- So 11. Aug 2013, 13:05
#1274245
Die AV Club Reviews drücken ganz gut aus, was ich meine:
Theologe hat geschrieben: Breaking Bad hat doch auch eine ganz andere Ausgangslage. Ray ist doch schon da vor Walter erst nach 4 Staffeln war.Ändert nichts daran, dass man bei Breaking Bad Walts Verhalten nachvollziehen kann und die Konflikte stimmig aufgebaut sind, während man das alles bei Ray nicht kann, weil man nicht genug Hintergrundwissen bzw. keinen guten Einblick in die Figuren hat.
Die AV Club Reviews drücken ganz gut aus, was ich meine:
I have a theory. I think Ray Donovan chooses to focus on plot elements not because they add to a larger story, but because they’re cool. The coffee spiked with LSD: awesome. The case-of-the-week, in which women steal a football player’s sperm to get child support from him later: neat. Mickey snorting coke with his sons and then pushing Bunchy upstairs with a pretty woman: sweet. It’s almost as if the show is collective repeating “cool story, bro” to itself and the audience as it unfolds every new scene. (“Cool story, bro” would be an excellent replacement tagline, too.) There’s nothing wrong with showcasing something that’s intriguing or interesting or different, something that appeals to our collective desire to see something awesome. But all that coolness is getting in the way of Ray Donovan’s narrative, whatever that narrative is. As interesting as these story elements are, they don’t consistently point to something bigger.
[...]
Watching this show feels as if it’s 1am and you can’t sleep so you turn on the television and there’s a made-for-TV movie, perhaps in a different language, that’s already an hour in. It’s compelling and mysterious, but it’s hard to find the significance of any particular moment. I don’t mind being a bit lost in a show, but that requires a patience and dedication most television shows can’t afford.
[...]
Maybe the whole show is a golem, a thing that walks and talks and looks like a television show but is created inorganically.
[...]
It’s a major problem that five episodes into Ray Donovan, the stakes are murky at best. Clearly, the FBI is closing in on Ray, but what is Ray doing that is so bad, anyway? He’s certainly messed with too many crime scenes, and lied, and trespassed on private property a whole bunch. He did beat that guy to death with a baseball bat, after dyeing him green. But Ray was afraid for his life well before that murder. And afraid of Mickey, too—though increasingly, that’s not making sense either. If, as we learn in this episode, Mickey went to prison for a crime he didn’t commit, why is he such a big scary man for Ray? Is Ray just deeply terrified of… intimacy? He never explains any of his motivations to anyone or anything, probably because his trust issues are a mile deep. But his obliqueness reads as opacity. For all that the show is named after the character, we know so little about Ray it’s impossible to invest in him—to empathize with him—really, to care about him—in the way the show wants us to.
[...]
The final moment of the show, where Ray is weeping at his desk and Abby comes in to ask him bluntly—“Who the fuck are you, Ray?”—is supposed to produce an emotional reaction in its audience. Unfortunately, the primarily feeling I experienced was confusion. As Abed from Community said so succinctly: “I need help reacting to something.” I really have no idea how to feel about most of what happens on Ray Donovan.
In much of the episode Abby is sifting through Ray’s things, trying to decipher her husband’s secrets and silences. If only there was anything to decipher. We see 10 times more of him than she does, and we still don’t have a clue why Ray feels the way he does. I like it when television challenges me to interpret symbols or character arcs, but nuance isn’t the same thing as hiding in plain sight. Sometimes it seems like Ray Donovan has a point. Sometimes, as in “Golem,” it feels like the whole show is based on nothing.
