TV: Damages Season 1
This show will grab you right from the Pilot. I’ve heard that the second season drops off in quality, but for now, I can highly advocate for Season 1. This is an unbelievable ride.
Glenn Close‘s Patty Hewes is a magnetic and powerful character. Sometimes when she came on screen, I would literally draw my legs up and curl into the couch to get away from her. She’s chilling.
That’s not really a spoiler because you’ll find out what the show wants you to know about Patty Hewes right off the bat.
Everything else though, now those are delicious and thrilling mysteries that get gradually revealed throughout the course of the season. And wonderfully, by the end of the season, your questions do get answered. What a welcomed change.
As the show begins, elevator doors open to reveal a shaken and bloodied young woman stumbling out into daylight. From here, we jump back six months to learn about the events that led up to that moment. To make things even more interesting, a third timeframe, days and weeks after that elevator exit, comes into play.
It may sound confusing, and if you don’t pay attention, it will be. This is a show that trusts in the intelligence of the viewer. I watched many of the episodes with a furrowed brow and a dull headache from trying to figure out character motivations and plot twists.
The main story is about Ellen Parsons, a first-year lawyer who is hired by Patty Hewes, the veteran powerhouse attorney. Patty Hewes heads up the class-action lawsuit against Arthur Frobisher, played by a Ted Danson that I think will surprise you. Frobisher is accused of defrauding his employees out of the legitimate value of their company stocks.
This white-collar crime will reveal once again that money=power, and the need to gain and keep power is more bloody and dangerous than any basis for a conventional crime of passion.
The story is tight and interwoven in just the right way. I will be very surprised if you’re able to watch just one episode at a time. This is definitely a oh-just-one-more show.