The Best Show You're Not Watching: 'Damages'

Glenn Close as Patty Hewes and Rose Byrne as Ellen Parsons on 'Damages,' airing on FX

Television programming is overrun with reality television shows and cookie-cutter procedurals that play out with minor variations of a master plot in every episode, so to see a series that has taken as many risks and pays as much attention to season-stretching arcs as much as it does to each individual episode as 'Damages' does is not only refreshing, it's addicting. A show with this caliber of writing is a dream for actors, and it has successfully beckoned Glenn Close from a still-ripe career in Hollywood, who anchors the series as vicious lawyer Patty Hewes, playing the culmination of all her most memorable creations for film. The highlight of every episode for sure, Close only helps to bolster the marvelous cast that also includes Rose Byrne, whose pretty face is the palette for her tabula rasa character, sometimes literally, and Tate Donovan, whose second-in-command to Patty is perhaps the only thoroughly virtuous character in the show. A magnetic cast of lawyers needs an equally-talented roster of able adversaries, and Season One had Ted Danson as the likable if ultimately evil Arthur Frobisher; Season Two sports names like William Hurt and Marcia Gay Harden; the new season boasts Martin Short as a fellow lawyer representing a Bernie Madoff-type. It's all a web of wonders and intrigue for viewers who might find it disorienting to hop onboard its time-traveling maneuvers through corruption-laden, corporate-sized plots of deceit mid-season, but will retrieve the full benefits in taking the time to catch up, all in preparation for some pretty head-spinning developments that'll arouse more than a few gasps. Kiss kiss, bang bang-style suspense in the world of corporate law in what has by now become a show that plans for the future.

But even as the show strategizes its next move, it's completely and confidently focused on the present, as every episode provides ample amounts of character development and plot-twisting to maintain or up your investment in Patty, in Ellen and in whatever case they're representing. You'd be missing the point to watch an episode or two and dismiss Patty Hewes as evil, her character is as full-fledged as they come, and to see Glenn Close find new ways to flesh her out and keep her on top in every episode is nothing short of miraculous. Here the payoff is in how these people can do what they do, their actions telling only half the story. And if you miss even a single episode, you're missing a ton.

  

R.J.M.