In words delivered by a character on Ray Donovan, “Stay calm; this will be over soon,” is an appropriate way to describe the feeling of binge-watching the so-called crime drama that ran on the Showtime network from 2013 to 2019.

The laconic title character played by Liev Schreiber is a fixer or “cleaner” in Hollywood who gets celebrities out of scandalous jams using bribery, blackmail, or more aggressive and sometimes lethal tactics. As Showtime summarizes it, “Set in the sprawling mecca of the rich and famous, Ray Donovan does the dirty work for LA’s top power players.” Great premise; the implementation is another matter.

[Warning: Some spoilers follow]

The first three seasons of Ray Donovan provide entertaining, edgy escapism (alert: very adult content including violence, language, and sex, and not for kids under any circumstances), but the series starts to go off the rails in Season 4. Shows often run out steam in subsequent iterations (e.g., The Walking Dead) for various reasons, so is anyone really surprised that Ray Donovan got the axe prior to Season 8?

If you haven’t caught an episode, the generally monosyllabic and perpetually scowling Donovan character spends much of the time barking orders to others over his cell phone (which never runs out of power) and then disconnecting before they agree to carry out his schemes. And everything has to be resolved “by tonight.”

Unfortunately, the show is kind of a bait of switch by often departing from the compelling premise of Hollywood depravity and lapsing into a tedious family drama revolving around the extended Donovan clan. Apparently the showrunners conceived of this approach from the beginning, but it comes across a often-irrelevant filler content.

IMBD users described Ray Donovan in its most boring moments as “the worst kind of soap opera imaginable,” “it’s got the look and feel of a daytime Aussie soap,” and “The Sopranos meets Day of Our Lives.”

By far the best part of the show is the award-winning performance by Jon Voight, who plays Ray’s estranged ex-con father Mickey. Aside from the fake, over-the-top Boston accent (which is also employed by Schreiber, Paula Malcomson, who plays wife Abby Donovan, and the actors in the roles of the misfit Donovan brothers). Voight shows tremendous range — comedic, menacing, and emotionally heartfelt.

Screengrab: YouTube — Jon Voight as Mickey Donovan on Showtime

With that in mind, you may want to fast-forward through the other content to get to the sequences that Mickey appears in. As one IMBD user aptly observed, “Voight steals every scene he is in as he is able to do one of the hardest tasks in acting-making a completely repulsive and utterly selfish character somewhat likeable.”

Parenthetically, Malcomson, who is from Northern Ireland, as Abby gives the role her all, but her accent in the show sounds more like a combination of New England and Carmela Soprano-style North Jersey.

As a consumer advisory, the show grinds to a complete halt (insert sound effect of screeching tires and a car wreck here) in any of the highly annoying scenes involving the Donovan man-baby brother nicknamed “Bunchy.” It’s not the actor’s fault; the material with which he has to work with is awful.

In Season 5, flashback sequences are cleverly and effectively interwoven into the ongoing storyline, until the content gets really tedious and exploitative with the illness of one of the major characters. Seasons 6 and 7 — with Donovan setting up shop in NYC — are so implausible if not insulting to the intelligence of the viewer that binge-watching becomes hate-watching. How in the world did Showtime green-light these scripts?

That being noted, much of dialogue over the course of the series is — whether intentionally or not — laugh out loud funny, which is rare and commendable.

Ray Donovan was abruptly cancelled about a year ago before any kind of series finale. Schreiber has claimed that it will return as a movie to wrap-up the storylines. With so many plot threads already abandoned, however, why bother?

Common-Sense Audit Needed

Of course, while meant to be fiction and entertainment, a successful series still has to contain some believability at its core. Here are some Donovan scenario aspects that hardly add up, in no particular order:

  • Many of the characters seem to be working in their offices 24/7, making it oh so convenient for Donovan to find them at will. When they are occasionally and conveniently at home when Donovan or someone else needs to track them down, they seem curiously detached from any family or friends. Plus, high-profile celebrities on the show seldom have assistants or an entourage hanging around. Moreover, doors are often left unlocked, and video surveillance is rare.
  • Ray Donovan or others are back at it that same day or the next day with no recuperation needed despite being shot (and often patched up by a veterinarian always in his office who works off the books), stabbed, or brutally beaten up.
  • Per the above, several characters often walk around in public with shirts covered with blood and no one notices.
  • Further, dead bodies are buried in backyards, and bystanders/neighbors seldom notice anything unusual going on.
  • A wedding reception in a smelly, unhygienic boxing gym — really?
  • What’s up with all the cigarette smoking, including by a character who portrays an oncologist of all things — more product placement?
  • The writers and actors must be on a profanity bonus system given the amount of needless F-bombs dropped. This becomes very distracting and detracts from the impact of the dialogue. In fact, you can’t help but come to the conclusion the lines would be more powerful absent the rampant cursing. Lazy writing.
  • Virtually everyone in — and outside — the Donovan family appears to be borderline alcoholics. As another IMBD user noted, “just how many drinks can these guys handle in one day and still keep standing?…It just gets boring watching everyone swear, drink [and] still be able to think somewhat rationally.”
  • Ray Donovan never gets into traffic jams as he navigates through L.A. or NYC going from one crisis to another and always manages to get a prime parking space directly in front of a skyscraper or office tower in both cities.
  • Why would a dude who keeps $1.2 million cash in a home safe (which, in itself, is ridiculous based on the events unfolding in the show) decide to pull a kidnapping based on the need for money?
  • In the real world, cops have to maintain constant contact with the dispatch center during their shift and can’t freelance. And both NYPD and LAPD patrol officers work in two-man teams. Don’t the writers know that?
  • Is it now mandatory for the petulant, obnoxious, know-it-all teenager in all these dramas?
  • With Mickey Donovan on the run from law enforcement authorities, why would Ray personally take him to the airport and then stand there and engage in an extended conversation?
  • The subplot involving the boxer and his sister was a pointless waste of time.
  • What happened to the Donovan family owned boxing gym as well as the bar left behind with the move to New York City? And who is running the NYC boxing gym when the principals are off doing other crazy things?
  • The way the toddler in the story is passed along from mother to father, to sister in law, to uncle, to grandfather, and so forth seems like child abuse.

