Damages
FX Networks has granted its freshman drama Damages two more seasons. Production is scheduled to begin in early ‘08 barring strike-related problems, presumably so the show can debut around mid-summer. As of right now Rose Byrne, Glenn Close and Tate Donovan are the confirmed returning cast.
The first season wrapped up a couple weeks ago by closing the Frobisher class-action lawsuit arc while opening up a major new plot with Ellen Parsons (Byrne) returning to work for Patty Hughes (Close) as an FBI mole. Who can blame her when the attempt on her life seems to have been conclusively ordered by Hughes. It should be fun to see how the show is restructured, considering how many characters were killed off and storylines concluded by season’s end. Will season two feature a single case for the duration? Will there be two timelines again? Who will fill in for all the lost cast? Can any character on this series ever be trusted? (No, no they cannot.) Trying to wrap your head around each week’s twists, turns, double crossings, and hell, triple crossings makes for a good romp. I look forward to having my mind messed with for another twenty-six weeks over the next two years.
Oh, and would it be too much to ask for FX to use Rose Byrne’s name a little more in future publicity? She is the lead character after all. Glenn Close is a pretty close second in that regard, and obviously has the bigger name, but c’mon. There’s room on the posters and press releases for both.
I guess I didn’t really touch on the characterizations, but yeah, it’d be particularly nice if something were done with Ellen. I can’t really blame Rose Byrne for it though. The character’s simply rather uninteresting. We’re generally not let into any of the characters’ psyches, for purposes of misleading us and creating plot twists aplenty, but it hurts Ellen most because we spend the most time with her. That’s more time for us to see her as the relatively empty vessel she is. She ensures the plot moves along, and her character did develop over the course of the season, but did that come naturally or was it simply predestined? I’d have to say the latter. Hell, as a viewer, I don’t think the former is even given a chance since we know her end state Her trek from naivety to cynical player was simply drawn out over 13 hours and so the small steps in that direction rarely stuck out as unnatural. She also appears to be a sort of cypher for the audience, but it’s kinda difficult to see Damages’s world through her eyes when we constantly know soooo much more information about it than she does.
I suppose my interest in the show is derived primarily out of the ways the writers manage to screw with their viewers’ minds, less than in the characters. Not only can the characters not trust each other, but I can’t trust them either. It’s hard to trust much of anything that we see, since there are always motivations and backgrounds that we’ve yet to be given. There’s almost always more than meets the eye.
It’s funny, Frobisher, Friske and Malina were probably the characters who attempted to be the most honest. They were all learning things about themselves and trying to articulate their conclusions to themselves and their closest companions. Not by accident, they’re undoubtedly the characters I cared for most. Unfortunately, they all died for those introspective explorations.
Actually writing down these thoughts sort of makes me like the show less now…
I realized at a certain point last week that I had never actually finished watching Damages (Add Californication to that list: of the summer Cable hits, only Mad Men really kept my attention through to 13). I was looking for a break from the Thesis, so I popped them on…and they were ok, I guess.
I really liked Ted Danson’s Frobisher, and I think that the show will require something similar if it’s going to work. Even though I liked her badass turn in comparison to her earlier characterization, Ellen is still largely uninteresting. If we’re going to draw the Alias parallel (Which, honestly, became even more clear considering the finale), she just doesn’t have…something that made Alias’ interpersonal relationships work in a way that Damages just doesn’t. If Byrne can pull it together, though, there’s plenty of potential there.
They walked a fine line with the characterization of Patty, I think, which is where much of this uncertainty comes from. Ultimately, we are supposed to constantly be questioning her motives and remaining skeptical of her actions; from the Pilot, it was clear that Patty = Evil. And while the show ultimately kept trying to show us her nicer side, I felt like the evil always came through: any attempts to humanize the character, such as her troublesome son, were ultimately undercut by her harsh decision making and cruel treatment of Ellen.
Whereas Frobisher was introduced as evil and yet he only ever tried to do the right thing: yes, he defrauded his shareholders, but I didn’t really like any of them very much so I cared more about Frobisher himself. Fiske was an element of that: while the rather tour de force episode where Fiske offs himself is a great Emmy submission for Ivanek, I felt it kind of sold his character up the river, turning him somewhat too pathetic.
I think the problem is that the show’s “good” side lacked a foil for Ellen, or for anyone; they used Tate Donovan in the beginning, but ultimately he was tossed off. David and Katie were both nearly unbearable, proving needy and distractive (Plus, Damages’ random whackjob named Lila was even worse than Dexter’s, but I digress). It was on the side of Frobisher that we saw characters who were engaging with moral questions, facing their pasts, covering their tracks. This was how the show was sold, and yet it all happened on the other side.
This isn’t bad, mind you, but when they killed off the entirety of that side it’s going to require a substantial rebuilding in the 2nd and 3rd seasons. And I can only hope they manage to give Ellen an FBI Handler who is capable of breathing some life into her side of the conflict.
Which will just make it even more like Alias.