I was going to do a full scale review of the first season of Ray Donovan, but... well... it's just not that good. I'm through 11 of the 12 and I like it, but I really can't recommend it. The premise is compelling, an inside look at a Hollywood fixer, and whenever that's the focus the show shines. Ray's humiliating ways of dealing with stalkers and corrupt real estate agents are a scream. His rag tag team of rogues are also some of the most interesting parts of the cast.
But they get a fraction of the screen time. Room has to be made for Jon Voight as Ray's jail bird father as well as his wife (deadwood's Trixie! She's fabulous.) and two kids. There was plenty of material and talent in the Donovans to sustain maybe 5 episodes, but if I were to make a pie graph of total time spent on characters, Ray's immediates would have run off with 9. They stop being bearable after 6. The actors are fine but the story structure brings the show's momentum to a screeching halt.
I mean, it feels like they wanted the show to be more about Ray doing his job, but they ran out of ideas. It's inability to break out of the family's increasingly tedious cycle of calling Ray a monster and kinda-sorta forgetting about it, made me groan out load. That cycle happens at least 3 times.
This is for hard core Schreiber and Voight fans only. And only then if you don't mind seeing their talent wasted on boiler plate material half the time. When the show snaps out of it's family drama coma and decides to raise the action, it's wonderful. But the valleys outweigh the peaks, you know what I mean?
A potentially great show watered down into an ok show.
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