Ray Donovan [Showtime] [** Spoilers **]

snausages wrote: »

One of the best new shows on ATM, enjoying it a lot. Better than fuppin Dexter that's for sure

From what I've seen of Dexter in recent years it wouldn't exactly take a lot to better it.

Caught up on the episodes to date and still really enjoying it. The performances and in particular, Voight and Schreiber are outstanding but episode 5 really highlights the shows shortcomings. We're almost 5 hours into a 10 hour story and already we have more questions than answers. The show goes out of it's way to paint Micky as some truly evil figure but he never feels threatening. Instead he feels like a live wire, someone whose actions aren't predictable but a long way from the Machiavellian character he's been painted by the other characters.

A lot of the supporting characters seem to be repeating the same actions week after week, Bunchy spends every episode moping around in a constant state of arrested development and the writers don't seem the least bit interested in expanding upon anything that makes him interesting. The same goes for Terry who has over the first 4 episodes came to the front as one of the shows most interesting characters but all this was thrown away in episode 5 where Terry went from being a sad sack love shy loser to the other man. It just didn't ring and seemed almost as if the writers had accidentally mixed in the pages from a later episode.

There's a lot of potential in the show but it needs to get a move on in introduction the pieces of the overall puzzle. You can't keep the viewer in the dark or offer slivers of information for too long before people just stop watching.

Not a bad episode this week though yet again the relationship between Ray and Mickey seems to be far more interesting that anything the writers have shown us to date. I'm dieing to find out just what he could have done to leave Ray with so much hate for his father, after all from everything we have seen of Mickey he's came across as a pretty decent bloke. Granted his social skills aren't all that and he has no idea how to conduct himself around his family but he's certainly not the figure of pure evil that the show has been selling him as.

I really hope that the coming weeks can deliver on the promise that the show contains. It seems to be constantly threatening to go from being merely very, very good to exceptional TV but week after week it fails to cross the line.

Diddy Kong wrote: »

To be fair I don't think I am seeing that! He is enabling his own son, Punchy, who is trying to stay off the sauce, in the latest episode he is giving a beer to his early teen granson. As for all the jokes he has been making about Punchy's abuse (half-nelson), and the meeting they went to. I just don't understand how the other's are not seeing this!

I am really enjoying this show, Voight just plays the sleeze perfectly. I am not so sure about Ray's missus, surely she must have some clue about what he does for a living...

He's a sleaze bag there's no doubt about that but he's far from the evil character he's painted at. He comes across as a deeply flawed individual who has no understanding of boundaries or how to interact with people. He's quite vile at the best of times and not a particularly nice person or someone you'd want around your kids but he's far from the evil figure Ray seems him.