Watched last night's, uh, surprising season opener to Damages?
Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "Damages Premiere: The Creators on That Twist, Julian Assange & The Final Season," in which I talk to the creators of the serpentine legal thriller Damages about the show’s final season, WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, and THAT shocking twist. (You know which one I'm talking about.)
Damages, which began its life in 2007 on FX before moving to DirecTV last year, began its fifth and final season last night, promising a bloody final showdown between two adversaries, malevolent and dangerous litigator Patty Hewes (Glenn Close) and her former protégé, Ellen Parsons (Rose Byrne).
Season 5 revolves around a WikiLeaks-esque website and issues of corporate transparency, but what fans are really waiting for is for Patty and Ellen to finally throw down against each other. One of them, it seems, may not walk away from this five-years-in-the-making battle.
The Daily Beast caught up with Damages’ trio of creators—Glenn Kessler, Daniel Zelman, and Todd A. Kessler—to discuss how they approached wrapping up the series after five seasons, Ryan Phillippe’s Julian Assange-like character, potential consequences for Patty’s machinations, and—MAJOR SPOILER ALERT, if you have yet to watch the season opener—the apparent murder of Byrne’s Ellen Parsons, shown in a pool of blood after plummeting off of a building.
In approaching the final season of the show, did you look at the full series as a five-act play, and what does Season 5 represent in broad terms?
Daniel Zelman: From the very beginning, we talked about the show being five seasons and we always knew it was going to end with Ellen and Patty going up against each other in a case. [In Season 1], we started seeing the first few minutes of Ellen’s birth into the professional world. In the second season, it’s like her rebellious adolescence. The third season is when she becomes an adult and goes off on her own; she works at the DA’s office. The fourth season is about her realizing that she can’t fully become the adult she wants to be until she separates herself from Patty, and then the fifth season is the final act of that separation and her actually trying to conquer Patty and move past her. So, from the beginning, that was an arc that we had in mind. There’s the case every season and all of that, but the center of the show has always been Ellen and Patty and their relationship, so that was always the spine of the series.
"If you have to ask the question, you already have your answer." - Patty Hewes
Serpentine legal thriller Damages returns for a twisty fourth season of backstabbing and betrayal, though if you don't have DirecTV, you'll have to wait until the inevitable DVD release to check in with Glenn Close's Patty Hewes and Rose Byrne's Ellen Parsons. The show, which aired its first three seasons on FX, moves over to the satellite platform's The Audience Network (formerly called The 101 Network) for an exclusive run. (That's right, exclusive. You're not going to see it anywhere else.)
Given its nature, Damages is one of those tense, labyrinthine dramas that's nearly impossible to discuss without spoiling the plot in some fashion, making it really, really difficult to review in advance. The first two episodes of Season Four ("There's Only One Way to Try a Case" and "I've Done Way Too Much for This Girl"), which I watched a few weeks ago, require little knowledge of the previous three seasons, but--as always--avid viewers are rewarded for their patience and attention. (Minor spoilers follow.)
In this case, the central mystery revolves around High Star, a Blackwater-style private military contractor in Afghanistan, and the wrongful death lawsuit against the company and its founder, Howard T. Erickson, played with pitch perfection by John Goodman. But there are, once again, personal stakes for Ellen and Patty as well, as Ellen--now working for Hollis Nye's former firm--attempts to try the case, reaching out to her high school boyfriend Chris Sanchez (Chris Messina), who worked for High Star. Questions of government malfeasance, of bureaucratic protection, of greed and moral obligation, loom large over the season.
"What price success?" seems to be the major throughline here, seen not just in the motivations of Erickson and his High Star cohorts (including an enigmatic and deadly fixer played by Dylan Baker), but also within the dynamic between Ellen and Patty. Both women have been changed by their collision with one another, not necessarily for the better. Each has taught the other, blurring the line between student and teacher further still. There's a sense that Ellen has perhaps learned too well at Patty's knee, that her mentor's methods have perhaps corrupted her inexorably.
In Season Four, these two are on far more equal footing, and the question that Ellen asked at the end of the third season--unanswered, hanging in the air--colors their interaction. Was it all worth it? Both Patty and Ellen's lives have changed considerably since their first meeting at the beginning of the series, and their encounters here are charged with both distrust and co-dependence. As wary as they each are of each other, they need one another more than either would care to admit. Their lives may have gone in very different directions--SPOILER ALERT!--as three years have gone by since we last saw them. While everyone in Patty's life has seemingly moved on or died or disappeared, she has remained ever constant, never changing, just as vengeful and malevolent as she ever was, just as ruthless to her opponents in court or her adversaries in her personal life. (Witness the firing of a subordinate in the first episode of the season to see what I mean.)
We know that Patty wasn't a very good mother to her son Michael; we saw just how far she was willing to take her punishment of Michael's girlfriend Jill last season, and we're forced to see the ramification of those decisions: the alienation and estrangement from her son, the result of her meddling come to life. Look for Tom Noonan's Huntley--now retired from the police force--to return as a private detective, hired by Patty to track down her missing son. I'm happy to see Huntley back here; his lupine way of interrogating, of asking questions, and turning evidence over in his mind haven't diminished with retirement. He's just as keen and perspicacious as he was before, seeing instantly the skull beneath the skin, the truth behind the lie.
Close is once again in fine form in Season Four, demonstrating that callous and insensitive streak we know so well from Patty, the way that she refuses to back down from any challenge because she can't admit defeat. We get to see that both in her own class action suit--against a pharmaceutical giant accused of killing test patients--and in her interpersonal relationships, as she's forced to contend with self-evaluation in the midst of court-mandated therapy sessions after a (humorous) assault charge. (I won't say who with.) Byrne, strangely attired in 1980s-style throwback businesswoman ensembles, is tougher than she has been in a while, presenting a far more determined and obstinate Ellen Parsons, one who is less of a shadow of her mentor than a lighter photocopy, proving herself willing to resort to tactics and sleight-of-hand to get her way.
Elsewhere, Messina gives a searing performance as Sanchez, particularly in a scene in his van towards the end of the first episode, Baker shines with malevolent intensity, and Goodman is mired in moral greyness, a man who believes in "the gift of our convictions," even as he tries to keep his private military afloat under the scrutiny of a Congressional evaluation of his military contracts.
The move to DirecTV hasn't diminished the whiplash-inducing plot twists nor the socially-conscious plotting of Damages, though there is clearly much more leeway here for harsh language than on FX. (Just the first two episodes alone are particularly rife with swearing, lending the installments a little more gritty realism.) The first episode of the season ("There's Only One Way to Try a Case") is particularly strong, asking difficult questions about society, war, terrorism, guilt, and loss. The price of life in the free world and just how far removed Patty and Ellen's lives are from the front lines in the longest war America has ever known. Ellen's question to Patty has never felt more relevant, really.
The second episode ("I've Done Way Too Much for This Girl"), alas, drags a bit and squanders some of the momentum of the season opener. But there's a lot of set up here, between Patty's sessions with her shrink (Fisher Stevens), her quest to find Michael, Chris' uncomfortable situation, and the lengths High Star's associates will go to keep certain matters under wraps, all jockeying for center stage. Still, that's a minor complaint with so much new content--and a revised status quo--to set up at the start of the fourth season.
Ultimately, Season Four of Damages may lack the visceral crackle of the first season's opener, but there's more than enough dread and mystery to go around here. You'd be wise to spend your Wednesday evenings with Patty and Ellen this summer... or wait for the DVD, if that's not an option.
Season Four of Damages begins tomorrow night at 10 pm ET/PT on DirecTV's The Audience Network.
We’re starting our summer at a bit of a disadvantage: there is no new season of Mad Men to look forward to this year, as we’ll have to wait until March 2012 to find out what happens to Don Draper and the other staffers at Draper Cooper Sterling Pryce. It’s enough to put a damper on anyone’s television-viewing this summer, but there are still some bright points amid a series of repeats and burn-offs like NBC’s Love Bites. (Seriously, avoid that one like you would the plague.)
Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, entitled "Summer 2011 TV Preview: 15 Reasons to Watch TV This Summer," in which I round up what’s new and noteworthy on the telly in the coming months, from True Blood and Torchwood: Miracle Day to British period drama The Hour and the return of Damages and Breaking Bad. All in all, 15 reasons to come in from the warmth of the summer evening and sit down on the couch for a few hours.
What are you most excited about heading to the small screen this summer? Which intrigues you the most? And which will make you change the channel instantly? Head to the comments section to share, discuss, and debate.
I'm already getting excited about the fourth season of serpentine legal thriller Damages, which moves from FX to DirecTV next year, following a landmark deal that brought the series back from the brink of cancellation and guaranteed a fourth and fifth season.
At last night's Sony Pictures Television party at the Beverly Hilton's Bar 210, I caught up with executive producer/co-creator Daniel Zelman and series lead (and Emmy Award nominee) Rose Byrne to discuss Season Four of Damages, why things always come back to the dock outside Patty's beach house, where we might find Ellen Parsons, whether we'll see Tom Shayes (Tate Donovan) again, why Ellen seems to have forgiven Patty for trying to kill her and much more.
What follows is a Q&A-style transcript of my conversation with Zelman and Byrne (sporting her natural Aussie accent) amid last night's revelry, held at the end of a full day of FX sessions at the Television Critics Association Summer Press Tour.
Televisionary: Congratulations to both of you on the pickup of Seasons Four and Five of Damages. What was your initial reaction after became clear that the deal between Sony Pictures Television and DirecTV would take?
Daniel Zelman: Well, to be honest, I was a little bit shocked. It's always such a longshot when these things happen. For a show to be moved from network to network is such a rare thing, as you know. But at the same time, we knew it was a possibility for a long time so we were very pleased that we would have the opportunity to tell more stories and write more for Rose... and Glenn.
[Byrne laughs.]
Televisionary: And Glenn too, of course. Ellen Parsons is an amazing character and you've done an incredible amount of work with her over the past three seasons and it seemed like she had finally made a decision about her future at the end of last season. Now that you're committed to two more seasons as Ellen, where are you hoping that KZK can take the character? Here's your chance to tell Daniel.
Rose Byrne: [Laughs.] My initial feeling was that they had wrapped all the stories up [at the end of Season Three], so I was wondering what's going to happen and what they would do next. But they were all so relaxed about that! [Laughs.] It was not any worry for them at all.
But I'm excited. I love working with Glenn. She always raises the bar in every scene and she's so much fun to work with. I've really grown to love being on a series. There's something very intimate about it. It's like a family. I'm a big television-watcher myself so I love being part of that world. [As for Ellen], I think they're up for the challenge.
Zelman: She's leaving it in our hands.
Byrne: [Laughs.] I have no ideas! No ideas!
Televisionary: Can you give us any hints then about where you might take Ellen in Season Four?
Byrne [to Zelman]: What are you going to do? Have you thought about it yet?
Zelman: We've thought about it. As soon as we got the news, we started to get into the season. It's so hard with our show to give things away as the surprises are so much a part of it. The best I can say is that Patty and Ellen are a part of each other's lives for better or for worse, but their history will always come back. Wherever they go together, they will never outrun their pasts.
For us, that's what's interesting about their relationship: it's developed its own mythology. There are certain things that have happened between the two women...
Televisionary: I know whenever any one tries to kill me, I keep them in my life. You want to keep them close.
[Byrne laughs.]
Zelman: We get that question a lot. All we can say is that that will never go away and that the past is always present in their relationship. We will continue to explore that theme.
Televisionary: In Season Three, we saw an amazing transformation in that relationship, in that we saw Ellen go off to the D.A.'s office and try to live a life that was separate from Patty Hewes before she gets pulled back into Patty's orbit. You've been the student in that relationship, you've been the adversary, but in Season Three, it seemed like we reached a plateau of friendship or equality between them.
Byrne: Absolutely. She needs her help by the end and she needs someone on her side. Ellen chooses to help her for her own reasons. That final scene on the dock, it certainly felt like they were equals by the end.
Televisionary: It always comes back to that dock, though. There have been some amazing showdowns over the years at the dock at Patty's beach house.
Zelman: The dock is a symbol for something and, when I figure it out, I'll tell you what it is.
[Byrne and I laugh.]
Zelman: Sometimes things just happen. We found that location and it just has taken on a meaning of its own and a life of its own within the show. There is a certain gravity to the dock. Before every season begins, we always know what scene is going to take place at the dock. I'm sure we'll be back at the dock for one reason or another.
Televisionary: We've seen throughout the seasons that people tend to come and go and return, even when they're dead. Is there any chance that Tate Donovan could show up in some form as Tom Shayes next season?
Zelman: There's a very good chance that Tate will be back. There's a very good chance.
Byrne: Really? Oh, I'm excited about that!
Zelman: Yes, there's a very good chance. We love him and we love the character and we love the person. He really is part of the soul of the show; there's no question of that. We always want to bring the soul of the show back to the show if at all possible. Same goes for Zeljko Ivanek [who plays Ray Fiske]. He always tends to come back and it's not always the plan going in but there's a gravity he has when he comes back.
In terms of Patty of Ellen's relationship, a lot of people have asked us last season, how does Ellen get past the fact that she tried to kill her. In our minds, part of how Ellen takes control of that and lives with that is by saying, I'm going to move past and I'm going to have control over Patty precisely because I'm not going to show her that I'm affected by it. There's a certain amount of denial that comes into that as well. Listen to this, Rose. [Laughs.]
Byrne: She's very pathological! I don't think she's very healthy. It's not a healthy thing to do, is it?
Zelman: So it might be that Ellen's behavior last season is something she can hold together for a while but not forever. Her anger and resentment about that always threatens to bubble up. The question is what will she do, especially now that she has all of Patty's skills at the ready?
Televisionary: Well, we've all seen Ellen's shotgun fantasy dreams.
Zelman: Yes! Also Wes [Timothy Olyphant] taught her how to shoot. She knows how to shoot.
Byrne: She does. She's got a lot of skills, Ellen. And she's just as duplicitous as Patty, really.
Televisionary: Where might we find Ellen in a career sense when we pick up with her again? Have you decided that yet?
Zelman: We actually have decided that. Well, we have a very strong idea about that, but we always like to improvise, so that could change. I just don't want to give it away because tuning into the first episode, there's always that question of where we will find these characters. Are they going to be together? Is Ellen going to be living in the same country? It's part of the fabric of the show. Where did she go after she left the dock and didn't get an answer to her question?
Byrne: She didn't get an answer.
Televisionary: Well, she sort of got an answer by not getting an answer.
Byrne: I guess that's the answer.
Televisionary: When do you go back into production? And is there a launch date yet?
Zelman: January. [As for the launch date], that is still being figured out.
Season Four of Damages will air next year on DirecTV's 101 Network.
Welcome to your Tuesday morning television briefing.
Now that the ink has dried on Damages's DirecTV deal, Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello talks to executive producers Todd A. Kessler, Glenn Kessler, and Daniel Zelman about whether the format for the serpentine legal drama will be altered for its fourth and fifth seasons, whether the budget will be affected, why Ellen has gotten past the fact that Patty tried to have her killed, who will be returning, and a host of other issues. "DirecTV wants us to do the show that we’ve been doing," said Zelman. "If anything, they want us to push what we’ve been doing even further. They’re encouraging us to be as bold as possible, which is something we strive for anyway. There have been no discussions about altering the show in any fundamental way." Except for the fact that the episodes will be longer, that is. "What’s exciting for us as creators is that on the 101 Network there are no commercials, so it’ll be an uninterrupted hour," said Todd A. Kessler. "And that lends itself to the type of storytelling we do." Production on Season Four begins in January. (Entertainment Weekly's Ausiello Files)
The cast of HBO's drama The Miraculous Year--from writer John Logan and director Kathryn Bigelow--just keeps getting better and better. Susan Sarandon (The Lovely Bones) will join Norbert Leo Butz, Frank Langella, Hope Davis, Lee Pace, Patti LuPone, Eddie Redmayne, and Linus Roach, among others in the cast of the drama pilot, which follows the lives of a wealthy Manhattan family. Sarandon, who will guest star in the pilot, will play Patty Atwood, the director and choreographer for the new show that Norbert Leo Butz's Terry is mounting. (Deadline)
Russell T Davies has teased information about the upcoming fourth season of Torchwood that will air in the US on Starz next year, telling a journalist from SFX that it will be very dark indeed, if not darker than Torchwood: Children of Earth. "Actually, this story is also very dark," said Davies. "I think with that, Torchwood found its feet. People found something very compelling and very chilling about it. I love the way people got on their high horse saying, 'Oh, he killed his grandson!' Hello! He saved every single child in the world! If you would fail to do that then you're the monster, frankly. It's this extraordinary treatment that only science fiction heroes get You find that. If ever a word is said out of place by the Doctor or Captain Jack, or even by Sarah Jane sometimes, people throw their hands up in horror, whereas in any other drama any character is capable of any thing at any time. That's the only way to write, and it's the same for these people as well. I thought it was fascinating and challenging what he did there, but hard—it was so hard. I do think with the whole of Children Of Earth we found a new heartland for Torchwood." (via Blastr)
Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello has a video interview with the stars of FOX's Fringe, in which Anna Torv, Josh Jackson, and John Noble discuss Season Three, the romance between Olivia and Peter, and familial bonds. Well worth a look if you don't mind vague spoilers. (Entertainment Weekly's Ausiello Files)
The Chicago Tribune's Maureen Ryan talks to Bruce Miller and Jaime Paglia, the producers of Syfy's Eureka about Felicia Day and Wil Wheaton's upcoming turns on the dramedy series as well as about James Callis' Dr. Grant. According to Paglia, Day will play a "very eccentric scientist, someone who was invited to be at Eureka but turned it down," when the series returns for the back half of its season in 2011. According to Ryan, Day's character will be "brought in to consult on a problem and Day's character and the character played by Wheaton, who will appear in several episodes, will be involved in a love triangle with a Eureka regular. The producers wouldn't say who it is, but I'd bet money that it's Fargo." (Chicago Tribune's The Watcher)
Glee fans, say goodbye to Coach Tanaka. TV Guide Magazine's Will Keck is reporting that Patrick Gallagher--who plays the surly high school coach/gym teacher, is not expected to return for the second season of Glee this fall and the producers will be introducing a new character--Dot Jones' Shannon Beiste--as the new football coach at William McKinnley High. "As he has not been written into the show's first few episodes," writes Keck, "it appears that Tanaka ran his course after failing in his attempt to marry Emma." (TV Guide Magazine)
Liam Neeson is set to guest star on an upcoming episode of Showtime's Laura Linney-led dark comedy The Big C, where he will play Bee Man, an eccentric man whom Cathy consults for a possible cancer treatment. (via press release)
Nigel Lythgoe is said to be thisclose to finalizing a deal that will see him return to FOX's American Idol as an executive producer for the tenth season. Lythgoe is widely expected to close the deal and serve alongside Ken Warwick, Simon Fuller, and Cecile Frot-Coutaz. "Fox is seeking to bring back Lythgoe to work on the hit series as part of a master plan to reboot the show following the exit of top judge Simon Cowell," writes The Hollywood Reporter's James Hibberd. "In addition, Idol fans can add pop star Justin Timberlake to the list of potential Cowell replacements. Timberlake, along with legendary singer Elton John, is on Idol producer 19 Entertainment chief Simon Fuller's wish list." (Hollywood Reporter's The Live Feed)
Deadline's Nellie Andreeva is reporting that Common (Date Night) has been cast in AMC period drama pilot Hell on Wheels, the first talent attachment to the drama, which depicts the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad. Common will play Elam, described as "a freed slave who comes west seeking work on the railroad and his place in the world" and who, "as a half black, half white man... does not completely belong to either world." (Deadline)
G4 has purchased four anime-inspired series based on Marvel characters from Sony Pictures Entertainment. The cabler has ordered twelve episodes each of X-Men, Wolverine, Iron Man and Blade, which it will launch in 2011. Marvel Entertainment will produce with Madhouse and each of the anime series will have some thread connecting it to Asia in some way. [Editor: the inclusion of Wolverine here then makes sense, given his history in Japan, but X-Men? Interesting.] (Variety)
It's thought quite elementary that BBC One's new mystery series Sherlock--a modern-day version of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's sleuth from Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss--will be recommissioned for a second season after 7.5 million viewers tuned in on Sunday to watch the first episode. (Broadcast)
In other UK news, British viewers will be able to watch the CW's Nikita and NBC's Chase, following a deal between studio Warner Bros. Television and The Living TV Group (a division of BSkyB) that will bring the series to Living. Nikita will air this fall on the channel, while Chase will jump across the pond in 2011. (Hollywood Reporter)
Deadline's Nellie Andreeva is reporting that Jeff and Jackie Filgo have left ABC's comedy pilot Awkward Situations For Men, which is being reworked and will be reshot. The cast of the original pilot--Danny Wallace, Tony Hale, and Laura Prepon--will return for the redone pilot though studio Warner Bros. Television will have to find a replacement for the Filgos, who wrote the pilot with Wallace and served as executive producers on the project. (Deadline)
TV Guide Magazine's Will Keck is reporting that an earthquake will rock Los Angeles in the September 13th season premiere of 90210. "We wanted to open the season with an event that has both physical and emotional ramifications for several people," co-executive producer Jennie Snyder Urman told Keck and added that the incident will seriously affect one character. "One of them has a very serious injury that takes time to resolve and sort of changes the direction of his or her life." (TV Guide Magazine)
Epix has acquired rights to stand-up comedy film Louis C.K.: Hilarious, which premiered at Sundance earlier this year. The pay cabler will air the film on September 18th on Epix, its website, and its on demand service before Comedy Central gets a second window in 2011. (Variety)
CBS and CBS Studios have signed a talent holding deal with former King of Queens star Leah Remini, who will also serve as one of the hosts of CBS' new mom-centric daytime talk show. Under the terms of the deal, Remini will star in a new half-hour comedy pilot for the network. (Deadline)
Former ITV managing director Lee Bartlett has returned Stateside, where he has moved into the business affairs EVP position at Discovery Communications. He'll be based in Los Angeles and will report to Peter Ligouri. (Variety)
Welcome to your Tuesday morning television briefing.
