Power Plays and Dinner Parties: Death and Deception Served Up on "Damages"

Ruth Rendell, in her dozens of crime novels, explores how murder spreads inexorably outwards, infecting everyone from the victim to everyone the crime touches, spreading outwards until no one is safe from the contagion of sin. Damages works rather the same way and, if next week's scenes are to be believed, not one or two, but all of the characters' lives will be, well, damaged by the war between Patty Hewes and Frobisher.

In this week's installment of Damages ("She Spat at Me"), the plot shifts forward again as controlling Gregory Malina (Peter Facinelli) becomes an even bigger advantage to all involved, Ellen and David's relationship hits the skids, and we see the skull beneath the skin of Arthur Frobisher's blustery arrogance. All this and repeated nightmares which might finally add some depth to Zeljko Ivanek's icy Southern lawyer Ray Fiske. Color me enraptured.

Frobisher. Um, hello? This guy is completely unhinged. Yes, I get his struggles with adversity (dyslexia, poor upbringing, absent dad unable to help with Boy Scout tasks), but he's turned out to be both a royal ass and painfully pathetic. I knew that his "brilliant" idea to have a ghostwriter tell his side of the story would blow up in his face but I had no idea that he would be the one to explode. The scene in which he drunkenly showed up at George Berber (Josh Pais)'s apartment, armed with his childhood trophies, only to insult George's "immigrant" girlfriend and smash him in the nose with a model car, had my jaw on the floor. The perfect coda? Cutting to Frobisher the following morning, typing with two fingers as he "writes" the cover page for his Important Autobiography. I am astounded at how polluted his soul is...

Ellen and David. David has either got to get with the program or ship out. Sure, he's angry at Patty for what went down with his sister Katie, but it wasn't Patty that forced Katie to commit perjury, after all. Instead, he attends dinner with Patty and oenophile hubby Phil but clams up altogether, leaving Ellen to scramble and apologize to Patty. I'm not sure I buy that Ellen is that forgetful that she'd leave the television on during the day and forget to lock the door at night (kudos, BTW, to David for using the eventual instrument of his destruction as a potential weapon), but the lovebirds did finally kiss and make up during a candlelit bubble bath, while Soda Skank (a.k.a. Lila) watched on, obsessively, from the shadows. Speaking of which...

Lila. The Cassavetes-adverse Soda Skank made a sudden return to David's life, claiming that her grandfather (whom he treated at the hospital) had died the weekend before, and enlisted his help to take a look at some medical equipment the EMTs suggested she sell on Craigslist. Not the most romantic excuse for bringing someone up to your apartment, Lila, but it worked... and Soda Skank used the opportunity to palm the keys to David and Ellen's flat. Despite her claims to the police investigating David's murder that she and the good doctor were dating for four months at the time of his death, I totally think that Lila is off her rocker. I had previously wondered whether Patty had put her up to seducing David but now, given that (A) her grandfather is not dead at all and (B) Soda Skank has a penchant for watching her target bathe with his fiancee, I do think she's a stalker, plain and simple. And she may have been the very person who killed David and attempted to frame Ellen. After all, it's our own assumptions that indicate that the two murders (Ellen's attempted murder and David's) were linked...

Gregory. Greg finally decided he's ready to play ball, but only after Ellen inserts herself into his life (taking a page from the Patty Hewes playbook, are we?) and makes contact with him herself, offering protection that she can't provide. Greg finally calls Ellen and arranges a meet, but gets too spooked before he can say anything crucial. However, he does say that everything going on with Frobisher goes beyond a meeting with a broker ("Forget about the broker," he tells Ellen.) and seems to imply something even bigger--and potentially more illegal--is at stake here. LOVED the scene in which Greg flees down a darkened street from the bald thug tailing him, only to have said thug pull a gun and shoot a woman who approaches Greg, a fantastic twist in which the putative assassin turns out to be a bodyguard in the employ of Patty Hewes. Oh, and that woman? She's the real killer, sent by Frobisher and Baby Carriage Man, to eliminate the loose end permanently. So what does Greg do, after seeing a man kill a willowy blonde woman in the street? Run right to Ray Fiske. Curious, that.

Fiske. Just what secret is Ray Fiske keeping to himself? Hmmm... I loved the repeated dream sequences, each one more disturbing than the prior, in which Fiske dreamt that his teeth were falling out (the grossest had to be the one in the therapist's office). If we do believe that it's a symbol for a secret getting out, then just what is Ray Fiske's secret? And is it in any way connected to that rather lingering hand-on-hand contact between him and Gregory at his front door? Methinks there's more than meets the eye there and it could answer many a question as to what exactly is going on here. It was definitely more than mere beseeching and loaded with implication. After all, why turn to Frobisher's trusted lawyer in the middle of the night for help?

What are your theories about what's really going on here? Mob involvement? Conspiracy? What are the dark forces at work here and where was Baby Carriage Man's baby this week? (Traded, apparently, for an ill-used Popsicle.) And just who is BCM and why did it seem as though he worked for Frobisher?

Next week on Damages ("We Are Not Animals"), Patty goes to desperate lengths to keep Gregory Malina alive and get his deposition, Ellen and Tom--fearful that Patty is manipulating them--conceal vital information from her, and the pieces begin to fall into place as the audience learns what's really at stake here.