Mr. Inbetween is an American-funded Australian Dramatic Half-Hour Black Comedy that aired on Fox Showcase (in Australia) and FX in America. It is created and written by Scott Ryan and directed by Nash Edgerton, based on Ryan's 2005 independent film The Magician.
Ryan plays Ray Shoesmith, a man with numerous criminal responsibilities including hitman, body disposal, drug running and money collection. On the side, he navigates things in his personal life including romance, friendships, a brother with motor function problems and a ten-year-old daughter he sees on the weekends.
The show ran for three seasons and a total of 26 episodes.
Mr Inbetween provides examples of the following tropes:
- Abusive Parents: Rays' father was physically abusive to him and his brother, and they want nothing to do with him in the present day. His father does end up at his doorstep, suffering from some sort of mental illness and after a few weeks Ray finds a home for him to stay. They find some reconciliation when his father confesses that something broke inside from his time in Vietnam, lamenting that he wished Ray knew him before the war.
- Action Film, Quiet Drama Scene: Many of these, some of which cross into Mood Whiplash territory, showing Ray doing something utterly normal and banal, followed by him doing something (or cleaning up after something) incredibly violent.
- Adaptation Expansion: Of The Magician, the 2005 film that first introduced Ray. The film was more of a basic snapshot mockumentary that followed Ray's criminal activities, but didn't really show much of his home life. The series makes his personal life and relationships half of the focus, contrasting his underworld life with that of his everyday world as a father, boyfriend, brother and best friend, and Ray's struggles to balance both.
- Affably Evil: Ray may be a ruthless killer and criminal, but he's also quite easy-going, is a loving dad, supportive brother and stand-up friend, who tries to treat everyone he deals with - even his victims - with a modicum of respect. Many of the other characters he deals with, including Freddy, Gary and Dave, count to varying degrees as well.
- Affluent Ascetic: Ray actually makes a very decent living in his criminal endeavours, easily earning thousands of dollars for every small job he undertakes, and hundreds of thousands for murders in particular. Despite this, he lives quite simply in a very ordinary suburban home, has a very plain and average dress style, and doesn't indulge in any bad habits like some of the more monied-up associates he has, such as Freddy. The only real sign shown that he has money at all is that he drives a BMW, and may occasionally reveal some expensive tactical gear he has on hand like night vision goggles.
- Age-Gap Romance: Slightly downplayed, but Ray has a brief fling with a young college student named Zoe, when the two are both recruited to do a drug run for Rafael. It doesn't end well for either of them, especially Zoe.
- All Girls Like Ponies: Brittany likes unicorns.
- Ambiguous Ending: Ray has retired from running various criminal side-jobs and started up a modest job as a taxi driver. Two sketchy acting guys are pushing him to take them further into the woods and he decides to stop and ask them to get out. They start mocking him with the subtext this was about to get violent. The series ends on Ray giving his trademark lopsided smile.
- Ambiguous Situation: The POV of the show stays fairly tight on Ray, and his attitude of not asking any questions means the backstory surrounding any number of encounters he has are left half-explained. The audience is usually given just enough to infer what happened and what the motivations are but unless Ray is told exactly what is happening he is left in the dark same as the audience.
- Asshole Victim: Most of the characters Ray takes out fall under this category, being either ruthless criminals like Ray (but with worse manners), or just straight-up despicable human beings. While the show goes out of its way to underline that murder is indeed a heinous act, when visited upon these people, it's also almost cathartic.
- Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work: In one episode, Ray’s daughter, Brittany, deals with bullying. After an attempt to explain and resolve the problem to said bully’s mother doesn’t work, and said mother sends her brother, who’s a cop, to intimidate Ray, Ray decides to send in Samantha, a girl who trains at Old Bob’s gym, to threaten said bully into backing off of Brittany.
- Bald of Evil: Ray, depending on what he's up to in any given moment.
- Being Evil Sucks: Ray had few reservations about his lifestyle until the third season, which progressively showed him getting disillusioned over what he does and how it impacts the people around him. He admits to a friend who runs a boxing gym that he is Only in It for the Money, but a combination of disposing of the body of a young woman who overdosed (who resembles Brittany), Brittany finding his gun and firing it in the house by accident, seeing Rafael kill an elderly couple to Leave No Witnesses, being told second-hand that Zoe died from her injuries in the car accident and an attempt on his life that ended up killing Dave forces Ray to reconsider his lifestyle.
