ON TV - Making a desperate plea for 'Damages' - The legal drama on FX is the type of quality show people say they want. So where are the viewers?
I didn't expect to get my heart broken quite so soon in this job. This summer, two great shows appeared as if from a planet more advanced than ours -- AMC's "Mad Men" and FX's "Damages." But while "Mad Men" has, justifiably, grabbed magazine covers and top 10 lists, "Damages" has gone begging. Indeed, FX has not committed to renewing the show and I don't quite know how to come to terms with this. Glenn Close, people. As Patty Hewes, the toughest lawyer you'll ever hate to want on your side. Ted Danson, acting up a storm as corrupt chief executive Arthur Frobisher, snorting coke and pushing around hookers. Ted Danson! A twisty turny plot in which no one seems totally evil or totally innocent, great cinematography and some very yummy Upper East Side interiors.
What else do you need in a television show?
For those who have not been watching "Damages," and it seems there are too many of you, it follows a civil case tried by Patty against Frobisher, who has apparently bilked the employees of his company out of millions through a stock dump scam. If that sounds boring, there's been plenty of murder and mayhem to go around as corruption was revealed and possible witnesses got whacked. The show opened with Ellen Parsons (Rose Byrne) running through the streets of New York practically naked and covered with the blood of, we later learned, her fiance. For a legal drama, the body count is pretty high, not surprising when you consider that writer-producer Todd A. Kessler also wrote for "The Sopranos."
"Damages" was, for many weeks, a classic whodunit, working backward and forward at the same time until a nexus of real time was reached last week.
Tonight's season finale should, we hope, ensure that justice is done and all loose ends are tied up. Of course it could do the complete opposite, or something else entirely, but that's why I can hardly wait to watch.
There have been murmurs, mutterings, that there are too many characters, that the plot, with all its flashbacks, is too hard to follow, that it's not a show you can just dip into and hope to understand. But that is precisely what makes it so compelling. Forget dipping. "Damages" is not just appointment television, it's commitment television.
Unlike some of the quasi magic-realism on TV these days -- "Lost," say, or even "Heroes" -- "Damages" does not invite a total Zen surrender. It is an intellectual rather than experiential show, an almost literary reminder that God is in the details and the revelation of character is just as important as cracking the case.
