There is
something quite primal in the new Showtime Series Ray Donovan, it attracts as
with a moth to a flame.
Ray Donovan,
without any job description in the beginning of the series, seems by acts and deeds to be some
sort of Private Detective working for a high powered law firm in Los
Angeles.
As time progresses, Ray is a fixer
of all the things that the rich and famous break and might go to jail for. But
he has his bag of tricks and network of paid muscle, contacts and brains to
hold together the power behind the throne of the rich and fabulously rich law
firm protecting the fabulously rich and fabulously ugly and stupid Hollywood
icons that pay huge retainers to be protected from the press, the public,
truth, justice and even reality.
Behind the
bone crunching, PR pizaazz fixing, bribing and body burying is the background
story of Ray’s extended blood family, transports from the poverty, crime and grit of Irish South Boston in their origins twenty years previously.
Ray Donovan
is played by actor, writer, director and
probably Emmy Award winner Liev Schreiber for his performance in this drama vehicle.
There, in
the background story of his scumbag gangster dad (played by Jon Voight) recently
released from prison by the FBI to spy on his son and bring down the powerful
men of the powerful L.A. Law Firm headed by veteran actor Elliot Gould - is also the
story of Ray's younger brother, emotionally lost in adulthood and scarred forever
by being abused by a priest in Boston some twenty years back.
Ray’s
younger brother “Bunchy” gets a $1,400,000 dollar settlement check from the
Roman Catholic church for services and abuse rendered in the name of holy
mudder church. Bunchy, a clearly disturbed
and drug and alcohol dependent individual paces back and forth in an eternal
daydream filled with fears, anxiety and doubts about himself as the result of
the institutionally sanctioned abuse and cannot sleep.
Without
giving too much away about perhaps cliché settings and characters of this brilliantly
conceived, written and performed TV Drama, Bunchy finds and begins to stalk
his priest abuser from the past, now transferred to a parish in Los Angeles.
Bunchy
shoots the priest, has regrets and brings the wounded cleric to his other
brother Terry’s (played by Eddie Marsan) boxing and training Gym in gritty downtown
L.A..
The brothers
circle the wagons and try to decide what to do with a wounded and probably
dying priest.
Ray, with
his seething undercurrent of personal and controlled rage begins to interrogate
the priest who denies being Bunchy’s abuser. As time and script allow, the
priest admits his crime but in a state of holy RC denial will not apologize to
Bunchy, perhaps because his sins have been forgiven in the confessional and he
basically does not give a shit about his victims through the years.
Finally, it comes to light that Bunchy was not the only brother molested by the priest.
Ray pops the
bastard with a clean gunshot right in the forehead, blood splattering onto the background side of the
boxing ring.
The crowd
went wild, the audience in my mind that is, to do what the courts in Rome or
America have not done to these predator priest bastards protected by the bishops
like Bishop Robert Finn in Kansas City Mo. here in America. Whatever.
All in all a
great episode. In an even greater
series.
Final episode
of the season next week. The FBI is
closing in…
.
