Terry Donovan: Is there Life without Health?

Terry Donovan’s health shows zero signs of improvement and potentially never will. His mind and body have separated, divorced. They are no longer a team, just roommates.

This article contains spoilers for Ray Donovan Season 7 Episode 4 (“Hispes”).

The prerequisite basics to life remain but is Terry Donovan really living? Regular everyday activities we all take for granted are being stolen right under from Terry’s fingertips as every minute passes. The home remains but the wallpaper is peeling off. What should have been a beautiful memory to reflect on for Terry, sleeping with Liberty on tonight’s Ray Donovan episode…. Became personal shame and emasculating embarrassment. Permanent scar tissue.

Liberty [Louisa Krause] attempting to offer comfort in the aftermath could not console the unconsolable. A proud man like Terry Donovan, a boxer, cannot bathe in Liberty’s sorrowful looks of pity to go from “caterpillar to butterfly.” No matter how well intended on Liberty’s part.

Eddie Marsan as Terry Donovan in RAY DONOVAN, “Hispies”. Photo Credit: Jeff Neumann/SHOWTIME.

Which is why after Terry understood his new alternative healing method was just more false hope, something to distract from the traffic where he’s ultimately heading… He placed rocks in his clothes and headed to a close-by waterfront, hoping to sink to the bottom of the ocean. “I know where this is heading.”

What once was achieved with ease is now a luxury and gradually becoming a pie in the sky dream. Soon it will take the strength of ten mountains to achieve what his body was once capable of. As if the very weight of gravity has changed. Terry does not want to spend the rest of his life asking for assistance, to feel like a burden, even tossing around the idea of euthanasia on his own.

Eddie Marsan as Terry Donovan in RAY DONOVAN, “Hispies”. Photo Credit: Jeff Neumann/SHOWTIME.

Dolores’ rescue

Yet, a woman in his group named Dolores [Lois Smith], seemingly in the same hopeless situation as Terry Donovan is trying to save him. It’s not because of naivety…. Dolores is aware just like Terry that this last stopgap of treatment after everything else has failed is likely a mirage. No cure through metaphors, no matter how pretty. However, Dolores wants Terry to live, she does not accept that, ‘There isn’t much he’d miss.’

Lois Smith as Dolores in RAY DONOVAN, “Hispies”. Photo Credit: Jeff Neumann/SHOWTIME.

Thus, through pure will of mind rather than a feat of strength, in contrast to what Mac once did for Ray pulling him out of the east river… Dolores was able to walk Terry Donovan out of an attempted self-drowning. Perhaps, Terry [Eddie Marsan] is not that different from his father Mickey Donovan or even Sandy Patrick after all in one respect…

Terry needs others with him on this journey, wherever it may lead. Even if it’s the road to physical deterioration and decline. One person that understands and is going through the same thing he is.

This time around, Terry Donovan’s opponent in the boxing ring is his own body… Failing him. A matchup he cannot overcome simply through a quick jab or uppercut. Only mind over matter.

Read more of The Natural Aristocrat’s Ray Donovan coverage in the Ray Donovan category section.