Many had given up hope that FX's brilliant and labyrinthine legal drama Damages would survive another season, given the low ratings for the series' fantastically taut third season, which wrapped its run earlier this year. Not so: DirecTV has come to the aid of the Sony Picture Television- and FX Productions-produced series and has renewed the Glenn Close-led series for two seasons of ten episodes apiece. The only problem: it won't be airing on FX anymore as DirecTV has the exclusive rights to the series on The 101 Network. "We're excited to partner with Sony Pictures Television as we breathe new life into this outstanding drama," said Patty Ishimoto, general manager of The 101 Network and vice president of entertainment for DIRECTV, in a statement. "It's a win for our customers because only they will be able to see these new episodes and another great step forward for DIRECTV as we continue to build our growing portfolio of exclusive, award winning programming." Season Four will launch in 2011, with the fifth season on deck for 2012. Additionally, DirecTV has secured the rights to air the first three seasons. "FX was very proud to have developed one of the best scripted series on television, but, in order to have a future, the show needed DIRECTV and we are thrilled they stepped in," said John Landgraf, President & General Manager, FX Networks and FX Productions, in a press release. "Sony Pictures Television is a great production partner and we at FX Productions are excited for these next two seasons." (via press release)
Is FOX's upcoming comedy Running Wilde turning into a massive Arrested Development reunion? Former Arrested Development star David Cross has been cast as a series regular on Mitch Hurwitz's Wilde opposite Will Arnett. He's set to appear in seven of the initial thirteen episodes, where he will play Andy, a radical environmentalist. [Editor: As well as the boyfriend of Keri Russell's character.] The role was originally filled by Andrew Daly in the original pilot. (Hollywood Reporter's The Live Feed)
Deadline's Nellie Andreeva has the full story behind Cross' casting on Running Wilde, where he was the original choice to play Andy. "But just as filming on the Lionsgate TV-produced pilot was underway in April, Cross got stuck in the UK when the country's airspace was closed as air travel in Northern Europe was severely disrupted by the eruption of Iceland's now-infamous Eyjafjallajökull volcano," writes Andreeva. "With Cross certain to miss the shoot, actor Andrew Daly was approached to step in and do the role in the pilot. Daly had just wrapped another comedy pilot, NBC's The Paul Reiser Show, where he was a regular, so for him Running Wilde would've been in second position at best." Daly, meanwhile, maintains that he was brought in as an "understudy" for the role, knowing that "a) if the show got picked up, David would come back to play Andy and b) if The Paul Reiser Show got picked up, I'd have a full time TV job and wouldn't have been able to play Andy anyway even if the Fox executives were so thrilled with my performance in the pilot that they were desperate to have me at any cost! (might've daydreamed about that scenario once or twice)" (Deadline)
Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello is reporting that 24's Gregory Itzin has joined the cast of HBO's Big Love for its upcoming fifth season. Itzin will recur on the series, where he will play Senator Richard Dwyer, the Republican Majority Leader of the Utah State Senate. Yes, the same senate where Bill Henrickson (Bill Paxton) was elected at the end of last season. Production on Season Five of Big Love is slated to begin this week. (Entertainment Weekly's Ausiello Files)
Deadline's Nellie Andreeva is reporting that Glee co-creator Ryan Murphy is close to signing a massive four-year deal with 20th Century Fox Television that will keep him aboard Glee for the foreseeable feature as well as allow him to develop new projects for the studio. The price tag on the overall deal? It's said to be worth $24 million, though Murphy will also share profits from the music business generated from the FOX musical-comedy, including both sales and downloads, tours, and merchandising (and he'll be paid retroactively for the first season as well). (Deadline)
SPOILER!Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello is reporting that Michael Ealy (FlashForward) has been cast in a multiple-episode story arc on Season Two of CBS' The Good Wife, where he will play Derrick Bond, the head of the D.C. law firm that is merging with Lockhart & Gardner next season. Ealy will appear in at least ten episodes of The Good Wife. (Entertainment Weekly's Ausiello Files)
Clifton Collins (Star Trek) has been cast in NBC's upcoming drama series The Event, where he will play Thomas, described as "a key player in the show's secret conspiracy who will come into conflict with the president of the United States (played by Blair Underwood)." (Hollywood Reporter)
Warner Bros. Television has signed a one-year deal with writer/producers Josh Appelbaum and Andre Nemec (Happy Town, Life on Mars), under which they will develop new projects for the studio from both their own scripts as well as work with other writers. The duo is expected to collaborate with JJ Abrams' Bad Robot shingle, which is also based at WBTV. (Variety)
Aussie actors Justin Clare (Underbelly), Jaime Murray (Dexter), and Marisa Ramirez (General Hospital) have joined the cast of Starz's Spartacus prequel, entitled Spartacus: Gods of the Arena. Clare will play Gannicus, the House of Batiatus' premiere gladiator before the arrival of Spartacus (Andy Whitfield). (via press release)
Rochelle Aytes (The Forgotten) has been cast in a recurring role on ABC's upcoming cop drama Detroit 1-8-7, reports Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello. She'll play Alice Williams, described as "a smart, sexy, ambitious lawyer in the Wayne County prosecutor’s office." Series launches September 21st. (Entertainment Weekly's Ausiello Files)
E! Online's Kristin Dos Santos talks to John Stamos about Glee, Entourage, the end of his extortion trial, and playing with the Beach Boys in concert. (E! Online's Watch with Kristin)
Jon Kinnally and Tracy Poust (Will & Grace) have come on board NBC's midseason romantic anthology Love Bites as showrunners, under their two-year overall deal with Universal Media Studios. They will take over showrunning duties from creator Cindy Chupack, who has given up oversight on the series due to personal issues. "We worked with Jon and Tracy for many years on Will & Grace and feel they are perfect for this job on Love Bites," said Angela Bromstad, NBC's president of primetime entertainment. "Not only do they bring intelligence, passion and great experience, but they are one of the funniest writing duos working in television today. This is great news for an incredibly promising new show." (Hollywood Reporter)
Former Danity Kane singer Aubrey O'Day has landed her own series on Oxygen. The cabler has greenlighted The Aubrey O'Day Project, which "will chronicle her attempt to make a comeback in the music industry while working with a demanding team of industry professionals," according to The Hollywood Reporter's James Hibberd. No launch date has been announced, nor an episodic order. (Hollywood Reporter)
Cartoon Network has ordered ten new episodes of reality competition series Hole in the Wall, which previously aired on FOX during the 2008-09 season but the format--based on a Japanese game show--will be retooled for a younger audience. "In the new version, the half-hour game show will pit two teams of families against each other," writes Variety's Michael Schneider. "But the gist of the show is the same: Contestants, dressed in spandex, contort their bodies in order to clear a series of moving barriers with various cut-out shapes." (Variety)
Syfy is teaming up with videogame maker THQ for two-hour backdoor pilot Red Faction: Origins, which would air in March 2011. "The story of Red Faction: Origins follows rebel hero Alec Mason and the Mason family and is set during a period between the Red Faction Guerilla video game and Red Faction," writes Deadline's Nellie Andreeva. "The screenplay for Red Faction: Origins screenplay was written by Andrew Kreisberg (Warehouse 13), based on a story developed by Paul DeMeo, THQ Director, fiction development." (Deadline)
Science Channel has renewed Through the Wormhole With Morgan Freeman for a ten-episode second season. (Variety)
ABC Studios has hired former 20th Century Fox Television executive Patrick Moran as the new head of drama, replacing Josh Barry, who will step down from his position after just a year. (Deadline)
Sarah Paulson, Karen Allen, and Emily Alyn Lind have been cast opposite John Corbett and Sam Elliott in Hallmark Hall of Fame telepic November Christmas, which will air Thanksgiving weekend on CBS. (Variety)
In an exclusive Q&A, we discuss the season finale and the series' potential future, as well as get to the bottom of some of this week's extraordinary plot twists (which I won't spoil here).
Head to the comments section to share your thoughts about the finale, whether you think Damages should return, and reactions to the third season as a whole.
In the end, it always circles back around to that dock, the scene for so many significant--and often fatal--encounters within the labyrinthine world of Damages. As it should be really, considering that their relationship is the central dynamic within the series, we're left once more with a conversation between Patty Hewes (Glenn Close) and Ellen Parsons (Rose Byrne) that signals the closing of one chapter in their lives as they square off on the dock of Patty's beach house.
But a house, after all, is not a home. Patty must contemplate the fact that she might truly be alone in this world after the events of the third season and particularly its finale ("The Next One Goes in Your Throat"), written by Todd A. Kessler, Glenn Kessler, and Daniel Zelman (whom I speak to exclusively here) and directed by Todd A. Kessler. Her conversation with Ellen is an intriguing one, revealing a rare vulnerability in Patty Hewes as well as the forging of a true connection between the two women.
It's uncertain whether Damages will continue past this season--studio Sony Pictures Television is said to be in talks with DirecTV about coming on to co-finance the series--though I am hoping that a deal can be reached and Ellen and Patty's story can continue. But if for some reason "The Next One Goes in Your Throat" does end up being a series ender for Damages, I'd be satisfied by the fact that we've seen their complex relationship evolve into some very unexpected territory over the last three seasons... and the tantalizing ambiguity with which we leave these ambitious and flawed women might just be the perfect cap to a such compelling and intelligent run.
So what did I think of this week's season finale? Let's discuss.
I thought that the third season of Damages offered a heady mix of a ripped-from-the-headlines case (with the Tobin family's Ponzi scheme) and deeply personal narratives that peeled away the layers of its central characters, revealing the rich, interior lives of Patty Hewes and Ellen Parsons, delving deep into their pasts to explain just who they are today.
It's not an easy feat to pull off. Damages is already a complicated narrative, due to its nonlinear format, offering two timeframes--the "future" and the "present day"--to bounce between and typically slotting in some flashbacks as well. This season saw a returned focus to the dream sequences and visions that have populated the drama from the beginning, providing a gateway into the innermost psyches of our characters on both sides of the case.
It's all the more shocking when it occurs within the context of a legal thriller, but let's be honest, Damages has always been more than that, offering one of a nuanced character study of ambition, success, greed, and what it means to need to win at all costs.
Tom. It's the latter element that Patty has fostered within her two former proteges Tom Shayes and Ellen Parsons and which leads directly to Tom's very undignified death in the season finale. Throughout the third season, we've seen a Tom Shayes that's slowly becoming unhinged as he deals with the loss of his financial status, his reputation, and finally his marriage. That Patty's eagle-eyed frequent co-conspirator would be duped by a feeder fund and have his entire extended family's fortune stolen by Louis Tobin sets off a chain reaction that leads Tom to lie to Patty and Ellen and to engage in a deadly alliance that ends with him stabbed, beaten, and drowned.
The circumstances surrounding Tom's death have been vague all season long. The cause of death was drowning but he hadn't been submerged in water long enough to affect his body. And we knew that he didn't die from the stab wounds to his stomach (and one, we learn, to his leg) and learn that it was Zedeck's enforcer Ben who was wielding the knife in this case. It was only a matter of time before Zedeck tweaked to the fact that Leonard and Albert had carried off the theft of a portion of the hidden Tobin money as Leonard was the only other person, besides for Joe and Zedeck himself, who knew of the connection between the funds and the charity. (I still maintain that it would have been a slightly better twist to have those water bottles explained, not by Tom's messiness, but by a waterboarding attempt.)
Ben attacks Tom at the loft, desperate to find Leonard after he and Zedeck became aware of the deal that Tom made with the former Tobin family counsel, stabbing Tom repeatedly in an effort to get him to talk... before Ben is felled by a bullet from Leonard's gun... and then springs back to life to strangle Lenny before getting bludgeoned by Tom with a wrench. Ouch.
That Tom would manage to escape this ordeal, stagger to a pay phone, and call Deb (telling her to take the kids and go anywhere but home) but not go to a hospital or call 911 required a little suspension of disbelief, as he goes home and is then attacked by Joe Tobin, who drowns him in the toilet.
I thought that the scene between them displayed a nice symmetry between the two men: both struggling to uphold their ideals of family, to regain what they lost and what each of them blames the other for. I found it terribly sad that Tom's nobility and his dreams should end up at the receiving end of a fatal swirlie carried out by a mentally deranged Joe Tobin. For all of his plans and his schemes, it all came down to being felled by an intruder in his house, one who saw Tom as the ultimate symbol of everything that had been taken away from him.
As for why Tom ended up in the dumpster behind Lenny's building, that's an easy answer: knowing that Tom and Lenny had a deal, Joe wanted to cast suspicion on Lenny for Tom's murder as he (A) knew the truth about Lenny's identity and (B) knew that Lenny owned the building and that the police would go looking for him.
Louis. That Joe would blame Tom for what had befallen him is the true travesty, as we learn that everything that has happened this season, all of the lies, the murder, the bloodshed has all been, not because of Louis Tobin's greed, but because of a father's love for a son who drunkenly destroyed the family fortune and had no memory of it. The entire Ponzi scheme, as Marilyn tells Joe, was set up because he had messed up and promised investors returns that weren't there, a situation that quickly escalated into outright fraud as Louis and Leonard sought to cover up Joe's mistake by paying off the investors with other clients' money, which in turn lead to the entire Ponzi scheme scenario.
While Joe believes that Louis didn't love him, the reverse is wholly true. Louis' entire life was based around making Joe happy and making decisions that he thought would better his son's life. While Marilyn wants Danielle to terminate her pregnancy, Louis lies to her and allows Danielle to give birth to Tessa and supports them financially for the rest of his life. When he discovers that Joe has destroyed his business, he takes steps to ensure that Joe will never be held responsible for any wrongdoing and goes so far as to kill himself, not to avoid trial, but to avoid any inkling of Joe's malfeasance from ever coming to life.
It's another sacrifice made for an ungrateful child, one unaware of the decisions being made without his knowledge, and it completely reverses the image we've had this entire season of who Louis Tobin was and why he killed himself, willingly giving up his life in order to save his son's time and time again.
Marilyn. Louis always put his family above all else, managing to find a way to secret a fortune for them and still find a way to take the fall for Joe's mistakes, even in death. Yet it's Marilyn who makes the wrong decision, who is unwilling to bend for her child, who becomes far too enamored of her lifestyle and the lure of the money that her husband has hidden away. She argued that Danielle should abort Joe's child and never told him that Danielle had gotten pregnant. Learning about Tessa's existence on Thanksgiving, she was furious that Louis had gone behind her back and had allowed Danielle to give birth to Tessa and supported them. And when the time came when Tessa became a threat to their financial status, Marilyn stood by and let Joe slaughter his own daughter.
Joe doesn't see Marilyn's decisions as being in his own best interests, at concealing his own wrongdoing for so long. He tells her that she is dead to him and will never see her grandson again. And she doesn't: after watching old home movies of her, Louis, and Joe during simpler, happier times, she throws herself into the East River. (Mystery solved!)
