Yes! There has been a mystery solved on Damages! Have you been wondering why Ellen will be wearing underwear under a trench coat when she finds David dead? Did it keep you awake at night? You can sleep soundly now, my friend; the explanation is that her clothes get stained with blood from the fight in Patty's apartment, so she takes them off. Thanks, Damages! So that's one down, what, forty-seven to go?
(You know the rule: don't read if you don't want to know.)
With one mystery put to bed, another one immediately cropped up in its place: Patty Hewes' omniscience. How did she know about Gregory's stock sale and the job offer Tom extended to Ellen, when none of them told anyone about it? Spy satellites? Robot surveillance pigeons? Hypnosis? And how does she have time for surveillance with everything else she has to do, like try a case, figure out TiVo, and mess with people's minds?
It's a wonder that she even found time for negotiations with her son this week. Michael, still at reform school and looking eerily like Piz, intended to play some mind games of his own with Patty when she came to pick him up, telling her that he didn't want to go. Patty, approaching parenthood the way she approaches everything else, as a case to be won, consequently drew up emancipation papers and offered them for him to sign. Michael wasn't stupid enough to call her bluff, and backed down and came home. But it wasn't all mental chess games and maneuvering; there was a newfound understanding between Patty and Michael by the end of the episode, and they passed a few moments together in peaceful harmony. It was one of those scenes that remind you that Patty does have a heart – it's just really, really tiny.
Good thing we have those scenes to keep her grounded and human, because the rest of the time, Patty sees all and controls all. Even the way she served Gregory with his subpoena was a devious bit of theater: Gregory got served with the woman he bumped into trying to escape the creepy-looking (but ultimately harmless) guy following him. But after Fiske released Gregory from his protection and Gregory fell into the custody of Patty and her bodyguard, there was a development she didn't foresee, and I don't blame her. Who would have thought that Gregory would have been able to overpower his huge bodyguard and escape? Especially when the guy had been hanging out in a hotel room eating snacks and watching daytime TV for some time? That's a combination that would leave anyone soft. At any rate, Gregory must be sitting on some huge testimony (or, at least, he'd better be), because, as eager as Gregory is not to be deposed, the Frobisher camp is more eager to kill him to keep him from deposing.
Also this week, Patty, possibly to amuse herself, played with the trust between Ellen and Tom, asking Ellen if Tom gave her a job offer a few weeks ago. Tom and I both agreed that if Patty's asking, it means she already knows, but Ellen lied anyway and then had a crisis of conscience about it. Should she tell Patty the truth? What if Tom told Patty? To whom should Ellen be loyal? In the end, Ellen made a pact with Tom that they could always trust each other, and I'll let you guess just how quickly it was broken. Yep, Tom confessed about the job offer. You know, in at least one way, Tom is more intriguing than any other character. Unlike every other duplicitous person on Damages, Tom tends to be an easygoing Boy Scout type, which just makes his double-dealings all the more dirty.
In our jaunt to the Future this week, Ellen and Tom reiterated (will reiterate?) that loyalty to each other, and Ellen begged Tom to find the missing Patty. While Tom claimed to have no idea where she was, of course he called her up straightaway. And to her credit, Ellen will have gotten a clue by then; she told Nye to follow Tom, as he'll lead them to Patty. After weeks of just crumbs, it was great to have some really meaty developments in the Future storyline. For the first time, I want to know what happens next to Future Ellen, not what came before. Damages has really turned the game around on that front, and now I can start to see what a second season would be like.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Damages: Patty Hewes knows all your secrets
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
Damages: She's not that innocent
Damages began with a simple premise: innocent law school grad gets tangled up with worldly, scheming attorney. Well, actually, it wasn't that simple, and things have only gotten more complex as the season has progressed. And now it seems that the naïve newbie is getting more complex, too. Could it be that our sweet little ingénue Ellen is becoming one tough chick? It's about time, considering that in three and a half months she'll be fighting with her would-be assassin and staring down the police in the interview room.
(Spoilers, people! Watch out!)
This week, Ellen located Gregory and coolly issued him an ultimatum: come to Hewes & Associates willingly within 24 hours, or get subpoenaed. Of course it didn't come from her, it came from Patty, but she still made it look like she was in control and she knew what she was doing. I haven't been rooting for Ellen much so far, but I was then. Nice one, Parsons. Ultimately, Gregory did decide to come in from the cold, but got spooked and ran off after he dropped the hint that it's not about the broker. And after nearly getting killed, Gregory ran to Ray Fiske for protection.
