Liev Schreiber, left, as Ray Donovan, Jason Butler Harner, middle, as Varick and Guy Burnet as Casey in Ray Donovan. (Michael Desmond/SHOWTIME)
The kids, a boy and girl, both teenagers,
are discussing dad. The son says, “Dad is a thug.” His sister snaps,
“Dad is not a thug!” The son replies, sarcastically, “I mean it in a
cool way.”
The dad is Ray Donovan
(Sundays, TMN and on-demand) and that conversation about Ray pretty
much sums up the series. Ray is a depressive thug, a fixer in L.A., one
of those men with multiple issues. Family, fidelity, religion, violence
and narcissism.
Now in its third season, Ray Donovan the series, from Showtime,
has many fans. No wonder – it is extremely well-made nonsense. It’s a
predictable network-type drama tarted up as a cable-quality, challenging
narrative. But take away the foul language, sex scenes and occasional
bursts of gory violence, and it’s very, very ordinary.
From the start, Ray (Liev Schreiber) was a
guy with some big-time Catholic upbringing problems. All smooth and
chillingly cool in the L.A. setting of big money and famous people, he
carried the baggage of his Boston-Irish background. His dad, Mickey (Jon
Voight, who remains the best element of the series), is a career
criminal newly released from jail. He had brothers, one of whom was
abused by a priest, and the family ran a gym where a lot of male rage is
unleashed in the boxing ring.
As for
the women in his life, Ray’s wife, Abby (Paula Malcomson), was his
harbour in a sea of cruelty and perversity. But Abby always wanted more
than an occasionally alert and loving Ray and was essentially a nagging
figure who cramped his style.
At this
point in the narrative, Ray has acknowledged his own sexual abuse as a
boy, he’s estranged from Abby, one brother is in jail, people have died
because of his actions and his dad is facilitating a prostitution ring
at a rundown hotel.
More than before, the series feels forced, contrived to be something of deep seriousness when it is very superficial.
The
first thing we hear is Ray’s old pal Ezra (Elliott Gould), a powerful
Hollywood attorney who has often used Ray’s services, saying, “You don’t
know who you are any more, Ray.” Well, we knew that.
There
is also a lot of dramatic business to let us into the fact that Abby is
as lonely as Ray is lost. Inevitably, there’s a fight involving Ray and
some guy who didn’t pay a hooker. And then a new, sinister force comes
into Ray’s life.
That’s movie mogul
Malcolm Finney (Ian McShane), who hires Ray to recover his son who has
been kidnapped. Soon, Ray is also required to work for Finney’s daughter
Paige (Katie Holmes, who isn’t really acting, but seems to be imitating
some female Hollywood flake she encountered), and the neat structural
contrast between the Finney family and Ray’s family is complete.
The
dialogue turns bizarre. “What is it you do?” Finney asks Ray. “I change
the story,” Ray replies with the sort of grumpy grandiosity he does so
well. Soon, Finney is quoting Kafka to Ray.
At
the end of the first episode, we see Ray lost and brooding and Abby
getting acquainted with a new family pet. The music on the soundtrack is
Hotel California by the Eagles.
Strip it of its gloss of pretend-seriousness and Ray Donovan
could be on CBS at 9 p.m. on weeknights. What saves it from utter
ordinariness is Mickey. There’s a dry, malevolent wit to Mickey and Jon
Voight is having the time of his life in the role. A scene in which
Mickey dreams up the idea of a whorehouse in a doughnut shop is
priceless.
The best of premium cable drama reaches far beyond what Ray Donovan does, and delivers. The truly great ones – Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, The Wire and many more – contain disturbing commentary on class, family and work. They have sociological depth. They don’t rely on Hotel California to establish a mood.
Ray Donovan
is, as such, an interesting example of the true differences between
network and premium cable drama. The show is mundane, at its core, but
presented to us in a cool way
Cr : The Globe and Mail
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