The Bag. Likewise, we learned that Leonard stole Ellen's Chanel handbag from her car in order to place the agreement and evidence in her bag (placing it in the beater car), rather than leave it with Tom and Patty, whom he did not trust entirely. But while Leonard looks to double-cross Tom, fate intervenes when homeless man Barry steals the bag (and it's contents) from the car. Tom, after being stabbed, later sees that Barry has the handbag and touches it with his bloody hand (leaving behind Ben's blood), making him promise that he'll get it back to Ellen.
Circling back around once Ellen learns that the handbag was found in Barry's possession, she's able to get that envelope that Louis had initially intended Patty Hewes to have (it now has Patty's name crossed out and Ellen's written in). Which is rather ironic, as all of this could have been avoided had (A) Joe gone to see Louis when he asked him to and (B) not taken the envelope from beside Louis' body in the first place.
The Car Accident. As I predicted last week, you can never get away with pulling one over on Patty Hewes. Jill's naivete was staggering; she rooked Patty out of half a million dollars, which she then spent on Michael with no intention of leaving him. If she thought that she could get away with it or that Patty would just let it slide, she was out of her mind. I knew that the writers would do something with the chromosome test that Michael gave Patty last week but didn't think that it would have the date of conception on it... a fact that Patty was able to use to her advantage, having Jill arrested for statutory rape right out of the very car that she had given Michael.
Patty, like Louis Tobin, made a decision that she believed was for the best interests of her child. She saw Jill as a failed mother, a criminal, and a lowlife who would drag Michael down with her, who had derailed his eduction and stolen his future. And, sitting across from her in the police station, she tells Jill that she will give birth in prison, that Michael will get full custody, and that she will make sure that he has help raising his child.
And, in an act of hubris, Patty seizes ownership of their apartment and the cherry red Jaguar that Jill bought for Michael. It is, after all, the very car that Patty is driving when she's struck by the hit-and-run driver.
As soon as Ellen encountered Michael at Patty's apartment (after driving there in the beater car that Tom purchased), I knew that the driver had to be Michael. Leaving the keys in the car, Ellen takes a phone call after discovering that the money that Leonard gave them as proof of the Tobin's fraud was in fact, well, fraudulent, and the car is driven off by someone unseen, someone who floors it and crashes it right into Patty Hewes.
But it's not a mystery to Patty who is driving the car, despite her testimony to the police. She sees Michael fleeing the scene and she knows just how much he sought to do her grievous harm, perhaps even kill her. Her decisions may have been with Michael's best interests at heart but they were just that: her decisions. She has, in a single day, destroyed his happiness and thrown his life once more into chaos.
And he is his mother's son, after all. He knows a thing or two about payback. Their collision is the ultimate dust-up, the row to end all rows, a permanent fracture in their already tenuous relationship.
The Horse. Patty is the first to admit that she hasn't been the perfect wife or the perfect mother. But she has been defined not by her maternal instincts but by her drive and ambition, her need to win, to knock down the bullies, and achieve victory and justice, using whatever means necessary. But her defining moment came in 1972 as a pregnant woman about to become a mother. Told by her doctor that her pregnancy was at risk and would have to remain in bed, Patty deliberately sought to terminate her own pregnancy so she could get out of her small town and claim her fortune in New York as a lawyer.
Julia's stillbirth wasn't an accident or a cruel twist of fate at all, but a deliberate escape plan for Patty Hewes. Walking far into the country, she happens upon a horse farm, where she encounters not only the horse (the one seen in her visions) but Julian Decker himself, here not a musician or an architect but a handyman who asks her if she is ready for motherhood, saying it's a huge responsibility. That Julian isn't her true love but rather someone she encounters at a formative moment is critical: her visions in the present day of him are echoes of a heinous act that she would rather forget. His constant reappearances, the ghostly visitations, and his promises to tear down the walls are manifestations of her guilt, her horror, the (literal) blood on her hands.
It's the thing she can't escape: she murdered her own daughter, just as Joe did his. And then she nearly repeated history by having Ellen killed. While Ellen isn't a replacement for Julia, her hysteria over arranging the hit on Ellen lead to Julia's grave at the end of Season One, a place that she hadn't returned since she left her stillborn baby behind. It's a return to the metaphoric crossroads, a reminder of the price she paid for her success, the bodies that lay in her wake.
Arthur Frobisher. Frobisher is one again undone by his vanity. After spilling his secrets to Terry (who went and told Patty), Frobisher is "visited" by Ray Fiske in the nightclub. It's his last chance to confess but he fails to take it. Ellen finally gets to see Wes, who fills her in on everything: that Rick Messer murdered David under orders from Frobisher and that he sought to protect Ellen and killed Messer to do so. Despite the fact that Ellen says that she's let go of all of it, Wes wants to see justice done for Ellen. He confronts Frobisher in his car and, at gunpoint, forces him to confess that he killed David. Wes then turns them both in, sacrificing his freedom in order to obtain justice for Ellen. It's a noble gesture that's wholly surprising, given Wes' propensity for violence. I thought he was going to shoot Frobisher but instead he looks towards the justice of the law, rather than man.
Confession. Confession is also on the minds of Patty and Joe. Patty turns off the intercom while sitting down with Joe at the police station and tells Ellen that they talked about confession. But what does she confess? The truth about Julia's death? Her attempt to kill Ellen? Or something else entirely? It's left deliberately unclear just what they talk about but, whatever it is, it's enough to get Joe to confess to killing Tom. Patty, Tom, and Ellen managed to take down the Tobin family in the end, but at a particularly high price: the life of one of their own.
Patty and Ellen. Ultimately, Patty and Ellen find themselves once more on the dock by Patty's beach house, having buried Tom Shayes. Patty mentions that she wants to be cremated and her ashes scattered there. It's a surprising conversation that's rooted in the intimacy that these two have formed over the last three seasons. After all, it's a conversation that one might typically have with a child. But Patty doesn't have children, not anymore. Julia is dead and her relationship with her son is forever tainted. She has lost Uncle Pete and Tom, her entire family. Ellen is, really, all that she has left now: the promise of the future, an emotional connection but one that's already been tested in unusual ways.
And Ellen wants to know if all of that has been worth it. If Patty's success was worth the blood, sweat, and tears that paved the way to this very moment in time. For Ellen, like Patty before her, is at a crossroads. She wants a family, she wants some semblance of normalcy in her life. She has three options: she can find work at another law firm, she can return and work for Patty, or she can quit the law altogether.
But it's that question of the price of all of this that hangs in the air between them. The long silence that follows is sharp and brutal as Patty can't bring herself to answer the question, denying the audience any sort of rubric for understanding her. There is no right reply but at the same time Patty's answer isn't vital to Ellen, not anymore. She walks away, determined to find her own answer to that question, choosing her own path, not Patty's, as she chooses a direction to leave from that crossroads.
One can only hope that these two find a way back to each other and that Damages continues for us to see just what path each of them chooses.
What did you think of the season finale? Does it work as a series finale, if Damages doesn't return? Would you be heartbroken if this is truly the end for Damages? Hoping that DirecTV coughs up some cash to keep it alive? Confused by anything? Head to the comments section to discuss.
Welcome to your Wednesday morning television briefing.
It took just one episode, apparently, before HBO ordered a second season of New Orleans-set drama series Treme, from creators David Simon and Eric Overmyer. "We would have picked up this show last week," HBO president Michael Lombardo told The Hollywood Reporter's James Hibberd. "We've seen the first nine episodes it's as strong as any show we've seen. Much like The Wire, the audience is so passionate and so invested. We're about servicing our subscriber base and I believe that people will become addicted to this show. We have to be a place where this kind of excellence is giving space to continue." According to Lombardo, Season Two of Treme is being targeted for a spring 2011 debut, where it will likely be paired with the first season of fantasy drama Game of Thrones. "They should be ready about the same time," said Lombardo. "[Game] looks beautiful, the compelling scripts are just fantastic, we're doing reshoots but nothing major. The show is there." Production on Treme's second season will begin this fall. (Hollywood Reporter's The Live Feed)
The Wrap's Josef Adalian, meanwhile, talks to Lombardo in a Q&A-style interview about the Treme renewal. "The first season of True Blood we picked up in the first week. Whether it was after the first day, I don't recall," Lombardo told Adalian. "But I must be candid: We knew we were picking this up (before the premiere). We were actually trying to arrange a phone call with David before we got numbers, but because of David Mills' funeral, that was just impossible. We were sure early on in a way that was unique." (The Wrap's TVMoJoe)
Variety's Stuart Levine is reporting that Monday night's season finale of FX's Damages may wind up being the series finale, after all. "Despite a meeting in the next two weeks between Sony Pictures Television and DirecTV to discuss the possibility of the Glenn Close skein changing networks, insiders say it doesn't look as though the drama is a good fit for the satellite provider," writes Levine. "Sony, of course, wants to see Damages continue, but the studio would have to take a substantial license-fee reduction. With what would be the fourth year of the show, and cast and crew expecting salary increases, it would likely be difficult -- though not impossible -- to cut costs." If Sony was able to broker a deal with DirecTV, their Channel 101 would want to take the first window of Damages' fourth season, which could be a problem for FX, which co-produces the legal drama. [Editor: I'm still keeping my fingers crossed that something could be worked out but in the meantime, I'm going to enjoy the finale as much as I possibly can.] (Variety)
Good news for Mad Men fans: Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello is reporting that Jared Harris has been promoted to series regular for Season Four of the period drama, which returns to AMC this summer. "Harris joined the Emmy-winning drama in Season Three as Lane Pryce, Sterling Cooper’s new financial officer (installed by UK parent company Putnam, Powell, and Low)," writes Ausiello. "In the finale, he became a founding partner in SCDP alongside Don Draper, Bert Cooper, and Roger Sterling." (Entertainment Weekly's Ausiello Files)
Elsewhere, Ausiello also has a spoiler-laden interview with 24 executive producer Howard Gordon about this week's shocking twist... which I won't spoil here, but I will say that Gordon is candid about the decision they made and much more. "It was an incredibly emotional day," said Gordon about the final day of shooting on 24. "I’m just so incredibly proud to be a part of it... This has been an incredibly strong season. I can [only] judge it in terms of what my own opinion is of the show and what I hear about it anecdotally from the people who are friends and family, but I feel very proud of this year. Kiefer is very proud of this year. People are happy to be ending with such creative vigor." (Entertainment Weekly's Ausiello Files)
Sophia Bush (One Tree Hill) has been cast in ABC comedy pilot Southern Discomfort, where she will play Haley, described as "a recent Harvard graduate who returns to her Texas hometown to reunite with her old boyfriend." She'll star opposite Don Johnson and Mary Steenburgen in the pilot, which hails from Sony Pictures Television, Tantamount, and ABC Studios. Bush's casting is said to be in second position to her role on the CW's One Tree Hill, which has yet to receive a pickup for another season. (Hollywood Reporter)
Elsewhere, Ben Browder (Stargate SG-1) has joined the cast of the CW's drama pilot presentation Hellcats, where he is set to play football coach Red Irvine. (Deadline.com)
More wrestling is coming to Syfy, following the conclusion of a multi-year deal between cabler Syfy and World Wrestling Entertainment to bring Friday Night Smackdown to the sci-fi channel beginning October 1st. As part of the move, Syfy will shift its traditional Friday night programming block of originals--which includes Caprica, Stargate Universe, and Sanctuary, among others--to Tuesdays. "WWE is the ultimate in imagination-based sports entertainment," said Syfy programming president Dave Howe. "The fantastical thrills of Friday Night SmackDown provide an ideal addition to the Syfy slate, as it targets the younger male and female demographics, which are the fastest-growing categories for WWE." Syfy's current wrestling series, NXT, will wrap up its run in October. (Hollywood Reporter, Variety)
Naren Shankar is said to be leaving CBS' CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, stepping down from his role as executive producer/co-showrunner on the procedural drama in order to focus on his development deal with CBS Television Studios. (Deadline.com)
Kevin Eubanks will depart NBC's Tonight Show on May 28th and will be replaced, beginning June 6th, by American Idol's Rickey Minor, the musical competition series' music director. (Hollywood Reporter's The Live Feed, Variety)
Looks like Glee star Lea Michele injured her knee while filming an upcoming episode that features the music of Lady Gaga. (Specifically, it was the glee club's take on Gaga's "Bad Romance.") "I'm directing that episode and I did more coverage on that song then we've ever done in the history of the show," co-creator Ryan Murphy tells told E! Online's Kristin Dos Santos. "It's a big number. It's like, big and athletic and hard. And those girls and Chris [Colfer] I think did it for six hours straight." As for Colfer, he too was amazed that he wasn't injured shooting the show-stopping number. "I almost died just trying on my getup," Colfer told Dos Santos. "Literally, I probably almost died because I wear 10-inch heels and those take some getting used to. They're like stilts walking around. They're platform, stick stiletto heels. And I had to dance my ass off in them [laughs.]" (E! Online's Watch with Kristin)
In other Glee-related news, FOX has released the Sue Sylvester "Vogue" video from next week's "Power of Madonna" episode of Glee. The video, a shot by shot remake of Madonna's "Vogue," can be seen in its entirety below:
BBC has confirmed that it will not be going ahead with a third season of post-apocalyptic drama series Survivors. "The BBC is committed to making a broad range of varied and ambitious drama, but in order to achieve this we do have to move on from some pieces in order to allow new work to come through," said a BBC spokesperson. "After two series, Survivors will not be returning." (Daily Telegraph)
Deadline.com's Nellie Andreeva is reporting that Wizards of Waverly Place showrunner Peter Murrieta will depart the Disney Channel comedy should it be picked up for a fourth season. (Deadline.com)
Arthur Smith and Kent Weed's reality shingle A. Smith and Co. is developing a reality series based around Aussie magician James Galea and will pitch the project--which mixes comedy, illusion, and sleight of hand--to networks. (Variety)
Looks like Carrie and Co. will be walking in their Manolos over to E! and Style, according to a report by Alex Weprin in Broadcasting & Cable. Comcast Entertainment Group has signed a deal to acquire off-net and ancillary rights to all 94 episodes of HBO's Sex and the City beginning in January 2011. (Broadcasting & Cable)
Warner Bros. Television has hired ICM agent Tom Burke as SVP/head of casting for the studio, where he will oversee all casting both for WBTV and offshoot Warner Horizon. (Variety)
Just a word of advice: don't mess with the person who knows all of your secrets.
This week's phenomenal episode of Damages ("You Were His Little Monkey"), written by Glenn Kessler and directed by Timothy Busfield, began to draw together the extremely diverse story strands of the series' taut third season before next week's finale. (It's worth noting here that Damages' ultimate fate is unclear and next week's installment may serve as either a season finale or a series finale. I'm hoping it's the former rather than the latter.)
I can't quite wrap my head around how the writers will manage to tie everything up, with Tom's murder, Patty's car accident, the Frobisher case, the Ponzi scheme, African charities, Wes Krulik, feature films, and dreams all in the mix somehow. Yet Damages has proven itself quite adept at building tension throughout the season and bringing together a slew of clues to offer one hell of a final act. Which means even if the series doesn't manage to return for a fourth season, it still will have gone out on an extremely high note.
So what did I think of this week's episode? Let's discuss.
My admonition earlier was thrown right at the Tobins, who this week decided to make a monumentally wrong-headed decision and fire Leonard Winstone. While Joe Tobin was shocked to discover that Leonard wasn't who he said he was, it really doesn't matter at the end of the day whether his name is Winstone or Wiggins: he's the man who literally knows where you buried the bodies. He's been aware of the fraud since the start and knows exactly how to procure the money that's being hidden in the charity with the help of Stuart Zedeck. He knows that Tessa Marchetti is the daughter of Joe Tobin and that Marilyn withheld this information from her son in a bid to get him to silence her forever.
So the question is: if knowledge is power and this man knows all of this, is it wise to make an extremely powerful man angry?
Yet that's just what Joe Tobin does, having it out with Leonard one final time and sharing with him just what Louis Tobin called him behind his back: his "little monkey," the creature who does his dirty work while he gets to keep his well-manicured hands clean. Leonard Winstone may have been a fraud but he was their fraud, a man so desperate to belong that he convinced himself that he was a valued member of the Tobin family, that he belonged to something bigger than himself. Marilyn first makes it clear what she really thinks about him, saying that he couldn't possibly understand her thought process because he doesn't have a family. It's a gutting scene but it pales in comparison to the one between Joe and Leonard. Joe's hold on sanity or logic expired some time ago: he's been making sloppy, stupid choices that have only shined a greater spotlight on the Tobin family and now he's cut ties with the one man who had made it his life's mission to protect them.
Just what did he think that Leonard would do? Was he so foolish that he thought that the little monkey would just dance away back in the shadows and keep the family's secrets for them? But that's not in Leonard's nature; he's a survivor and a grifter at heart. Scorned by the Tobins, he makes a deal with Tom Shayes to save his own skin at the expense of the Tobins... but he also makes a fatal error that will have lasting consequences: he steals from Stuart Zedeck.
There's a nice parallel in this episode between two very different thefts, both of which will have some nasty repercussions for the parties involved, and between the actions of intermediaries. Ben's appearance at the charity to withdraw the secreted funds and his line about people making their attorneys do things rather than doing them themselves is clearly meant to echo Leonard Winstone's predicament (and also inadvertently allows the former Tobin family counsel access to the funds themselves). Meanwhile, Leonard and Albert's efforts to use the system that Zedeck set up in order to get Tom back some of his lost financial status--tantamount to theft itself--also nicely parallels the theft committed by Jill when she agrees to take Patty's money... and then turns around and spends it on Michael. Ouch. Something tells me that neither Stuart Zedeck nor Patty Hewes will take too kindly to people stealing from them.
Patty. This week, Patty's dreams about the beautiful horse continued as she fell asleep at the office and later experienced a waking dream on the streets of New York City when she glimpses a police horse. In both cases, the horse seems to calm her initially as she's struck by its beauty and majesty but there's a jarring sense of shock when Julian Decker turns up in both cases. In the dream in her office, Julian appears next to the horse as she watches through the ripped-up hole in her wall and he calls her Patricia. Later, she transposes Julian's face onto the mounted police officer. Julian is clearly on her mind but seems to represent something just out of reach.
A reader suggested a few weeks back that Julian was a figment of Patty's imagination, as the only person he interacted with was Patty... and it's not like any renovation work has actually been done at Patty's apartment since their "meeting." But while I don't think that Patty has created Julian out of whole cloth, I do think that he's a figure from her past, someone who meant something significant to her. Otherwise her reaction upon seeing his face on that policeman--leading her vomit--wouldn't be quite so violent.
