Walrus Comix TV Review:
FX's 'Damages'

God bless the creative forces at FX. While their parent station can be blamed forunleashing the culturally abortive phenomenon whereby seemingly billions of single-brain-celled constituents are captivated by singularly untalented and cloyingly annoying karaoke singers who under normal circumstances couldn’t find refuge at the opening of your local food court, FX has joined HBO in recent years in functioning as a beacon for one of life’s truly fleeting pleasures: original programming. With the likes of Rescue Me, Nip & Tuck, and The Shield, FX has steadily offered a much needed respite from the primetime donkey shows that seemingly dominate the airwaves, and they’ve continued their winning streak with the edition of Damages to their palette. Headlined by Glenn Close, Damages offers a keen mix of plot devices, dialogue, and deft performances in following the travails of a young attorney (Rose Byrne) whose education regarding human nature has only just begun.

As with many of FX’s better shows, Damages features a wide array of characters that each bring their own set of (a)moral scruples to the table of a corporate kitchen in which the heat is figuratively on a steady climb. The notion that the world is filled with deeply flawed people averse to basic notions of altruism is not a novel idea, but the makers of Damages do an excellent job of navigating the sociological minefields of the Big Money Big Apple without simply coasting on the cynicism that pervades the moving and shaking. In luring an actress as talented as Close, FX has ensured a charismatic centerpiece to their legal drama that in less capable hands could have easily descended into a send-up of Meryl Streep’s Miranda from The Devil Wears Prada. Close’s performance conjures memories of her scheming Victorian from Dangerous Liaisons, as her icy stare and perpetually locked jaw hint at an intelligence alternately showcased and hidden in the shadows of her Machiavellian subconscious. Close stars as Patty Hewes, a notoriously talented litigator with a penchant for high stakes class action suits. In her sights is billionaire CEO Arthur Frobisher (Ted Danson), who stands accused of defrauding hundreds of millions in the way of life savings from his shareholders and employees via a well-timed stock dump. Frobisher has escaped criminal reprobation but now finds himself locked in a civil case engineered by Hearst. While Danson has shown his face in various nondescript television ventures the last decade, he once again displays the inverse charisma that made him one of the most beloved fixtures on the small screen for an entire generation with a searing and gleefully evil depiction of a man for whom power and greed have become means to an end unto themselves. He and Close both do an excellent job of choking back on their characters to reveal a studied depth befitting two titans of industry and influence, as they opt for nuance over bombast while connecting with the kinds of jabs that seek simply to open a cut instead of producing an instantly apparent mortal wound. The ways in which both are willing to manipulate the people around them in advancing their agendas suggests a begrudging kinship of sorts, and the hint of an eventual culmination of the escalation between the two is cleverly dangled with each passing episode.

Inasmuch as none of the characters in Damages seems particularly virtuous, the writing and dialogue given to the actors is such that the show easily avoids the pitfalls of a full-on zero gravity moral abyss where distinctions between such characters are hardly worth the effort. The show features solid performances from the likes of Byrne, Tate Donovan, and Zeljko Ivanek in roles that otherwise would be considered stock characters in such an ensemble. Byrne sits in as Ellen Parsons, the unwitting lynchpin in the case between Hewes and Frobisher, as she finds herself the object of Hewes’ admiration as a newly hired attorney while increasingly discovering herself ensconced in a tangential web that connects the two warring parties. The show actually begins in a present tense where Ellen is discovered at the scene of a heinous crime in which she stands as the foremost suspect before unraveling the months leading up to that moment. The plot device functions in ratcheting up the interest in the different characters who may or may not be involved in the eventual crime, as their motivations take on a different light when viewed against the backdrop of the imminently violent proceedings. Donovan and Ivanek function as counsel and accomplices for their respective bosses, as Donovan’s character is ostensibly shown the door to make room for Ellen while Ivanek portrays a Southern attorney whose drawl masks a willingness to fight dirty while pursuing Frobisher’s best interests (along with his own). Each of these characters have their own self-preservatory motivations to some extent, yet their interactions are such that the gamesmanship never suffers from a lack of any semblance of a high moral ground.

In crafting Damages, FX is seemingly once again running creative laps around its basic cable brethren. Built upon the dynamic performances of Glenn Close and Ted Danson, the show weaves an intricate web in which its cast maps and masks the motivations that so often make the most flawed characters the most engrossing. While the show is not alone in highlighting the cynical nature of our 21st century social and professional strata, the execution of its themes makes it worthy of further examination in a marketplace that increasingly caters to demographics seemingly incapable of such expenditures.

- Brant Miles