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Ray Donovan "Horses" (spoilers)
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Adam H. Kerman
Oct 2, 2017, 2:24:35 PM10/2/17
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Ray Donovan has never been the greatest show. The intermediate plotting
tends to be poor, although the finales are usually strong. The performances
are good although the only consistently likeable characters have been
Terry and Bridget.
The one thing it didn't do that's gotten so fucking annoying on every other
drama is non-linear story telling. Yeah, it's done plenty of backstory,
but we see the story in order.
This season, they went another way with Abby's suicide, which we finally
see this week. This was the trigger for the first scene of the season,
Ray attacking his family. Big fight scenes are boring; Hollywood has
convinced itself for decades that it brings in television viewers, so
it's been a traditional way to start a lot of shows, like Bonanza. Fox
even made Firefly do it in "The Train Job" when they rejected the first pilot.
Now we get that crap in Ray Donovan.
Even though viewers expects a dark family drama from this show, they
cheated in the first episode for they left out Ray attacking his own
daughter in grief. It was everyone else pulling Ray off Bridget that
led to Ray fighting the rest of them. Viewers would have HATED Ray
if we'd seen Ray attack his daughter, and it would have been inexplicable,
out of character.
Was the non-linear story telling worth it? I don't think it improved shit.
They could have gone through the whole thing with Abby's rapid deterioration
and everything else in order.
Paula Malcolmson's performance as the dying woman was fine. She hasn't
been playing Abby as her stock hateable character from so many other shows,
the instigator of most of the trouble, for several seasons now. It's not
that Abby was redeemed, they just dropped the character and gave her an
unrelated character to play. I suppose the actress demanded it so she's
eligible for an Emmy based on the Thirtysomething rule.
We learned just a few things:
All season long, we were led to believe that Abby didn't want the surgery.
We thought it was a transplant, hence the waiting list, but no, it was
that experimental cancer surgery they have on tv in which there are no
bad outcomes even though it's experimental. I thought Abby had breast
cancer, but apparently something else was killing her that they still
haven't told us about. I mean, the boy wouldn't be waiting for the
surgery if it were breast cancer. Yeah, I know a tiny number of men
are at risk for breast cancer, but that's not what this was.
It turns out that Abby had agreed to the surgery but tried to get Ray to
agree to stop forcing her to prolong her life if she couldn't participate.
I'm actually shocked to hear that, 'cuz I figured she just wanted to die
at that point.
Ray did murder the innocent boy. He conspired with Avi to obtain meningitis
bacteria from an old Mossad contact. They don't say outright that she was
an assasin. She just keeps communicable diseases in her refrigerator, which
we learned from The Americans is a standard practice among enemy spies.
Ray asks for re-assurance that the meningitis won't kill him. Duh. What
will kill him is not receiving the surgery. That's murder (although the
kid still hasn't died). This lets the one viewer in the audience for whom
there was some confusion understand that, yes, Ray would indeed murder
an innocent if he convinced himself that the ends justified the means.
I don't recall why Avi was in so much pain. I forgot what happened to him
last season. Ray learns Avi is addicted to opioids when he's arrested in
a heroin drug buy and Ray has to confront the Mossad agent himself.
We also learn: The actress playing the Mossad agent is the one tiny woman
on tv who cannot beat up a large man despite the large man being a killer,
physically fit, and weighing 120 pounds more than she does. I don't
understand why she couldn't take him out with a glare. Perhaps the actress
just wasn't tiny enough.
We also learn: Last I looked, assisted suicide isn't legal (except Oregon),
but one can simply obtain Seconol in Elizabeth Taylor suicide quantity
from any pharmacist, and then when your husband flushes the pills away,
one can readily replace the prescription from the same pharmicist.
We thought Terry had made an illegal connection, but no, somehow sick
Abby, being watched like a hawk by Ray, managed to figure out how to do it.
