Damages

In my second installment of TV reviews, I’m going to look at the show Damages. I’m not sure how we found this show, it’s not a typical show for us and wasn’t on any channels we have access too. It’s another Netflix find I guess.

The show follows young lawyer Ellen Parson (Rose Byrne) as she starts working for Patty Hewes (Glen Close) law firm. Patti is one of those lawyers who will do anything to win a case, and usually does. The first season follows a case against Arthur Frobisher (Ted Dansen) who did some illegal stock trading and cost all of his employees their jobs and retirement funds.

There is an interesting story telling dynamic to the show. Interspersed with “real time” events are scenes from months in the future. The scenes from the future present clues as to what is going to happen. These add a sense of drama and mystery, but more often then not are played in such a way as to throw you off. Potential spoiler alert from here on out, though I don’t go into much detail.

The first episode of season 1 follows Ellen beginning to work for Patty and is interspersed with scenes of here 6months later, running from an apartment covered in blood. At the end of the episode, you see her fiancee dead. Through out the season, it is implied that several different people killed him and you’re led on a guessing game trying to figure out what happened and how it happened.

We watched the first season, 13 episodes, in less than a week. It got us hooked. We had to try and figure out what happened and how it was going to all work out. It was very well done, and very well played by the entire cast. Every scene from the future, taken out of context, kept you guess, but fit into the overall story very well when the time line caught up to it.

It took us several months to give season 2 a try, the first was so intense we needed a break. The second season wasn’t as good. There was still a lot of mystery and it was fun trying to figure out the secrets. But it felt more convoluted than the first season. Which is saying something. The future scenes played better as flash forwards, than they did when you actually caught up to them in the present. The last episode felt more like an info dump, than a final pay off.

Definitely recommend season 1 but be prepared to get sucked in. We’re not sure if we’ll watch seasons 3 or 4. This might be a case of a one trick pony. Like Heroes season 1 or 24 season 1. Very well done and enjoyable, but fell apart after that.