"Ray Donovan"

"Ray Donovan" is a series on Showtime, about a fixer in LA who grew up in Boston, and his family and associates. The show is a wicked pissah.

Okay, first and foremost, my impression of Paula Malcomson as Abby "Abs" Donovan, wife of tough guy fixer Ray, mother of Bridget and Conor, in every episode of "Ray Donovan" that she's been in. Ms Malcomson was terrific in all 36 episodes of "Deadwood" a while back, she's been terrific in a lot of other stuff and she's been terrific in all 39 of the 48 episodes of "Ray Donovan" that she's been in

Okay, okay, so here's my impression of Paula Malcomson as Abby Donovan:

"Yer scarin' me, Ray."

Thank you, thank you! If you'd seen it in person you would have liked in even better, if you can imagine such a thing, because I imitate the voice pretty well, and when I do the impression I'm looking almost straight up.

But the other thing I have to say about the show is almost as important as the brilliance of that impression, if you can imagine such a thing: Conor could be headed toward a whole lot of trouble. Everybody's been really concerned about Bridget, who ran away from home -- but not far, and she came to the house for dinner recently -- and just turned 18 and is still in a relationship with her former schoolteacher Greg, whose hands Ray threatened to cut off if he didn't leave her alone when he first caught them together, but now Ray has changed a bit, and when Abs tells him that she just saw the two of them fucking in his minivan on the street right outside their house, instead of leaving right away to go cut off Greg's hands, he says that Bridget is 18 now and that if they interfere too much between her and Greg they'll just push her farther away; and Abs just found out she has breast cancer and the doctor wants to remove both of her breasts; And Ray's job constantly brings him in contact with very bad people and very scary things; and Ray's dad Mickey, a career criminal, is, even in his 70's and after having spent decades in prison, every bit as criminal and lacking in sound judgment as he ever was, which constantly causes the whole family a lot of grief up to and including Terry getting shot (but not killed) just because he was in the way when some gangsters came to kill Mickey, and then Ray getting shot (but not killed) when he and Avi went to kill the gangsters because they knew the gangsters wouldn't stop coming after Mickey and everyone close to him (for instance, they blew up Darryl's car), and now other gangsters related to the same situation created by Mickey have sent a gunman into the Donovan house, and Abby shot the gunman as Ray grappled with him, and now the whole family is in a hotel except for Bunchy and his wife, who just went into labor, so they headed to a hospital; and Ray's mentor and father-figure Ezra recently died, after having gone through a temporary stage of dementia brought on by a brain tumor; and before Ray went through the above-mentioned slight change, his inability to confront his own emotions had led to some nasty conflicts with his brothers, Terry, Bunchy and Darryl, and with employees, Avi and Lena, as well as severely alienating his wife and daughter (He seems much closer to everybody now: for example, when Bridget came over to dinner, when they all sat down at the dinner table, Ray said to Abs and Bridget and Conor and Darryl and Terry, "I love all of you so much," and everyone seemed astounded that he actually said it, except Darryl, who grew up in another family, and replied, "We love you too, Ray."); and Terry has a severe case of Parkinson's which began years ago when he was a professional boxer and Mickey let him fight too long before retiring; and Ray shot the priest who had sexually abused him as a child (leading to that very unhealthy state of bottled-up emotions, which, after having changed somewhat, he is now expressing much more openly), shot him right in front of Bunchy (whom the priest had also molested, causing Bunchy a lot of long-term emotional problems) and Terry (whom the priest had tried to molest, but Terry broke his hand) and Darryl; and Ray's sister Bridget (his daughter is named after her) committed suicide as a teenager for reasons which still haven't been explained to the viewer --

-- and a whole lot of other stuff too, so the point I'm getting at is that I'm afraid that in the midst of all of this extreme melodrama, people may be neglecting Conor, who I think is about 16 years old, and failing to realize that he seems to be very stupid and terribly devoid of good judgment about things like career plans. He constantly misunderstands very simple things that others say. He's not doing at all well at school. He says he wants to be "a gangster" like his father. (I debated whether or nor to put quotation marks around "a gangster.") A couple of years ago Conor severely beat another boy at school. I'm worried that it may be just a matter of time before he does something like that again, or something worse.

And, as I say, with all of the other melodramatic things happening, his family may be failing to notice that Conor is in trouble. That's why I'm worried.

In conclusion, France is a land of many contrasts.

"He's An Irish-American Ex-Cop, Used To Drink All The Time, A Tough Guy But A Good Guy[...]" (Stop Me If You've Seen This One)

Has it ever struck you how dominant the presence of recovering alcoholic Catholic characters is in American dramatic TV series? Or is it just the shows I happen to watch?