The same dynamic plays out between Abby and Ray at the very end: The
expensive gift, expensive enough that Abby knows Ray has done something
wrong he can't make up for. I guess plotting the murder of an innocent
doesn't warrant quite as expensive a gift as an affair did. After all,
he bought Abby an absurdly large house one of those times.
For once, Abby's not the greedy little girl allowing herself to be bought
off. She doesn't resist and doesn't put up much of a fight when Ray
grabs his go bags to head for New York (allegedly to confront the doctor
in charge of the clinical trial). She sees it as her opportunity to free
herself once and for all.
Abby's a sanitized version of a wife who is her husband's prisoner. We
don't see Ray beat her but we never see her freeing herself so she's
truly free. She reacts out of desperation, taking just the one option:
Suicide gets her out of the disease and gets her out of her marriage.
If Abby's kids were both under age, would she have committed suicide?
We learn is that Terry and Bridget do not receive Ray's phone call that
Ray had gotten Abby into the trial after all. The two of them DON'T have
to face the choice of assisting Abby if there's a possibility of a positive
outcome for her disease.
The final thing we learn is that Ray sees immediately that Abby
committed suicide. We thought Abby's true cause of death was
hidden from Ray.
The show has always been dark, but it didn't have the guts to break
through boundaries for heart-wrenching choices that might have been made
by two of the good characters, everything being relative.
As it's all backstory, the actress from Banshee isn't on this week.
p
o
i
l
e
r
s
p
a
c
e
Ray Donovan has never been the greatest show. The intermediate plotting
tends to be poor, although the finales are usually strong. The performances
are good although the only consistently likeable characters have been
Terry and Bridget.
The one thing it didn't do that's gotten so fucking annoying on every other
drama is non-linear story telling. Yeah, it's done plenty of backstory,
but we see the story in order.
This season, they went another way with Abby's suicide, which we finally
see this week. This was the trigger for the first scene of the season,
Ray attacking his family. Big fight scenes are boring; Hollywood has
convinced itself for decades that it brings in television viewers, so
it's been a traditional way to start a lot of shows, like Bonanza. Fox
even made Firefly do it in "The Train Job" when they rejected the first pilot.
Now we get that crap in Ray Donovan.
Even though viewers expects a dark family drama from this show, they
cheated in the first episode for they left out Ray attacking his own
daughter in grief. It was everyone else pulling Ray off Bridget that
led to Ray fighting the rest of them. Viewers would have HATED Ray
if we'd seen Ray attack his daughter, and it would have been inexplicable,
out of character.
Was the non-linear story telling worth it? I don't think it improved shit.
They could have gone through the whole thing with Abby's rapid deterioration
and everything else in order.
Paula Malcolmson's performance as the dying woman was fine. She hasn't
been playing Abby as her stock hateable character from so many other shows,
the instigator of most of the trouble, for several seasons now. It's not
that Abby was redeemed, they just dropped the character and gave her an
unrelated character to play. I suppose the actress demanded it so she's
eligible for an Emmy based on the Thirtysomething rule.
We learned just a few things:
All season long, we were led to believe that Abby didn't want the surgery.
We thought it was a transplant, hence the waiting list, but no, it was
that experimental cancer surgery they have on tv in which there are no
bad outcomes even though it's experimental. I thought Abby had breast
cancer, but apparently something else was killing her that they still
haven't told us about. I mean, the boy wouldn't be waiting for the
surgery if it were breast cancer. Yeah, I know a tiny number of men
are at risk for breast cancer, but that's not what this was.
It turns out that Abby had agreed to the surgery but tried to get Ray to
agree to stop forcing her to prolong her life if she couldn't participate.
I'm actually shocked to hear that, 'cuz I figured she just wanted to die
at that point.
Ray did murder the innocent boy. He conspired with Avi to obtain meningitis
bacteria from an old Mossad contact. They don't say outright that she was
an assasin. She just keeps communicable diseases in her refrigerator, which
we learned from The Americans is a standard practice among enemy spies.