It's interesting too that these manifestations should come on the heels of the knowledge that Michael is the father of Jill's baby. While Patty had doubts about the baby's parentage, Michael turns up at her office to tell her that the chromosomal test came back clean and the DNA proved that he was the father. He offers to send her a copy of the report and turns on his heel, but it's Patty's surprisingly vulnerable face--a crack in the wall--that's the true kicker of the scene. Her armor has fallen and here we see a woman who has realized that she has lost her child. The anguish she feels is palpable.
So it only makes sense that she would seek to bring Michael back to her the only way she knows how: by getting rid of Jill and breaking his heart. She agrees to meet Jill and pay her $300,000 to go away and never see Michael again, even though she is carrying his child. (Parallels here too between Jill and Michael and Danielle Marchetti and Joe Tobin.) But Jill's not going anywhere: she demands a cool $500,000 and then turns around and buys Michael a flashy ride and makes a down payment on an apartment. But all of this is on borrowed time: Patty is going to find out that Jill is still in the picture and come after her. And I don't think Jill wants to find out the full force of Patty's rage.
Ellen. I loved the scene between Ellen and Patty where she tells Patty that the reason that she didn't want to come back to work for her was that she wanted to make her own choices. While I thought that Patty might react negatively to that sentiment, she seems to respect Ellen all the more for it... as she does Ellen's decision to protect Tom and give him her loyalty rather than Patty. He did, as Ellen says, need it more than Patty at that point. I'm just thrilled to see these two back in the same room together again, with Ellen clearly willing to put aside the awful argument she had with Patty and focus on the case. Could it be that these two have gotten through their first spat as friends and come out the other side? I was also chuffed to see that Patty hasn't forgotten the promise she made to Ellen to find David's killer, to use her resources to put his murderer behind bars. Ellen might not work for Patty anymore but she clearly intends to honor that commitment to her former protege.
Josh Reston. I loved that it was Josh who is able to give Ellen and Patty a major break in the Tobin case, using his contact at the jail to learn that Leonard Winstone had bailed Albert Wiggins out of jail. It's a nice callback to the favor that Ellen did for Josh and a way to balance things out between them. His quick-thinking sends Ellen on a path of discovery, learning that the real Leonard Winstone died in a car accident just a few weeks after graduating law school and low-life grifter Lester Wiggins stole his identity and reinvented himself as a hot-shot lawyer, becoming the family counsel for the well-heeled Tobin clan. But the past always catches up to you and it's Albert who brings the house of cards tumbling down around his son's head.
Arthur Frobisher. I was wondering just how the Arthur Frobisher storyline would play into the overarching storyline this season and this week--even without Ted Danson's presence--it finally began to pay off three seasons of dangling plot threads as Terry Brooks told Patty that Frobisher had implied that he had someone killed and had hired a man--a cop--who would do anything. While Patty laughs off the implications and denies that Frobisher would be capable of murder, she quickly goes to see A.D.A. Gates and Ellen and leads to reopening of the investigation into David Connor's murder. Plus, they've now thisclose to connecting Frobisher to Rick Messer and Wes Krulik. While Messer is dead, it's Krulik who might finally provide some closure to this story. Ellen attempts to reach Wes but can't get a hold of him. But he's the key to finally putting Frobisher away for murder by proxy and laying David's spirit to rest.
The look of shock when Ellen sees the photograph of Messer and his former partner Wes is one that's hard to shake. Given that they were lovers, I am sure Ellen is wondering just if Wes knew anything about David's murder... while being unaware that he's the one that was (A) ordered to kill her and (B) shot and murdered his partner in order to protect Ellen. I'm just hoping that Ellen finally learns the truth about Detective Messer and David's death. With the end of the series possibly occurring next week, it's about time that some of these plotlines were dealt with.
Tom. Poor Tom's life is unraveling before his eyes. Having been forced to resign from the firm in light of his conflict of interest (which was disclosed to Patty by the judge), Tom has a row with Deb on the steps of their brownstone and she kicks him out. With nowhere to turn, he makes a deal with Leonard Winstone, offering him immunity from prosecution in exchange for information about the hidden Tobin fortune. And Leonard is able--thanks to some help from his crooked father (who assumes the identity of Stuart Zedeck)--to offer Tom a bag of cash as a sign of good faith.
Of course, we later learn that Tom himself engineered his entire resignation. Which didn't quite make sense to me while I was watching the episode. Why would Tom make himself unemployed when he's literally got no money and no prospects... in order to risk the chance that Leonard Winstone might talk to him? Especially as this entire affair plays out BEFORE they learn the truth about Winstone's identity and BEFORE Joe Tobin fires Leonard. Given that Leonard was antagonistic towards Patty and Tom, what made Tom think that this was a risk worth taking? Why would Leonard have sold out the Tobins at that point, given that Tom had no leverage over him? It was the odd misstep in an otherwise flawless episode but one that I couldn't put out of my head last night as I went to sleep. Odd.
And then there's the matter of the car, the one that ends up plowing right into Patty's vehicle. Tom is seen late at the office looking on Bing for... something. The search results pull up photographs of the car we saw smashing into Patty, including a shot of the Statue of Liberty bobblehead on the dashboard. But why is Tom researching cheap cars? Why does he in fact purchase it and register it to Leonard Winstone's apartment building? And how does it get from there, with the stolen funds, to the street where the accident occurs? And just who is driving it when it hits Patty? Curious.
While Ellen offers Tom a place to stay, he turns down her offer to instead sleep on the floor of one of the creepy lofts that Leonard owns in an otherwise empty building. Given from what we see from the future-set timeframe--now only Three. Days. Later.--Tom uses it as a makeshift office as well as a meeting place for his rendezvous with Leonard. I'm a little concerned by the presence of homeless man Barry after he sneaks into the loft and wakes Tom up, asking if he can stay there. While I don't think that Barry would hurt Tom--they seem to have something resembling an odd-couple friendship--the fact that he was able to get into the building and the loft so easily doesn't sit well with me.
Three Days Later. And then there are the jumbled flash of images from the future-set timeframe, now just three short days later, scenes that depict each of our protagonists in jeopardy, as Ben pulls a knife, Ellen is confronted by someone, Tom bashes the hell out of someone's face, Patty is involved in a collision, and someone jumps off of the Brooklyn Bridge.
Just what does it all mean? I'm still convinced, as I have been since early on this season, that Tom is tortured--waterboarded--by Zedeck's men in an effort to discover just what he knows about the funds stolen from the charity (after all, Ben will learn that "Stuart Zedeck" showed up to collect some cash and Leonard's the only one who can connect all of the dots) and where the money is. The presence of the empty water bottles on the floor of the flat support this theory as does the presence of water in Tom's lungs without the accompanying waterlogged condition that his corpse should be in had he been drowned. Given that we've seen Ben with a knife, he ends up stabbing Tom, who is able to escape and who calls Deb on the pay phone.
As for the bridge incident, I'm convinced it's either Leonard Winstone (my thought a few weeks back) or Joe Tobin, who learns the truth about Tessa Marchetti and realizes that he's destroyed his entire family rather than saved them. And, like his father before him, he takes his own life rather than be prosecuted and imprisoned for his crimes. In other words: it's the Fall of the House of Tobin.
But I still can't wrap my head around the car accident, however. Unless, Ben manages to find the bag of money, takes Tom's car, and then seeks to silence Patty as well. He orchestrates the accident and jumps out of the passenger side of the car after the impact. But why leave the money behind then? Hmmm...
What do you think of the above theories? Got some of your own? What do you think will happen in next week's season finale? Head to the comments section to share your thoughts.
Next week on the 90-minute season finale of Damages ("The Next One's Gonna to Go in Your Throat"), Ellen and Tom take matters into their own hands in an attempt to win the Tobin case; Patty Hewes is haunted by the price of her success.
Welcome to your Thursday morning television briefing.
Showtime has ordered twelve episodes of ensemble drama Shameless, based on the British Channel 4 drama series created by Paul Abbott, who co-wrote the pilot for the US adaptation with John Wells. Project, which is expected to begin production late this summer, stars William H. Macy, Emmy Rossum, Justin Chatwin, Jeremy White, Cameron Monaghan, Ethan Cutkosky, Emma Kenney, and Allison Janey, who recurs. Wells will serve as showrunner on the series, which hails from Warner Bros. Television and John Wells Productions. No launch date was announced for the series, which Showtime's Robert Greenblatt likened to "Party of Five on acid." (Variety)
HBO, meanwhile, ordered ten episodes of single-camera comedy Enlightened (including the pilot) from writer/executive producer Mike White and star/executive producer Laura Dern. Dern stars as "a self-destructive woman who has a revelatory experience at a treatment center and becomes determined to live an enlightened life, creating unexpected havoc at home and work." The cast also includes Luke Wilson, Diane Ladd, and Sarah Burns; production is slated to begin this summer. (Hollywood Reporter)
Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello is reporting that FX president John Landgraf has confirmed that Sony Pictures Television is in talks with DirecTV to come aboard legal drama Damages in order to ensure a fourth season pickup. "Sony is talking to DirecTV," said Landgraf. "We couldn’t be happier with Damages creatively. The third season is superb. It’s a massive success from a creative standpoint. But, it’s a show that has always struggled from a ratings standpoint. I think that’s because it’s so complicated. It takes an incredible amount of devotion and an incredible attention span to watch it." (Entertainment Weekly's Ausiello Files)
Ausiello also confirms that the feature film version of Veronica Mars isn't dead, after all, talking to the series' creator Rob Thomas about the status of the teen sleuth. "It’s not dead," Thomas told Ausiello. "I continue to want to do it. It’s funny, because the rumors go around and around. Kristen Bell had said to somebody that I had written a script, and that wasn’t correct. I did have a treatment and a pitch, with which I went to Warner Bros. and [Mars producer] Joel Silver and said, ‘Here is the fastball version of the movie, the big studio version of the movie that I think we can make.’ And I think they did one of their brand-awareness surveys and were like, ‘We don’t know if we can make money with that.’ So it’s been back-burnered. But I still want to do it. I’m still happy to do it. We’re still looking into it." [Editor: While Thomas admits there's a close-ended timeframe, I do like his idea to see Bell as a "30-year-old noir detective" in the future as well.] (Entertainment Weekly's Ausiello Files)
It's official: Doctor Who is heading to PC and Mac in a new episodic computer game entitled Doctor Who: The Adventure Games that will be offered for free from the BBC website. Featuring the voices of Matt Smith and Karen Gillan, the four-episode interactive game will be written by Phil Ford (Doctor Who: The Waters of Mars) and James Moran (Torchwood: Children Of Earth). The first episode is expected to be released in June. "There aren’t 13 episodes of Doctor Who this year," said executive producer Piers Wenger. "There are 17 - four of which are interactive. Everything you see and experience within the game is part of the Doctor Who universe: we’ll be taking you to places you’ve only ever dreamed about seeing - including locations impossible to create on television." (Broadcast)
Oprah Winfrey is set to announce an hour-long evening series Oprah's Next Chapter, which will air on the nascent cabler OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network, according to the Wall Street Journal's Sam Schechner. Series, which could air as many as twice or thrice during the week, will follow Winfrey as she travels the world for a series of interviews. "I'm going to take viewers with me, going to take celebrities I want to interview with me" around the world," said Winfrey. (Wall Street Journal)
Jason Gedrick (Boomtown) has been cast in HBO's horseracing drama pilot Luck, from executive producers David Milch and Michael Mann. Gredick will play "a racetrack gambling degenerate" and will star opposite Dustin Hoffman, Dennis Farina, Nick Nolte, and Gary Stevens. (Variety)
ABC has announced its summer schedule, which includes the launch of two new drama series on Sunday nights--The Gates and Scoundrels--which will air back-to-back beginning at 9 pm ET/PT on June 20th. The Bachelorette returns Monday, May 24th, True Beauty on May 31st, Wipeout on June 1st, and the launch of new reality competition series Downfall on June 29th. Late summer brings The Bachelor: Bachelor Pad, Dating in the Dark, and Shaq Vs. (Variety)
SPOILER! Orla Brady will reprise her role as Elizabeth Bishop in Fringe's two-part season finale ("Over There, Part 1" and "Over There, Part 2,"), which are set to air May 13th and May 20th. (Entertainment Weekly's Ausiello Files)
Francois Arnaud (I Killed My Mother) has been cast in Showtime period drama series The Borgias, where he will play Cesare, the son of Rodrigo Borgia (Jeremy Irons) in the thirteen-episode series. (Hollywood Reporter)
Broadcasting & Cable's Alex Weprin has a rundown on the announcements made at yesterday's FX upfront presentation in New York. "I think it is important to talk about the originals in basic cable as a continuum, from the edgy, adult side of it, which we cornered the market with The Shield and Nip/Tuck, to the other end of the spectrum, which would include The Closer or White Collar," said Bruce Lefkowitz, executive VP of Fox Cable ad sales. "We are never going to be all the way to the right side, we are never going to do The Closer, because that is not what audiences come to FX for, but we have earned the right to move a little bit more to the right."(Broadcasting & Cable)
ITV has announced that Ciarán McMenamin, Alexander Siddig, and Ruth Kearney will join the cast of Primeval, which is being co-produced by ITV, UKTV, and BBC America. Hannah Spearritt, Andrew-Lee Potts, Ben Miller, and Ben Mansfield will reprise their roles on the sci-fi drama, which is set to launch in early 2011. (Digital Spy)
The Hollywood Reporter's James Hibberd offers a suggestion about why the ratings for FX's fantastic drama series Justified continue to slide each week: "My take is that the show was promoted with a serious dramatic tone, which matched its pilot, plus it felt like a serialized show. Subsequent episodes have felt lighter, more comedic, more procedural -- less FX and more USA." (Hollywood Reporter's The Live Feed)
Maura Tierney is set to return to television following her battle against breast cancer. The actress--who was originally part of the cast of NBC's Parenthood before having to drop out to seek medical treatment--will reprise her role as Kelly McPhee on FX's Rescue Me and is slated to film four episodes for the series' seventh season, set to air in 2011. (Variety)
Could Jane Alexander (Tell Me You Love Me) have played the mother of Joseph Fiennes' Mark Benford on ABC's FlashForward? TV Guide Magazine's Will Keck teases that Alexander would have played Granny Benford, according to Fiennes' co-star Sonya Walger, and that Alexander had been featured "in a doctored-up family portrait hung in the Benford home at the start of the season." (TV Guide Magazine)
ABC has announced that Canadian cop drama Rookie Blue (formerly known as Copper)--which stars Missy Peregrym, Gregory Smith, Enuka Okuma and Travis Milne--will launch on Thursday, June 24th day and date with its Candian debut. (Hollywood Reporter)
HBO has acquired the US rights to Adrian Grenier's documentary Teenage Paparazzo, which focuses on 14-year-old paparazzo Austin Visschedyk. (Variety)
Cartoon Network has ordered thirteen additional episodes of animated series Adventure Time. (Hollywood Reporter)
This week's episode of Damages ("All That Crap About Your Family"), written by Daniel Zelman and directed by Matthew Penn, found each of the characters grappling with the truth, whether that be a personal discovery, a bitter confrontation, a shocking confession, or the decision to withhold information from a loved one. The latter offered one of the most shocking moments in this week's installment, a pivotal turning point for a supporting character who seemed to be far more benevolent than they actually are.
Additionally, we learned the truth about what happened that Thanksgiving night and how the smallest of moments can have a ripple effect on everyone around them. Louis Tobin's decision to entrust his fortune's future to Tessa Marchetti hasn't quite panned out the way he thought it would. Trust is, after all, a funny thing.
The same holds true for Ellen and Patty. Their relationship this season has become something akin to friendship but that rapport would seem to be shattered this week as Patty casts everyone and everything away from her, rendering herself alone and paranoid. It seems the walls haven't quite been pulled down around her yet.
So what did I think of this week's episode? Let's discuss.
I'm all too willing to admit that I was wrong about Ellen's parentage. My theory that Ellen was the mysterious Annie's daughter and was somehow connected to the Arlington car crash that involved Arthur Frobisher turned out to be a non-starter. (Alas, that the risk you take with cockeyed theories.) This week's episode picked up where we left off last week, with Ellen heading 100 miles out of Manhattan to come face to face with the woman who had begun to crop up in her dreams. Was it her birth mother? Was she adopted? Was is the bond that exists between them?
Last night's installment once again didn't feature any of the future-set timeframe, leaving the events that we've been glimpsing so far this season all the more tantalizingly out of reach. Instead, the episode focused both on the past--Ellen's, Louis Tobin's, and Frobisher's--and on the the present, where things are beginning to build to a head. While Damages often features a pretty high body count, I didn't quite expect two characters to get killed this week, roughly 30 seconds apart. Especially when one of them was such a crucial witness in the Tobin case.
But that's the high-stakes world that Damages has set up: everyone is expendable and everyone is in jeopardy. Given that we know that Tom is murdered, Patty involved in a near-fatal collision, and Ellen absolutely terrified, it seems as though the noose of danger is about to tighten around all of their throats.
Ellen. Hoping to discover the truth about her past, Ellen traveled to see Anne Connell but was shocked to learn that reality is often more complicated than fantasy. She isn't Annie's birth daughter but is a Parsons by birth who was nearly adopted by Annie when she was about five years old. That she can't rewrite her family history seems to strike a chord with Ellen; she's immediately cut deeply by the fact that her mother nearly gave her up but changed her mind... and that things had apparently gotten so awful with her father that she had been sent away to live with someone else. Which made me wonder: was Carrie sent away too? Or was she kept close by her mother, a victim to their father's erratic mood swings and violent temper?
Ellen, meanwhile, returns to the city to discover that she's been sold out at work and that she's going to have to take the fall for Tom's impatient and unwise contact with Tessa. Her conversation with a drunk Patty is a sad and solemn scene as Patty rails against Ellen while her former protege stands there silently. I thought that it was a testament to her friendship with Tom that she doesn't tell Patty the truth but instead endures Patty's abuse and then walks out.
As for what Patty tells her--that she wanted to impress Gates at her expense, that she's ambitious, a "climber" and "parasite," and that she's ruthless--I found it ironic that those are all things that anyone could say about Patty Hewes herself. Was the teacher aware of just how much the student had learned at her feet? Or was the speech also directed at herself in some way? A symbol of her own self-loathing? Still, it cut like a knife when Patty told Ellen, "I want you out of my life."
