MagneticMediaFed

I’ll tell you what, gang. Damages is a hard show to warm to, but sticking with it was probably the smartest thing I’ve done all year. Part of the problem is it’s really hard to see where they were trying to go in those first almost half-dozen episodes or so, and even if you got the sense of a bigger picture it seemed like they couldn’t possibly pull it all off. Well, after last night’s (sorry, I gotta say it) tour de force episode I believe — good god do I believe. More after the jump…

I’ll leave the episode’s intricacies for those who want to discuss it in the comments. The fact of the matter is no matter how clear things become I’m always a little fuzzy on how exactly things went down. This likely has more to do with my inability to keep track of the title cards that tell us how many days or months ahead of or behind the action we are, than it does a flaw in the storytelling (unless you consider a maddening amount of jumps forward and backward in time to be a storytelling flaw — I’m still on the fence).

If anything, what really struck me this week was how you simply can’t beat a good mystery. It’s what made the first season of Veronica Mars so brilliant. Great mystery writing works because it engages the viewer. It boasts, “Think you’re so smart? Figure this one out!” and ultimately rewards the audience if they are able to connect the dots as well as rewarding those who couldn’t figure it out with the currency of surprise. Mysteries — that is good mysteries, not your typical crime-of-the-week fare — only ask you for your attention and trust in return for a level of entertainment you simply can’t get in most other genres. Honestly, seems like a pretty good trade-off.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t give major props to Zeljko Ivanek (pronounced ZELJKO IVANEK) who turned Ray Fiske from a kind of annoying James Carville knock-off to what is now (or what was) the single most dynamic and significant character in the entire story. My boss at work called it a few weeks back as to what his “big secret” was, though I don’t think any of us saw him as being the singular force that started this whole mess to begin with. Though what was most startling was how his influence was based almost exclusively on matters of the heart and in no way acts of maliciousness. By the episode’s end, I felt a deep sorrow for Ray Fiske. He was the only lawyer on the show who seemed to be playing by the rules (all of the deaths seem linked more directly to Frobisher than anything Ray dealt with), or at least what we can make of the rules in these cut-throat dealings. When he told Patty that he couldn’t ever work for her, you knew what was coming next, and you knew he was the most honorable person in the room.

As for the murder mystery, funny how it’s beginning to look a lot like a season-long mcguffin, something this is as brilliant as it is frustrating, though we won’t know for sure for two more weeks. I will say this, that scene toward the end where Ellen walked in to her apartment and Lila, the crazy stalker, is sitting at the dining room table while the camera follows Ellen’s path through the apartment to the kitchen and then back again without her ever seeing the woman, only to notice the front door was left open gave me serious goose-chills. Creep city!

I’m dying to see how all of this plays out.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 10th, 2007 at 2:03 pm and is filed under Damages, FX. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.