As season 5 has progressed the relationship between Mickey and Ray has drastically digressed. While their relationship has never exactly been ideal there have been few times in the show’s history where Mickey and Ray Donovan have been further away from seeing eye to eye and with the events of the past two episodes, their relationship seems like it will be permanently frayed. While the past two episodes managed to close the door on some of the other storylines (some more successfully than others) the show moving forward seems like it will be directly Mickey V.S. Ray Donovan.
As I alluded too earlier, these past two episodes have been fairly successful at wrapping up plot lines that have developed throughout the year. While the ridiculous Bunchy money situation was resolved in a pretty batshit crazy and entertaining way some of the seemingly more thoughtful arcs were settled in less satisfying ways. In particular, the situation in which Mickey and Daryll murdered the head of the FBI. When you kill someone who has that much clout it’s extremely rare that a show will seemingly brush it under the rug in less than two episodes. In fact, I was convinced that this situation was going to put Ray and his family on red alert for the foreseeable future and into next season. Instead, Ray managed to take care of this situation in a way that not only benefited him in one way but as a two for one. This is nearly as unbelievable and ridiculous as the Bunchy money situation. Imagine if someone just straight up murdered a person who was only a couple steps below former FBI director James Comey. This would be all over the news and conspiracy sites in less than a day after it happened and the half cooked excuse provided by the FBI upon Ray’s arrival to try and explain away why no one was talking about it was even worse.
News broke earlier this week that Ray Donovan was being renewed for a 6th season and while I’m excited because I’m a long time fan of the show. I can’t help but be a bit pessimistic. One of the producers has been on record stating that he wants the show to be ‘insane, beautiful and obscene’ as well as mentioning that the show will be moving to NYC. While the show has always had soapy elements it was for a very a long time grounded in what seemed to be a real underground world of Hollywood fixing. This season has ventured much further into the elements that the producer mentioned in his quote while losing some of the reality that has made the show great in the past. Shows have to evolve in order to succeed and I’m willing to ride this out but I just hope the change in scenery doesn’t mean a completely new show moving forward.
The season finale of Ray Donovan airs next Sunday on Showtime and we’ll have a full season, spoiler-filled breakdown dropping later that week.
