After Tyrant and Masters of Sex, this may be the most improved show on TV. Here's my take these 1st 3 episodes so far.
Ray is back on his grind. Which should be the focus of the show and I love. He's out there one his fixing steez. It was fun to see Bronson Pinchot come back into TV, I haven't seen homie in over a decade, and I was a big fan of Perfect Strangers as a youth. Anyway, I could understand why Ray is hesitant to come home full time especially, since he and his wife are entangled in a complicated change in relationship, but Ray is actually in the wrong considering he's been cheating on his wife for years prior to her tryst with the dectective. And he didn't really look out for his kids they needed him the most at times. I think this season, he will have a powow with his dad,
because Ray needs to exorcise his demons and his dad is the biggest of them. But all in all this is one of TVs most complicated characters and Liev Shriber has done an excellent job.
Abby is talked down to on this forum, but I feel like she has to be a shrill shrew just to get Rays attention. Aside from her dip into the bottle, shes a good mother to the kids and she's going through some transitions herself. I'm not going to get at her for sleeping wit the homie from Boardwalk Empire. Rays bodycount is way higher.
Mickey Donovan has been brilliantly played by John Voight and I thought was the only real saving grace of a poor season 2. He's been an awesome character. He kinda plays the angle as a noble crook, but in all reality the dude is an opportunist and a user. He sacrificed his son Terry just for a fairly small amount of weed money, then he makes it worse trying to intimidate a judge who was already knocking on heavens door, forcing his other son Ray to essentially sell his soul to the devil to save his brother which was in a sense short sighted because Terry was ok with his fate and resigned himself in a sense. I gotta say he has more shcemes that bugs bunny. I can't see the cocaine/pimping ange to work, and Darryl (Pooch Hall, who left being the star of a successful TV show to be the gullible mixed son of a sociopath) is dumb enough to go along with it despite his dad's shyt track record.
Terry I feel real bad for. His business that he bought with his fight earnings was a front but he ran it like a gym. It seems like he had the most talent as a boxer but he was also the smallest staturewise, so he took the hardest hits and it messed up his brain. What made it worse is that dude also had the desire to run a gym and only turned to criminal activities to protect people he cared about (his fam and girlfriend at the time). He tried to look out for Ray too, but Rays a stubborn cat.
Bunchy is a poor messed up dude, he out there bustin shots to that dominatrix Mexican Broad. I thought that chick looked familiar, the actress is Allysa Diaz, I remember her playing this mouthy young Latino girl on the last couple of seasons of Army Wives (I watch TV with my wife and she loved the show, it was just ok to me.) But I can't lie she's sexy in a not perfect sort of way and I would let her do a hurricanrana on me. I can't hate on Bunchy, as messed up emotionally as he is, he still has a dikk.
Good to see Katie Holmes back on TV she was always a good actress. She's good on here.
My man Manolo is still a sensitive gangster over 30 years later.
Ian McShane has blessed us again with his presence.
All in all a top 5 TV show out so far, hopefully the keeps momentum.
On a side note that young Black actor that was in the Navy and his wife was cheating on him. Who is he? He's a very good actor and I don't know if I'm just being crazy but if they made a movie about 2pac, that's my 2pac. He seems like he had just enough crazy in him but he sounded real intelligent too. I'd keep an eye out for him either way. Just with my 15 years in television, I can see talent.