YMMV / Ray

• Award Snub: Kerry Washington (Della Bea Robinson), Regina King (Margie Hendricks), and Sharon Warren (Ray's mother, Aretha Robinson) did not receive awards or nominations for their stellar work.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • George's drowning. What started out as innocent childish play quickly turns tragic in an instant. As Georgie playfully waves his arms up quipping "I am a giant!", he slips on the wet slippery wooden boards beneath his feet and falls backwards into a metal washbin used for laundry and he soon starts convulsing and trashing about. A combination of possible head trauma and drowning in laundry detergent. Ray doesn't intervene thinking that his little brother is just playing, at first. Their mother is inside calling them in for dinner, unaware of what's happened. And when she steps outside, the look of horror as and sadness on her face when she sees her child has drowned in an accident. As the mother cradles her dead child, and any efforts made to save him are too late, she screams and cries to Ray "Why didn't you do anything?!".
  • Ray's hallucinations of water and a dead child.
  • Ray's terrifying visual hallucinations of bloody water and animal livestock and roadkill heads as he suffers from drug withdrawal.
• Retroactive Recognition: C.J. Sanders as young Ray Robinson. He's now a football player as a wide receiver.
• Tear Jerker: There are several, including:
  • Ray watching in horror as his little brother, George, drowns in their mother’s washbin.
  • George’s funeral.
  • Seeing young Ray slowly lose his sight.
  • Ray’s final moment with his mother when she sends him to a school for the blind and deaf.
  • During his recovery from his heroin addiction, he gets a final vision of his mother, who scolds him for breaking his promise and letting drugs turn him into a cripple. Then walks in George, who gives Ray the final push he needs to heal with these five words: ”Ray, it wasn’t your fault.”

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