Bad People Doing Bad Things

march 20, 2008

I just blew through the first season of Damages on DVD. The show is superbly written and has an excellent cast. Like its sister show, The Shield on FX, Damages is about flawed people. When shows are about flawed people, I am drawn in because this makes the show more interesting -- watching perfect people doing perfect things is really boring. But, watching bad people do bad things, now that is interesting. Damages follows a fresh lawyer, Ellen Parsons as she joins up with a morally corrupt Patty Hewes. Patty Hewes is in the midsts of a huge fight against an ex-CEO Arthur Frobisher. Damages is refreshing in that the show does not follow one case per episode -- with the case being nicely tied up by the end of the hour. The Frobisher case is the driving arc of the season and everything revolves around the Frobisher case. Hewes is portrayed by Glenn Close and she is just a joy to watch. Ted Danson is Frobisher and he does a fantastic job, I really enjoyed Danson and hope he returns for the second season. Rose Byrne plays Parsons and I am in the air about her. She is OK, but not fantastic like Close and Danson. I did enjoy watching her though. The storyline for Damages actually jumps between current time and about six months before. The two timelines eventually meet. And in the last few episodes the writers continue to warp time and make things more interesting. What I did like about the writing was that by the end of the season, the writers were able to wrap up all the storylines in a very satisfying fashion -- yet, they were able to spin up new storylines for the second season. I thoroughly enjoyed Damages and am really anticipating the second season -- which I'll have to wait for on DVD as I don't get FX. This show is what good TV is all about: Perfect spot-on writing and great acting. Reposted from baddub.


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