Oh, and by the way, Frobisher is the guy who's running the guy who's running Gregory, just in case you didn't know that. I honestly can't remember if the show's made it obvious before now, because I always just assumed that it was Frobisher behind it all. If they didn't, it is him, and you all can collect on your bets or say "I told you so" to your friends, or whatever you need to do to acknowledge the fact that you called it.
Aside from that, the Frobisher case mostly took the week off. Frobisher got the idea to write up his memoirs, in a desperate attempt to make himself less loathsome to the public, but the plan hit a snag when he assaulted his ghostwriter. Not to say that it wasn't tremendous fun, and somewhere along the way I ended up hating the sniveling little ghostwriter quite as much as Frobisher did. The magic of Danson, I tell you. Who knew it existed?
Fiske, meanwhile, was having weird dreams about his teeth falling out, which were apparently supposed to mean that he was afraid of other people finding out a secret. So it looks like Fiske is next in line to give up his dark secrets – everyone else has by now.
Hey, remember Lila, the girl that David was all set to have an affair with? Remember how I thought it would make David more interesting? Yeah, funny story about that. Lila, like every other character on the show aside from David and, arguably, Ellen, is not who she seems. She lied about her dead grandfather, will lie to the Future Police, stole David's keys, and did her level best to seduce David, but to no avail. So David continues his reign as the Perfect But Boring Boyfriend, while Lila is either a crazy stalker or working for someone. And on this show, it's probably the latter. Who isn't working for someone? But as Lila was inside their apartment while Ellen and David were in the tub, I wouldn't rule out "crazy stalker" just yet. It would almost be refreshing for someone on Damages to be simply a crazy stalker, with no other agenda – if it weren't just a tiny bit disappointing.
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Damages: All about Tom
He'd been hanging back for a while, content to be part of the ensemble while Glenn Close and Ted Danson stole all the attention. But this week on Damages, it was finally time for Tate Donovan to come into his own, and he didn't disappoint.
(Look out for spoilers.)
Tom Shayes was the man of the hour. Not only did he tell Patty he was leaving without managing to be gruesomely killed on his way out, but he took on the Frobisher case after the employees fired Patty. He even thought of setting up shop on his own for a while. All of this he did with the encouragement of his loud, obnoxious, yet somehow awesome friend, played by Donal Logue. I don't know what it was – Donal Logue's character was the worst kind of self-centered businessman, offering tips on negotiation and using "Power!" as a catchphrase, but I still ended up enjoying his presence on screen.
Anyway, so Donal took Tom out to celebrate, which only ended in Tom passing out and having a vision of Patty telling him he was good enough to make it on his own. Of course, they had to do some nifty camera work to get the point across that it was a hallucination, because showing up randomly in a locked men's room isn't something that I think any of us would put past Patty Hewes. The real Patty Hewes did not think Tom was good enough, and told him to take his clients to Cutler because Tom's only talent was as a subordinate.
In the end, fratty pal Donal helped Tom realize what he really wanted: to stay with Patty. Which would be kind of heartwarming, if Patty hadn't treated Tom so badly up to this point. He just looks like a masochist now. But Tom delivered his clients back to Patty, and Patty now she has what she wants. Again. Am I going to have to say that every week? She's got her clients back, and now she can subpoena Greg legitimately – you see, she was waiting for Ellen to find out to prevent tipping her off. Like a game of telephone (but not exactly like it, because there was none of the inevitable garbling or flat-out messing with the message), Katie told David, David told Ellen, and Ellen told Patty.
Just as I've been pleasantly surprised by Ted Danson's work on Damages, I was impressed with Tate Donovan this week. He delivered in the drunk shouting match with Imaginary Patty, sparred confidently with Ray Fiske, and then went into adorable dad mode for the scenes between Tom and his daughter. Damages has really given all of its actors the chance to step up and shine, and for the most part, they've acquitted themselves well.
Meanwhile, in The Future, there were plenty of flash- um, backs? Forwards? Whatever. Flashes to Ellen struggling with the person who tries to kill her. That person ends up dead in Patty's apartment, and I was all set for a big reveal that it was Tom, but it never came. Come on, you can't have an entire episode about Tom and about the guy who tries to kill Ellen and not expect me to believe they're not one and the same. Just tell us it's Tom already. Honestly, who else would it be?
