Glenn Close But Yet So Far: Spooky Legal Thriller "Damages" (Rose Byrne Also Dwelleth Here)

CO=SIGN ON THAT SHIT.

haven't seen martin short since three amigos, but he's certainly delivering on the promise of that film.

i liked s2! not as much as s1 but danson was great.

lily tomlin looks really good! even if heavily botoxed/made up.

tomlin is such a weird choice for that role

first two episodes show promise tho

I can't wait to start watching this. Can't now cause we're already doing Homicide and Oz.

tomlin is such a weird choice for that role

― max, Saturday, January 30, 2010 1:29 AM (10 hours ago) Bookmark

ya... keep expecting her to turn kooky. but i don't think she's a bad choice.

Still best show on television. I was a little worried in the beginning, but there's some great stuff going on. I liked how they turned the Madoff thing into a family psychodrama, and I also loved the totemic use of items on the show -- how the purse passes back and forth between time and to a lesser extent the phone number passes from hand to hand. Also Keith Carradine looking really skeevy and creepy. Martin Short I'm meh on so far, but I think Lily Tomlin is kinda great.

2nd episode was *amazing*

I really like how it's a little ambiguous on exactly how complicit or evil Martin Short's character is so far, one of the kinds of things this show excels at. Campbell Scott's character is having a quick descent into hell already, which is great.

Woah. New episode was amazing.

Once again the bizarre title for this week's episode is a home run - "Don't Throw That at the Chicken".

That scene with Short making faces at the video cameras was a great mixture of humorous and creepy. All the actors are continuing to bring their A-game, though this was a pretty slow episode compared to the last couple. Tom Noonan as the detective interviewing Patty is weirder than ever, I love it. Also liked the line from Ellen, "Of course he is! You always mentioned how you're such a bad mother!" followed by an "OK that one was too far" awkward silence.

That scene with Short making faces at the video cameras was a great mixture of humorous and creepy.

omg next level

the one where they were trying to get the chick to the airport was great. no flashforwards, oddly

yeah was wondering why no flash forward in that episode

missed tom noonan :(

i watched the first seasons on dvd over about two days apiece so am feeling it's not fast enough atm

+ they shd bring back olyphant, he's always good value

He's on Justified so I doubt he's coming back... I figured they'd get back to the whole Frobisher plotline at some point before the end of the series, but the ratings are so bad, this is probably the final season.

rly? that sucks

Yeah, the ratings have always been pretty bad but they've only gotten worse every season. I mean, this is getting beaten by the Kardashians show and Pawn Stars on the History Channel - Damages gets about 25% of the viewers of those shows. Thanks, America! I'm definitely glad they signed up everybody for two years after the first season, otherwise it never would've gotten this far.

gd u america, this show owns. keep it going.

i can kind of see that this is not a show that grabs you by the nuts straight off, and it requires some memory n whatnot. but so does lost.

i blame fox's marketing people. if you can't market significant rose byrne screentime you can't market, period.

i dont think its that complex compared to other 00s narrative tv really. its not as layered or as wide-ranging as lots of cable shows really the structure of s1 felt awkward more than confusing putting the main story in flashbacks didnt really add much and the stuff in the present was ugly and broke the flow of the story.

i still liked it but havent watched any of the other seasons.

I genuinely love this show but stopped watching after S1 because I completely forgot it was gone. I really like the title of this thread btw, I laughed out loud in real life and everything.

havent watched any of the other seasons.

stopped watching after S1

if this show gets cancelled it's YOUR FAULT.

there is a curious agreement about season 1 here
now that i am watching this show it will probably get axed
rose byrne should maybe eat a hamburger once in a while, beautiful gal but lollipop head syndrome nagl

she is hideously skinny.

I finally caught up to the latest episode. I think I like this season more than season 2. It's weird, though... this season's story seems less grandiose, as far as the main characters are concerned - like it's more about the case than it is about Ellen vs. Patty - yet they are killing off a key main character.

I think maybe the main problem with this show is that it's too dumb for people looking for a legal equivalent to The Wire, but too dark, complicated, and subtle, for like, people who watch NCIS or whatever. Like, I have a feeling my lawyer friends would scoff at this show the way scientists probably laugh at Fringe.

one thing that amuses/annoys me about this show is that they don't even seem like they practice law. it might as well be a detective agency. Like, you never see straight-out-of-law-school Ellen plugging away at her desk, and on her laptop, until 10:30pm every night. I think she wrote one brief in three seasons. I try to just imagine they are doing that shit on the side and that it would be boring to show, but damn... especially with the straight out of law school chick trying to prove herself, you'd think she would have less spare time.

I don't think too dumb compared to the The Wire is really appropriate at all, since this show isn't even trying to be so "realistic" or in the same genre - this show is a character-based mystery thriller. Damages is actually quite smart, particularly in its storytelling via character dynamics - making you constantly wondering what every character is after, how they're all related/communicating/lying to each other - I can't think of any other show on the air that's as good or superbly acted. Damages just isn't going to appeal to people who can't keep track and pick up all the nuances of these relationships - most continuity-heavy shows more heavily rely on plot for this sort of hook instead. The flashforward structures are also pretty effective on the whole, I think only Lost even tries anything as interesting on a season-long basis.