- Berserk Button: Ray has a few small ones, namely blatant disrespect and insulting his family or loved ones, but threaten or harm a child around him, and Ray will go out of his way to destroy you and not give a damn about the consequences. This is almost certainly a result of his own hellish, brutal upbringing.
- Big Bad: Davros for season 1, the closest season 2 has is Alex the bikie, and season 3 has Rafael.
- Black Comedy: Loads, often as a result of many of the criminals Ray deals with being woefully incompetent.
- Celebrity Paradox: One scene features Ray and Gary watching the film Chopper. Kenny Graham, who plays Ray's dad Bill, also played Chopper's dad Keith in that film.note
- Characterization Marches On: Gary in the first season is pretty well acquainted with the criminal environment Ray is involved with, and will casually talk of violence, theft and cutting up bodies for disposal, sometimes even getting violent himself. Once Dave is better asserted as Ray's criminal partner, Gary becomes more about the mundane civilian side of things as his marriage falls apart and he gets involved in the porn industry.
- Consummate Professional: Ray is one pretty composed dude, regardless of the situation. Even when mooks are trying to gun him down, he rarely loses his cool, and simply handles the situation. He also tends not to hold grudges against many of the people he comes up against, knowing that, for the most part, it's just business for them and really Nothing Personal.
- Country Matters: Used with pretty high regularity, which shouldn't be that surprising, seeing as how the series is set in the seedy underbelly of the Australian crime world where the word is as ubiquitous as "fuck".
- Crazy-Prepared: Ray keeps a safebox in a remote, run down house in the middle of nowhere with a frag grenade on a trip wire, just in case he needs to bribe someone who has him dead to rights and have a chance at survival.
- Creator Cameo: Series director and executive producer Nash Edgerton appears in "Can't Save You" as Ally's brother Trent.
- Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Gary may be a total doofus most of the time, but he is surprisingly capable of doing what is necessary. When it comes to having Ray's back, the guy delivers. The most notable example of this is when Maddy is kidnapped by child sex traffickers. While Ray's rampaging through the city on a fruitless search for answers, Gary not only succeeds in finding out who took her, he manages to track the traffickers down, get into their home under the pretense of doing a drug buy, takes them all hostage, rescues Maddy, locks the traffickers in their own dungeon, and lets Ray know exactly where to find them. Even better, he manages to do all this over the course of one afternoon.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Both Ray and his brother Bruce endured an absolutely brutal childhood at the hands of their father, with Ray copping the worst of it due to always jumping in to protect his brother.
- Deadly Euphemism: Whenever someone who doesn't know Ray asks what he does for a living, his usual response is, "bit of this, bit of that."
- Destination Defenestration: After Ally's brother Trent takes the unicorn present off Brittany during the Christmas present swap, Ray tries to persuade him to give it back afterwards, as it's clearly a kid's present and Trent just took it to be a dick. Trent blows Ray off, who throws him through a glass sliding door for it in front of Ally's shocked family.
- Diabolus ex Machina: Ray accompanies a young college student named Zoe in a standard drug run. A kangaroo jumps in front of them on a long stretch of road, making them crash.
- Didn't Think This Through: Gary sets up his own porn company, offering his services to make private sex tapes for couples looking to spice up their love life. He assumes that his business will revolve around (presumably attractive) heterosexual couples, and is blind-sided after arriving at the home of his first clients, who turn out to be a gay couple instead. To his credit, after a moment of processing the situation, Gary just gets on with it and does the job he's being paid for.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Due to his violent nature and hair-trigger temper, more than one character ends up on the receiving end of a beating as a result of disrespecting Ray or his family. It's actually one of the first red flags to drive a wedge in his relationship with Ally and eventually lands Ray in jail for a brief spell after he punches out a guy who walked in front of his car while he was driving, and gave Ray attitude when called out on it.
- Double-Meaning Title: The title refers to both Ray's job as a clean-up guy for criminal types and the double life he has dealing with violent crimes and taking care of his daughter.
- Dramedy: Scenes of criminal actions are interspaced with Cringe Comedy with friends and family, where Ray can be surprisingly a Bumbling Dad at times.