Possible Ray Donovan drinking game (please drink responsibly or not at all): Every time the title character says “what?”, “sure,” or “awwright.”

An Affair to Remember or Not

A 30-day Showtime free trial also provides the opportunity to binge-watch another series, The Affair, a drama (similar adult content warning) which ran for five seasons, culminating it the series finale on November 3, 2019. The title of the series explains what it’s about and the depressing and emotional events that follow.

The Affair has its moments. The cool thing is that — initially anyway — an episode would present the same situations or backstory from the separate point of view of different characters.

It demonstrated how people can witness the same events or participate in the same conversations — or or perhaps recreate them from memory to the best of their ability — but draw entirely different inferences conclusions (and without any basis for accusations of lying). Unfortunately the show soon departs from that unique format.

Moreover, the showrunners seem to have no idea how normal, non-wealthy, people (who don’t have a lot of time on their hands for extracurricular activities) operate in the real world. And apparently anyone who lives outside of NYC is regarded as sort of hillbilly, which may explain how why it won so many awards.

Plus, virtually every character on the show is unsympathetic and narcissistic (including the mandatory obnoxious teenagers), with the exception perhaps of Maura Tierney, who delivers a solid and “real” performance as Helen, the long-suffering wife. Also, Joshua Jackson is stellar in his role as the cuckolded husband Cole.

First-World Problems

An indictment of basic premise is that The Wire actor Dominic West as Noah Solloway — the married father of four on vacation from NYC who enters into an affair with troubled and married Long Island waitress Alison (Ruth Wilson) — is a novelist, so-called, but with little or no real-world experience or creativity.

That is, until he opportunistically and like a reformed slacker merely writes a fictionalized version of their summer fling that subsequently becomes a best seller.

Other notes:

  • The opening theme song is jarring and falls way short of being a scene-setter.
  • The lovers did next to nothing to conceal their affair even while it’s supposed to be a big secret.
  • The major and inventive plot swerve that is portrayed in Season 3 should have been introduced sooner.
  • Season 5 effectively demonstrated how the #MeToo movement was weaponized, but without any resolution.
  • Over the course of the series, way too many coincidences occurred.
  • The often promiscuous characters engage in a lot of sweaty activities, but seldom take a shower afterwards before engaging in more up-close-and personal contact.
  • Characters have a hard time keeping their eyes on the road while driving.
  • Many of them are also Donovan-style borderline alcoholics or maybe not so borderline.
  • The subplot where Solloway teaches at a Los Angeles high school was lame and pointless.
  • The quirky doctor on The Affair started off as a great character (i.e., Helen wondered “if he was a dick pretending to be a nice guy” or vice versa), but the storyline ruined that by taking him into an entirely different, gloomy direction.
  • Like Ray Donovan, The Affair is yet another show where everything has to be settled “tonight” despite the physical and time limitations of same. For example, people can somehow quickly drive back forth from the south shore of Long Island to NYC, or from Brooklyn to Pennsylvania, as time stands still.
  • What book publisher schedules a reception on Thanksgiving Day when people are traveling, have already left town, or otherwise busy with family activities? And who would really forget to buy a turkey?
  • The fast-forward into a purported climate apocalypse backdrop in Season 5 was wholly gratuitous. More relevant, in this high-tech future, why didn’t the relentlessly unpleasant Joanie character record the explosive conversation with Ben for the police, and how could a medical document signed with an assumed name be binding?
  • Three significant plot points are left unresolved, as are several minor ones.

At least there were fewer F-bombs than Ray Donovan.

Parenthetically, both West and Wilson are U.K. actors adopting American accents on The Affair, while a supporting character (playing an A-list actor who again, has no entourage, or even a driver) from Demark pretended to be British.

Accents aside, West and Wilson seem to have little chemistry despite their on-screen roles as lovers.

Possible The Affair drinking game (please drink responsibly or not at all): Every time someone says “Montauk.” Or when someone says “can I ask you something?” or “can I ask you a question?”

Footnote: After watching both shows all the way through, what is up with the Showtime fetish for assisted suicide?