Ray Donovan recap: The End of the Line
Everything’s starting to come to a head, finally, on this season of Ray Donovan. All the various storylines, which have been rather plodding and dull, are coming together in a way that could be very, very interesting. There’s a lot that’s hinted at throughout “Passport and a Gun,” and the episode’s climax is a real doozy. Maybe this meandering season can finally pull itself together.
We begin with Jim Sullivan getting shot at in the street. This isn’t a random act of violence though. This is Gary O’Malley trying to get revenge for his dead father and brother. Of course, he doesn’t know that Sullivan had nothing to do with the murders and that Mickey Donovan is the one doing all the killing. He just assumes that since the tapes were stolen it must have been Sullivan. He calls Ray from a detention center and tells him exactly that, asking Ray to go to the house and check out a surveillance camera that his brother had installed above the safe that held the tapes.
Ray does just that, but not because he wants to help O’Malley. Rather, he’s once again trying to cover for his family, who just keep messing things up for him. Ray, with Smitty tagging along all day because he’s a sad boy whose marriage is on the rocks, gets to the house, finds the footage, and watches as Daryll stabs a man to death before taking off with the tapes. He deletes the footage, and Smitty compliments him on how stealthy he is. Smitty is like a desperate puppy dog throughout this episode, always right on Ray’s heels. But he has a purpose too. He’s not just sad. More on that in a bit.
This move doesn’t exactly solve Ray’s problems though. When he goes back to visit Gary and tells him that there was no footage, Gary sees right through it. He can’t believe that he’s working for Sullivan, that he’s still in his pocket. “And after what he did to your family? Your sister?” he asks. Ray’s taken aback. What about his sister? Gary won’t say another word, telling him to go ask Sullivan about it instead. This whole thing is about to get a lot messier if Sullivan was somehow involved in Bridget’s death. Ray asks Molly to get him the tapes from around the time of her death, and she does, even though she has no idea what it might mean in the long run.
While Terry and Bunchy are off on a quest to get a necklace from the Shaman and return it to the dying Dolores because this show has no idea what to do with any tertiary characters, we get a few flashbacks to Ray’s life as a teenager working for Sullivan. He’s reliable, bringing in money, and starting to get more violent when it comes to collection. He’s morphing into the Ray we’re familiar with, and it lets us know that this whole business with the Donovans and Sullivans is pretty complicated. Jim was essentially the guiding father figure when Mickey wasn’t; so, if Jim did anything to hurt Bridget, Ray is once again going to have some Daddy Issues to deal with. He tries calling his therapist but gets the machine. He’s on his own for now.
That couldn’t be truer as the episode comes to an end. As Daryll gets himself in more hot water with the Sullivans resulting in Jasmine getting shot, Ray comes to find out that Smitty hasn’t been following him around just because he’s struggling with his marriage or what they did to those cops. Rather, Smitty has been wearing a wire the whole time, and that means Ray is on tape admitting to murdering at least one of the cops. Smitty was backed into a corner and didn’t know what else to do. He wanted to help Bridget, and that came with betraying the rest of the family. As the episode comes to a close, Detective Perry is pointing her gun at Ray, ready to arrest him. His response is simple: “You want to talk? Let’s talk.” It sure sounds like he’s ready to give up Mickey (yet again), but can he really escape from this unscathed?
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