“Trust no one.” – Glenn Close as Patty Hewes
Damages: The Complete First Season DVD Review
By L.B. Bryant
Upon the start of this series, two stories are immediately introduced. In the first story we meet Patty Hewes (played by Glenn Close), a high stakes New York litigator who has reached the top of her field through hard work, manipulation and sacrifice. Patty is locked in a huge class action lawsuit against an arrogant and corrupt millionaire named Arthur Frobisher (Ted Danson). Arthur is accused of an insider trading scam that bankrupted five thousand of his employees, and while he managed to escape with a not guilty verdict at the criminal trial, his civil trial is not going anywhere nearly as well.
In the second, related story we meet Ellen Parsons (Rose Byrne) who is fresh out of law school and looking for her first job with a firm before starting life with her fiancé David. After she impresses Patty by choosing family over her career, she is hired. In this story, though, we pick things up six months into the future when Ellen has been accused of murdering her fiancé, and Patty is nowhere to be found.
Over the course of thirteen episodes, the audience is taken on a wild ride, which will clue the audience in on who killed whom, why they did it, and just how guilty Arthur Frobisher is.
I was unfamiliar with this series before I began watching it, but the first thirty seconds were enough to grip me completely and interest me in this story. From the first second, this is a series that prides itself on being a dark legal drama, and exploring just how far it can take you from your comfort zone in order to tell a mesmerizing story.
It’s hard to know where to even begin with a series like this because so many of its strengths also manage to be its weaknesses. The writing in this first season is absolutely phenomenal, with twists and clues dropped into every episode that the audience will never see coming. On the flip side of the coin, however, it makes the series impossible to watch casually. If you want to have any chance at all of following the labyrinthine plot, you have to pay attention and remember subtle clues, sometimes dropped six episodes earlier. I can imagine that if one were to watch this series on television and only see one episode a week, it would be very difficult to remember it all. I can’t help thinking that this is a series better watched at your own leisure on DVD.
Another strong asset of the series is its characters. Every character in this series is compelling and very strong. In the world of high stakes litigation, there is absolutely no room for weakness, and Glenn Close plays Patty Hewes with such raw intensity, its almost impossible to look away whenever she’s onscreen. Even the opposing attorney, Ray Fiske (Zeljko Ivanek), is played with complete conviction that won me over.
The series is not without its faults, however. With a primary cast that numbers around a half dozen and a supporting cast which numbers about the same, one would think it’d be entirely likely to find at least a few likable characters to cheer for. While there are certainly a few characters who are likable--or even manage to show some redeeming qualities--the vast majority of the characters in this series are just completely unlikable.
Patty may be one of the primary characters of the series, but her manipulative and conniving nature make her such an anti-heroine, she is hard to care about. Even Ellen, theoretically the primary heroine, starts the series as very sweet, but the flash forwards find her as bitter, angry and callous.
The villains in the series are thoroughly developed, written and presented in interesting ways throughout the season. Ted Danson, as the completely arrogant and self-obsessed millionaire who can’t figure out why everyone is after him, is chilling. His lawyer, Ray Parke, is equally unnerving.
Perhaps the biggest flaws of the first season are the loose ends left at the end. While it is obvious certain things are left open because, one can assume, they will be resolved--or at least brought up again--in the second season, there are some things (such as the plot point between David and Lila) that feel like they were left open-ended because no one wanted to figure out how to close them adequately. Though with the sheer amount of detail that was spent on making sure that the audience only knew what the writers wanted them to know, I find the latter option to be the least likely of the two and instead, I feel more like the writers wanted to give the audience every single reason to get them back next season.
This thirteen episode set is on three discs and housed in a single cardboard box. The disc cases are slim paks, which will save space on your bookshelves but the holding box is rather flimsy and didn’t stand up to very much abuse.
The opening menu screen is fairly standard, with a still shot from the opening credits showing the New York City skyline. It’s not exactly reeking of innovation, but we’ll let it slide. What won’t slide, though, are the terrible warning screens that plague the set. On every disc, if you hit the “play all episodes” option, you have to sit through 30 seconds or so of warning screens (in two languages). If you happen to have a busy schedule that prevents you from watching all the episodes in one sitting, you have to sit through the warning screens each time you start an episode, which becomes a very taxing experience, very quickly.