I was glad to see David (Noah Bean) turn up in this week's episode as Ellen wandered aimlessly through the city after being placed on an indefinite leave from work. (I can't say I blame Gates for his decision and his anger at Ellen but he's just so bad at playing the game and seeing the bigger picture that I want him to fail.) The scene between Ellen and the ghostly David was a nice callback to the earlier seasons of Damages and their relationship a reminder of a simpler, happier time.
But David also has a message for her, one that Ellen has carried around for some time but hasn't come to terms with: she needs to make a decision regarding Patty. If she wants to work for her again, she should go do that. And if she doesn't, she needs to put Patty behind her and really move on. To put the past behind her and step into tomorrow. But it's hard when she's literally carrying baggage--that Chanel bag--with her everywhere she goes...
Patty. The strain of the last few months has clearly gotten to Patty. The once supremely composed and icy-cold litigator has become a vulnerable mess, the exact type of person that she hates above all else. Pressure from the plaintiffs, the judge, the D.A., the Tobins, etc. have all led her to a place of extreme paranoia, where she believes everyone is out to get her. It's Patty's Atlas-like burden to carry the weight of the world on her shoulders while everyone else is sniping at her and looking to drag her down.
David's words to Ellen are true about her similarities to Patty: they do both hate bullies and her sense of betrayal at the hands of Ellen isn't just about the fact that she (wrongly) believes Ellen's behaviors have jeopardized the case but she's fractured the one relationship built on respect that still exists in her life. She certainly doesn't have that with Tom. She holds him to a level of responsibility that would have made anyone else quit years ago. His decision to come clean to Patty--though he does leave out the fact that he's a Tobin victim--and his confrontation of her (loved the bit where he asked her if she's ever lied to him) points towards his eventual resignation from the firm. And it hits Patty like another blow to the gut, feeding into her paranoia about Ellen. ("The two of you were strategizing behind my back?")
Earlier this season, Patty sought to replace Ellen by hiring Alex Benjamin. Alex seemed to be the perfect candidate for Patty: ambitious, devoted, devoid of a personal life, she was tailor-made to be Patty's right-hand woman. Or at least on paper. Here, she's a step ahead of Patty, making suggestions about bank account routing numbers, charities, etc. But she lacks a certain je ne sais quoi... In other words, she's not Ellen. It was only a matter of time before Patty realized that herself... and this week took matters in her own hands and fired Alex on the spot as she recalled her conversation with Ellen about her new associate. Au revoir, Alex.
Frobisher. While still completely separate from the overarching storyline, I have to say that I'm loving the return of Ted Danson here as Arthur Frobisher, particularly as the feature film version of his life is getting workshopped, filtering the tenseness of Damages' first season into a bizarro funhouse mirror.
Loved that Katie Finneran (Wonderfalls) was cast as the way-too-young actress playing Patty Hewes and that Frobisher was so willing to sell out the memory of his alleged friend Ray Fiske that he spills the fact that Fiske was secretly gay to the (awful) actor playing him with a way-too-prominent Southern drawl. The story has become so "Hollywoodized" that it's almost impossible to connect it to the viciousness of Frobisher and Patty's battle.
But it's Frobisher's constant need for approval that leads him to make a stunning confession to Terry, in which he recounts his darkest moment (his decision to murder David) after recreating the hooker-and-blow scene from the first season, a case of art imitating life. (Or vice versa.) Are we seeing the return of darkness in Arthur Frobisher? Has he ever actually been redeemed or has it been a smoke and mirrors act to convince himself that he's not pure, unadulterated evil?
Boots. I wondered why Leonard Winstone was so keen to throw out Louis Tobin's boots from Danielle Marchetti's house. The claim was to prevent anyone from learning about the affair between Louis and Danielle but that's the furthest thing from the truth. Instead, the monogrammed boots had been worked on by Zedeck and represented a link between the Tobins and Zedeck, something that had to be eliminated and covered up.
We learned this week that Louis and Tessa were both at Danielle's place on Thanksgiving Day and that Zedeck stopped by to return the boots that his cobbler had repaired. While Leonard believed getting rid of the boots was a smart move, the link between Zedeck and the Tobins, and therefore the charity and the Tobins, has yet to be discovered. Hmmm...
Tessa. Likewise, we learned that Louis Tobin, surprised by how quickly the government was moving, confessed his crimes to Danielle and turned to Tessa for help. Believing that he could trust her--given that she was family--he used her as the courier to move the funds down into the Bank of Antigua but didn't give her all of the facts, making her think that she was signing one of her forms for a charitable organization. An organization that was, in fact, acting as a shield for the fraud itself.
Patty wisely assigned Malcolm to protect Tessa and her down to Antigua, where she would smuggle out the third form and deliver it to Patty and Tom, who would then know the identity of the charity that the Tobins were using to conceal their fortune. But it was not to be. Given that the Tobins already had Emmanuel in their pocket, he was only too willing to alert them to the fact that Tessa had shown up in Antigua... and Joe and Marilyn were only too willing to sacrifice Tessa to keep their secret safe.
And that's where things really got tricky. Those of you who guessed that Tessa was actually Joe's daughter, give yourself a pat on the back. It turns out that everyone has been lying to Joe for decades, concealing the fact that he had a daughter with Danielle Marchetti... and once he learned about Tessa's existence, her parentage was still concealed from him. When he gives the order to have Tessa killed, I was shocked because it seemed to point at the fact that Joe was a soulless bastard willing to murder his own child. But it's not Joe who's pulling the strings here: it's Marilyn, who is whispering lies into her son's ears. She never tells him of Tessa's true identity, instead making him believe that he is having his illegitimate sister executed in order to keep his "real" family safe.
Not so. Joe has just ordered the murder of his own daughter, a brutal act that sends a bullet through her face and ends her life down in Antigua. Will he ever learn the truth about Tessa? And is this the act that finally sends Leonard over the edge and into an alliance with Tom?
What did you think of these week's episode? Surprised by the reveal about Tessa? Freaked out that Marilyn would appear to be absolutely evil through and through? Head to the comments section to discuss.
Next week on Damages ("You Were His Little Monkey"), Patty is under pressure to make progress in the Tobin case; Ellen uncovers new evidence about Louis Tobin's death; Tom makes a fateful alliance after his marriage and career falls apart.
Welcome to your Monday morning television briefing.
Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello is reporting that the fate of FX's serpentine legal thriller Damages, set to wrap its third season in two weeks' time, is in the hands of DirecTV. "Multiple sources confirm to me exclusively that Sony is talking to DirecTV’s 101 Network about partnering on a possible fourth season of Damages," writes Ausiello. "The cost-sharing arrangement would be similar to the one DirecTV and NBC forged with Friday Night Lights, which means future seasons of Damages would air first on DirecTV with a second window on FX." An unnamed source further tells Ausiello that Sony Pictures Television began talks with DirecTV after it became untenable to maintain financing Damages on its own and the studio has engaged in talks with other outlets as well. Both FX and Sony refused to comment for the story. (Entertainment Weekly's Ausiello Files)
The Chicago Tribune's Maureen Ryan has a fantastic interview with Chuck co-creator/executive producer Chris Fedak about the remainder of the third season, the series' chances at a fourth go-around, and Brandon Routh's Daniel Shaw. "I’m very happy with [it]," said Fedak about Chuck's third season. "We’re very excited by the way we’ve structured this season. It starts out with some darks spots in the season, we have gone dark, we’ve tested the premise of the show, especially with "Chuck Versus the Final Exam," which aired last Monday. And [Monday's] episode, "Chuck Versus the Other Guy" -- all these episodes are really kind of testing the premise of the show, testing the idea of what we can do on the show. But from the perspective of the overall season, I think that we’re going to a really neat place and we’re having a lot of fun with it. We’re very excited that we’re able to tell such a dynamic story this season. But in truth, [it is] dynamic and also challenging." [Editor: It's a great and lengthy interview, so be sure to read through to the end. Lots of great moments.] (Chicago Tribune's The Watcher)
In other Chuck-related news, I was so sad to miss this weekend's Chuck panel at WonderCon in San Francisco. But if you--like me--missed out on the festivities, you can ready ChuckTV's in-depth panel report. You'll feel just like you were there, I promise. "Because they already had one season finale (3.13) written before learning that they had another six episodes, they essentially got to have two season finales in one season," writes ChuckTV's Mel. "Chris [Fedak] reiterated that no one is safe." (ChuckTV.net)
Lost showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse will be sitting down with ABC's Jimmy Kimmel for an exclusive hour-long postshow special, entitled Jimmy Kimmel Live: Aloha to Lost, where they will be joined by many cast members from the ABC Studios-produced drama series, which is set to end its run on May 23rd. Plus, ABC has promised that they will be airing alternate endings to Lost on the special as well. (E! Online's Watch with Kristin, The Wrap's TVMoJoe)
Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello has an exclusive first-look at True Blood's werewolf Alcide, played by One Tree Hill's Joe Manganiello, shown in a shot from Season Three alongside Anna Paquin's Sookie Stackhouse. "There is definitely some [sexual] energy between the two of them," True Blood's executive producer Alan Ball told Ausiello. "It’s not like either one of them is looking for romance, but they’re thrown into several intense situations [and] it’s hard not to bond on a deeper level." (Entertainment Weekly's Ausiello Files)
The Los Angeles Times' Irene Lacher has an interview with Damages' Lily Tomlin, the latest in the paper's Sunday Conversations series. "I don't see any difference, really," said Tomlin about shuttling back and forth between comedy and drama. "It's just a matter of style or degree. And I've listened to Marty [Short, who plays the Tobins' devious lawyer], and he has the same point of view. You're just going to try to represent the human who's written on the page." (Los Angeles Times)
The Hollywood Reporter's James Hibberd takes a look at several "on the bubble" series at the broadcast networks, including ABC's FlashForward and V, NBC's Chuck, Heroes, Parenthood, The Marriage Ref, and Law & Order (Hibberd says that Mercy and Trauma are basically DOA), FOX's Human Target and Sons of Tucson, CW's One Tree Hill and Life Unexpected, and CBS' Cold Case, Numbers, Ghost Whisperer, Medium, Accidentally on Purpose, Gary Unmarried, and Old Christine. (Hollywood Reporter)
Pilot casting update: Tisha Campbell-Martin (Rita Rocks has been cast as a regular on ABC comedy pilot Wright vs. Wrong, where she will star opposite Debra Messing and will play the stylist to Messing's political pundit Evelyn Wright; Duane Martin (All of Us) has come aboard Paul Reiser's NBC comedy pilot Next, where he will play Reiser's best friend, a restaurateur; Jonathan Slavin (Better Off Ted) has been cast in CBS comedy pilot Team Spitz; Tyler James Williams (Everybody Hates Chris) has been cast in NBC comedy pilot Our Show; and Dejan Loyola (The Troop) has landed a role in the CW drama pilot HMS. (Hollywood Reporter)
For Slavin, the casting is formally in second position to "Ted."
The Futon Critic is reporting that TNT will launch Jason Lee-led drama series Memphis Beat (formerly known as Delta Blues) on Tuesday, June 22nd at 10 pm ET/PT, behind the second season premiere of HawthoRNe. Later during the summer, the cabler will launch Season Two of Dark Blue (in August, specifically) and Rizzoli & Isles. (Futon Critic)
BET is said to be close to a deal to resurrect canceled CW comedy series The Game and is expected to announce the pickup at its upfront later this month, according to The Hollywood Reporter's Nellie Andreeva, who writes that the majority of the comedy series' cast will be returning for this new iteration and that Salim Akil will take over showrunner duties from his wife, Brock Akil, now a consulting producer on ABC's Cougar Town. (Hollywood Reporter)
Universal Media Studios has signed a two-year overall deal with former My Name is Earl writer/producer Danielle Sanchez-Witzel, under which she develop new series projects for the studio while joining an existing NBC series. (Hollywood Reporter)
"Ellen, my husband is gone and my unemployed teenage son is about to be a father. I think you might want to ask someone else for family advice." - Patty
I don't know about you but I screamed aloud at my television when the screen faded to black at the end of this week's cliffhanger-laden episodes of Damages ("Tell Me I'm Not Racist"), written by Todd A. Kessler and directed by David Tuttman.
It was a scream derived not from frustration but from an excruciating anticipation for the next installment of this quicksand-like legal thriller. Over three seasons, we've come to know these characters intimately, but this week's episode seemingly pulled the rug out from right underneath us, revealing that we'd been standing over a bottomless pit all along.
In an episode that was seemingly devoid of the future timeframe or flashbacks (or was it?), this week's installment marked a major turning point for Damages as a series, as we may have learned a vital clue about Ellen Parsons, something that has lurked at the very center of the series since the pilot episode and a major reveal that many people have wondered about ever since.
Is it a red herring? A coincidence? A long-buried family mystery? Or will Ellen's attempt to rattle the skeletons in the Parsons' closets result in Patty's protege discovering something about herself?
So what did I think of this week's brilliant episode? Let's discuss.
I've been raving about the third season of Damages since it launched earlier this year. It's been a supremely strong season, filled with the sort of whiplash-inducing plot twists that made the original season such an original and compelling drama series. In that initial season, Damages stood out as a first-rate thriller whose roots in legal drama were marked less by courtroom outings and more by the deadly and ruthless battle between two adversaries, each willing to do whatever it took to win.
This season has fulfilled the promise of the first season, offering us not only a intricate jigsaw puzzle of an overarching case but also deeply personal storylines involving the home lives of our three lead characters--Patty Hewes, Ellen Parsons, and Tom Shayes--and a riveting nonlinear storyline that directly places the characters in jeopardy in a way that recalls that amazing opening sequence from the pilot where a blood-covered Ellen flees Patty's apartment dressed in a nightgown and a coat.
The death of Tom Shayes has raised the stakes in more ways than one and, should this be the end of the line for Damages, the third season has offered a pitch-perfect swan song for the series, combining a ripped-from-the-headlines case, swirling eddies of doom, and revelations about characters that we've thought we'd come to know inside and out.
Not so.
This week, we learned that Ellen Parsons might not be who she thinks she is. Long-buried memories of her childhood have come back to the fore, thanks to a series of Lynchian dreams that have unlocked something inside her. Dreams have been a vital part of Damages since the very beginning of the series, with many of the characters--from Patty and Ellen to Frobisher and Ray Fiske--revealing essential truths about themselves via their subconscious.
That thread has carried over into this season with both Patty and Ellen experiencing the unconscious lure of an invisible thread, yanking them back to uncomfortable truths from their earlier years. The mysterious horse which Patty keeps dreaming of, now that the walls she's built up are crumbling around her, continues to crop up while Ellen herself experiences an uncomfortable and jarring deja vu.
Ellen. Is Ellen Parsons adopted? She's never quite fit in with the rest of her blue collar family and the chasm between them has only widened since her sister Carrie was arrested for intention to sell narcotics. But failing to fit into a family doesn't necessarily equal a lack of blood; it's not the first time we've seen first-hand how lucky Ellen has been to escape her ignoble roots. But there are several intriguing developments in this episode: Ellen dreams/recalls an incident from her childhood, in which she was at someone else's house and then helped an unknown woman stir some tomato sauce on "her stool." (It's significant that Ellen first believes she's visiting Patty and the dream house at first recalls Patty's palatial apartment and there's some correlation between the fact that she has confused these two locales and these two women.)
Next, Ellen uncovers a photograph of the woman from her dream, a picture in which this unknown individual holds the very same flowers Ellen had been carrying in her dream. Why does this image strike a chord with her? And why is it mixed in with other childhood photographs? Photographs which, very interestingly, depict Ellen as a young girl many times over... but never as a baby.
Confronting her mother gets her nowhere. Ellen's mother is startled by the photograph--visibly in fact--but tells Ellen that the woman was her babysitter when she was younger and was named Annie or something. It should be infinitely clear to anyone who has ever watched even a single episode of Damages that Ellen's mother was lying to her face.
Carrie, meanwhile, doesn't provide any further information. Despite Ellen recalling that Carrie used to claim that she had been adopted as a child, Carrie denies it, saying that she was only teasing her... but her reaction to the photograph says anything but that as she expresses concern that Ellen showed their mother this picture. Just what are they all hiding? Could Ellen be adopted? Could her mother have met some untimely fate?
Malcolm meanwhile uncovers Annie's identity and an address, which is itself significant. My first instinct upon watching the episode was that (A) Annie was Ellen's mother, (B) Annie was dead, and (C) Annie had been killed in the car accident in Arlington, Vermont that involved one Arthur Frobisher and which killed a young woman in the early 1980s. The dates certainly match up. If Annie had been killed and Ellen given up--or taken--by another family, she would be young enough not to remember much about her biological mother.
It's also significant because we still haven't learned the truth about that car accident... and Arthur Frobisher has only just come back into the picture now. Coincidence? Perhaps but I can't shake the fact that Frobisher and this woman are connected and that the fateful car accident might also involve Patty Hewes herself. Longtime viewers might recall the scene at the end of Season One where Frobisher asks Patty just what he did that has made her hate him so much. She never answered it aloud but it points to their paths crossing at some point. Did Patty know Annie? If she is/was Ellen's mother, has Patty known this all along? Could it explain just why Patty kept tabs on Ellen and offered her that job? Why she wanted her to break things off with the Parsons? Hmmm...
But there's the matter of the address that Malcolm has tracked down for Ellen, one that is 100 miles outside of Manhattan. If Annie was dead, Malcolm would have told Ellen that upfront. (There's no reason for him to conceal it from her.) And he hardly would have given her an address for a cemetery. So is Annie alive then? And if so, why is she so significant to Ellen that she would feel drawn to this woman and begin an investigation into her identity? Curious...
Tom. Tom, meanwhile, completely sold Ellen out this week and surely ended her career at the district attorney's office... which could be why, in the future, he and Ellen were launching plans to start their own firm. (She's all but finished at the D.A.'s office now that Gates knows that she has been dealing with Patty behind their back and likely stalled their case against the Tobins.)
But Tom's rationale is entirely personal: he's on the hook for supporting his family, his parents, and his in-laws and Deb isn't exactly realizing what sort of dire straits they're really in. Tom's attempt to broach the subject of selling the lake house falls on deaf ears; Deb just doesn't really get how much financial trouble they're truly in. Which will make Tom's inevitable death all the more painful.
