On the home front, Ray told Abby about his childhood sexual abuse and then everybody went to stay in a hotel so Sully doesn't kill them.
AIRPORT
Avi and Ray chase Eddie all over the airport with their bag of money, so he doesn't get away and make Sully even angrier/crazier than he already is. It is a pretty fun sequence to watch, but not so much on paper. In the end, they chase him into the path of a car, and he goes to the hospital without his giant bag of money. On the downside, he has no idea where Sully is, but at least he can tell them that the third man on the team, a big man named Tiny, is very into Chinese buffets. Exactly the kind of shitty C-story Lena generally finds herself.
THE FBI
Frank: "Why are you lurking in my office? It's so scary when you do that."
Ray: "I have too many problems to also be worried about getting arrested."
Frank: "Then why did you shoot Van Miller? He was the best thing on this show!"
Ray: "Think about it. I didn't kill him."
Frank: "On reflection, that makes sense."
Ray: "I am still going to blackmail you though, just in case."
FITE CLUB
Bunchy: "As I said last week but will be reiterating, I feel pretty okay with my rapist dying."
Terry: "It's perfectly understandable."
Bunchy: "I am going to get a grownup haircut, and tuck my shirts in, and also go live back at my apartment. I am going to try being a person now."
Terry: "A little whiplash-y, this turnaround, but I get it."
THE HOTEL