- Driven to Suicide:
- When Ray's friend Dirk robs Freddy after being fired, Freddy orders Ray to finish him off. Ray instead tries to give Dirk money to leave town for good, but a despondent Dirk, both riddled with PTSD from his time in the army and knowing the risk to Ray if Freddy ever finds out he's alive, throws himself off a cliff instead.
- Bruce, fed up with his disability and feeling like a burden to his brother, convinces Ray to kill him by taking him to their childhood home and giving him a lethal injection.
- Ray reveals to Ally that he briefly considered this when he was young due to his horrendous upbringing, but ultimately decided against it.
- Ray discovers that his old boxing trainer, Old Bob, killed himself after he lost his gym and all of his money to a dodgy conman.
- Due to the Dead: Ray is hired to dispose of the body of a young woman who overdosed at the home of a rich young guy. After retrieving said body, he's ordered by his client to take her to a remote pig farm and feed her to the pigs. Ray, already shaken by Brittany finding his handgun at home and feeling the beginnings of true dissatisfaction with his criminal career, decides to bury the body in the bushland behind the pig farm instead.
- Establishing Character Moment: The first two scenes show Ray injuring a man who owes money to Freddy, and then helping a ladybug get out of his shower.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Ray does a lot of bad things, but he prefers dealing with people who are obviously bad guys themselves. Whenever his job intersects with innocent people he is not happy about things. After beating up some assholes who harassed him with his daughter he was sent to anger management group therapy, and took umbrage that he has to share his feelings and listen to a group that would beat their wives, girlfriends and children.
- Eye Scream: Ray nearly has his eye gouged out during his fight with the biker sent to kill him, and we can even see the dislodged eyeball hanging from the socket for a moment before Ray pushes it back into place. The injury results in his briefly adopting an Eyepatch of Power afterwards.
- Face of a Thug: Ray has a pretty hard appearance, he tends to be intimidating by virtue of most interactions coming across as barely contained rage. He approached a parent of Brittany's classmate who was bullying her, which only lead to them calling the police on him despite trying to be as casual and friendly as he could.
- Fan Disservice: A pretty girl in short shorts and bikini top... also a dead body Ray is called upon to dispose of for a rich brat (implied to be a drug overdose).
- Faux Affably Evil: Rafael seems like a reasonably personable guy when he's first introduced, joking with Ray and Freddy, and being keen to bring Ray on board to help his fledgling drug empire due to Ray's skills and reliability. However, the more Ray works with him, the more that it becomes clear that Rafael is really a cold-blooded, unhinged prick, with his actions during the drug run - ruthlessly killing the elderly couple who stopped to help the crashed Ray and Zoe, and then all but admitting that he also killed Zoe rather than taking her to the hospital like he promised - leading to Ray deciding that he wants out for good. It culminates in Rafael setting a trap to kill Ray in the series finale, turning Freddy against Ray in order to do so. Out of all of the despicable characters Ray deals with over the course of the series, he turns out to be one of the worst.
- Fire-Forged Friends: Ray and Dave first meet when Dave is hired to kidnap Ray and deliver him to Davros to be killed. After the two end up inadvertently teaming up to take Davros and his crew out, they end up becoming sort-of mates, with Ray hiring Dave's services more than once in later episodes, and the two making a surprisingly effective team. When Ray is sent to jail for assaulting a guy who cut him off, Dave even tracks the guy down and threatens him into dropping the charges on Ray's behalf. It develops to the point where, when Dave is mortally wounded in the final episode, his last request is for Ray to look after his son.
- Forgettable Character: It seems like Ray was this to everyone else at high school, if their school reunion is anything to go by. Made all the more hilarious by the fact that lots of people remember Gary, but not Ray, despite the two being best friends who were usually inseparable.
- Gory Discretion Shot: We don't see what Ray does to the three child traffickers who kidnapped Maddy due to Ray closing the door of the room when he enters, but considering he emerges absolutely covered head-to-toe in blood, one can surmise that it was appropriately nasty.