Ray asks for re-assurance that the meningitis won't kill him. Duh. What
will kill him is not receiving the surgery. That's murder (although the
kid still hasn't died). This lets the one viewer in the audience for whom
there was some confusion understand that, yes, Ray would indeed murder
an innocent if he convinced himself that the ends justified the means.
I don't recall why Avi was in so much pain. I forgot what happened to him
last season. Ray learns Avi is addicted to opioids when he's arrested in
a heroin drug buy and Ray has to confront the Mossad agent himself.
We also learn: The actress playing the Mossad agent is the one tiny woman
on tv who cannot beat up a large man despite the large man being a killer,
physically fit, and weighing 120 pounds more than she does. I don't
understand why she couldn't take him out with a glare. Perhaps the actress
just wasn't tiny enough.
We also learn: Last I looked, assisted suicide isn't legal (except Oregon),
but one can simply obtain Seconol in Elizabeth Taylor suicide quantity
from any pharmacist, and then when your husband flushes the pills away,
one can readily replace the prescription from the same pharmicist.
We thought Terry had made an illegal connection, but no, somehow sick
Abby, being watched like a hawk by Ray, managed to figure out how to do it.
The same dynamic plays out between Abby and Ray at the very end: The
expensive gift, expensive enough that Abby knows Ray has done something
wrong he can't make up for. I guess plotting the murder of an innocent
doesn't warrant quite as expensive a gift as an affair did. After all,
he bought Abby an absurdly large house one of those times.
For once, Abby's not the greedy little girl allowing herself to be bought
off. She doesn't resist and doesn't put up much of a fight when Ray
grabs his go bags to head for New York (allegedly to confront the doctor
in charge of the clinical trial). She sees it as her opportunity to free
herself once and for all.
Abby's a sanitized version of a wife who is her husband's prisoner. We
don't see Ray beat her but we never see her freeing herself so she's
truly free. She reacts out of desperation, taking just the one option:
Suicide gets her out of the disease and gets her out of her marriage.
If Abby's kids were both under age, would she have committed suicide?
We learn is that Terry and Bridget do not receive Ray's phone call that
Ray had gotten Abby into the trial after all. The two of them DON'T have
to face the choice of assisting Abby if there's a possibility of a positive
outcome for her disease.
The final thing we learn is that Ray sees immediately that Abby
committed suicide. We thought Abby's true cause of death was
hidden from Ray.
The show has always been dark, but it didn't have the guts to break
through boundaries for heart-wrenching choices that might have been made
by two of the good characters, everything being relative.
As it's all backstory, the actress from Banshee isn't on this week.
Bill Idgerant
Oct 3, 2017, 10:49:25 AM10/3/17
to
still need to see how Ray handles Terry's admission that he got the
pills for Abby and that he was there helping her take them.
We also now know why Bridget is acting the way she is towards her Dad
while in NYC.
--
Bill Idgerant
Not a real name
RichA
Oct 3, 2017, 11:48:28 AM10/3/17
to
On Monday, 2 October 2017 14:24:35 UTC-4, Adam H. Kerman wrote:
>
> The show has always been dark, but it didn't have the guts to break
> through boundaries for heart-wrenching choices that might have been made
> by two of the good characters, everything being relative.
>
> As it's all backstory, the actress from Banshee isn't on this week.
The whole death thing really is way out of bounds for the show. They could have used the first ep. to say "she died" and have had done with it. This, "family is as important as the main PLOTLINE," came from the Sopranos and it detracts from the point of the show, though it was better-handled in the Sopranos. Tony as the mob boss running his empire and Ray as the great and powerful fixer.
>
> The show has always been dark, but it didn't have the guts to break
> through boundaries for heart-wrenching choices that might have been made
> by two of the good characters, everything being relative.
>
> As it's all backstory, the actress from Banshee isn't on this week.