People could totally go for this show if they gave it a chance, but Damages has always been totally mismarketed ("Live the lifestyle of Patty Hewes! By Cadillac!") and probably isn't helped by completely dissimilar programming on the channel, like Nip/Tuck or Rescue Me or the 297th airing of Fantastic Four. (Though perhaps Sons of Anarchy or Justified are slightly closer in spirit?) Maybe because it's such a female-dominated show that's not your typical Grey's Anatomy or Desperate Housewives type soap.

I do agree though that, surprisingly, the whole Tobin family drama is better than last year's William Hurt/family drama, since the concept seemed pretty thin at first, but the acting as usual has really made it work. Not that I wasn't pretty amused by Kevin Corrigan last year, but just compare that to how entertaining Martin Short's brief character scenes are in every episode this year. You're totally right about how it seems less grandiose, despite the stakes being much higher all around.

I vaguely remember in the first season there were a lot more scenes of Ellen telling her fiance/family members that she was too busy to ever see them since she was working late in the office - I think we've seen enough of those scenes in this show to be safely assumed at this point that all these people are busy all the time doing boring clerical work. Court appearances and so on work pretty minimally into the plot, which I think is a good choice for this show.

Still kinda sad that this is likely gonna be it - only three episodes left, and I doubt they're going to get a renewal or really wrap up the Frobisher storyline for good.

god that was a long post, my apologies

I don't mean to slag the show by being all, "it's dumber than the Wire" or anything... I just meant that maybe that's one reason why this show hasn't tapped into that 'don't watch anything but intelligent cable dramas' crowd that seem to support shows like Breaking Bad.

No, it was a good post - not too long at all! I don't have time to respond to all of it, but I'll try to get on later. I agree with most of your points anyway, though. It's sad to hear that this show is probably dying.

http://www.talkingtoyourselfbook.com/uploads/1/7/0/2/1702575/7361888.jpg

Apparently DirecTV might try to pick up the show and share half the costs with FX, the way they did with Friday Night Lights. I hope they do, as I really do not want this to be the last season.

I don't know a single person who has kept up with Friday Night Lights since they did that, but at least it is still on the air, I guess.

Just realized that the Antiguan crook is Brother Mouzone from The Wire. Mind blown.

1/2 of the cast are wire alums

Turns out Lily Tomlin is one cold-blooded character, huh? That scene w/her and Campbell Scott was great.

i had a feeling they had something good cooking for her, since she was pretty important in the first few episodes and then disappeared for a while

Also, I literally LOLed when they were doing the table read for the Frobisher movie and the dude started doing the Zeljko Ivanek drawl. That was amazing.

I'm so behind on this season.

gotta say i don't think it's as good as the last two...

too serious somehow, and a bit slow

but i liked the second season, possibly even more than the first

then again i watched both of the earlier ones on dvd over a weekend, which might be a better way to do it

hope it does get rescued as is rumoured

everything's so close - so psyched for the finale!

btw, i love how completely fucked Jill is (the mother of Patty's future grandchild) and how she really has NO CLUE the kind of revenge she's in for

also campbell scott perfectly getting crazier and more evil with every appearance, even as his scenes get briefer

everybody knows that this show is over everybody knows the finale was trash

trash? no way. it was more or less the same kind of finale we get every year, which was great

on top of that it's a nice series finale if it doesn't come back

meh it failed to resolve the timeline & the plot resolutions were rushed and nonsensical. final scene was dope tho

Timeline seemed pretty resolved to me. In particular, Tom's actual murder and the bridge suicide red herring were pretty unexpected and well handled. Also, for once, the angle with Patty's son wasn't a complete misdirection!

The only part I was waiting for that wasn't quite explained totally or left out was when Ellen went to Tom's wife and asked her "Who else knew about me and Tom?" when it was still being implied that they were either having an affair or were going to open a practice together, I don't quite get that one. My only guess is that it had something to do with the final evidence that Ellen eventually retrieved from the awesome hobo.

I wish they'd gotten a full two hours instead of 90 minutes - it was a little rushed - but the pieces still came together.

my biggest eyeroll.gif was michael knowing by magic exactly where his momz was at so he could hit her with the car he stole i mean

re: timeline idk i couldnt really get a grip on what was happening relative to anything else - when was ellen @ the station when did tom die (b4 or after mama tobin? i guess it doesnt matter) how did tom get home w/ those stab wounds & why was joe @ is apt in the 1st place? idk feels like none of it really held 2gether imo. & usually theres more of a coda that resolves shit? also didnt really understand cowboy cop wanting to get revenge against frobz like the scene with the dead doc was really good couldve left it @ that.

Michael didn't know by magic, he knew Ellen was supposed to meet Patty back at her own apartment because Ellen just told him a few minutes earlier. Alternatively, he figured she was coming back from the police station after talking with Jill.

Ellen was at the police station after Tom died, she got called in when they found her ID in the bloody purse (from the dumpster with Tom's body). Tom died presumably while Ellen was stranded after Michael stole her car.

Tom crawling home with the stab wounds was purely for dramatic effect, when he could have simply called 911 instead - but he had just been kicked out of his home a few days ago and was desperate to see his wife and kids again. (Also, the stab wounds were bad, but they were also from a pen knife - not necessarily fatal, and I'm don't think Zedek's goon really was trying to kill him, just torture him for information.)

Joe was at Tom's apartment because he was drunk and believed that Lenny had just made a deal for testimony with him, and wanted revenge - really liked that all of those "Joe makes really bad decisions when he's drunk" storylines lead up to this.

i will miss u, rose byrne

is this show cancelled then?