- The camera also cuts to an extreme wide shot when Ray kills Rafael in the final episode. Considering Ray empties an entire clip from his machine gun into Rafael's face at point blank range, that's probably not a bad thing.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: Deconstructed. Ray is generally a pretty relaxed and easygoing guy but has a habit of running into people who are general pieces of shit who decide to antagonize him. He tries to approach things civilly but when the tension rises he has no qualms about getting violent, without further context it seems like he snaps for no reason. This catches up to him when Allys' brother was being obnoxious and Ray throws him through a glass door. Ally later reveals she was physically abused by her last boyfriend, while Ray promises he would never harm her she can't separate the similarities between them.
- Heel Realization: While Ray has no illusions about the sort of person he is, the entirety of season 3 is devoted to emphasising just how horrible, empty and downright meaningless his life and work really is. It's ultimately enough to make him turn his back on the criminal life for good in the final episode.
- Hitman with a Heart: He may be a ruthless professional killer, but Ray's still a loving dad and generally decent guy (comparative to most everyone else in his line of work, anyway).
- It's Personal: Most of the things Ray does is handling assignments from some mob bosses. But the rest are things Ray does as side projects trying to fix problems that cross his path in some way. And God Help You if you cross Ray this way. The child traffickers and the con man who ripped off Old Bob found this out the hard way.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Ray is a fairly thoughtful guy and rarely does anything on blind instinct. When people question some of his violent behavior or brutal point of view, he is able to rationalize it in a way that is hard to deny even though it goes against what is considered appropriate for a civilized society. After Ally is unnerved from a road rage incident Ray explains that he reacted the way he did because otherwise it would have prolonged into a 2v1 fight that would have placed her in danger too. In anger management group therapy Ray describes assholes of the world behaving the way they do because they think there are no consequences, after getting their ass kicked by him it will make them think twice about doing it again.
- Killed Offscreen: This happens to the three child traffickers, and is implied to happen to a few other characters as well, most notably Dennis Miller and Zoe.
- Living a Double Life: Ray always tells people he works in "security" when they ask about his job, and most of the show he is technically a security guard and bouncer for Freddy's strip club. But this hides Ray's actual life dealing with all manner of criminal activities, even performing hit jobs, and his more mundane suburban life provides a significant contrast to unusual things he has to deal with. Unusually, though, is that there is little overlap between those two worlds. There are very few moments that threaten to expose this part of his life to his family.
- Lovable Sex Maniac: Gary is into fetish porn, specifically piss porn, and is also turned on by feet, despite being married to the gorgeous Tatiana. Season 3 sees him go into business shooting homemade porn for couples, partly as a moneymaking venture, but also implied to partly be so he can watch the couples go at it.
- Lured into a Trap: Freddy does this to Ray in the series finale, giving him an address he claims will lead Ray to Alex the bikie, but actually leads him and Dave to an ambush set up by Rafael. Freddy later claims that Rafael threatened to kill him and Michele if Freddy didn't help him.
- Manly Tears: Ray briefly sheds a couple at the end of "There Rust, and Let Me Die" after he euthanizes Bruce and burns down their childhood home with the body inside.
- Mood Whiplash: In keeping with the show's Black Comedy tone, there are many scenes involving gunfights or violence which are extremely intense, before something undeniably funny will occur (usually as a result of someone's stupidity).
- Nerves of Steel: Ray is very calm under pressure, even when his life is at stake. This nonchalant demeanor helps him immensely in his line of work; nobody expects him to react as violently as he does until it is too late. This largely applies to the various jobs he picks up on the side, when It's Personal he is notably much more agitated.
- Never Suicide: When Ray visits the conman who ripped off Old Bob, he hangs him in his living room to make it appear as a suicide.
- Not Quite Dead: A hilarious example involving Gary's brother-in-law Vasili. Gary shoots Vasili in the head after the latter tries to rob him, and enlists Ray to dispose of the body while Gary distracts his wife (Vasili's sister). Ray goes to cut up the body with a machete in order to dispose of it, only for Vasili to wake up screaming when Ray lands the first machete blow on his arm. Ray's "fuck me!" face when this happens is absolutely priceless.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Ray generally handles his underworld job and everything that comes with it with consummate cool, rarely becoming unflappable in a situation. This is why, when Dirk's daughter Maddy is kidnapped while on a playdate with Brittany, it's terrifying to see Ray go absolutely ballistic in trying to find her, and even Freddy realizes how volatile the situation has become when Ray barges into the home of Davros's family in the mistaken belief that Davros's brother is involved, pulls a shotgun, and threatens to kill their grandmother while trying to get information, seriously damaging his relationship with Freddy in the process. It's the most out-of-control we've seen him, which just drives home how much of a Berserk Button child endangerment is for Ray.
