The Bag or the Bat? The Bag or the Bat?

Ray Donovan asks a stalker what he wants – the bag or the bat?

The Bag or the Bat?

IMDB explains that “Ray Donovan is the man called in to solve the most difficult problems for LA’s elite.

Ray’s life is thrown into turmoil when his father Mickey gets out of prison five years early.”

Liev Schreiber plays Ray Donovan – and plays the role well. Between you and me, I never heard of him. But I looked him up. He has 87 acting credits and had a nice role in 1999’s Hurricane – a movie about Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, a boxer wrongly imprisoned for murder, and the people who aided in his fight to prove his innocence. Denzel Washington played Hurricane Carter. Schreiber played some guy named Sam. I saw the movie a couple times but don’t remember him.

Nor do I know any of the first 10 or characters playing the main parts in the series.

In the first episode, Ray is hired to tail a Hollywood producer’s side-piece. Ray finds a stalker whacking off while the side-piece is doing yoga on her deck. So Ray pays him a visit carrying a baseball bat and a small bag. He asks the stalker what he wants – the bag or the bat?

The stalker chooses the bag – which contains several pouches of green dye. Ray forces the stalker to take a bath in the green dye – but I have no idea what the green dye signifies.

One of the things I like most about the series is the flood of guest stars that appear in episode after episode. Three guest stars appear in Episode 1.

Jon Voight plays Rays’ pain-in-the-ass father Mickey Donovan – Steven Bauer plays Ray’s Man Friday – Elliott Gould plays a powerful lawyer who contracts Ray’s services.

If I wanted to emulate Ray Donovan, I’d have to learn to drink a lotta whiskey, be ungrateful to the people helping me, and enjoy having tremendously rough sex. Which means – yes – plenty of tits and ass throughout the series – the casting director gets an A+ for the choice of sexual correspondents.

I’m America’s Best Crime Writer

and I approve this message.

We’ll start getting into the guest starts next time. Warner Books published Born to Be Wild in 1992 & it still sells every day at Amazon & Kindle. True story about certain members of the Warlocks motorcycle gang.

The story takes 21 years to play out – with many twists & turns – an amalgam of Sons of Anarchy & Breaking Bad – but these outlaw bikers make the Sons look like Cub Scouts.