Who Once Was Dead... #RayDonovan Falls Out of Favor With All the Women Left In His Life

In this sad, dark episode, pretty much everything Ray has built in New York City seems to come apart. Samantha (Susan Sarandon) hires someone to beat up Ray.

Sam has 2 demands of Ray: Return the money and leave town. He returns the $3,000,000, to the fixer who beats him up in scene 1. (How did Sam find a new fixer anyway? In the yellow pages, under "F" no doubt). The new guy, Vinny, seems to be a Texan. He's 6 foot 4, and much bigger than Ray, who gets badly beaten up in Scene 1.

Terry Donovan sleeps with Abbie's niece, Lauren Kelly. The two have real chemistry, and these are the best scenes of this episode.

Terry Calls Lauren "Abby" in the heat of passion--loving a woman Who Once Was Dead. Later, Terry asks her to attend his fight "for good luck," but she says she has to work at 4. She seemingly forgives him for his excited utterance the night before. She lets him off the hook easy, saying that she was imagining he was Ryan Gosling.

Having demanded a sign from the Lord last season, Bunchy (Dash Mihok) gets the intervention he demands: he sees Sandy in Boston, catches her and takes back the $3,000,000. Bunchy is going to take the money to Maria, when Ray shows up to take it all back for Samantha.

Bridget returns to her internship to find a new guy sitting in her seat. Her supervisor tells her that her internship has been "completed." She confronts Anita Novak, who tells her pretty much the same thing.

Ray confronts Samantha, in her limousine. He tells her that he's going to fix everything, "but it has to get worse" in the next news cycle before it can get better.

Meanwhile, Mikey Donovan (Jon Voight) breaks into Sandy's house in Queens. He finds his brother Cormac's Vietnam era uniform (it would look a lot older than that, sorry, having been in a box). He puts it on and waits for the others to show up. He dreams he was his older brother, a man Who Once Was Dead.

Mikey's son Darrell comes through the door first. They reconcile, while Ray beats up Bunchy to get back Sam's money. It's the only chance either man have to reconcile with their families; giving the money to Sam in Ray's case, or to Theresa in Bunchy's.

Ray goes to Justine's apartment, to find the Texan crushing a cigarette on the street. He goes upstairs to her apartment, where he discovers the shower running, and Justine dead, hung in the shower, by the Texan no doubt. Samantha choose her own way to fix the problem, she's not going to give Ray time to fix the many problems she views him as responsible for.

Lena confront's Ray in his apartment, which she has creepily broken into as he sits down to google maps Manhattan. She asks him if Sam Winslow killed Justine. "I'll take care of it," says Ray.

"I know you think you do all this for the sake of your family. But where is everyone Ray? Your brothers? Bridget? Connor, he joined the fucking marines to get away from you." As she exits the door, Lena says "You know what Ray? You're going to die alone. And you deserve it." It's a very powerful moment as all the women in Ray's life, from Anita and Sam to Bridget and Lena, have denounced and abandoned him.

Bridget reads Ray the riot act: I'm going to disappear, and I don't want you to come looking for me. Bridget meets Ray in a bar called Smiths and says “ why couldn’t you teach me to drive? Because you didn’t want me to grow up. you’re my dad and I love you but you have to let me go. We can’t keep doing this.”

After Bridge walks away, Ray descends into hallucinations. He sees all the women in his life who have died, the young actress Natalie James from last season, Justine, Abby, the blood on his hands. He sees the dead woman, Justine as a blonde walking through Times Square, right behind a Marilyn Monroe look alike. Again, she Who Once Was Dead.

Ray is completely delusional, just as Sam said he was. Did she drug his drink? as she drives by Times Square, it certainly seems so. He makes the same mistake his dad made in the last episode, and starts a fight with a police officer who's just trying to assist him. Ray wakes up in an insane asylum. As the episode ends, we don't know how, or even if, Ray Donovan will get out of the facility, as a woman in the next room sings an Irish lullaby.

At the Fight Club, Terry's fight goes badly. His tremors return, as his face bleeds from the blows of a much bigger man. The wires in his head to prevent Parkinsons seem to have become unglued. Even the other boxer realizes this, and doesn't seem to want to continue striking the obviously crippled man. But Terry laughs, he's thrilled to have been able to "live again" since he Once Was Dead.

Or is Ray the one who Once Was Dead? As the season began, he wanted to be dead. As the episode ends, Ray is dead to Sam and to the world. Will have to wait until next week to see how he rises from his ashes.

(I wrote this summary very quickly. If you have corrections or additions, they are appreciated. Post a comment, or e mail them to us).