Ray Donovan recap: Mickey's ride into the sunset
Mickey is alive, and another head has been found. That’s what the Donovan family is dealing with at the moment. Everything that can go wrong is going wrong, and that leaves the family desperately trying to find a way to cover up what they’ve done. Look, those dirty cops deserved what they got, and they would’ve killed Ray and all the Donovans on the spot, but there’s no way the law would see it that way.
Ray has a plan. With Mickey alive but technically dead, it should be a breeze to pin the three murders on him. Ray takes his father to all the different relevant locations and gets Mickey to put his prints and blood on the scenes as evidence. With more heads popping up, the cops will be looking for clues, and they’ll find all sorts of evidence telling them that Mickey Donovan killed everyone. Then Ray will put his father on a plane and send him away forever, the cops having nailed a dead man for the crimes and nobody the wiser.
But things, of course, are never that easy. Sure, Mickey does get on a plane and heads to the Maldives, but that doesn’t mean this problem is buried. In fact, Detective Perry is more suspicious than ever. After all this evidence pops up, she pays Daryll a visit. She asks him about the night of Nov. 7, and quite frankly, Daryll is a terrible liar. His mother, who’s visiting for Mickey’s now-unnecessary funeral, knows that he’s lying too, and she warns him that if he continues to get wrapped up in this Donovan family nonsense, he’s going to wind up in prison.
Ray is doing everything he can to keep everyone out of danger. He changes the story with Mac’s widow, he gives Daryll the backstage passes and ticket stubs that confirm their false alibi, and he sends Mickey packing. It could work. Later in the episode, Perry is told to close the case and take the win on the three murders. She’s furious; she knows this is a frame job, and she wants to keep digging. At the end of the episode she’s still poring over the file, so there’s no way she’s done with this just yet.
Of course, there are still a lot of other problems in Ray’s life. Most of the Donovans are dealing with one stress or another. Bunchy’s feeling of heroism is quickly cut short when he asks his boss for a raise and he’s informed that the company might actually sue him for what he did. Plus, Bunchy comes to the realization that he shot a 15-year-old kid while he was running away. There’s nothing noble in that. He lashed out and shot that kid when he was defenseless, and now he has to live with that. As the episode ends, Bunchy is at the hospital staring in at the kid, who’s in critical condition.
While Terry is off visiting a shaman in the hopes of curing his disease, Ray is working away on the Sullivan case. Ferrati wants Ray to find a 10-year-old kid to act like the one in the photos and, at a press conference, confirm that he watched Sullivan engaging in oral sex. This is one step too far for Ray. Or maybe the act itself isn’t a step too far, and he’s just done. With his father leaving, and even accepting his forgiveness, Ray is feeling some sense of closure. He’s also just tired, done with this life. He’s tired of doing bad things for other people, a realization he comes to during therapy when he talks about being a kid and wanting to be a veterinarian.
So, he sets about starting to make things right. He gives Molly Sullivan the photos meant for Ferrati’s blackmail, honoring the sister who thought he had the capacity to be a good man. Now, Ferrati is going to come after him, as Lena reminds him as she heads off for Los Angeles, but he doesn’t care. “I don’t want to do it anymore,” he mutters.
Is this the end of Ray’s fixing days? Maybe. The Donovans are in a time of flux. Bridget has kissed her producer and officially cheated on Smitty. Terry is alienated from his family and grasping at any sort of treatment. Bunchy is having a moral crisis, Daryll is staring down a prison sentence, and Mickey is maybe gone for good. Things are changing, but are they changing for the better? Only time will tell.
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