Would Ray Donovan Be A Better Show If Conor Found A Large Tectonic Fault In Calabasas And Fell In It?

In "Fite Nite," the latest episode of Ray Donovan, our protagonist's immediate family reaches an important milestone: Ray (Liev Schreiber) brings his wife Abby (Paula Malcomson) and kids Bridget (Kerris Dorsey) and Conor (Devon Bagby) to a fight at his brother Terry's (Eddie Marsan) boxing club, to introduce them to one of the night's fighters -- his half-brother Daryll (Pooch Hall). As the Donovans enter the club, Abby gives Daryll a nice big wave; when he waves back, Conor has a question: "How can he be our uncle?" Bridget squeezes her eyes closed in vicarious embarrassment: "Oh my God. You're a moron." "He has a different mom," says Abby kindly. Conor: "I still don't understand."

The internet has been unhelpful in revealing how old Conor is supposed to be -- or even how old Devon Bagby is. I ascribe the latter to canny identity management from an actor who'd like to play up or down, and the former to how little impact Ray Donovan has had on the viewing audience since its launch earlier this summer. What we know for sure is that Conor's younger than Bridget, who's sixteen -- so let's assume he's fourteen or maybe thirteen; twelve would be a stretch, but still, any of those possibilities would make Conor old enough to have received rudimentary sex ed at school. We also know that he's had some pretty frank discussions about sex with his good friend Tommy (Austin Nichols), in terms of the circumstances under which Tommy prefers to have sex with biological women vs. transwomen, so one might expect Conor to be a little bit ahead of his chronological peers with regard to his secondhand knowledge of sexual matters. "I STILL DON'T UNDERSTAND"?! What are you, SIMPLE?

If his clearly self-penned IMDb bio is anything to go by, Devon Bagby is pretty sure that Ray Donovan is a big break for him -- and it may turn out to be. Playing the son on premium cable drama The Big C probably got Gabriel Basso noticed for Super 8, and Brie Larson's done pretty well for herself since playing the title character's daughter on The United States Of Tara. But we can't forget the Greyson Fletchers or Bree Seanna Walls -- the kids who popped up on HBO dramas and never worked again. Because even at his young age (whatever it is), Devon Bagby has to know he has less in common with Basso or Larson, and more in common with Jackson Pace.

Of course the name Jackson Pace doesn't ring any bells for you, because it would be weird if it did, but he plays Chris Brody on Homeland. Until Ray Donovan came along, I thought that Chris had set a gold standard for how pointless and dumb a teen character can be on a cable show and not get shipped off to boarding school (okay, not a gold standard; a brown standard?), but I think that even Chris would grok how he could possibly be related to a nonwhite person. It's not even like Conor is playing dumb for the sake of providing exposition for the audience: if you require a two-part explanation for how Ray and Daryll can be brothers despite the single most obvious physical difference between them, you are definitely not mature enough to be watching a show in which, about half an hour later, a guy is going to get murdered in front of his infant daughter.

I'm not the world's biggest fan of Bridget Donovan, but at least she knows how to commit some compelling acts in order to get herself some negative attention, what with her sexts and her blowjob-demanding quasi-boyfriend. If anything ends up coming (no pun intended) from Conor's weird friendship with Tommy, it's not going to be satisfyingly titillating; it'll be an infuriating misrepresentation of pedophilia as just another perversion that gay men perpetrate on children (and the fact that the Tommy plotline has veered away from the direction it seemed to be going may be heartening proof that someone in the writers' room decided to bring reality into the discussion).

So if even this isn't a function that the character of Conor can perform, why is he still here? Literally no reason. Take him on another school tour, have him assault some other rich guy's obnoxious kid, and send him off to juvie, or back to Boston, or on an Outward Bound whitewater rafting trip that ends up killing him. I'm not fussy.