Spoilers, Spoilers, Spoilers. The last 15 minutes of ‘If I Should Fall From Grace With God’ are the most spoiler-filled minutes in the show’s history. It cleared up nearly all of the questions swirling around this season in one fail swoop. Bunchy, Ray, Mickey, and Terry all found relative degrees of closure for their specific ailings. Now some of these newly found closures may have opened up a new can of worms entirely, but at least we’re continuing to trend in the right direction storywise. I’ve been vocal with my criticisms about the middle chunk of this season. It was dull, repetitive and largely inconsequential, but if we had to trek through those three episodes in order to get to this point then all is forgiven. The past two weeks have been gleaming examples of what this show can be when it’s on it’s A game. Ray and his family are constantly finding new ways to get in their own way but often times that ends up bringing the family closer together in the end, in a sick and twisted sort of way. I’ll only get into one specific plot beat do to the spoiler-filled nature of this particular episode. So if you’re spoiler adverse I recommend stopping here.
Throughout ‘If I Should Fall From Grace With God’ we see Mickey and his son Daryll portrayed by Pooch Hall, sort through the air of racial tension that constantly swirls around their relationship. Mickey is a stereotypical old South Boston Irish white guy who is always saying racist shit even though his son is half black. When Daryll finally decided to confront Mick about this issue and more specifically about if Mickey truly viewed him as his son. The conclusion of this discussion isn’t necessarily the important part here, but what is, is the fact that this issue was finally raised and that through an uncomfortable conversation they managed to at least begin to understand each other, for better or worse. This all comes to a head when at the end of the episode, Mickey thinks he’s in the midst of completing a pre-negotiated arrangement that ends up going completely sideways. There had been a plan to put Mick behind bars that had been taking place behind everyone’s back and when that began to come to fruition, with Mick’s hand’s inches away from the cuffs, Daryll backed his dad up and killed the man who was trying to arrest his father. This exchange ultimately culminating with a death, highlights exactly how this show can bring the family members closer together through the most insane ways conceivable.
With the show back on the right track and interesting new throughlines, the end of Season 7 looks like it’s going to be quite the finish. Let’s just hope the final episodes are half as good as ‘If I Should Fall From Grace With God’.
Ray Donovan airs Sunday nights on Showtime at 8 PM est.