I'm a bit thrown by the fact that (A) Tom is so willing to let Ellen take the fall against Patty should word get back to her that Tessa was approached by an attorney, and (B) that he's so entirely focused on getting his money back that he nearly blows their entire case by alerting Tessa to the fact that Danielle was likely murdered by one of the Tobins. It's way too soon to be showing their hand to Tessa, considering they've already caught her in one lie (about spending Thanksgiving with her mother) and Tom is lucky that Ellen was able to save his hide again by prompting Tessa to call Patty for protection against the Tobins... pushing her right into their hands.
Not that it quite worked out that way. Despite Ellen engineering the perfect scenario to get Tessa on their side, Tom's little confrontation scene led Tessa to the D.A.'s office, outed Ellen, and led the Gates to swoop in and arrest Tessa at the end of the episode, leading our lawyers without their star witness. A major problem, considering that they now suspect that Tessa's trip to Antigua on Thanksgiving wasn't an attempt to move money down there but to begin to bring it back. Not good.
Patty. I loved the scene with Patty and Ellen on the couch, which served as a sharp callback to the first season of Damages. Here, Ellen asks Patty for advice about what she should do about her family and what Malcolm has turned up about Carrie, leading Patty to jokingly say that she's the last person who should be giving Ellen advice about her family, given how hers turned out.
Still, the implication is clear: despite what has passed between them--betrayal, murder attempts, mind games--these two women respect each other and have forged something akin to a real friendship between them. I think it even takes Patty by surprise, the companionship, the bond she feels with Ellen, the sort of relaxed easiness of their drinks on the sofa and discussions of renovations. Over three seasons, the mentor and the protege have become almost equals now. So much so that Ellen knows to keep her secrets close to the vest; she doesn't tell her about what's really going on with Tom, despite his fury at Patty's decision not to pursue Tessa earlier.
But Patty isn't one to go out without a fight, even if the plaintiffs are looking to have her replaced. So much so that she tells the judge that she's willing to circumvent his authority and the courts to pursue her own leads in the Tobin case and recover the victims' money. She's right: if she locates that fortune and is able to provide the Louis Tobin's victims with restitution, no one will care how she did it or with whose authority. The ends justify the means with Patty; we've seen over three seasons just how much that's true and what lengths she is willing to pursue to achieve her goals.
It's a lesson she's taught to Ellen as well; her protege nearly tampered with a witness (or worse) in order to get her sister Carrie off, but Ellen changed her mind in the end, allowing Carrie to sit in jail and receive the proper punishment for her crimes. One can't help but see that Ellen has taken on board Patty's ruthlessness but with a distinct perspective of her own that colors her decisions. While the courts will punish Carrie, she too exacts her own punishment on her sister, withholding her help after she lied to her.
Leonard. But it's not just Patty and Ellen who deal with their own familial issues. Leonard Winstone's own issues come home to roost at precisely the wrong time. Leonard's con man father Albert Wiggins isn't pleased that his son has stopped sending him checks, wondering pointedly if the mailman is stealing from him or if he's just racist. But the threats don't stop when Leonard--with his favorite prostitute--tells him that he won't ever start paying him; instead, they escalate as Albert shows up at Leonard's office while he's with Marilyn Tobin.
It's not good for a number of reasons. Leonard's belief that he's a member of the Tobin family is being sorely tested once again and it's safe to say that if he's exposed as a fraud, as a small-time grifter and reformed low-life, the Tobins won't stand by him. He claims that the Tobins are clients, family, and not marks but Albert won't listen: he wants a piece of the Tobin fortune himself.
Is it a good enough reason as to why Leonard, in the future-set timeframe, is seen assisting Tom and giving him money? Does he figure that he can weather the imminent destruction of the Tobins if the money is found but not if he's exposed? And, as I surmised last week, is it Leonard who jumps off the bridge? Curious.
I'm also still puzzling out how the Tobin's money, Stuart Zedeck, and the African charity are connected. We learned that Zedeck is on the board of Marilyn's cause celebre and he votes to not allow her to take a trip to Tanzania in order to keep some major distance between the Tobins and the charity. But is that how Zedeck and Louis Tobin kept the fortune hidden? By moving it through the charity and into the Bank of Antigua? Hmmm...
What did you think of this week's spectacular episode? Agree with the above theories? Think Annie could be Ellen's birth mother? Still wondering about the connection between Frobisher and Patty? Head to the comments section to discuss.
Next week on Damages ("All That Crap About Your Family"), Patty strikes an unusual deal after her star witness is arrested; Arthur Frobisher reveals too much of his past.
Not that you would, but if you were even thinking of waiting to watch this week's episode of Damages ("Tell Me I'm Not Racist") later this week, think again.
Seriously.
This is one episode that you will definitely want to watch as live as possible, as there will be any number of outlandish, bizarre, and possibly correct theories swirling around the internet by the time the credits roll at the end of tonight's gripping and suspenseful episode. As they should be, really.
Secrets are revealed, alliances sorely tested, and some rather tantalizing new subplots introduced, as tonight's episode of Damages offers some enticing callbacks to previous seasons and potentially sheds some light on a dangling story thread that many viewers have wondered about for quite some time.
In other words: do not, under any circumstances, miss tonight's episode. You've been warned.
On tonight's episode ("Tell Me I'm Not Racist"), Patty's clients want her removed from the Tobin case; Tom Shayes makes a risky move that jeopardizes Ellen's job with the district attorney.
"Life is complicated... We live in the grey areas." - Arthur Frobisher
On this week's episode of Damages ("Drive It Through Hardcore"), written by Glenn Kessler and directed by Tate Donovan, we received a few tidbits of information about the two overarching mysteries this season as Patty and Tom sought to learn the truth about what really happened on Thanksgiving (and how it involved Tessa Marchetti) and we're given another look at just what happens to Tom Shayes in the future storyline. (I'm still sticking by my theory even with last night's seeming revelation.)
Meanwhile, Ellen had to contend with more family drama and Arthur Frobisher met with Terry's producing partner in an effort to bring his life's story to the silver screen, bringing them face to face with Patty Hewes herself.
So what did I think of this week's episode? Let's discuss.
The season's two timelines are now nearly touching one another as the gap between the present and future continues to slide together, with only two months now between them. Given that things still seem to be cordial between Tom and Patty, I'm curious to see just what leads to the breakdown in their relationship in the next few weeks... and just how some of the grander character explorations--such as Patty's recurring nightmares and Frobisher's seeming redemption--fall into the larger picture.
This week's episode didn't give us too much to go on with regard to the future storyline, save for two scenes that seemed to shed some light on the aforementioned bust-up between Patty and Tom and the final scene which offered a potential twist in Tom's murder, one that I'm still trying to wrap my brain around. Instead, the episode focused on four distinct storylines: the Tobin case, Patty's nightmares and her estrangement with son Michael, Ellen's family drama, and Arthur Frobisher's nascent movie career.
The Tobin Case. This week, we learned that everyone in the Tobin family would appear to be a pathological liar by nature. Tessa Marchetti lied to Patty and Tom when she said that she hadn't spent her Thanksgiving holiday with her mother, instead claiming that she spent it with friends upstate. Why Tessa would lie--and why Danielle would instruct her to--remains to be seen, given that what Tessa would appear to be covering up (at least from Carol Tobin's perspective) is that Leonard Winstone stopped by the apartment and collected Louis Tobin's things--removing all evidence of the affair between them--and then throwing them into the dumpster behind the apartment building he owns.
Those items would appear to be the custom monogrammed cowboy boots and a burner cell phone that Louis used to communicate with Danielle. Yes, Leonard acted quickly to build some distance between Louis and Danielle but why was it so essential that the removal of the evidence be done that night, by Leonard himself, and why would everyone lie about it, given that Patty already uncovered the objects themselves weeks ago? Hmmm... And, given that Danielle made Tessa promise to lie, there must be something bigger than all of this going on, something that reveals just how Louis and Zedeck were able to hide the money in Antigua. Interesting.
Carol Tobin, meanwhile, is cracking under the strain as she attempts to come to grips with the fact that she murdered Danielle Marchetti. Not helping matters is the fact that she's a virtual prisoner of the apartment where Joe has hidden her and that the only person she has any contact with is Leonard Winstone. Finding her in the bath with a knife, he convinces her to see her psychiatrist... but forbids her from discussing Danielle Marchetti.
But Carol's visits to Dr. Samuels open her up to a confrontation at his office by Patty and Tom, who question her about Thanksgiving and she tells them about how she and Leonard drove to see Danielle Marchetti that night and disposed of her father's belongings. While she identifies Tessa as having been there, Patty doesn't reveal that she wasn't Danielle's housekeeper, as Leonard claims, keeping Carol in the dark that Leonard is lying to her about that night. (Clearly, it's an effort to keep Tessa's existence a secret and therefore preserve their means of keeping the fraud and the secret fortune alive.)
Interesting too that Marilyn would be attempting to create some familiarity between herself and her dead husband's illegitimate daughter, as we see Marilyn and Tessa share a coffee and Marilyn reach out and touch Tessa's hand when Tessa tells her that she's been talking to Patty Hewes. Just what is Marilyn after exactly? Why attempt to form some connection between them now? How much does Marilyn know, really? (It's the first scene together for the two since Marilyn turned up as Tessa arrived home the night of Danielle's murder.)
Ellen. Poor Ellen once again got sucked back into the nightmare of family drama as her junkie sister Carrie got arrested with an ounce of meth on her and was booked for intention to distribute. Once again, Carrie attempts to (A) lie, (B) deny, and (C) basically blame Ellen for landing her there and not doing anything to get her out of this situation. I'm beginning to think that jail might be the best place for Carrie as she desperately needs to face up to reality and admit that she has a problem. Instead, Carrie is so quick to attack Ellen that it's no surprise that Ellen wouldn't want to put herself out there and help her sister, a fact that their mother plays up in her typically histrionic way, saying that Carrie "never had a chance." Ugh.
Was Ellen right to tell Carrie to plead guilty and throw herself on the mercy of the court? Probably, especially because her logic is somewhat sound as Carrie doesn't have a record and is a first-time drug offender. She certainly can't represent her as she works for the D.A.'s office and Gates even goes so far as to tell her that she should hope for the nastiest prosecutor ever because there would then be no whiff of favoritism. They can't get involved.
And yet... Ellen's mother once again works her guilt mojo on her, leading Ellen to ask Patty for help. Which is always a big mistake as Patty hates weakness, she hates vulnerability, and she doesn't do anything for free. A favor now means one in exchange down the line and it means that Ellen now owes Patty. Which makes me very nervous, given Ellen has already crossed a line for Patty and Tom regarding the Tobin case and withheld evidence from Gates about Carol's involvement in Danielle's murder. It's only a matter of time before Ellen loses her job at the district attorney's office, given the subterfuge and unethical behavior going on.
Not good.
Patty. I'm glad that Michael finally came clean to Patty about what's really going on in his life, telling his mother that he is expecting a baby, is a painter, and is living with Jill. He claims that he lied to her at that dinner they had because he didn't want her judgment; she then responds by asking if there's any possibility he isn't the baby's father. (Um...) But Michael isn't there for a fight; he wants her to fill out some paperwork on their family's genetic background and poses some questions that take us back through the last two seasons.
Loved the mention that his biological father is in prison and his question about previous babies, once more dredging up the corpse of Julia Hewes from her grave. We've never fully gotten the entire truth about Patty's prior pregnancy, so I can't help but wonder if we'll learn something more about Patty's past before the season is over. After all, the recurring nightmares about horses continues apace. After Michael leaves, Patty throws a bowl against the wall, leaving a nasty gash there. (A chink in her armor, perhaps?)
Patty, being Patty, later takes a hammer to the wall and smashes it up, rather than let architect Julian Decker do it properly. During her latest dream, she looks through the hole she made and sees a horse looking back at her. Just what does the horse symbolize? The idealized version of her life that she left behind in childhood? An emotional truth that's buried beneath the surface like the true beauty of her apartment? Like her home, Patty needs someone to smash down the walls built up over the years and reveal the truth that lies there, the skull beneath the skin.
Frobisher. This week's character exploration dovetailed quite nicely with the latest scenes with Arthur Frobisher, who has become so focused on his redemption that he wants Terry and his producing partner to make Patty Hewes the hero of the piece rather than the Machiavellian villain; he's fully aware of his crimes and wrongdoings in the past and wants a fair and balanced approach to the story. (Fro's son, meanwhile, offers a more nuanced perspective of what happened, rightfully acknowledging that Patty attempted to destroy Frobisher.)
Patty isn't interested in appearing the crusading hero or playing a part in the ongoing redemption of Arthur Frobisher. She turns the tables on Frobisher's little meet-and-greet at the office with the Hollywood types, belittling Frobisher and attempting to humiliate him for his weakness, vanity, and foolishness. "The Arthur Frobisher I know is a despicable bully," said Patty. "He stole from his employees, then he manipulated the system to escape prison with a slap on the wrist... Do what you want; I don't much like movies."
The effect brings back the old Frobisher we know and (sort of) love: he's done with any attempt at balance and fairness in this film. Patty can be the villain and he can be the protagonist who overcomes obstacles, makes grievous mistakes, but redeems himself in the end. Oh, Fro, you've just fallen prey to a revisionist history, exactly what you sought to avoid. Maybe you are just as vain and foolish as Patty said you were. Or maybe you're just as mercenary as you always were.
Two Months Later. The episode is bookended with two scenes from the future-set storyline. In the first, Tom hands in his resignation from Hewes & Shayes, clearly as set-up for launching his own firm with Ellen. If Patty is surprised, she hides it extremely well (she did, after all, almost convince Michael she didn't know about his baby) and Tom doesn't exactly give her a reason for why he quits. Could it be that she learns that he's personally invested in the Tobin case and was himself swindled out of money? Or does she once more ask him to cross a moral line that he's unwilling to cross? Hmmm...
Meanwhile, the final scene puts another spin on Tom's murder. He's seen once more bloody and staggering over to a pay phone, calling someone--Deb?--and telling the recipient that he loves them. This time, we see a shot of the Brooklyn Bridge as something dark plummets from the bridge into the waters below. Tom's body? Does he kill himself? Is he pushed? I'm more than a little confused by this as there doesn't seem to be a hard connection between the pay phone scene and the bridge. (Would he really make a call from a public payphone on a bridge? Why would there by a phone on the bridge?) And if Tom jumps or is pushed from the bridge, why would anyone fish him out of a huge body of water and then dump him in a dumpster nearby where someone would find the body? How could anyone locate a corpse in that much water?
To me, it's a red herring, at least as far as Tom's murder goes. I still maintain that the fluid in Tom's lungs comes from waterboarding, which would again explain the vast quantity of empty water bottles littering the floor of the apartment. Which would mean that it's not Tom's body but something else that's thrown off of the bridge. It's not the bag of cash, because that's found in the trunk of that car registered to Tom.
My initial response is that what goes into the river is Leonard Winstone's body as he jumps off the bridge. Knowing that the truth about his real identity will come out (given that his fingerprints would likely be found at the scene), Leonard kills himself before he can be exposed as a fraud. The season's been rife with suicides--from Louis Tobin's death to the mention of poor Ray Fiske last night and Carol almost slitting her wrists in the bathtub--so it might only be fitting that Leonard leaves his world in the same method that his father figure Louis did: at his own hand.
What do you think? Do you agree with the above theory? Disagree? And what did you think of this week's episode? Discuss.
Next week on Damages ("Tell Me I'm Not Racist"), Patty's clients want her removed from the Tobin case; Tom Shayes makes a risky move that jeopardizes Ellen's job with the district attorney.
"Consider this the carrot. Believe me, you don't want the stick." - Patty
Damages has done a phenomenal job at keeping secondary and tertiary characters spinning within the orbit of Patricia Hewes, the ruthless and Machiavellian litigator who seems to view mere mortals as nothing more than pawns in her latest grand scheme, whether that be her partner Tom Shayes, her former protege Ellen Parsons, or her own son. In fact, Patty's modus operandi seems to be to push reality into line with her expectation of it. When people don't behave how she anticipates, it throws off her entire worldview.
On this week's episode of Damages ("I Look Like Frankenstein"), written by Daniel Zelman and directed by Chris Terrio, two people from Patty's past returned to the series with some emotional baggage as well as efforts to free themselves from the, well, damages that they suffered at the hands of Patty Hewes.
Even as Michael Hewes attempted to build a new life for himself as an artist and a soon-to-be father, Patty sought to sink her claws into his life once more in order to do what she felt was best for him... or to pay him back for betraying her so easily. Likewise, Arthur Frobisher (Ted Danson, once again at his conflicted finest) sought to achieve redemption through environmental philanthropy, turning his attentions towards improving the earth (and his own soul), even though he can't escape his own villainous past nor his enduring reputation.
So what did I think of this week's episode? And what did we learn about the overarching plot this season? Let's discuss.
I'm glad that Danson's Frobisher returned to the series after a far-too long absence. While the plot of Season Three clearly doesn't have anything to do with Arthur Frobisher--at least not yet--his presence is an intriguing one as it connects this season to the two that have come before. Patty Hewes destroyed Frobisher's life and he in turn destroyed Ellen's. While he was a minor presence in the series' second season, Ellen was nearly corrupted body and soul by her quest for vengeance over the man who killed her fiancee.
But while Frobisher achieved a Zen-like calm last season, it's Ellen who appeared to have achieved some peace within herself. As she tells Tom at the cafe, she can't return to work for Patty without risking losing herself in the process. By maintaining a distance, she can keep her boundaries and keep herself from falling into the abyss once more.
Frobisher himself has seemed to come out the other side. He's attempting to be good by doing good, an important distinction that makes me wonder just how much altruism actually exists inside of him. Is all of his wind power campaigning a true effort to save the world or to save himself? Are the two mutually exclusive? He tells his son that old reputations die hard (despite the fact that his crimes pale in comparison to the Tobins'), that he can't change people's perceptions of him and that's why Hollywood actor Terry (Craig Bierko) doesn't want to become the foundation's pitchman.
But everyone, Hollywood especially, loves redemption. Frobisher's book--"My Long and Windy Road" (and that's windy as in "wind")--details his fall from grace and his struggles to put his life back together again, a puzzle not unlike Detective Huntley's game with Ellen. Terry, upon reading the book, wants to option it and star in a film based on Frobisher's life. In exchange, he'll star in the foundation's webisodes, commercials, and PSA's. Which begs the question: did Frobisher engineer this from the start? Did he know that Terry would want his life rights? Is he looking for a grander canvas on which to paint the story of his redemption? Is it possible that he's just as conniving as Patty?
