I missed Ray Donovan the first time around. Although I'm usually a sucker for shows set in Boston, especially ones with a Boston-Irish theme, for some reason this one - although it was on for years: from 2013 through 2019 - flew under my radar.
something off-putting about it. Probably the presence in the cast of James Woods (Season 1) and Jon Voight (throughout), neither of whom I like. And it's not just for their right-wingery. James Woods I find weird and creepy. And Jon Voight I find weird and creepy. (I don't much like his daughter Angelina Jolie, either. I find her a bit - you guessed it - weird and creepy, too.)
Anyway, this winter, they brought back the show with a full-length movie to button up some loose ends, and it caught my interest. Plus I had the recommendation of my friend Joyce, who told me she thought I'd like it. With the caveat that the show was violent. (Understatement of the decade, that caveat.)
Despite my reservations, I decided to give Ray Donovan a try.
Lots to catch up on. There were 82 episodes to get through before movie time. So I dug in and did a mini-binge, spinning through all the episodes in about six weeks.
Despite it's obvious flaws, I did get caught up in it.
For one thing, the Boston accents were pretty good. I would expect as much from James Woods, a New Englander who went to MIT, but Jon Voight was a surprise. As Mickey Donovan, paterfamilias of Clan Donovan, his accent was good. Almost wicked good. So was his acting.
The overarching plot follows the "career" of the eponymous Ray Donovan, a South Boston tough who emigrates to sunny Californi-ay to become a Hollywood fixer, taking care of ghastly situations that actors and athletes find themselves in - and need a way out of. Along the way, Ray gets rich: fancy cars, posh home, pricey duds.
Mickey Donovan is a Southie thug, too, recently released from Walpole Prison. He makes his way out to LA to reunite with Ray and his other sons, who'd both trailed Ray out to the West Coast. Terry is an ex-boxer with Parkinson who runs a boxing gym. Brendan (Bunchy) is a brain dead goon who's just collected a big payout from the Catholic Church for having been molested by a priest. Also conveniently in LA is Mickey's son Darryl, a surprise half-brother to Ray, Terry, and Bunchy.
The molester priest angle is just one of many topical kitchen-sinkers thrown in along the way. Thin, boring gruel.
As for the cast, I was familiar with some of them: Woods, Voight, Hank Azaria (as a corrupt FBI agent), Elliot Gould (Ray's boss), Susan Sarandon (ruthless business exec), and a few players with smaller roles. (Susan Sarandon's another actor I could live without. This time for left-wingery and weird/creepy rather than right wingery and weird/creepy.)
Ray is played by Lieb Schreiber, and actor I wasn't familiar with but well, he sure is one hell of an alpha male stud.
Most of the plot was reasonably terrible.
Most of the cast was reasonably good.
At any rate, I stuck with it.
In no particular order, here are my impressions:
It's no Sopranos. Last year, I rewatched The Sopranos in its entirety, and it was every bit as brilliant as I remembered it. The writing was terrific, the characters well drawn and interesting, and the melding of organized crime family drama with plain old suburban family drama was extremely well done. The acting was first rate. Was anyone ever, in the history of television, better than Edie Falco as Carmela Soprano?
The Sopranos gave us so many memorable scenes, so many tremendous moments. Sure, it was violent, but the violence didn't seem to be the point - at least not all the time.
There were moments - often related to violence - that were so gripping and terrifying I could barely watch. When Sil drives Adriana to her death, well...Thinking of it still unnerves me.
And there were scenes that were outright, LOL funny. I smile just thinking of the episode where Christopher and Paulie Walnuts are stuck in the cold, in their broken down car, in the New Jersey Pine Barrens - with the only thing to eat the little packets of McDonald's ketchup and mustard that Christopher finds in the glove compartment.
In many ways, Ray Donovan is derivative of The Sopranos, starting with the ripoff of the family dynamics: "good" but enabling wives; bright, ambitious daughters; troubled sons. The normalizing of thuggery as business. The complex family interactions.
It's just not anywhere near as good as The Sopranos.
The violence is insane. I don't know what the body count was for Ray Donovan, especially as compared to The Sopranos. But the violence in The Sopranos seemed more organic. The violence in Ray Donovan is often gratuitous. Did the teenage rapper, the boyfriend of Ray's daughter, have to die? And, sure, kill the molesting priest, but did they have to kill a non-molester priest by mistake? Etc. Plus, Adriana aside, there's a lot more killing of women in Ray Donovan than there was in The Sopranos. We've come a long way baby, or nonsensical?
And when they weren't killing people, everyone was getting beaten up. Especially Ray. Yet despite the savage beatings Ray endured, he almost always seemed to bounce back instantly. Beaten to a pulp? No problem! Right as rain in just five minutes.
The drinking, oh the drinking. Everyone drinks alcohol - mostly brown spirits - the way normal people drink water. Ray walks into a room - home, apartment, office - and pours himself four fingers of Scotch (no ice, no mixer) and guzzles it right down. I'm pretty sure that, if the Donovans were drinking like that in real life, they'd be dead. Or at least look like crap. But they all bounce back from the boozing the same way they do from the violence: instantaneously. Do the writers think that clinking glasses and saying Slainte (Irish for to-your-health) actually prevents the booze from taking over?
A lot of the Irishism is cheesy. Slainte, slainte, slainte. I'll see you and raise you Terry's scallly cap. Abby (Ray's wife) Donovan's family back in Southie runs - what else - a bar! As I always tell people. I'm a walking ethnic stereotype. My German grandfather was a butcher; my Irish grandfather owned a bar. So I get it. But couldn't Abby's brother lean on a shovel for the City of Boston? Couldn't her sister work for Gillette? How about a bit of nuance to the stereotypes.
And the Catholicism, which played in the background in The Sopranos, is way overdone. (What's with that weird priest Father Tom intervening all the time? Bring me Carmela feeding Father Phil!)
Attention: Whitey Bulger alert! The character James Woods plays is patterned on Southie psycho Whitey Bulger. Okay. But did they have to make his girlfriend a Catherine? As in Whitey's GF, Catherine Greig. Did they have to give her a fluffy white dog, just like the one Catherine Greig had?
Another ripoff of the Whitey Bulger is that the Donovans are always getting away with murder, as long as they dime someone the FBI wants more. I know that Whitey Bulger and his gang got away with a lot of killings because they were ratting out Italian Mafia members to the (largely Irish) Boston office in exchange for a blind eye turned to the crimes Whitey and Co. were committing. (One of Whitey's goons admitted to killing 20 people and got a prison sentence of just 12 years.) But Ray especially seems to be able to go back to the well again and again, trading heads the Feds want for heads the Donovans have taken - including the heads of several FBI agents killed by various Donovans.
Mostly they get Boston right. Mostly. The Boston accents are pretty good, so there's that. And they get a lot of the details and local color right, too. But it's Dorchester Avenue, not Dorchester Street. Nobody who's spent more than five minutes in Boston would say Dorchester Avenue, let alone Ray Donovan. And Ray would say Dot Ave.
Most of the characters on Ray Donovan are not sympathetic in the least. Other than brother Terry. Sometimes. But why did they let one of the few characters I actually like mispronounce Canobie Lake Park. It's CAN-a-bee, not Ka-NO-bee.
I give it three stars. Despite all the elements that I disliked about Ray Donovan, I stuck with it to the bitter end, gratified that Mickey finally met his maker. (Did they have to turn Ray's daughter Bridget into the killer?)
They've left room for additional episodes. And I would watch another season.
But would I rewatch Ray Donovan in its 82 episode + movie entirety? No way.
I could start rewatching The Sopranos tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment