BY JOEL BROWN/MeeVee

FX perhaps could have picked a better time for a drama about civil litigation than now, when late-night comics are still making jokes about that asshat who sued his Washington D.C. drycleaners for $54 million for losing his pants.

At least in the early stages of "Damages," debuting tonight on the cable channel, we’re supposed to be glad for heroes like the big-time litigator Patty Hewes, played by Glenn Close. But one of the things I like the most about "Damages" is that after the first two hours, I’m not at all sure Hewes will still be a hero when the first 13 weeks are over.

Hewes, played steely and sharp by Close, is a relentless advocate for the little guy. She likes a good class action suit, she relishes making the big guys pay. That she loves to fight for the underdog suggests we should overlook her ruthlessness and ferocity as necessary attributes in an effective advocate.

But she is soooome ruthless, as freshly minted lawyer Ellen Parsons (Rose Byrne) discovers when she joins Hewes’ firm. When not making public speeches about the greed of corporate titans, Hewes is a killer queen herself, feared by her own staff much like Meryl Streep’s fashion-mag editor in "The Devil Wears Prada."

Unlike Anne Hathaway’s fashion neophyte in that flick, however, Ellen isn’t going to end up with just some modest life lessons and a new wardrobe.

When we first see her, she’s staggering out of a swanky New York apartment building, underdressed and covered in blood. It’s not called "Damages" for nothing, people. Quickly she becomes the prime suspect in the murder of a man inside ??? and it’s only then that we flash back to the beginning of Ellen’s story.

She hires on with Hawes’ firm just in time to join the team on a particularly challenging case. Ol’ Patty is suing a corporate scumbag named Arthur Frobisher (Ted Danson), whose resume roughly matches that of the top guys at Enron. He sold his company’s stock for top dollar just before it crashed and wiped out the life savings of his employees. Now Patty wants to take his millions to make them whole again.

But hold the violins. This woman plays serious hardball. Chipper, overworked Ellen is shocked when Patty fires her loyal sidekick (Tate Donovan) after a single mistake. She’s even more shocked when Patty starts screaming at the him to get the fuck out of the limo, now. A serious personality problem seems to leak through Hewes’ polished veneer in this scene; it’s like a perfectly modulated little guitar solo by Close.

It’s just one first sign of some seriousness nastiness ahead. It’s going to be a bumpy but very watchable ride.

(No Ratings Yet)  

 Loading ...

A young woman stumbles out of an apartment building in Manhattan. Spattered with blood, she wanders through the city streets in shock.

There’s no need for a spoiler alert on this information: The scene comes at the very beginning of the terrific new series “Damages” (9 p.m. Tuesday, FX), which proves in the first few minutes that it has what it takes to hook viewers and keep them truly hooked.

What happened to this woman, whom we learn is a young lawyer named Ellen Parsons (Rose Byrne)? Something has gone terribly wrong, the police surmise after picking her up, but her blank expression reveals little. Piece by piece, we learn how Parsons ended up wandering around in stunned disarray, and that story promises to be every bit as interesting as the most tightly plotted big-screen thriller.

If that knotty tale were the only attraction to this series, that would be almost enough, given the strength of the writing by series creators Daniel Zelman, Todd A. Kessler (a “Sopranos” veteran) and his brother Glenn Kessler. But on top of that crackerjack plot, we’ve got a performance of tightly coiled intensity from Glenn Close as top New York litigator Patty Hewes.

Close is one of those performers who is so innately compelling that I’d literally watch her read the telephone book. Fortunately she has a lot of meaty material to work with here, and as with Jon Hamm on AMC’s “Mad Men” and Holly Hunter on TNT’s “Saving Grace,” two other fine new cable offerings, I can’t see anyone else making this role work. Close and her character Hewes were made for each other.

Hewes is one of those powerful people who keeps everyone around her off balance — she’s a confidant one minute, a stern taskmaster the next, and one gets the sense that she loves the power she derives from keeping everyone wondering about what she’ll do next.

Close knows that Hewes doesn’t need to strut and preen to get noticed; charismatic people can dominate a room without saying a word. With a gesture, a few well-chosen words, an enigmatic smile, Hewes can send her underlings scurrying or give opposing counsel a migraine. And she knows that. Part of the fun of her profession, you sense, is how it gives her free rein to manipulate others for her own purposes.

We follow two different story lines in this show — and it’s a credit to the show’s writers and directors that the two plots mesh so well. One thread tracks the police who investigate what sent Parsons stumbling through the city streets.

The other story line follows Parsons as she, against the advice of another big-shot lawyer, takes a job with Hewes’ high-powered firm. There Parsons receives an education in the ways of not just the legal world but of Hewes, who is one of the most feared litigators in the nation.

Parsons sees what Hewes’ career has cost the older woman — her teenage son is clearly a problem child — but Parsons forges on anyway. She thinks she can enter the big leagues and remain unchanged, and we know at the outset that that story doesn’t end well.