Last night, while channel-surfing, I happened to watch an entire episode of "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit." The episode was named "Hammered," and it originally aired on 14. October 2009. I'm not a big fan of the series. I think Mariska Hargitay is very good-looking, and that's usually about the extent of my interest in the show. But last night, I happened to pause on whatever channel was running a block of episodes of the show, a few minutes from the end of the previous episode, "Solitary," because Stephen Rea's face was onscreen and he was talking about how you can't know what solitary confinement is like without experiencing it, and I watched the rest of the episode, where Christopher Meloni decides to find out what it's like and spends 3 days in the cell Rea was in and goes a bit cuckoo, and then Rea is convicted and sentenced to go back to prison and back to solitary, and as he's dragged from the courtroom he screams at the judge to please just kill him instead, the way a suffering dog would mercifully be killed -- and I guess I don't have to spoil the ending for you in case you haven't seen that episode yet.

Anyway, I kept pausing my surf, which took me right into "Hammered," which begins with Scott Foley, whom I know mostly from his good work portraying Sean Kelly, waking up face-down on the floor in a big apartment with a dead woman in the next room and blood all over the place. Anyway, I guess I don't have to spoil that episode either; let's just say that it could've been entitled "An Extremely Unsubtle Argument For The 12-Step View Of Alcoholism."

The thing is, exactly the same title would fit very well on lots and lots of episodes of the shows in the "Law & Order" franchise, and "NYPD Blue," and "Ray Donovan," and, come to think of it, "Scrubs" as well, although it tends to fit better with drama than comedy.

Come to think of it: a whole lot of those recovering alcoholic Catholic characters on the tube are Irish recovering alcoholic Catholic characters. Add "Hack" to that list of shows.

I suppose it's possible that I've just stumbled across shows with such characters by accident, and that American TV as a whole does not feature Irish Catholic recovering alcoholics in 12-step programs all that prominently.

I used to assume that there were an awful lot of Irish Catholic recovering alcoholics among the higher tiers of the entertainment industry, where it is decided what TV shows will be made. But I've begun to reconsider that. Look at it this way: there are an awful lot of TV shows and movies with characters who are Italian gangsters. Does this mean that the Mafia runs a big chunk of Hollywood? I don't think so. Mafias shows are a genre. Westerns are a genre. Maybe all of these shows with Catholics (often Irish Catholics) who are recovering alcoholics and cops, or ex-cops, or other people who work with or against the cops, or sometimes with the cops and sometimes against them -- maybe that's all just another genre.

Westerns have elements like cattle drives and campfires, and one-street towns in the middle of the desert, and saloons and showgirls and shootouts -- elements which are familiar to viewers, and for which there are well-established rules about using them to build stories, rules you can follow or bend or satirize, but they're there in everyone's minds in any case.

In these shows I'm thinking about, alcoholism (as explained by 12-step programs) and law enforcement, and a protagonist (often Irish) who is a tough guy but a good guy, and is good friends with the same priest he goes to for confession (often not as often as the priest thinks he should), and the interesting visuals of churches and bars and police squad rooms and confessional booths and jails -- now that I come to think about, these are used very much like the common elements of other genres.

Maybe these kinds of shows have little or nothing to do with actual Irish-Americans deciding what kinds of shows get made, and much or everything to do with simply being another genre, like Westerns or Mafia shows. Maybe actual Irish-Americans react to these shows in ways similar to how Italian-Americans react to typical Mafia shows.

I don't know. I'm just sayin' is all.

Why Don't They List The Records On TV Shows' Soundtracks Like On Movies'?

Some TV shows have a lot of really great pop records on their soundtracks. They've been doing this for a while now -- the earliest example I can recall at the moment is "Scrubs," which started in 2001. Before that, a sitcom or a TV drama would feature a snippet of a good pop record now and then. But "Scrubs" drenches you in good music. It's like before & after American Graffiti in the movies.

Come to think of it, "Alias" started doing the same thing in 2001 also.

But there's a crucial difference here between the movies & TV, and that's why I'm writing this post: the movies list all of the records at the end of the credits. With TV shows, apparently they don't want anybody to know what all that wonderful music was. There ought to be some complete list of all of the music from "Scrubs" or from "Ray Donovan."

Actually, I think there is such a listing somewhere on the Web for Scrubs, but the show's producers didn't put it out: a fan, out of the goodness of his or her heart, tracked down each and every record on every episode and put it on a website --

Oh you know what, it looks like somebody made a site like that for all TV shows. Harrumph. Well, good, and about time! (Has that site been there for like 12 years?... 5 years, apparently.) (And for all I know it's just 1 of many such sites. Key phrase here, as usual with me: "I don't know.")

And that song that played over the closing credits of last night episode of "Ray Donovan," that I couldn't find by googling the lyrics, is "The Evil That Men Do" by Diz and the Fam.



I never heard of Diz and the Fam before this, but when I heard that song last night I suspected that some crusty old white guys from the cast of "Ray Donovan" might be involved in its production. No, Diz of Diz and the Fam is not Jon Voigt. Not quite that crusty. But it is Dash Minok, who plays Bunchy on the show. Here's another clip from Diz and the Fam, featuring beaucoup celebrity cameos in the video: