DAMAGES 3.1 - "Your Secrets Are Safe"

WRITERS: Todd A. Kessler, Glenn Kessler & Daniel Zelman
DIRECTOR: Todd A. Kessler
GUEST CAST: Lily Tomlin, Keith Carradine, Len Cariou, Ben Shenkman, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Tom Noonan, Michael Gaston, Reiko Aylesworth, J. Tucker Smith, Michael Laurence, Robert Sedgwick, Darren Goldstein, Ana Reeder, Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick, Campbell Scott & Martin Short

[SPOILERS] After a bumpy sophomore season that didn't connect with me on an emotional level and became a slog, I'm relieved to see Damages hit back with a strong and nimble third season premiere, set nearly a year later. Over this hour, some of my concerns about last season were swiftly addressed: the multiple flashforwards/-backs that swamped season 2 have been downsized to just the one, and this year's legal battle is more personal and less corporate in nature...

Patty Hewes (Glenn Close) is now working on behalf of the government to recover billions of dollars lost during a Ponzi scheme[*] setup by corrupt Wall Street businessman Louis Tobin (Len Cariou) -- elderly patriarch of an apparently ignorant family that include proud wife Marilyn (Lily Tomlin) and crestfallen son Joe (Campbell Scott), who've been left destitute now the family's assets have been frozen. It's up to Patty to find the missing billions accrued by Louis' deception, to repay the investors what they're owed and perhaps clear the rest of the Tobin family in the process.

Across the city, Patty's former-protégé Ellen Parsons (Rose Byrne) is now working at the District Attorney's office on a drug case, apparently having moved on with her life and career. She's less solemn, at any rate, while her new job gives her the opportunity to go out into the field and mete out justice on the streets. Of course, she's destined to be drawn into Patty's contentious Wall Street case like an asteroid to a black hole -- likely via her boss Curtis Gates (Ben Shenkman), who's involved with the criminal side of the Tobin fallout.

Damages has always attracted an astonishing amount of famous faces and talented character actors, and that tradition continues in season 3 with Lily Tomlin, Campbell Scott, Keith Carradine and Martin Short already introduced in key supporting roles. The latter being another example of Damages giving typecast actors a chance to subvert audience expectations. Seeing the impish Short (known for '80s comedy roles in the likes of Three Amigos) play a devious lawyer is almost as surprising as "nice guy" Ted Danson was playing a crooked billionaire who had sex with prostitutes.

The signature flashforwards (set six months in the future) appear to only be tackling one storyline, which makes it a lot easier to follow than the miasma of season 2's multiple subplots. Here, Patty is involved in a car crash where the offending driver flees the scene, but the police discover the car was registered to Patty's trusted associate Tom Shayes (Tate Donovan), whose dead body is later found in a dumpster beside a creepy homeless man who has a luxury handbag given to Ellen as a gift from Patty in the present-day. And we also see a more contented Patty, who's seen regularly spurning the advances of an alluring man called Julian Decker (Carradine, again utilizing his innate easygoing charm.)

Overall, "Your Secrets Are Safe" offered plenty of fresh intrigue, and the adroit plot did a fantastic job outlining the stakes and introducing new characters, mostly avoiding the sense of information overload that Damages has been guilty of in the past. In simplifying their narrative and tackling a legal case with strong human ties (who cared about faceless stock market manipulations and dreary environmentalism last year?), I get the feeling the writers understood what went wrong last time and are now repairing things with an eye on what worked in the magnificent first season.

Of course, because we're into the third season, a certain amount of familiarity with Damages format occasionally undercut some surprises (who didn't think that homeless guy would have Ellen's handbag in the future?), but there were still some genuinely shocking moments -- not least the foreknowledge that genial Tom's days are numbered, just as he finally got his name on the door...

Asides

-- A note to directors of television; audiences are now too aware that a car crash is going to happen when you position the camera low, in the passenger seat, facing the driver as they nonchalantly drive along. That familiar angle has been used ad nauseum ever since Six Feet Under's pilot. It's no longer surprising, so please try and find another way.

-- The recap opening with split-screens being used to summarize the events of season 1 and 2 was like 24 on steroids! I'm not sure if it really helped any newcomers catch-up, though -- it probably just confused the hell out of them! I've seen those episodes and even I felt bewildered.

-- It was great to see Tom Noonan return as that detective; another example of a typecast actor (mostly fated to play creepy villains) getting to play the opposite.

-- Was I alone in failing to recognize Campbell Scott? The sign of a great actor.

-- One thing I particularly love about Damages is that it's a legal drama that's barely set foot inside a court room. I only recall one court scene back in season 1, and even that lasted less than two-minutes!

24 FEBRUARY 2010: BBC1, 10.45PM
25 FEBRUARY 2010: BBC HD, 10PM

[*] A Ponzi scheme is a type of investment fraud where investors are repaid using their own money, or that of the other investors, and not from any actual profit being made. Familiarize yourself here.