Hewes’ biggest case has her suing tycoon Arthur Frobisher (Ted Danson), on behalf of his employees, who contend that his actions destroyed the company that employed them and that he enriched himself at their expense. Did Frobisher do anything wrong? Nobody gets to that kind of magnate status without being at least a little nasty — but is Frobisher capable of much worse than that? It’s a testament to Danson that it’s just as easy to believe in the slippery Frobisher’s guilt as it is in his possible innocence.

In the present, Parsons sees how Hewes frantically works to get the Frobisher case to go her way — and as the viewers, we see even more shenanigans that Parsons is too naive to figure out. And in the future, we know that six months after getting hired, Parsons’ entire life comes apart.

Yes, this is a show with a lot of lawyers (Tate Donovan plays Hewes’ chief lieutenant to good effect), but there are few courtroom scenes. “Law & Order” this is not. “Damages” is really two things: an impressively constructed thriller and an intriguing, timely exploration of what people at the apex of society will do to hold on to their power.

And that answer may just be: Anything.

source: http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/

(No Ratings Yet)  

 Loading ...

By Mary McNamara, Times Staff Writer

Scheming is in danger of becoming a lost art on television. Ditto malice and guile. Lying we’ve got plenty of; cheating, violence, your basic psychotic rage are all pretty well represented, especially on cable. But guileful, malicious scheming, that requires an artist. Someone with a face full of sunshine, a mind six steps ahead of everyone else and a heart that pumps sleet. Someone like Glenn Close.

Or rather, Patty Hewes as played by Glenn Close on "Damages," which premieres tonight on FX. The legal drama will undoubtedly be classified as a vehicle for Close’s first long-term commitment to television. (Two years ago, she did a stellar turn guest-starring on a season of "The Shield.") Although this is not quite fair — there are many fine actors in the cast of "Damages," including Ted Danson — I say stick with whatever keeps Close playing the most beautifully vicious and complicated woman on any screen since Bette Davis stopped making movies. So star vehicle it is.

Conjured from the combined talents of creators Glenn Kessler, Todd A. Kessler and Daniel Zelman, Patty Hewes is a high-stakes litigator with the sort of reputation that causes other attorneys to grow pale and twitch at the mere mention of her name. Far too fearsome to be a protagonist, she requires a less defined foil. That honor falls to Ellen Parsons (Rose Byrne), a doe-eyed, newly minted lawyer who somehow lands a job at Hewes & Associates. Think of it as "The Devil Wears Prada" gone noir. Very, very noir.

This is clear from the very beginning because "Damages" opens with Ellen, bloody and half naked, running from her apartment building. So a little darker than, say, "L.A. Law." Early episodes of "Damages" are told in fractured time frames — the present, which is the aftermath of that scene, gives way to flashbacks explaining the events that led up to it.

It is an unusual structure but a wise move on the creators’ part. As a lawyer, Patty tries civil cases against big companies. (Damages, get it?) When Ellen enters her lair, er, firm, Patty is suing Chief Executive Arthur Frobisher (Danson, with that terrific silver hair), who may have coerced his employees into investing in his company mere days before he dumped his stock. To prove this, Patty must find someone who saw him talking to his stockbroker in the key two-day period. As far as McGuffins go, this is not the most spine-tingling. Though the theft of workers’ savings and 401(k) plans makes for tragic headlines, as far as televised drama … well, it’s much better to open with a bloody young woman running half-naked in front of a cab.

The contrast between the scenes of past and present help create that dramatic Grail — the true psychological thriller. It doesn’t matter, in the end, what the actual case is. The show is about the battle of two ruthless adversaries, Patty and Arthur, and Patty’s psychological seduction of Ellen. "You know what I like about you?" Patty tells the younger woman, her head tilted charmingly to one side. "You don’t fall for" B.S.

As any world-class player knows, the first thing you have to do is make the mark feel smarter than she might actually be. The case grows ever more complicated — the person who can put Frobisher and his broker in the same room, for instance, turns out to be Katie, Ellen’s future sister-in-law — and it’s hard to know how much seduction is necessary. For all her alabaster blandness, Ellen seems like a pretty tough cookie. But Close’s chilling ability to say the most cold-blooded thing in such a well-modulated, lovely manner would be hypnotic if she were selling shoes.

"How old were you?" she asks Katie (Anastasia Griffith) at their initial meeting.

"I’m sorry?"

"I’d just turned 6."

"When what?"

"When I realized I was a good liar. How old were you?"

Great dialogue, perfect delivery. Close is a big old-fashioned American movie star (thank heavens there are a few of them left), and in "Damages" she proves that genus is just as flexible as its British cousin. Like Helen Mirren and Judi Dench, her performance illuminates rather than outshines with its high wattage. It would be easy to compare Patty to Alex ("I will not be ignored") Forrest in "Fatal Attraction," but that would miss the point. Alex was a damaged, out-of-control victim, while Patty is precisely the opposite. Besides, it isn’t at all clear that she is the bad guy. Frobisher seems capable of bilking his employees and stopping at nothing, including murder, to cover it up. If that turns out to be the case, then won’t Patty’s extreme measures seem justified, her schemes and machinations something like heroic? And on whose hands, besides Ellen’s, will the blood be?

We’ve got a whole season to find out. Can’t wait.

(No Ratings Yet)  

 Loading ...