After a year long hiatus, Damages returned last night to FX. Academy Award winner Glenn Close, the fabulous Rose Byrne (huge crush in this corner), and a top-of-his-game Tate Donovan, are joined this season by William Hurt, Timothy Olyphant, and Marcia Gay Harden, among other notables. How can a TV cast get better than that? I have no idea.
The second season starts off in a similar fashion to the first. There’s a six-month flash forward in which we see Parsons (Rose Byrne) calmly threatening to kill someone with a glass of bourbon in one hand, and pistol in the other. Obviously, this isn’t going to be Arthur Frobisher (Ted Danson), because the brother writing team of Kessler and Kessler are just too damn smart for that. Damages thrives on its twist and turns, fantastic acting (Byrne and Close play off each other to perfection), and crisp, often film quality direction. My immediate guess would be Olyphant’s character, Ellen’s skeezy, anger counselling partner (remember her husband’s recent murder), but again, this is probably too obvious. As the first season showed us, there are always quite a few pieces still missing to the puzzle, often until the final act.
Last night also saw the welcome return of Zeljko Ivanek (who won an Emmy for his performance last year), if only for a brief moment. Who cares that he was last seen blowing his brains out all over Patty’s chic office? I sure don’t. Ted Danson’s loathsome Arthur Frobisher also puts in a quick appearance, drawing both sympathy and disgust. I’ve read that he doesn’t show up in the second episode, but I hope it’s not the last we hear of him. He’s a richly layered character, like most in the show, and it would be a shame to lose him. While Damages might not be the most intelligent of the legal shows (I’m looking at you The Wire) it’s certainly better than 90% of the crap out there. It’s also got a hell of a title sequence, which I link below.
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