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Damages: What's going on?
Curse you, Damages. You just keep sucking me in. There were twists and turns this week that I never saw coming. This entire episode threw me off balance, in a good way, and now I have no idea what's going on. At this point, I can officially declare myself "addicted."
(Stop now if you don't want to know what happened.)
Instead of a flash-forward to the future, after David's murder, things started off this week with a flashback. A flashback to, as the garish, flashing letters indicated, PALM BEACH FLA 2002. Okay, calm down, I get it! If the intention was to make me feel like I was having a bad drug trip, then congratulations, Damages, you succeeded. So we saw Katie slam shots at a club, meet Greg, snort some coke, hear some gunshots, and then see some guy get into Frobisher's limo in the parking lot. All of that, and what she chose to tell, was the substance of her deposition by Fiske, the center of this episode.
After a disastrous trial run, in which Katie allowed herself to get flustered by questions about rehab, cocaine addiction, and her abortion, Katie did almost well in the real deposition. She admitted the sex and drugs up front, hoping to embarrass Fiske, but he caught her in a lie. He proved that the man she claimed to see entering Frobisher's limo, one of Frobisher's broker's assistants, was in Atlantic City at the same time. So where'd she get the name? Blame Greg.
Ah, Greg. At first he looked like just your average, garden-variety jerk. He gave Katie the name of the guy he said they saw in Palm Beach so that she could use it in her deposition. But he still wasn't willing to testify, lest his wife find out or – this is true – he turn into another Kato Kaelin. Really? I'd think the fact that people still know who Kato Kaelin is means that things have turned out pretty well for Kato. Whatever, it doesn't matter, because Greg is actually a lying jerk. He's not married, and he fed Katie the name on purpose to make her perjure herself. I should have known, but it was still a surprise. How naïve I was, thinking Greg was just an ordinary jerk. There are no ordinary jerks on this show – only lying, cheating, manipulating jerks.
Apparently, Greg's been acting on the orders of some guy pushing around a baby in a stroller, who was there at the house in Palm Beach with them. Yeah, I don't know what's going on with this yet. Probably stroller guy is a Frobisher employee, because Greg owned Frobisher stock before the collapse. Otherwise, no idea, although I do kind of fear for the baby.
Interestingly, everything's going according to plan for Patty, who always wanted to embarrass Katie under oath. Fiske won't think they have anything, and they'll pull the settlement offer, which is good news somehow. Okay, I didn't see that coming either. I don't know why I didn't expect that Patty's plan was much more intricate and devious than simply hiring Ellen to get at her friend. Makes me wonder what else she's got planned, and what she'll do when someone refuses to act according to plan.
Like Tom, who's taking a job with another firm. There's no denying that Patty is very good at manipulating people to get what she wants, but occasionally you have to recommend someone's daughter for a private school and not make him look like an unemployed loser to get what you want. I'm just saying. I'm actually looking forward to the scene in which Tom breaks it to Patty that he's taken another job, because I think Patty might actually defenestrate him – if it wasn't her idea that he take it in the first place. Hmm.
Also, I really didn't think last week's revelation that Ellen and David had broken off the engagement at the time of the murder was much of a DUN! moment, but now that it turns out that David will probably be having an affair? That changes things. This week, David got chatted up by the granddaughter of one of his patients at the hospital. There was some mild flirting over Cassavetes and Jack Benny, and Lila got him tickets to the Cassavetes retrospective, and then there was a nighttime tryst. I'd been waiting and waiting for some flicker of interest to appear around David, and it's finally happened. The good doctor – okay, really, the bland doctor – is starting to go bad. Maybe now I'll actually care that he ends up dead.
Wednesday, August 08, 2007
Damages: Drop the bomb
Damages this week was all about Patty – her work, her family, and her past – and that's just the way I like it.
(Watch out for spoilers.)
