Ray Donovan's LA

My wife and I started watching the new Showtime original, Ray Donovan. It's set in and around Los Angeles, staring Liev Schreiber as a tall, dark, handsome, former Southy who's now a big-shot Hollywood tough guy doing Mr. FixIt work for some sketchy entertainment lawyers. To tell you the truth, if my friend Elliott Gould were not co-starring in it (as one of the aforementioned lawyers), I wouldn't have watched it past episode 2 or 3. Just not my cup of tea. But we're about midway through the season now and there is still some entertainment value in the show for me.

We watch and laugh at how easily Ray gets from, say Malibu to West Hollywood. Or from Hollywood to Compton. As you can see on the map below, LA is giant. It can easily take 1.5 hours to get from Malibu to West Hollywood in traffic. Never mind how long it would take to drive from Compton to Calabasas, deep in the Valley where Ray's family lives. But not in Ray Donovan's LA! He steps into his Mercedes and in the time it takes to make one phone call to his secretary or hit-man, he's already at his next destination, no road rage, no wrinkles in his suit jacket, no stops to urinate or get gas... I mean, I know all about suspension of disbelief, but seriously. Does the Mercedes fly and we just haven't seen that episode yet?

Anyone else watching the show and find this as funny as we do? Anyone in love with the show? What are we missing? What do you like so much about it? (Okay, besides Liev Schreiber?)


This reminds me of the official California tourism website Visit California's promo "Surf to Ski California ... in the Same Day." Technically it's possible, but you have to take a helicopter to avoid all the traffic jam in order to do that.
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I never even considered that. I live in Wyoming. Been to LA twice in my life, the first time I was 8 years old and the second time, it was just to catch a connecting flight. I think most people who don't live in a big city like that would have no idea anything was off. I love the show.

Regardless, you don't want him to travel in real time. If it takes that long to get around, the show would be about nothing but traffic.
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When I lived in LA and had some one visit, on more than one occasion we planned on going to Malibu, but gave up and didn't go past Santa Monica due to the time it took to get there. And that is when we had most of the day set aside to mess around along the coast.
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I had a similar situation when the short lived "Eleventh Hour" was on tv. The second episode was set in Pooler Georgia, which is relatively small compared to Savannah less than ten miles away. They depicted Pooler as the kind of town that was backwoods rural and isolated, away from any medical help and specialists ( they even mention contacting doctors as far as Garden City, which butts up with Pooler city limits). In truth Pooler has an International Airport and probably the only IMax theatre within 100 miles. The funniest part of that episode was when the County Sherriff Department would show up for every incident. I'm sure Chatam County's Sherriff is probably much too busy to personally investigate some unusual medical event.
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