- Papa Wolf: Aside from the mentioned scene above, Ray will do anything to keep his daughter safe, even sending in a kid he trains at Old Bob’s gym to deal with a girl cyber bullying Brittany.
- Pet the Dog: Ray prefers to see himself as dealing with the scum of the world, even if he is working for scum himself. He learns that a man he killed for stealing money was actually a mistake, he is notably very angry with Freddy when told. He later makes an anonymous drop of cash in a brown bag to the widow, claiming it was a failsafe stash from her husband, before disappearing.
- Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Ray was training at a boxing gym and was asked to assist in a session of kids. While doing light sparring with a 12 year old girl he compliments her skill, and she explains she's spent several years beforehand in Brazilian Jujitsu. Ray invites her to try a move on him and she quickly sweeps a leg, takes his back and chokes him out.
- Police Are Useless: It's implied that the police have Ray on their radar but he's a careful guy and they can't connect him to anything. A Running Gag is him getting into trouble for the minor altercations he gets into rather than being a lynchpin to the criminal underworld.
- Precision F-Strike: Brittany would often call out the adults for swearing around her. This makes it more notable when she was playing with Ray's pistol and fired it into the wall and her immediate response is an emphatic "Fuck!"
- Prison Episode: Ray is imprisoned at the end of "Coulda Shoulda", and spends most of "Champ" behind bars.
- Professional Killer: Ray is a hitman.
- Punch-Clock Villain: Ray himself. He is good at what he does but prefers the flexibility of choosing what job comes his way. He turns down jobs because the people don't sit right with him and doesn't like it when innocents get involved, preferring to feel he is taking care of even worse people.
- Reckless Gun Usage: Brittany accidentally finds Ray's personal handgun that he keeps stashed under his bed, and plays around with it in her bedroom, before accidentally firing it into the wall. Although she tries to hide the damage before Ray gets home, he immediately figures out what she got up to upon smelling gunpowder when he walks in the door. He's very definitely not happy about it.
- Running Gag:
- Ray doesn't like sandwiches, except when they're toasted.
- He always has to find a shovel to dig graves.
- Seinfeldian Conversation: A regular fixture of the show.
- Slasher Smile: Ray has one that he doesn't bring out very much, but when he does, it's frankly terrifying.
- Slice of Life: Much of the show leans on the contrast between Rays' normal life and the violent world he is a part of. He will swing between hit jobs and taking his daughter to a birthday party and interacting with the other parents. In turn many of the episodes start to run the credits with nothing resolved, focused more on the mood than actually wrapping up any plotlines.
- Spared by the Adaptation: Towards the end of The Magician, it's revealed that Ray was gunned down outside his home shortly after filming of the "documentary" wrapped. Nothing of the sort happens here, and he makes it to the end of the series (presumably) alive.
- Taking the Heat: Ray hilariously agrees to do this for Gary after Tatiana finds Gary's porn DVD, and Gary tells her it's Ray's, resulting in a disgusted Tatiana calling Ray a pig and a pervert, made all the more hilarious with Ray somewhat meekly agreeing with her, even after finding out that the porn is urine-themed.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Ally gives one to Ray as she breaks up with him.
- Title Drop: Late in the series Freddy runs into problems with owing money to a mafia leader and Ray meets with him to ask for an extension on Freddys loan. As Ray leaves the mafia leader comments to his bodyguard that Ray was known as "The Magician," a name the show had avoided but was the title of the original film.
- Tragic Keepsake: In the final episode, after the time skip reveals Ray working as a cab driver, we see that he keeps the Polaroid photo of Zoe in his cab's sun visor.
- Trespassing to Talk: Ray is very fond of doing this. Most of the time, he's not even being very stealthy, merely taking advantage of someone being distracted and not expecting him to be there, resulting in them not realising his presence until he decides to speak.
- Tropaholics Anonymous: After assaulting two men, Ray is mandated by the court to attend anger management meetings.