The big story was that someone mailed a grenade to Patty at her office. Oh, all right, it was Frobisher, trying to derail her brief. Even Fiske, Frobisher's lawyer, seemed to disapprove of this tactic. You know, I think I might like Fiske if it weren't for his triple-thick, chicken-fried accent – it's just a teensy bit distracting. Anyway, the grenade did succeed in rattling Patty, specifically because Patty was attacked ten years ago by another disgraced CEO. It was great to finally see some real vulnerabilities and fears from Patty, and I'm assuming that they were real because the story of the attack was corroborated by the cops. (Think about it: how many shows have you ever had to watch where you needed a corroborating witness in order to believe something? This is a very easy show to get obsessive about, not that I'm complaining. At all.)
With the bomb threat forcing work on the brief into Patty's apartment, there was more to see of Patty's relationship with her husband and son than ever before. We saw Patty in family therapy and Patty in a vulnerable moment, confessing her worries to her husband Phil. Then there was a subplot involving Patty's son Michael, who was having trouble at school and seemed to be proof that the manipulating apple doesn't fall far from the tree. To wit: he gained control of the school's computer system, passed off one of Patty's dreams as his own, and claimed to be controlling his mother. So, with her son making a run at her "Most Manipulative Person in New York City" title, Patty did the only thing she could do: staged a kidnapping and carted her son off to reform school. I had been waiting for a payoff to the Michael subplot all episode, and that was it – yes, Patty would really do that to her son. You would think I would stop being shocked by the nasty things Patty does at this point, but apparently not.
One of the things I really loved this week – not anything huge, just a little touch that added something special – was the awkward question of boss etiquette that Ellen had to wrestle with. Did she invite Patty to the engagement party or not? It's a tricky question even in the best of situations, but when your boss is Patty Hewes, it's impossible. Sure, Patty seemed to be angling for an invite, but then she did everything in her power to keep Ellen from making the party herself. Is it all a ploy to sever Ellen from her loved ones? In any case, Ellen's tentative invitation was a deliciously awkward moment, and proof that this chess match between Ellen and Patty isn't all about briefs and witnesses. Truly, Patty's power to make Ellen twist in the wind so completely, with just a word or a look, is awesome to behold.
In non-Patty related developments (yes, some things happened that didn't involve Patty, but no, they weren't as fascinating), Katie's old flame, Greg, is both her current flame and married, and Ellen of the Future claimed that someone tried to kill her before she found David dead. The question is who, and is it too obvious to say "one of Patty's minions"? There are two people on Damages who may be capable of such a thing – Patty and Frobisher – but, it must be pointed out, neither of them has reached the point of actually having a person killed. Patty has only had a dog killed, and Frobisher called off his hit. Technicalities, I know, but so far important – neither of them has passed the point of no return.
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
Damages: Secrets and liars
Watching last week's premiere of Damages, I thought that the villain of the piece was going to be Patty Hewes. And she is pretty bad, but she's by no means the only shady or morally ambiguous character on the show. In fact, the only really good, honest character is Ellen's fiancé David, and it's no coincidence that he's also the most boring character. At this point, I'm begging for some dark secret to come out of his past, if only so that I have some other reason to care that he ends up dead in the future. The only one I have now: he's pretty. That's not enough.
(Spoilers ahead.)
Patty's biggest competition for the gold medal in the No Conscience Olympics is, of course, Arthur Frobisher, and this week he sunk even lower than Patty's dog-killing exploit of the premiere. When a guy offered to take care of Katie "permanently," nudge nudge, Frobisher balked at first, refusing to take an innocent person's life. But after thinking about it, spending some time with his family, and then screwing a hooker and snorting some coke down at the docks, he decided to do it. Really, I don't know why this show is TV-MA; there are some good lessons here. Sex and drugs lead to bad decisions, kids. If you don't want to end up ordering a hit on someone, stay away from hookers and cocaine. Anyway, Frobisher just ended up calling off the hit – but only after Katie signed the confidentiality agreement, so it's not like he's totally off the hook for it. But even with all of his dastardly deeds, we still saw a lot of Frobisher the family man this week, dealing with his wife's worries and playing with his kids. It brought a lot of depth to him that we hadn't seen in the premiere, and I'm really loving Ted Danson in the role. He's a worthy antagonist to Glenn Close. I can – and probably will – spend the entire season happily watching them circle around each other.