The Tobin Case. Patty and Tom quickly learn that Horatio Emmanuel will be no help to them when it comes to Tessa Marchetti's banking records but they have an ace up their sleeve already: Tessa herself, who turns over her banking documents to the firm. The problem: the records she has only show paltry checking and savings accounts and certainly no proof of millions squirreled away by the Tobins. And, interestingly, Tessa tells them that she didn't spend Thanksgiving with her mother but instead was upstate with friends and that her mother spent it alone. So what does that mean about Louis' story that he left his heart medication at Danielle's apartment? What really happened that night? Tessa promises to help Patty in any way that she can, though she's clearly in the dark about everything.
Just how are Zedeck and the conspirators managing to keep this information secret? I'm still puzzling that one out. Zedeck, meanwhile, promises Leonard and Joe that Patty won't be able to find the money trail due to the Antiguan bank laws and Emmanuel will help them as well as he's financially motivated since Zedeck and Louis Tobin cut him into their scheme. He doesn't want this money found either, after all.
Carol Tobin. It now appears that Joe himself gave Carol the potassium compound that killed both their father and Danielle Marchetti and that he knew exactly what he was doing when he gave her the vial. While I had assumed that Carol had killed Danielle out of malice, it seems far more engineered and premeditated than that. Danielle had pled the fifth at her deposition and hadn't toed the party line like Joe had demanded of her, so he... what? Got his sister to silence her permanently so Patty Hewes and the DA wouldn't be able to uncover anything?
And just where is Carol then? She's gone off the grid again, just like she has in the past. At first I worried that Leonard had gotten rid of her, but Marilyn's concerned tone and Leonard's decision to hire that security firm to locate Carol allayed any suspicions on that end. In the end, we learned that Joe himself had hidden Carol away from prying eyes in a building owned by Leonard, a building that he easily recognizes once the firm tells him where she is.
That building would just happen to be the one located by the dumpster where Louis Tobin's boots and Danielle Marchetti's burner cell phone were discovered and where Barry the homeless man makes his place of residence. Leonard's arrival at the building triggers a memory in Barry: he's the man who dumped that stuff in the first place on Thanksgiving. Interesting...
Joe Tobin. To say that Joe is toying with things he doesn't understand is an understatement; he's virtually unrecognizable from the man he once was, a man whose soul purpose seemed to be to restore his family's good name and distance himself from his father's crimes. Yet, each episode, Joe seems to be plunging further down the rabbit hole, engaging in crimes that grow increasingly bigger. His attempts at emancipating himself from his father's legacy have resulted in him exceeding Louis' nefariousness, replacing greed with rage and financial crimes with mortal ones.
Ellen. I loved how Ellen's face blanched when Patty mentioned her old hotel room (where she was living during Season Two), stating that she likes her new place so much better. I couldn't help but wonder just why Ellen did tell Patty that she was going to be a grandmother, sensing that Michael and Patty didn't talk. Did she do it to injure her former mentor, to catch her off-guard and unawares? Patty's face turned deep crimson as she struggled to extricate herself from a moment of weakness, pretending that she did know about the baby and was still getting used to the idea of being a grandmother.
Like Michael, Ellen has attempted to emancipate herself from Patty, to forge a new life that's separate from her influence but she can't help but be drawn back into Patty's world, teaming up with her on the Tobin case and supplying her with information that she's concealing from Gates. She's walking a tightrope though, one that's growing narrower and narrower with every step. Her efforts to get Tom to see just what Patty did to her and how she had to get away might be the first stumble into the darkness below. Especially, with what we learn from the future timeframe...
Patty. Patty, meanwhile, nearly goes to Michael's art show--called, only fittingly, Emancipation--but stops herself from going inside. She doesn't want a confrontation but seems more willing to destroy Michael's happiness from afar, summoning Jill to her office to attempt to pay her off. Why is she going to such lengths to split these two up? Because Michael didn't turn out the way she wanted him to? Because he's happier without her? Because he left her behind? She has information about Jill's past, her divorce, and her husband's sole custody of her children because the state of Colorado found her to be an unfit mother.
It's this final revelation that sets Jill's chin quivering. She clearly doesn't want Michael to know this, not when they're expecting a child of their own, and she doesn't want Patty's dirty money. But Jill's confidence in their relationship is shattered, as evidenced by her attempts to get Michael to leave her, to return to a "normal" life of college and parties, to put fatherhood out of his mind. But he's not going anywhere.
Michael might be emancipated from Patty, he might be about to become a parent himself, but he's never free of her influence. Especially now that she feels betrayed by him and was made to look weak and foolish (exactly what Patty fears most) after their last meeting, where he blatantly lied to her and misled her. If anything, she's more dangerous and vindictive than ever...
Three Months Later. I loved the scene between Ellen and Detective Huntley (the always great Tom Noonan) at the police station where he ripped up a scrap of paper into little pieces and then attempted to get Ellen to solve the puzzle and bring all of the various strands of knowledge together for him. She doesn't quite manage to do that but we learned quite a few things this week that are drawing the plots closer together.
Here's what we learned now: -Ellen and Tom are definitively not in a romantic or sexual relationship. In fact, the two were attempting to start their own law firm, likely without Patty's knowledge. Did she find out that they too were going to emancipate themselves and leave her behind? -The apartment where Tom is going through those files is in the same building where Joe hid Carol from the D.A., a building that's owned by Leonard Winstone. -Leonard appears to have betrayed the Tobins at some point and is working with Tom and Ellen. As a proof of his friendship, he delivers Tom a bag of cash--likely part of the Tobin fortune--in order to help Tom's financial situation. (The guy did lose 70 percent of his net worth, after all.) "It's all here. I'm a man of my word," says Leonard. Hmmm.... -We know Leonard was at the apartment the day that Tom is killed and that he touched Ellen's bag. The dumpster behind the apartment building is used as a garbage dump by Leonard (as seen when he throws out the Tobins' stuff earlier), so it's likely that he threw away Ellen's bag. Thus, the fingerprints and the fact that Barry found it in the trash. -The car that hit Patty was registered to Tom Shayes but the address was that place in Brooklyn, which again is owned by Leonard. Why would Tom put that place down as his address? Answer: he wouldn't. But someone looking to frame Tom for a crime might. -We see the driver of the car that collides with Patty but not his face (just a set of gloves) as the person braces themselves to hit her. Afterwards, the driver escapes. Perhaps an employee of the security firm Leonard likes to hire for these sort of things? -It's definitively not the Statue of Liberty bookend from Season One that's glimpsed on the passenger seat but rather a Statue of Liberty bobblehead, something that I can't see Tom Shayes having in his car. Is it a callback to that prop from Season One, a coincidence, or an intentional message to Patty or Ellen? -Why was Ellen so freaked out that someone other than Tom's wife Deb knew what they were up to? Did she too think that Patty had Tom killed? Hmmm...
What did you think of this week's episode? How does Frobisher fit into the overarching plot? Will Patty ever let Michael, Tom, or Ellen go? Agree with the above theories or conclusions? Discuss.
Next week on Damages ("Drive It Through Hardcore"), Carol Tobin is forced to reveal the truth about Thanksgiving after Patty tracks her down; Ellen's family life becomes chaotic; Frobisher begins making his movie.
"You hired someone. You haven't replaced me." - Ellen
This week's episode of Damages ("You Haven't Replaced Me"), written by Todd Kessler and directed by Glenn Kessler, offered a tantalizing number of confirmations as well as a new power struggle emerging between Ellen Parsons and Patty Hewes, just as the contentious duo agree to work together on the Tobin case.
Patty and Ellen's relationship has been the spine of the series, with the dynamic shifting from that of mentor and protege, to adversaries, to something approaching a twisted friendship based on both mutual respect and distrust. Compared to the meek and naive law associate Ellen was at the start of Season One and the dark angel of vengeance she became in Season Two, we're seeing a very different Ellen here, one who has learned at the feet of the master manipulator and who isn't afraid to remind her that she knows her methods and her secrets.
What we see in this week's episode, from Ellen's growing smile in the first scene (when Patty awakens her at nearly 4 am with an invitation to a dinner party) to Patty's knowing smirk (when she realizes Ellen has gotten to her), is another round of mind games between them, each one launching a calculated attack to remind the other that they are in power, each determined to knock the other off-balance.
At the heart of their relentless game of one-upmanship is newly minted associate Alex Benjamin, a pawn caught between two queens, who both Ellen and Patty are willing to use to achieve their ends. Ellen should have some sympathy for poor Alex. After all, she warned her not to take the job with Patty Hewes in the first place (the same thing that Hollis Nye had warned Ellen about, ironically) and if anyone knows what it's like to be forced into the role of Patty's protege, it's Ellen, who was nearly destroyed, body and soul, by her former employer.
Yet, just as Patty is willing to cast Alex in the role of prop in this game, using the unaware Alex in a tableau designed to injure Ellen (who is meant to feel that she's been replaced), so too is Ellen willing to do the same to Patty, going so far as to ask her lover, reporter Josh Reston, to write a piece on Alex, only to have Alex embarrass herself by taking the puff piece to Patty in an act of mea culpa. It's an effort to prove that Patty isn't invulnerable, that there are chinks in her armor that can be exploited, and that Alex isn't a threat to her.
What is the point of this never-ending game? Why, to prove which one of them has the sharpest claws, of course: which one of them wields the power and which one can take things the furthest. Patty doesn't want to bake cupcakes with Ellen, she wants a worthy opponent to do battle, a mind as cunning as hers, an enemy she respects.
For all of Patty's flaws, she cares about the case and about meting out justice for the victims, just as much as she does winning. Her pursuit of the Tobin fortune is about finding the money at any cost. Ellen's ADA boss Curtis Gates, however, doesn't care one jot about the hidden cash; he's under significant amount of pressure to pin a crime on the Tobin family and he needs results: he needs a Tobin behind bars and their picture splashed across the front page.
His myopia is staggering to Ellen, especially since Ellen knows that Tom is a victim of Louis Tobin's greed. She could have helped Gates out. After all, she knows that Carol Tobin visited Danielle Marchetti the day of her death (thanks to the ID she got from Danielle's doorman) and should be considered a suspect in Danielle's murder.
But, after Gates' outburst, Ellen keeps this little gem to herself, lying to Gates, and instead gives it, wrapped in a ribbon, to Patty. In the seventh episode of the season, the halfway point, it's only fitting that Patty and Ellen's partnership should once more be reforged, though Patty has come to see that Ellen has changed significantly since they first met. It's all about leverage and Patty has the best shot at getting the money back for the victims.
Tom Shayes. This week, Tom was a man on a mission, heading to Antigua to shadow Tessa Marchetti and uncover just how Louis Tobin was able to move money and keep these transactions under the radar. Given that we learned last week that Tessa is a flight attendant, we have the means of how a courier was able to go to and from Antigua without anyone being the wiser. Tom meets a bank clerk who seems willing to help him gain access to Tessa's account--in exchange for visas for his family, including his seriously ill daughter--but he's silenced by a shadowy finance minister (played by The Wire's Michael Potts, a.k.a. Brother Mouzone) who happens to be in Zedeck's pocket.
This is a significant problem because the judge overseeing the Tobin case--Judge Reilly--believes that Minister Horatio Emmanuel is a friend of the US government and their best shot at gaining some valuable information about Tessa's account and the hidden money. Hell, Patty even goes down to Antigua to see him face to face. But if Emmanuel is going to obstruct their investigation, the team might be back to square one again... Which could explain why Ellen and Tom launch their own investigation into the hidden funds in the future.
Tessa Marchetti. We got an iron-clad confirmation (from both Zedeck and Winstone) that Tessa Marchetti is definitely the daughter of Louis Tobin and not Joe, as many viewers have surmised. Working as a flight attendant, Tessa is the ideal courier to be carrying funds for the Tobins and Zedeck. She's family, which means that she can be trusted and she's a citizen of Antigua, having been born there (she has a dual citizenship with the US). But the plot thickens: Tessa appears to be unaware that she's involved in any illicit or illegal. She believes that the forms she's signing at the Royal Bank of Antigua are necessary to exchange her paycheck into US dollars--which involves her signing three forms each time--which means that she's been duped. But who set up this arrangement? Louis Tobin? And why hasn't Tessa been curious about what she's been signing? And is she actually signing a bank transfer order? Just how is Zedeck carrying out this fraud?
Joe Tobin. Joe is shocked to discover that Louis and Danielle had a daughter, a fact that he learns from Zedeck... who makes him aware that someone in the family is whispering secrets into Patty's ear. Joe's reaction to what Zedeck tells him is clearly felt; hell, it's written all over his face. But he proves far better at maintaining a poker face when Ellen confronts him at a cafe and tries to catch him off guard by telling him that both Louis and Danielle died from potassium overdoses and that their deaths were suspicious.
Given that Joe saw and took the the mixture that Dr. Brandt had prepared for Louis, he knows that someone in his family killed Danielle. And, given Carol's instability, she seems the most likely suspect, no?
Meanwhile, Joe is able to give Marilyn some hope for the future by giving her the sable that Zedeck had given him, telling her that Louis had a plan to ensure their financial stability. Sigh. If only Marilyn hadn't already tipped Patty Hewes off about how Louis managed to hide these funds. Hindsight, however, is 20/20, as they say.
Leonard Winstone. Meanwhile, we learned a great deal more this week about the Tobin's loyal retainer, Leonard Winstone. It turns out that Leonard isn't quite what he appears to be. Despite the fact that he has served the Tobins for 27 years, he hasn't come clean to them about his real identity. Leonard always thought of himself as a member of the family; he went so far as to tell that prostitute that he felt like Louis was his father and Carol remembered Louis telling the family when he hired Leonard that he was now "one of the family."
Patty plants a suggestion in Leonard's head, however, that he's not a Tobin, he's just the servant who cleans up their messes and takes out the garbage. If he wants to act like a Tobin, she'll punish him like one... but she gives him one last change to salvage what's left of his career. His encounter with Patty shakes Leonard considerably and he makes up an excuse about a sick friend from law school to get away from Joe for a day in order to see someone.
But Leonard, as we learn, has reinvented himself. His real name is Lester Wiggins and he would appear to have been raised in an environment very different than the Tobin's palatial Manhattan mansion. In fact, his relations with his actual family is so strained that he's unaware that his mother Barbara died five months earlier, only learning of her demise after he attempts to visit her in the nursing home where he's been paying for her care.
So why didn't he know? That would be because his father Albert Wiggins (the always magnificent Bill Raymond, also of The Wire) made her funeral arrangements but just kept cashing the checks that Leonard sent. And he doesn't want the checks to cease now that Leonard knows his mother is dead, opting to blackmail his son into silence. He knows just who and what Leonard really is and he knows that the Tobins don't know...
Three Months Later. The truth about Leonard Winstone is a crucial reveal this week, given his past, and an identity that he discarded more than 20 years ago. In the future-set timeframe, we see Detective Huntley show Ellen the Chanel bag that Patty had given her, a bag that was found, splattered with blood, in the homeless man's shopping cart. As for how it got there, Ellen claims that the bag was stolen. While I was at first loath to believe Ellen's story (too convenient) there is a ring of truth about it, considering that forensics uncovered partial prints on the bag. Prints that happen match those of a petty thief and drifter named Lester Wiggins who was booked in 1984.
We now know Lester Wiggins to be the true identity of Tobin family attorney Leonard Winstone, so just how did he manage to reinvent himself and become a valued employee of the Tobin family and a hotshot attorney? Did he ever go to law school? Or was he able to steal someone else's identity and charm his way into the Tobin's good graces. But there's something amiss there. After all, Leonard supposedly has been working for the Tobins for 27 years, which would put his start date in 1983, a year before his arrest as Lester Wiggins. Odd, no? Was Patty mistaken about how long he's worked for the family? Or is there something else going on here? Hmmm...
Meanwhile, also in the three months later storyline, we catch a glimpse of a hand (Tom's? Leonard's?) flutter back to life in the apartment where he was seemingly murdered. There's blood on the wall and, voila, there's that handbag that Ellen claims to have been stolen and which we know that Leonard Winstone touched.
Which makes me wonder if Leonard wasn't present at Tom's murder, after all. Tom knew his killer and let him into the apartment, though if the bag was stolen from Ellen, it may have contained a key to Tom's apartment. But why steal the bag? Was Leonard after something that he suspected--or knew--that Tom and Ellen had? Information that would be worth killing for?
And whose blood is it on the handbag? Is it from the same source as the blood splatter on the wall? We know Tom was stabbed but did he fight back? Was he able to injure his attacker, or one of his attackers? Is it Leonard's blood, given that the police's DNA database doesn't go back that far? Hmmm...
What did you think of this week's episode? Agree with the theories above? Or do you have some theories of your own? Discuss.
Next week on Damages ("I Look Like Frankenstein"), Carol Tobin vanishes, forcing Patty and Ellen to track her down; Arthur Frobisher (guest star Ted Danson) returns to launch his new foundation.
Whistleblower Deep Throat suggested that tack to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein to do just that in the 1976 film All the President's Men, based on the Watergate scandal that eventually took down Richard Nixon.
The same applies to the twisted Ponzi scheme enacted by financier Louis Tobin this season on Damages but Tobin has hidden his money trail rather cleverly. So well in fact that rottweiler attorney Patty Hewes and her crack team of investigators are no closer to uncovering his fortune's whereabouts than they were when the season began, a fact that leaves Patty's position as the court-appointed trustee in the case in serious jeopardy.
This week's episode of Damages ("Don't Forget to Thank Mr. Zedeck"), written by Aaron Zelman and Mark Fish and directed by Timothy Busfield, may have lacked the jaw-dropping plot twists of last week's stunning episode but that doesn't mean that we didn't receive any further clues about the overarching mysteries of the series' third season.
This week, the action was focused once more on the money trail as Tom and Patty attempted to uncover the hidden millions--or even billions--that Louis Tobin squirreled away somewhere, Joe sought proof of his father's arrangement with the mysterious Mr. Zedeck (Dominic Chianese), and Ellen discovered a possible link between Louis Tobin's death and Danielle Marchetti's.
So what did I think of this week's episode? Let's discuss.
While "Don't Forget to Thank Mr. Zedeck" focused on smaller discoveries and less shocking developments than the last two episodes, this week's installment did offer us some more clues and continued to build on the sense of doom and dread that have circled around this season.
