Ray Donovan Recap of Shabbos Goy

There were a few surprises in “Shabbos Goy” (9/10/2017), the 5th episode of “Ray Donovan” Season 5. One involved Ray and prescription drugs.

The episode opened at Abby’s, with Mickey trying to get Daryll’s mind off the gruesome death of Jay White’s sensei. Daryll just wanted to know if Mickey put the chopped up body parts in the concrete but Mickey told him to stop going over and over the gory details. “We didn’t kill the guy,” he said, and suggested that Daryll just may not be cut out for this type of work. Daryll stormed out angrily while Bunchy sulked in a corner behind the bar. Mickey came back to get the card to the Spearmint Rhino Gentlemen’s Club, where he is supposed to go kill Avi, and found Bunchy sobbing. Mickey had a hard time grasping Bunchy’s woeful tale of being robbed of a 1.2 million dollars in a sub shop. You have to admit, it sounds far-fetched. Ray, in the meantime, was taking in a Natalie James flick.

The next day, Ray went to see Dr. Brogan, his anger management counselor, and it was actually the first time that we see them get anywhere. Alas, it doesn’t turn out to be anywhere good. Ray checked “no” for all the childhood abuse questions on his questionnaire. Most people do, Brogan says, because they don’t want a written record floating around. He tells Ray it will be between them, off the record. Ray admits he was subjected to verbal, physical and sexual abuse as a boy. His Irish-Catholic parents didn’t divorce and, yeah, someone had a drinking problem because, as Ray put it again: “Irish Catholic.” We know this is all difficult for Ray to acknowledge, so it was a surprise for Brogan to even get that far. When Brogan brought up Mickey hitting Ray’s mother, mental illness and suicide, Ray began to balk so Brogan got to his point: children brought up this way are subjected to an overload of stress and fear hormones on their brains and are constantly in fight or flight mode, even when they are grown. Then, bam! Just like that, Brogan wrote Ray prescriptions for Zoloft for depression, and Neurontin for anxiety at night. That was a surprise because you would think Brogan would deal with Ray’s depression over Abby’s death first. It was another surprise that Ray went right to the drugstore to get the meds. The clerk told him to take one pill a day with food and informed Ray it would take 2 to 4 weeks to kick in.

Back in his office, Ray sat reading the possible side effects when Terry walked in. Ray quickly stuffed the package in a draw. Terry is headed to New York City with Damon to train him for his next fight. Hector Campos is there and agreed to put Damon on the undercard. Terry learned that Ray sold his house and thinks he should tell Bridget and Conor. Terry left and Ray noticed that the Zoloft bottle wasn’t even in the bag he put away. It was right on the desk the whole time, not that Terry noticed. Ray did call Bridget about selling the house. She told him to throw her stuff out.

Later, Smitty showed up at her place and said he was still trying to make sense of why she would come out to look for him and get involved with him if she knew her father had done something to make him sick. He was not in good shape and Bridget got him a drink of water, as he sat on the floor.

Ray went to meet Tom, the blackmailing fixer, at the San Pedro pier. Tom gave his demand of $2 million plus he wanted the Oscar that Sam Winslow’s husband won. The whole time, Vicky, the other fixer that worked for Winslow, was watching Ray and Tom from a parked car. Ray relayed the demand to Winslow and Doug Landry in person. Winslow countered with 3 million and no Oscar and a warning to never trifle with her again. Outside in the hall, Doug Landry told Ray that Natalie James is missing since having creative differences with her director and must be found. Ray wondered if this mission came from Doug or Winslow. Doug said that to people like Sam Winslow, Tom’s million dollar demands were nothing but a nuisance. A real problem is when the star of your $3 billion franchise disappears.

The star of that franchise reappeared in Ray’s office with a completely different story than Doug’s. Natalie told Ray that the night she caused Ray to crash his car, she was really running away from Doug’s house. They were sleeping together when Doug’s wife returned unexpectedly. Now, Natalie is pregnant and Doug wants her to get an abortion, but she wants to keep the baby. She also wants to stay at Ray’s apartment but Ray wants her to leave town for a while. He agrees to let her take a nap first. When she opens the door to the bedroom, Ray flashes back to a night he spent with Abby in that room. Abby asked him how many women he had brought there and Ray said none. The pain of the memory caused Ray to break out the Zoloft and take 5 pills at once, without food and even without water.

Ray picked up the 2 million and the Oscar from an angry Sam Winslow. Doug asked if Ray had found out anything about Natalie but Ray said no. With the effects of the Zoloft escalating, Ray drove to a motel to make the exchange with Tom. Vicky was there again, just watching. Tom didn’t care to divulge why he insisted on having the Oscar statuette. Ray dealt with another flashback to Abby in a wheelchair in the hospital, then took a quick look at the contents of the box. He went back to his car, put the box in the backseat and got a call from Bridget. She was at a hospital and said she knew that Ray poisoned Smitty, and “now he’s going to die,” and hung up. Ray got physically sick, opened the car door and proceeded to vomit. Up walked Vicky with gun drawn and said “don’t move.” Hard not to when you’re puking your guts out, eh? She took the box out of Ray’s car, got in her own and sped off directly into oncoming traffic. A car hit the driver’s side and that was the end of her.

Mickey and Avi make a deal

Mickey found Avi at the Spearmint Rhino Gentlemen’s Club all right. it was 11:30 in the morning and Avi looked like he’d been on a week long bender. In that condition, it was very easy for Mickey to swipe Avi’s car keys and take his gun off him. Mickey forced Avi into the trunk of his own car, loaded up the shovel and other supplies he previously bought, and drove off to an isolated area while Avi sobered up in the trunk and loudly sang Jewish songs.

Mickey forced Avi to walk away from the car and get on his knees. Avi knew this was really coming from Frank Barnes and told Mickey he was Frank’s “shabbos goy,” the person who will do something that the orthodox guy won’t do because the shabbos goy has no morals. Interesting because we were unaware that Frank Barnes had any morals or even scruples about killing anyone and were wondering why he didn’t take Avi out himself. Way back in Season 2, Barnes killed Sully’s nephew, Tiny, and a completely innocent guy Tiny landed on after Barnes shot him.

Avi supplied the answer: once he’s dead, Mickey will have to work for Frank 24/7 because Frank will have leverage on him and Frank won’t even pay him. He offered to cut Mickey in on his drug deals operation. Mickey went for it. Back at the club, Avi made a deal and paid Mickey $80 grand. Mickey knows Frank has leverage on both of them but tells Avi he’ll figure out a way to deal with the FBI agent. “Der mentsh trakht un got lakht,” Avi said– Man makes plans and God laughs. But it’s not like Mickey hasn’t knocked off an FBI agent before — remember Van Miller back in Season 1?

Bunchy dropped baby Maria off at daycare and told Carmen that he might be late picking her up. He went back to the sub shop and learned that Ian, one of the clerks on duty during the robbery, was getting a $14K settlement from the company and workers comp due to malfeasance and not providing enough security. Bunchy called an attorney to see if he could file a lawsuit, too. Of course, Bunchy’s story sounds so fake, it was a waste of time. Bunchy was so mad, he knocked his bottle of booze over. When he went to pick up Maria, Carmen could tell he had been drinking and told him to get someone else to pick up the baby. Mickey came and gave Bunchy the $80 grand and picked up the baby.

When Bunchy and Mickey went back to Abby’s, Frank Barnes was waiting and he did not take it well that Mickey didn’t kill Avi. Mickey obviously did not think Frank would make good on his threat to take Bunchy into custody. Big mistake. Frank Barnes pulled a gun and hustled Bunch out of there, telling Mickey “get it done” on his way out.