Sooo...
Ray Donovan...
I'm taking this with a grain of Star Trek: The Next Generation. So far, three episodes in (you mentioned it started to work for you after three episodes, right
@KSM?) where the character development was clumsy.
So far, Elliott Gould is showing himself to be a bad actor. Poor script writing aside, he's stiff. Community theater stiff.
I saw the first episode on Amazon prime, now I have to go over to Roku Channel with bad commercials.
I just thought of this analogy...
It's like a band of young kids playing the blues and they never heard Sonny Boy Williamson or John Lee Hooker or BB King. Kind of an empty vibe.
Something else, the prop master made a lot of errors. License plates were out of sequence; much older plates on much newer cars. Plus, on post production, impossible definition on a zoomed in photo, etc...