Ray

Liev Schreiber

I do watch television. I am not an connoisseur of much of anything. Wine tasting and film festivals are not my scenes. However, I do write and appreciate good writing, whether it is prose or drama. 

The rise of streaming video is for me what the development of the automobile was for early 20th century pedestrians. Like the car, video has its evils. The streaming video market place is filled with a preponderance of mediocrity and outright crap, like any other. Youtube, for example, is best used to find out how to fix a toilet or to locate an obscure documentary, in my opinion. 

So, I am getting old. By sundown, my eyelids are prone to imitate the setting sun. This is my time to kick back for some stimulating  entertainment (hopefully). I light up my cable or my Netflix account.

This brings me to Ray Donovan, for whom I have titled this essay. Ray Donovan is the lead character of a Showtime cable TV series, modeled very loosely on a version of the Bulger family of South Boston. Liev Schreiber plays Ray. 

I didn't want to like this show. I am disgusted by the Brothers Bulger and their kind. My Irish surname here in Boston often associates me with their ethnic group, from which I could not be more dissociated. My own Irish-American grandfather taught me deep skepticism about the Irish. "The only difference between the bog Irish and the lace-curtain Irish," he would say with a sigh, "is that the lace-curtain Irish proudly paint their names on their trash cans."

I got hooked on Ray Donovan's life. He is a fixer for a gangster-turned-movie-producer who ran from the police in Boston to Hollywood. Ray grew up with two brothers and a sister in South Boston poverty. His father, Micky, a retired boxer and low-level henchman for the Irtish mob, was a derelict father. The boys were abused by a local Catholic priest who stepped in when their mother was dying of cancer. The sister committed suicide while high. The three brothers moved to California with the help of the well-meaning (in his mind) movie producer, who in turn exploited rough Ray as his fixer, a man who makes problems go away by any means. It's a little more complex than that, but that is the gist.

So, why would a self-proclaimed, nonviolent humanist get hooked on a show like this? I think I first got hooked as a nurse. Much of my nursing role was being a fixer of sorts. Then I realized that Ray is a Zen nihilist. He is a shark, moving through the swampy water of Hollywood, simply doing what he perceives he must do to survive and protect his clan. No matter what it takes. And it takes lots of intimidation and violence, even murder.

The interplay between religious hypocrisy and the Donovans' code of familial superiority is fascinatingly torturous. The show directly confronts and exposes issues of racialism, homophobia, addiction, clan, family, parenting and loyalty. Ray, a very well written anti-hero, is both likable and hateful. Just like any real person in extreme circumstances. 

I know. I sound like an advertisement and/or a lame critic, but my point is that my practice of watching television is intentional, thoughtful and skeptical. I learn from selecting media which inform as well as entertain. Ray Donovan has actually brought me to a very different place in my thinking about South Boston, the Irish thing, the role of being a provider and more. I am discovering more and more quality productions which are questioning religion, ethnic loyalty and the questionable definitions of "family values". This is a good thing for a practical humanist.