Certainly not the greatest show on TV, but I’m still watching.
Seems to me that they’ve set themselves up to take this show wherever they want on the fly. Are they Donovans going to move to a more upscale neighborhood with annoying neighbors? Maybe/maybe not. Will Ray sleep with the reporter? Probably.
To me, Jon Voight is the reason I keep coming back. His overacting is compelling. Ray and Abby’s story? Not so much.
I watched the first season–mainly for the performances. (In addition to Voight, I like Eddie Marsan, Steven Bauer, and Brooke Smith, among others.) I agree with you in not loving the Ray-and-Abby-marriage-troubles plotline.
I have yet to watch the Season 2 episodes shown, so far. I keep making excuses not to watch.
Somebody needs to strangle the wife (Abbie?) so she dies a slow, agonizing death. Is there a more irritating wife character on TV?
I like the show. I go back and forth on Jon Voigt, though. Sometimes I hate him, and sometimes I think he’s pretty good. He was quite good in the last episode.
Best line of Season 1: * I’m not the kind of guy you fire.*
I almost wish they wouldn’t do the accents. They actually are pretty good for TV, but they often slip mid sentence and it kind of throws me off. I guess it gives “authenticity”, though. Unless you’re from Boston, you surely wouldn’t notice the slips.
Honestly, I was cringing during the scene involving Bunchy. It could have gone so badly. For those who missed it (although I’ll spoiler-box this for the one person still watching the series who’s interested enough not to want to get spoilered):
Bunchy, one of Ray’s brothers, who was molested by a neighborhood priest as a child and is still suffering the effects of the trauma, met, in the previous episode, a young mother and her approximately ten-year-old son at the bicycle shop in which he works. They seemed to hit it off, and in this episode she invited him to her home for dinner. He arrived, expecting the son to be there as well but the son was at a friend’s house for a sleepover. In other words, she arranged for them to be alone. As Bunchy and the wife were getting comfortable, he excused himself and in the bathroom took a Viagra pill. But then the son came home unexpectedly. First, Bunchy was there in the bathroom as the mother started to undress the son to give him a bath (the boy had wet himself at the friend’s house). Later, the three of them settled down to watch TV and the kid rested his head in Bunchy’s lap. Where, presumably, a Viagra-assisted boner was developing. I was afraid that the kid would notice this, and then the boy and mother would assume the wrong thing (that Bunchy was turned on by the kid).
I had the impression that Bunchy is worried about his reactions even in the absence of the, er, medication. (And that this is the reason for the storyline involving the mother-and-son–Bunchy is dealing with fears about his own nature and/or the effect his childhood experience may have had on him.)
Well, leaving the Bunchy story open-ended makes me think it’ll be a non-event. The character’s been through enough; it’d be nice to see him have some sort of normal relationship.
Did Sherilyn Fenn actually gain weight for this role, or has she just let herself go?
I keep waiting for Shorty to blow himself and Mickey up by smoking a joint around an oxygen tank.
It’s no Breaking Bad, for sure, but even with all its flaws Ray Donovan is possibly my favorite show on television right now.
Agreed that the wife is annoying as hell. I like to imagine that she’s a time-traveling Trixie from Deadwood who landed in Boston 16 years ago and has been trying to blend in ever since.
That was an intense episode… glad to see Silence of the Lambs girl stand up for Terry and tell Ray he’s an asshole though it should be obvious to everyone that Ray was blind-drunk at that point. And- I agree Abby is an annoying character who doesn’t know what she wants. I wish she was more Trixie-like and could call Ray out on his bullshit and cheating.
I don’t think Connor will try to get the whole family back together again…
I knew there would be a problem with the cake when the mother just told the kid in the bakery her son’s name. His name is spelled Conor, but most people hearing that name are going to assume Connor or Conner. And why couldn’t she just go to the supermarket for a cake? They usually have ready-made sheet cakes that can be personalized on demand.
Wanted to add…the “blackout drunk” camera effect used when Bridget told Ray what time Abby came home was very reminiscent of a similar famous scene from Mean Streets when Harvey Keitel’s character gets shitfaced and hits the floor.