Tom. Wisely, the writers have placed Tom Shayes front and center in this episode as we see the fallout from his involvement in Tobin's Ponzi scheme, an investment decision that has not only wiped him and Deb out but also his own parents and hers. A conversation between Tom and his father-in-law reveals just how desperate the situation is, as Deb's cancer-stricken mother is now likely to lose her medical coverage. Tom is trying to keep it together however he can but he's still not willing to jeopardize his role on the Tobin case by telling Patty that he's been compromised and has lost everything. Likewise, Deb isn't quite getting the severity of the situation, even when Roger Castle presents the reality of the financial hit they've taken.
But there's also a personal sense of vengeance enacted by Tom against their own financial adviser, Eric Nichols, who has a daughter at the school where Tom and Deb's daughter Megan attends. Nichols seems positively unperturbed by any of the Tobin case developments and he continues to flaunt his wealth despite the fact that many of his own clients have lost everything. Despite the dark path that Tom is on (one that, as we know, gets him killed in the future), I couldn't help but cheer when he started to beat Nichols in the school hallway. He's going to get their money back but we all know what dumpster that leads him to...
Patty. Tom's attack on Nichols does result in some new information as Tom believes that he's put together just how Louis Tobin was moving money after Patty receives some intelligence from a felon she put behind bars: Sterling Bittle (Wallace Shawn). Antigua is a hotbed for financial malfeasance and it's likely that Tobin was able to stash hundreds of millions down there. But there are a few complications: one someone would have to have traveled down to Antigua frequently to make the deposits at an offshore bank account and none of the Tobins nor their known associates have made the trips necessary. Plus, the account would have to have been opened by a resident of the Caribbean island where the bank is based. Hmmm...
I loved that Patty was more than willing to meet with Sterling and that he was willing to help her, despite their history. But there was also more than a glimmer of shared respect between the two of them, despite being on opposite sides of the law here. Sterling not only tells her about Antigua--for a price, of course--but also manages to set her up with his architect. An architect that just happens to be Patty's would-be paramour Julian Decker (Keith Carradine), who is willing to redo Patty's palatial apartment and expose what's going on under the "modern lines." (Metaphor much?) But he told her that it was "a lot of responsibility," a line that echoed her recurring nightmare in last week's episode.
Alex Benjamin. While Patty was desperate enough to go to Sterling Bittle for help, she knew that it would come with a price tag and she was all too willing to use her wannabe associate Alex to carry out Sterling's demand for a "conjugal visit." Alex, meanwhile, followed through on her testament to do whatever it took to win this job at Hewes & Shayes but she seemed outright nervous when it came to visit Sterling. Fortunately, she wasn't there to have sex with Sterling but rather to smuggle in some caviar, which he then wanted her to watch him eat in the conjugal visitation room. (I wouldn't have put it past Patty, however, to have prostituted Alex outright.)
While Alex proved that she was willing to do anything to win over Patty, Patty hadn't quite finished with her yet, sending her to Coventry and refusing to even let her wait in the lobby. Despite Ellen's admonishment to "run away," Alex is determined to get this job... and she eventually does, much to Ellen's chagrin. (You could see the blatant disappointment on Ellen's face as she realizes that Alex is doomed to be Patty's catspaw.)
Zedeck. Joe, meanwhile, finally made the acquaintance of his father's "partner," Mr. Zedeck, an owner of a chain of dry cleaners who makes him jump through a number of hoops in order to obtain proof that he has access to the Tobin fortune. But like Patty with Alex, Zedeck is testing Joe and Joe fails his game miserably. After participating in a series of rendezvouses, dead-drops, codes, and dry cleaner pick-ups, Joe doesn't receive a box of cash but rather a sable for Marilyn. Disgusted and frustrated, Joe believes that Zedeck is playing him and returns the coat.
It's a misstep. The coat was intended as a gift for Marilyn, a sign of support and friendship. By not giving her the coat (and failing to heed the woman at the dry cleaners' instructions to "be sure to thank Mr. Zedeck"), Joe throws the old man's gift back in his face, proving both that he is ungrateful ("how sharper than a serpent's tooth," as Shakespeare would say) and untrustworthy.
For his part, despite his abhorrence at Joe's behavior, Zedeck does produce some verifiable proof after scaring the daylights out of Joe by appearing in his hotel room. But Zedeck has left a present for Joe in the bottom drawer of the dresser: a suitcase filled with crisp bills. It's clear that Zedeck, who claims to be an old friend of Louis', did have an arrangement with his father. But why the mindgames, the tests, and the subterfuge? It's as Roger Castle says, however they moved the money, it was all done in person and not on the phone or via email. Just like Zedeck's first meeting with Joe at the end of the line in Queens, in fact. No paper trail means no money trail, after all.
Ellen. I'm really liking Ellen this season; she has a confidence and forthrightness that she didn't have in Season Two, a real sense of empowerment that's absolutely tangible in every scene. As the DA's office begins to investigate the possibility that Louis Tobin was murdered and they interview Richard Renfro (the man that Joe Tobin assaulted), Ellen uncovers a link between Louis' heart attack and Danielle Marchetti's death, one that implicates the involvement of the Tobins' family physician, Dr. Brandt.
They learn that both Louis and Danielle were killed by an overdose of potassium and while Brandt admits to giving the idea for the mixture to Louis as a way out, he can't explain how Danielle could have died the same way. But Ellen knows that she was murdered by someone... but has no idea that the killer is Carol Tobin.
Danielle Marchetti's daughter. I had assumed she was younger than she actually was and mistook her uniform for that of a private school student. But it turns out that the unnamed Ms. Marchetti is a flight attendant for a private airline.... and would be able to move money around to Antigua without anyone being the wiser, considering that Louis Tobin was very careful not to establish paternity (her birth certificate was left incomplete) and to keep the girl a secret from everyone, it would seem. It also makes the choice of Louis Tobin and Leonard Winstone to use the Farmingdale Airport to get Danielle out of the country all the more fitting, since it seems to be the locus through which her daughter is traveling. Interesting...
Four Months Later. Not much in the way of answers from the future timeframe this week but we did learn several important facts. One, that Tom had not only uncovered proof of the Tobin's secret fortune but had in fact managed to get his hands on some of his own lost money, placed in a duffel bag that Tom has at the apartment (which Ellen sees) and which is later found in his car by Detective Huntley after his murder.
Two, we now know that Tom was alive for two hours BEFORE Patty's car crash, it's possible that he was driving the car when it crashed into her. But why, really? I can't think of any motive at this time that would explain why he would want her dead but it's also possible that Tom's car--and the cash--was taken before his murder by someone else who also wants Patty dead.
Three, if Tom and Ellen have uncovered proof of Zedeck's means of procuring and securing hidden funds, it's enough of a reason why they would want to have Tom permanently silenced. And it also places Ellen in jeopardy as well. (I still maintain that Patty called Ellen after learning of Tom's death and that she had warned them from launching their own private investigation into the money.)
Four, it's unclear whether Patty knows about the money or not. Ellen makes a point of asking Tom whether Patty knows and Tom says that Patty won't be a problem. I think this is another red herring intended to make us think that Tom willingly attempted to kill Patty in the car crash but I don't think that's the case at all. There's still a big missing piece that we're not seeing that will tie together all of this disparate threads. Hmmm....
"I like where this case is heading," says Huntley. Me too.
What did you think of this week's episode? Is Zedeck far more dangerous than he seems? Will Ellen and the prosecutors realize that Carol murdered Danielle Marchetti? Just what is going on with Patty and Julian? And do you still agree with my theory from a few weeks back that Tom was waterboarded? Discuss.
Next week on Damages ("You Haven't Replaced Me"), Patty sends Tom out of the country to follow the money trail of the Tobin fraud; Ellen must choose between Patty and her new boss; Leonard Winston leaves the city under mysterious circumstances.
On this week's episode of Damages ("It's Not My Birthday"), written by Adam Stein and directed by Daniel Zelman, the investigation into the Tobin case and the nefarious actions of several interested parties were bookended by two very interesting nightmares on the part of Patty Hewes.
Throughout the three seasons of Damages that have aired, we've typically seen Patty as an imposing, almost invulnerable adversary who steamrolls everyone in her path. But every now and then--the beach breakdown, her recurring nightmares of death, her frequent summoning of Ray Fiske's ghost--we're privy to seeing her true vulnerability, the thoughts that keep her awake at night, the actions that she regrets, the skull beneath the skin.
Last night's episode offered just that opportunity, setting the action just a few days before Patty's latest birthday, a point of pride that she will only admit to those within her inner circle--Tom and Ellen, really--and deny to those on the outside. The nightmare that Patty finds herself unable to escape, in fact, contains appearances or references to those she allegedly trusts above everyone else: the long-dead Uncle Pete, Ellen Parsons, and Tom Shayes.
So what did I think about this week's fantastic and gasp-inducing installment? Let's discuss in detail.
The Dream. I thought it interesting and telling that the days before Patty's birthday would be so marked by nightmares. As the pressure begins to mount with regard to the Tobin case, Patty's subconscious is telling her something about her current circumstances. Her latest birthday, likely to be spent alone or working, looms large on her mind and we're given access to her dream state, where she sees her beloved Uncle Pete, her former protege Ellen, and her childhood heart's desire: a beautiful and magnificent horse that seems to fill the living room of her lonely Manhattan apartment. As Ellen says that it will require a lot of responsibility, Patty sees her feet covered in blood.
It's an image that's repeated at in the closing scene of the episode, another nightmare in which she decides to take a bite of one of the homemade cupcakes that Ellen has baked for her as a birthday present. There is blood on Patty's hands here, both literal and figurative. Another year of ruthless behavior, treachery, and malicious action is likely weighing on her mind as she awaits perhaps her ultimate and inevitable judgment, a self-fulfilling prophecy, a look into the dark mirror of her soul.
Ellen. I have to say that Ellen Parsons this season is a breath of fresh air after the twisted pit of vengeance that she fell into last season. She has made choices very different than those of Patty Hewes. She didn't want to be owned by Patty and wanted to experience life on her own terms rather than those of her keeper. While the apartment she owns might be empty, she's filling the void by cooking, by creating rather than destroying. She's flipped sides to work in the public sector rather than in the high stakes litigation world of Patty Hewes.
While she is clearly still haunted by David's death, she's made her peace with him even while she waits for her former lover Wes to return from wherever he is. It was telling that she immediately thought of Wes when she was told that she had a visitor at the D.A.'s office... but it was actually Josh Reston (Matthew Davis)--last seen during the UNR investigation in Season Two--newly transplanted to Manhattan, working the crime beat, and looking for an anonymous source in the district attorney's office. Despite the fact that he's angling for information loosely connected to the Tobin case, he and Ellen end up in bed together and she bakes cupcakes. It's a scene of domestic tranquility dramatically at odds with the hotel-living, revenge-seeking Ellen of last year. Can it be that she's finally found her place in the world? Possibly, but this is Damages, so any happiness she can carve out for herself will likely be all too short-lived.
Alex. Loved that Tom's preparatory interview with cutthroat legal associate Alex Benjamin (Boston Legal's Tara Summers) identically mirrored his conversation with a naive Ellen Parsons in the Damages pilot episode, down to the precise lines of dialogue as he prompts Alex to see if she's ready to meet with Patty, even offering her a hypothetical situation in which she needs to meet Patty during her sister's wedding (answer: she'd skip the wedding).
I'm not quite sure what to make of Alex. She seems ambitious and eager to please but her arrival at Hewes & Shayes, while they're in the midst of the Tobin case, seems a little too perfect. Alex tells Ellen that she wants to be owned by Patty. (Patty, meanwhile, groans when Tom tells her that the new associate candidate is a woman.) She even offers Patty a lie when Patty asks her for something that she hasn't ever told anyone about herself. The question itself is a trap: Patty doesn't want someone who gives up her secrets too easily. Alex's decision to lie--even though she knew Patty would see through it, as she was warned by Tom--wins Patty over.
Which worries me even more. Unless Patty sees Alex as a potential threat rather than a protege, she'll be opening herself--and the case--up to a stranger. And I'm extremely concerned that there's more to Alex than meets the eye.
Leonard Winstone. I think Martin Short is doing a phenomenal job as Leonard this season; he's made him shifty and ruthless but with a real emotional core. I loved the scene in which Leonard visits a prostitute (not for the first time, either) and, instead of engaging in sex, unburdens his soul. His true feelings about Louis emerge here as Leonard says that he was his father and his friend, a revelation that might explain just why Leonard was so willing to have Joe killed. He always wanted to be at Louis' right hand and clearly was the more trusted ally, despite the fact that he wasn't blood. (Though it's a distinction that Louis didn't make to his family; Carol recounts that when Louis hired Leonard, he told them that Leonard "is now family.")
Danielle Marchetti. Poor Danielle has no idea what she's gotten herself into. Joe is threatening to cut her off completely and take away everything that Louis had given her (though he's still unaware of the existence of Louis and Danielle's child), Gates is offering her immunity, and Patty is offering her... Well, Patty is offering her a chance to keep things as close to normal as they can remain and promises to look after her when she's able to track down the money and disperse the fortune. (Whether or not Patty would actually do that is unclear.)
Joe wants her to lie under oath when she's deposed by Gates, to read a prepared litany of lies that will shield them from the deposition's outcome. But Patty has another plan, one that's predicated on the fact that Gates is able to get to Danielle before her: she suggests that Danielle plead the fifth on the grounds that she could incriminate herself under oath. It's an uncomfortable position for Gates but it also means that Patty could gain the upper hand and still be deposed by Hewes & Shayes... or give them some information in exchange for the promise of future comfort.
Carol. However, that plan backfires, not because Danielle cracks under pressure during the deposition (rather, she's actually relatively calm as she pleads the fifth) but because the delirious and off-kilter Carol Tobin enacts her own revenge. I'm glad that Carol is becoming a bigger player in this plot; she's completely oblivious of her father's flaws and misdeeds and instead places the blame on his investors, saying that Louis only wanted to make people happy and give them what they wanted and that the investors knew what he was doing.
Her inability to accept the truth, even after learning that Louis had killed himself the night before his sentencing, leads to further madness: she uses the same poison that Louis used to commit suicide to murder Danielle Marchetti. I loved how director Daniel Zelman framed the shots with Danielle by having her wine glass clearly visible and prominent, a future murder weapon in plain sight. When Danielle gets Carol's coat--after Carol asks one too many questions about her relationship with Louis (and whether they were in love)--that's when Carol strikes, adding the poison compound to her drink. And later, we see Carol dispose of the evidence, casually throwing the vial into the river... as Tom discovers Danielle's body.
Zedeck. So who is the enigmatic Mr. Zedeck then? I'm thinking a shadowy financier with ties to organized crime. Zedeck claims, through his shifty "associate," that he can't conduct business or begin to pay out the Tobin fortune because the terms of the deal between him and Louis Tobin were broken when the authorities found out about Danielle Marchetti. While Leonard and Joe claim that Danielle won't be a problem, there's too much heat going on. End of conversation. Does Zedeck intend to uphold his end of the agreement or is he looking to keep the fortune for himself now that Louis is dead? Hmmm... Regardless, the fact that the associate is outside Danielle's apartment and that they are keeping tabs on her points to a larger interest here. These guys are dangerous and they will likely stop at nothing from keeping these funds for themselves now. Which brings me to...
Five Months Later. While last night's episode focused mostly on the present-day, we were given three scenes set in the future timeframe: one in which Huntley talks to Patty about Tom's death, one in which Tom attempts to escape the apartment by sliding out into the hallway (before he's dragged back in), and the last in which Tom makes a call--presumably to his wife Deb--and tells the recipient that he "loves [her]."
These scenes are important for a number of reasons. The phone call is another bait-and-switch to make us think that Tom and Ellen were having a sexual affair but it's also an indication that Tom was stabbed before he died and that those wounds, while serious looking, were superficial. The coroner's report indicated that Tom died from drowning but that his body wasn't in the water long enough to become bloated... and that it was thrown into a dumpster.
Last week, I offered a possible solution to Tom's death: that he was waterboarded in an effort to illicit information from him. I still believe this to be true. Besides for the existence of those empty water bottles in the apartment, there's the fact that Tom attempts to escape by crawling on his stomach. He hasn't been stabbed yet but he clearly seems to be in pain and desperate to escape. His appearance at the pay phone, as he clutches his side, adds further credence to this theory. His blue-tinged lips, pallid complexion, and shallow breathing could indicate that his lungs are filled with water and that he is unable to bring oxygen into his body. Hmmm...
But just who killed him and why was he being waterboarded? As I surmised last week, I believe Tom and Ellen had launched their own inquiry into the missing Tobin fortune, an investigation that will put them in the crosshairs of the mysterious Mr. Zedeck, who would appear to stop at nothing to keep prying hands off of the millions that Louis Tobin had secreted away. After all, Zedeck's associate--the one who meets with Leonard and Joe and is later seen outside Danielle's apartment--wears black leather gloves very similar to those worn by whoever throws Tom's corpse into the dumpster. Could it be that the true villain this season is finally coming into focus and might be even more deadly than we realized?
Marilyn. Then there's Marilyn Tobin, the grieving widow of Louis who clearly knows more than she's letting on. She finally gives Patty a concrete lead in her investigation and tells her that Danielle and Louis had had a child together and that Louis had been supporting them. That child is the likely recipient of the blind trust that appeared in Tobin's revised will and the likely source of the massive amounts of money that he had hidden. So why was it so vital that the daughter's identity be kept unknown? Was he able to use some creative financial loophole to put the money into the trust for a child that no one--other than Danielle--knew existed? And if so, that would explain why Danielle had to be sent away before anyone could connect the dots and find out about the daughter's existence.
Yet, there's something very ominous about the way that Marilyn is standing outside Danielle's apartment as Danielle's unknown teenage daughter pulls up, given the fact that Danielle is dead upstairs. Just what does Marilyn want from this girl and what will she say to her? We'll have to wait until next week to find out...
All in all, a killer episode of Damages that offered some plot twists galore and raised the stakes for everyone involved in the Tobin case. As we reach the halfway point of the season, we're seeing a very deadly situation begin to ensnare each of the interested parties and I cannot wait to see what whiplash-inducing plot twists the Kessler Brothers and Daniel Zelman pull out next.
What did you think of this week's episode? Agree with my theory about Tom's death? What do you make of Alex and of Josh? Are they on the level or do they have ulterior motives? And just who is Mr. Zedeck? Discuss.
Next week on Damages ("Don't Forget To Thank Mr. Zedeck"), Patty is under pressure to make progress in the Tobin case, while Ellen uncovers new evidence about Louis Tobin's death and Tom starts to crack from his financial woes.