EGK
Oct 3, 2017, 1:12:07 PM10/3/17
to
On Tue, 3 Oct 2017 08:49:20 -0600, Bill Idgerant <fa...@fakeserver.org>
wrote:
>On 10/2/2017 12:24 PM, Adam H. Kerman wrote:
>> s
>> p
>> o
>> i
>> l
>> e
>> r
>>
>> s
>> p
>> a
>> c
>> e
>>
>> Ray Donovan has never been the greatest show. The intermediate plotting
>> tends to be poor, although the finales are usually strong. The performances
>> are good although the only consistently likeable characters have been
>> Terry and Bridget.
>>
>> The one thing it didn't do that's gotten so fucking annoying on every other
>> drama is non-linear story telling. Yeah, it's done plenty of backstory,
>> but we see the story in order.
really stupid decision on the part of the producers. I'm mystified as to
what they think they accomplished by using the non-linear format. It's not
artsy and all it did was confuse and annony the audience.
Not only was the story of Abby's death confusing but the part with Avi was
stupid as hell too. Finally this episode told how he got addicted to drugs
after being captured and beaten by the Russian mafia last season. Given
his history on the show as being a total professional and former Mossad, it
made no sense why he was now ripping off drug dealers and double-crossing
the FBI.
wrote:
>On 10/2/2017 12:24 PM, Adam H. Kerman wrote:
>> s
>> p
>> o
>> i
>> l
>> e
>> r
>>
>> s
>> p
>> a
>> c
>> e
>>
>> Ray Donovan has never been the greatest show. The intermediate plotting
>> tends to be poor, although the finales are usually strong. The performances
>> are good although the only consistently likeable characters have been
>> Terry and Bridget.
>>
>> The one thing it didn't do that's gotten so fucking annoying on every other
>> drama is non-linear story telling. Yeah, it's done plenty of backstory,
>> but we see the story in order.
>Wow! Very impressive analysis. Gave me much more to ponder. I guess we
>still need to see how Ray handles Terry's admission that he got the
>pills for Abby and that he was there helping her take them.
>
>We also now know why Bridget is acting the way she is towards her Dad
>while in NYC.
I agree completely with Adam that telling this story in flashbacks was a
>still need to see how Ray handles Terry's admission that he got the
>pills for Abby and that he was there helping her take them.
>
>We also now know why Bridget is acting the way she is towards her Dad
>while in NYC.
really stupid decision on the part of the producers. I'm mystified as to
what they think they accomplished by using the non-linear format. It's not
artsy and all it did was confuse and annony the audience.
Not only was the story of Abby's death confusing but the part with Avi was
stupid as hell too. Finally this episode told how he got addicted to drugs
after being captured and beaten by the Russian mafia last season. Given
his history on the show as being a total professional and former Mossad, it
made no sense why he was now ripping off drug dealers and double-crossing
the FBI.
Adam H. Kerman
Oct 3, 2017, 1:14:47 PM10/3/17
to
Bill Idgerant <fa...@fakeserver.org> wrote:
>On 10/2/2017 12:24 PM, Adam H. Kerman wrote:
>> s
>> p
>> o
>> i
>> l
>> e
>> r
>>
>> s
>> p
>> a
>> c
>> e
>>. . .
>On 10/2/2017 12:24 PM, Adam H. Kerman wrote:
>> s
>> p
>> o
>> i
>> l
>> e
>> r
>>
>> s
>> p
>> a
>> c
>> e
>>Even though viewers expects a dark family drama from this show, they
>>cheated in the first episode for they left out Ray attacking his own
>>daughter in grief. It was everyone else pulling Ray off Bridget that
>>led to Ray fighting the rest of them. Viewers would have HATED Ray
>>if we'd seen Ray attack his daughter, and it would have been inexplicable,
>>out of character.
>Wow! Very impressive analysis. Gave me much more to ponder. I guess we
>still need to see how Ray handles Terry's admission that he got the
>pills for Abby and that he was there helping her take them.
>We also now know why Bridget is acting the way she is towards her Dad
>while in NYC.
