I’m not sure if I’m going to cover Ray Donovan full time. It’s never been the most buzzworthy show, and frankly it’s tough to tell what Showtime is trying to do with it. If I had to guess, I’d say they’re trying to fill the void of “morally conflicted antihero” that Dexter left open, and they’re doing so with varying degrees of success.
After the tumultuous events of season one, Ray’s life is finally starting to calm down. He’s living at home with Abbey (or “Abs,” as he frustratingly continues to call her), and they’re having sex twice a day. He’s even showing up on time for their marriage counseling appointments, and agreeing not to let his kids see him beat the shit out of anyone anymore. Father of the year right there. Then, naturally, everything goes to shit, as it must.
Ray gets the squeeze put on him by Cochran, the new head of the FBI’s Los Angeles office. Cochran isn’t afraid to play hardball – for instance, he has two LA Sheriffs pull over Ray’s daughter Bridget and threaten to arrest her for some weed they “found.” Cochran wants Ray to deliver Mickey, and he’s giving him twenty-four hours to do so. He’s also, somewhat counter-intuitively, played by Hank Azaria.
Mickey, meanwhile, is down in Mexico, soaking up the sun and having WTF visions of bad CGI dolphins quoting “La Bamba” at him. (I’d say this makes sense in context, but it really doesn’t.) He’s putting together a fight for Daryl, who is pissed that the posters refer to him as “El Negro” and not “Black Irish,” which is a pretty valid point. Dick move, Mexican fight promoters. Mickey has also grown out his beard and now he looks like my Uncle Kenny.
Mickey bets against Daryl in the fight, because Mickey is a fucking terrible father. Jon Voight’s performance is as manic and intense as it was last season; the character might grate at times, especially because Mickey’s motivation last season was so ill-defined, but no one can say that Voight isn’t fully committed (case in point: he was the sole Emmy nominee out of Ray Donovan‘s entire cast).
Anyway, Mickey attempts to buy Daryl’s affection, but it doesn’t work, so he calls Ray to narc out their dad. I’ve always enjoyed the adversarial chemistry between Voight and Liev Schreiber, especially because the former is so animated and the latter so stoic (indeed, the chief complaint about Schreiber seems to work to his benefit here). Obviously Mickey doesn’t wanna go back with Ray, so “Yo Soy Capitan” ends with the very cool shot of a shirtless Ray walking into a Mexican cantina, brandishing a baseball bat. Schreiber is nothing if not intimidating (think of his pilot-episode monologue about the bat vs. the bag).
Overall, “Yo Soy Capitan” was a pretty uneven episode – but Ray Donovan is a pretty uneven show. It perks up whenever Ray or Mickey are on screen, but as of now (and I know the first episode is too early to make this call), the show doesn’t know what to do with Bunchy or Terry. For instance, it looks like Bunchy might get some sort of possibly gay stalker. There wasn’t much of Ray’s crew tonight, but that’s okay because Avi is recuperating from getting shot, and Lena’s main purpose is to look and act like Lizzy Caplan.
So Ray Donovan is no Dexter (all Internet snark aside, when Dexter was good, it was really, really good). But it’s a decent way to spend an hour on a Monday. You don’t need to make this appointment television.
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