As for the wide-eyed young innocents, Katie and Ellen, they were not so innocent, and not as easily manipulated, as they seemed. Katie realized she was being followed and chased away her would-be killer, and she went toe-to-toe with Patty Hewes. This was where we learned that Katie was a practiced liar (just like Patty!), and that she was concealing a one-night stand she'd had on that fateful weekend in Florida, one that ended in pregnancy and, probably, abortion. But that's what Katie said, and as she was brazen enough to lie to Patty again, telling him that she didn't know how to contact the father, what else could she be lying about? (By the way, I am seriously impressed by Katie now. Lying to Patty? Twice? That's taking your life in your own hands.) Ellen, meanwhile, showed the first vestiges of cunning, refusing to talk to Tom about the Frobisher case – a smart decision, as Tom had been sent to cultivate Ellen's trust.
Speaking of Tom, Damages spent this entire episode making us think that Patty was using him and some shady guy to perpetrate some nefarious scheme on Ellen, when, really - she was buying Ellen an apartment. Oh, come on. That can't be all, can it? I mean, there must be cameras or listening devices there or something. Or, since they spent so much time dwelling on the pigeons outside the bathroom window, maybe the pigeons are Patty's evil minions, much like the Wicked Witch's flying monkeys. I refuse to believe that Patty gave Ellen the apartment just because, and I'm putting my money on evil robot pigeons.
In The Future, not much happened. There were a lot of close-ups of pigeons that were up to no good, and the murder weapon – a Statue of Liberty bookend – was revealed, and Ellen was holding it while standing over the body. Frankly, what fascinates me about the future scenes is not the murder, but Ellen herself. She seems like a completely different person sitting in the interview room at the police station, and I'll be extremely interested to see the progression, over the course of the season, from the naïve Ellen we know now to the sullen Ellen of The Future.
This being the second episode, the burden was on Damages to show that it could take off from the pilot and keep the good momentum going, and it did. The mysteries are just as juicy, the characters more so, and while I'm not hooked into the mystery yet, it doesn't really matter. I want to keep watching just to see what the characters are going to do next. If I get invested in the murder mystery along the way, great. But I'll still be watching anyway.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Damages sets a good precedent
Damages continues two of the best trends in cable series right now: movie stars taking a chance at headlining a TV show (see Holly Hunter, Minnie Driver), and strong, vibrant female leads (see Brenda Johnson). Glenn Close's character isn't technically the protagonist, but if you've seen any of the bajillion ads for Damages crowding the internet, you've seen that Rose Byrne's photo is sliced down the middle to reveal a picture of Glenn Close. It's a perfect metaphor for the show: Ellen Parsons is on the surface, but Patty Hewes is at its heart – its dark, mysterious heart.
(Potentially damaging spoilers ahead.)
The story: Ellen Parsons is an idealistic young lawyer (are young lawyers ever jaded?) who comes to work for Hewes & Associates despite dire warnings about the evil that is Patty Hewes. The firm is working on a huge case involving Arthur Frobisher, a CEO whose employees lost millions when the company's stock tanked. Conveniently, the sister of Ellen's fiancé may have seen Frobisher meet with his broker just before he sold his stock. Patty knows all about this connection; it was the entire reason she hired Ellen. And somehow, six months from now, Ellen's fiancé ends up dead, while Ellen, covered in blood, is taken to the police station and asks for a lawyer.
But Ellen's whole experience is only a way for us to meet Patty, a slippery character to whom there are two wholly different sides. Her gentle side is the woman who wins an award for public service, loves her husband and her son, and seeks damages for clients easy to sympathize with, like kids made sick by a big, bad corporation or employees defrauded out of their pensions. But the moment you get used to Sweet Patty, Merciless Patty shows up. She considers family a drain on time and energy, manipulates everyone around her, and isn't above having a dog killed to encourage a witness to testify. It's the ease with which she can switch between these two extremes – for instance, when she "fires" her associate – that makes Patty so chilling, She's worse when she's being kind, because you know what it's hiding – the old "iron hand in the velvet glove" idea. The genius is that the two halves aren't totally irreconcilable; she uses sweet talk to get a good settlement, and when offered a choice of motives between helping her clients and destroying the opposition, answers, "Both."
Overall, the show is a tight, stylish thriller. It has excellent performances from Glenn Close, Ted Danson, and Tate Donovan, and there are enough questions to keep me wondering for quite a while. What's Tom up to now? How did the fiancé die? What happens in the intervening six months? And is there anything Patty doesn't know? Damages leaves you with the sense that you're not sure of anything that's happening, and that's exactly where you want to start with a mystery like this.
