Mr. Inbetween

Mr. Inbetween wrecked me because it never asks you to solve Ray.

Scott Ryan gives a performance that feels completely lived-in and still impossible to fully read. Ray is funny, calm, terrifying, gentle, exhausted, loyal, and capable of ruining someone’s life before lunch. The show moves from crime drama to black comedy to something painfully heartfelt without ever losing control of its tone. Even the violence isn’t flashy.

It’s treated with the same mundaneness as his home life, which somehow makes it hit harder when the show decides it should.

That split is what makes it stick. Ray can be a good man to his family and a bad man to the world, and the show never lets one truth erase the other. His relationship with his daughter is special because it isn’t there to redeem him. It’s just love: plain, funny, protective, flawed love.

I can’t stop thinking about him.