Ray Donovan recap: Season 7, Episode 9

The latest episode of Ray Donovan, sees Ray the closest he's ever been to everything collapsing around him. Despite all he's done that's illegal and violent, he's always managed to stay one step ahead. Now though, after Smitty wore a wire and recorded Ray saying he killed a cop, things aren't looking so good. But Ray still has a few cards to play. Namely, he knows everything about Mayor Ferrati's corruption and his scheme to take kickbacks from the Arthur Kill prison.

Knowing all of that gives him some leverage with Perry. He's honest with her about everything, telling her that the cops kidnapped his daughter, and that they were trying to keep him quiet about the whole scheme. He tells her that Ferrati put out a hit on his IAB investigator too, and promises to bring in a witness to corroborate this: Judge Scholl. Thus begins a pretty solid episode, one of the few this season.

What's great about the episode is that, for the most part, the tertiary Donovan family drama is put on the sidelines, and the focus becomes Ray's attempts to take down the Mayor and save himself. First, he bugs Scholl's office. But the goal isn't to listen in on his conversations. Rather, he wants to convince Scholl that the Mayor is keeping an eye on him, ready to take him down and pin the whole kickback scheme on him. Ray comes to the office and shows the judge a bug in his phone, and starts telling him about how the cops know everything about the prison scheme and that it's clear Ferrati is trying to throw Scholl under the bus.

Ray enlists Bunchy in this plan too. He gets him to sit in a car outside the judge's house and snap pictures of his family. He purposely gets noticed so that Scholl gets a call from his wife. Now the judge is truly paranoid, thinking that the all-powerful Mayor is working to send him to jail. Ray even blows up the judge's card moments before he's set to get in it in order to really secure that paranoia. The judge takes Ray up on his offer, and the two drive out to an isolated cabin in the woods so that Scholl can give Perry everything he knows.

Unfortunately, for Ray, nothing goes as planned. Three men in suits come to the cabin carrying guns, and attempt to kill Scholl. They manage to kill Perry's partner, but Scholl escapes. Ferrati must have sent these men, and the episode suggest that it's the police lieutenant, Perry's superior, who tips Ferrati off to the location of the cabin. The corruption is deep and widespread, to the point that the lieutenant seems to have no problem handing power to the Mayor to put his own officers in the line of fire.

While all of this is happening, the other Donovans are off on their own adventures. Terry has a run-in with Ray's psychiatrist at physical therapy, and Mickey is endearing himself to Smitty, asking him to open a bank account for him so that he can receive a wire transfer when the stocks get transferred over. Mickey's behind on the current events though. There's no way he's getting those stocks. Daryll is trying to bait Declan into coming to the motel so that he can kill him and get revenge for Jasmine, but it's Ray who shows up after Claudette calls him and says that she knows her son is in deep, real trouble. So, Ray shows up to take the briefcase and sort out this whole business with the stocks. Daryll is on the edge. He points the gun at himself and threatens to pull the trigger, but Ray manages to talk him down. Daryll is broken, deep in it at this point. All he knows is that he wants Declan dead, and he tells Ray to make sure he kills him.

Maybe he will, but for now he's hunting down Scholl with Perry, another mess he's left to clean up after something goes awry. But things might be getting worse soon. Molly has been listening to the tapes. Flashbacks seem to tell us that something happened with her at the Sullivan house. Something bad. We're getting close to that being revealed, and that may just be the final straw for Ray. Ferrati, Sullivan, the cops; he's got a lot of enemies, and nowhere left to hide.

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