Adam H. Kerman
Oct 3, 2017, 1:16:55 PM10/3/17
to
EGK <m...@privacy.net> wrote:
>On Tue, 3 Oct 2017 08:49:20 -0600, Bill Idgerant <fa...@fakeserver.org> wrote:
>>On 10/2/2017 12:24 PM, Adam H. Kerman wrote:
>>> s
>>> p
>>> o
>>> i
>>> l
>>> e
>>> r
>>>
>>> s
>>> p
>>> a
>>> c
>>> e
>On Tue, 3 Oct 2017 08:49:20 -0600, Bill Idgerant <fa...@fakeserver.org> wrote:
>>On 10/2/2017 12:24 PM, Adam H. Kerman wrote:
>>> s
>>> p
>>> o
>>> i
>>> l
>>> e
>>> r
>>>
>>> s
>>> p
>>> a
>>> c
>>> e
>I agree completely with Adam that telling this story in flashbacks was a
>really stupid decision on the part of the producers. I'm mystified as to
>what they think they accomplished by using the non-linear format. It's not
>artsy and all it did was confuse and annony the audience.
>Not only was the story of Abby's death confusing but the part with Avi was
>stupid as hell too. Finally this episode told how he got addicted to drugs
>after being captured and beaten by the Russian mafia last season. Given
>his history on the show as being a total professional and former Mossad, it
>made no sense why he was now ripping off drug dealers and double-crossing
>the FBI.
I'm starting to remember: Avi was kidnapped and tortured for several
>really stupid decision on the part of the producers. I'm mystified as to
>what they think they accomplished by using the non-linear format. It's not
>artsy and all it did was confuse and annony the audience.
>Not only was the story of Abby's death confusing but the part with Avi was
>stupid as hell too. Finally this episode told how he got addicted to drugs
>after being captured and beaten by the Russian mafia last season. Given
>his history on the show as being a total professional and former Mossad, it
>made no sense why he was now ripping off drug dealers and double-crossing
>the FBI.
episodes, right?
EGK
Oct 3, 2017, 1:31:41 PM10/3/17
to
On Tue, 3 Oct 2017 17:16:53 -0000 (UTC), "Adam H. Kerman" <a...@chinet.com>
wrote:
Yes, the Russians captured him and held him hostage to get Ray to return
their drugs. That was when Ray set up throwing the boxing match for them
to recoup their money.
Of course Ray and company double-crossed them and ended up killing or
capturing the Russian mafia guy and his henchmen then giving credit to Frank
Barnes, the FBI agent. The ending to last season was pretty convoluted.
Avi's story this season was made worse with the non-linear story-telling.
wrote:
their drugs. That was when Ray set up throwing the boxing match for them
to recoup their money.
Of course Ray and company double-crossed them and ended up killing or
capturing the Russian mafia guy and his henchmen then giving credit to Frank
Barnes, the FBI agent. The ending to last season was pretty convoluted.
Avi's story this season was made worse with the non-linear story-telling.
Adam H. Kerman
Oct 3, 2017, 2:19:45 PM10/3/17
to
made Avi look so horrid.
EGK
Oct 3, 2017, 3:23:55 PM10/3/17
to
On Tue, 3 Oct 2017 18:19:42 -0000 (UTC), "Adam H. Kerman" <a...@chinet.com>
He did look bad. Without any context provided by telling the story in a
linear format, it seemed to come totally out of the blue.
linear format, it seemed to come totally out of the blue.
inf...@mindspring.com
Oct 3, 2017, 5:35:57 PM10/3/17
to
On Tue, 3 Oct 2017 18:19:42 -0000 (UTC), "Adam H. Kerman"
Yeah, he looked so bad that I wondered if the actor had been sick.
Bob(but not THAT Bob)
Oct 3, 2017, 7:28:35 PM10/3/17
to
blackmailing the cancer surgeon into performing the procedure on the kid
he dosed with the bacteria.
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