Damages, the show on FX starring Glenn Close, is what you would call a tour de force.

When it came out in 2008, I paid it no attention. I’m not particularly drawn to Glenn Close and haven’t seen anything of hers that I can particularly recall as interesting to me. I also don’t follow most legal dramas. Apparently, the first season of the show was some high level shit as not-so-ineloquently described by SFGate/Chronicle’s Tim Goodman. When season two came around, he pleaded for his favorite readers to give it a chance, I followed suit.

I am so glad I did.

Damages is far more than a regular drama and universally evolved beyond a legal procedural. In fact, the impact of the show lies heavily in its character development and serial narrative. There are twists, turns, and red herrings a plenty in the show. Left right at the end of episode quarters and at the end of episodes leaving you begging for more, the twists deliver and make a whole deal of sense. But, as in any quirk or convention, twists don’t matter if we don’t care about the characters. And in Damages, we really, really do.

Interestingly, I was watching the return of BSG when I tested out Damages. The “Final Episodes” of BSG employed two storytelling devices frequently: flashbacks and twists. Yes, BSG’s highly intensive and complicated story always employed both, but not as often as they did in the final episodes to fully unravel the complete story. Because of this, when I started watching the first few episodes of season two of Damages I felt a gut-instinct that the show had some elements of BSG in it.

Those elements were: the twists, the deeper complicated flashback story, the multitude of levels of ulterior motives, multi-faceted motivations of the characters, and the willingness of the creators to not keep their characters locked in a box of conventions aka anything goes.

So, with that, I decided to Netflix Season One. It took me a few months to finally settle in and watch it, but surely it did deliver. And don’t call me Shirley.

The elements that I noticed remain throughout Damages – and despite not paying attention to each second as I would BSG – the impact of the larger plot twists and exposures were fully felt. The main conflict of Season One is between Patty Hewes (Glenn Close), a highly driven, successful, and brash class action attorney and Arthur Frobisher (Ted Danson) a corporate billionaire who is being sued by his former employees for insider trading. The story is pushed along, though, by the freshly optimistic young attorney Ellen Parsons (Rose Byrne).

But, there’s more. There are quite a few murders that have happened in present time, and the main story is told from a flashback point of view. We basically know there is some crazy shit going on, and we’re watching to see how it unravels.

I think all the characters eventually get their do – and our portrayed well. The leads, Close, Danson, and Byrne are wonderful in portraying particularly non-linear characters. They all go through a major process, as characters, as the season-long narratives slowly gain more clarity. There are numerous twists, as stated numerous times, along the way. There are also great inter-personal drama plotlines to keep each episode compacted into digestible pieces.

Now, onto Season Two.. whenever the DVDs come out.

posted by breakfast boy@ 2:51 PM