Damages: Starting Soon on FX

[rosered]

Has anybody been seeing the promos for this show that have been airing lately?

I think it looks SO good, and I *love* Glenn Close (the "if you were a man, I'd be scared" line in the promo is totally the best thing ever). I'm already kind of intrigued about what's going to happen on this show, just from watching the ads....like why that girl ends up covered in blood, etc.

I think FX just makes the best shows lately. I'm really looking forward to this. Is anyone else gonna check it out?

[Janice]

I plan on watching it. I like Glenn Close too, and I'm a big Ted Danson fan. They're heavily promoting this show, and have been for months now. I hope it's as good as it looks.

[Janice]

http://apnews.excite.com/article/20070719/D8QFULAG0.html

Glenn Close Stars in Her First TV Series

NEW YORK (AP) - Patty Hewes keeps the audience guessing, like everyone around her. The nation's foremost high-stakes litigator, she plays mind games with consummate skill. She can be silky and seductive, cold and ruthless. She can sweet-talk or threaten with equal dispatch.

All this Patty demonstrates when "Damages," a crafty legal thriller, premieres on FX at 10 p.m. EDT Tuesday.

Starring as Patty, Glenn Close makes a strong case for tuning in. But "Damages" has even more to recommend it: A mysterious murder; a highly sympathetic victim of a vicious assault.

There's also Patty's class-action lawsuit against billionaire Arthur Frobisher, who's accused of selling off stock in his teetering company while his employees are left holding the bag.

Suffice it to say that in Frobisher (played by Ted Danson with steely bonhomie), Patty has a menacing opponent.

Caught in between: Patty's hotshot protege, Ellen Parsons, whose career - and life - are put in jeopardy once she arrives at Hewes Associates.

Hired out of law school, Ellen (Rose Byrne) is in awe of her new boss. But nagging questions quickly arise. Ellen wonders what Patty is up to. And so, of course, do viewers.

Even the actress who plays Patty Hewes admits to difficulty figuring her out, early on.

"I was very intimidated by her," says Close during an interview at Brooklyn's Steiner Studios not long ago.

What would be the next step? It's a familiar process for Close, transforming a new character into one of her fearless portrayals.

"Usually when I get on the set, I've overcome _" she catches herself and substitutes a milder phrase: "I've worked through it.

"Until then, you feel that you're just commenting on something with your performance, rather than fulfilling it. You have no idea who this person is you're trying to play, so it all seems incredibly superficial - until you find that whatever-it-is that makes it real.

"I've gone periodically to a wonderful coach, Harold Guskin, over the years, with scenes," she says. What happens there? "You just force stuff out of your mouth and start taking charge of the material."

For "Damages," Close tore into the scene where Patty confides to Ellen about her problematic son.

"Do yourself a favor, Ellen. Don't have kids," says Patty. "Kids are like clients: They want all of you, all the time."

After a few more musings while she signs a stack of briefs, she lets loose with a chuckle. Then, wearing an enigmatic smile, she praises Ellen for not falling for things that aren't true.

"That, to me, was the script's most important scene in terms of what Patty does or does not reveal," says Close. "What I really liked about it was that, by the end, you didn't know if it was all (nonsense) or not. Was she putting Ellen on?

"So it was a tricky scene, and I had to just work through it, so I could keep people guessing whether Patty is really sincere, or just saying something for effect."

Would knowing whether Patty means it or not affect how Close played the scene?

"Yes," she replies, "and I think I do know that. But I'm not going to tell anybody."

Close, 60, has had a distinguished career making characters real for films, the stage and television.

But her first stretch on a TV series was just two years ago as LAPD Capt. Monica Rawling, who commanded the corrupt Farmington precinct for the fourth season of "The Shield."

It was a magnificent performance (helping the cop drama land a Peabody award). But Monica was a role with 13-episodes-and-out closure, as well as overarching clarity.

"I said to the writers, 'I want her to be a good guy.'" Along with many other things, she was.

Then FX President John Landgraf asked Close if she wanted a series of her own. They agreed it would be in the legal arena.

"Our best shows attach themselves parasitically to a familiar genre," says Landgraf, speaking from Los Angeles. "Then we bend it, even turn it on its head," as with the network's like-no-other doctor series, "Nip/Tuck," and firehouse drama, "Rescue Me."

Created by Todd A. Kessler, Glenn Kessler and Daniel Zelman, "Damages" is meant to co-exist as a thriller and a textured melodrama. "That's TWO bull's-eyes you have to hit," says Landgraf, who cites another challenge of the series: the "larger-than-life but realistic" woman at its core.

Does Close feel she has a full grasp of that woman?

"Actually," she replies, "I had a conversation this morning with Todd, telling him I'm really coming to the point where I need to know a little bit more about Patty's background."

Only a little bit?

"I'm not as hard on myself as I used to be," says Close, relaxed in her dressing room. "I know now you have to be patient." On "Damages," her patience is richly paying off.

[rosered]

I've loved Glenn Close in every role she's ever done, I think, so the fact that she speaks so highly of this part and the show's writing and working with FX, just really makes me feel good about this. She seems like she's got a good handle on the character already.

The Wall Street Journal likes it! (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118489900959072597.html)


Damages" is a dark legal thriller set, and filmed, in New York (FX, Tuesdays, 10-11 p.m. EDT). Its crowning glory is Glenn Close as Patty Hewes, the passive-aggressive head of a high-stakes litigation firm. This season, the firm will be waging war over one major case on a battlefield far more vicious than a courtroom.
[Glenn Close]
Glenn Close as a high-powered lawyer in FX's "Damages."

Ostensibly, Patty is on the side of the angels, fighting on behalf of some 5,000 former employees who apparently were cheated out of their life savings by their boss. He's named Arthur Frobisher, and Ted Danson gives a chilling performance as a man descending ever further into evil. Yet Patty, who seems at first to be a legal version of the Meryl Streep character in "The Devil Wears Prada," is equally frightening in her way. This is no zealot whom we automatically admire for doing anything to win her case. Something is rotted in Patty's soul, too.

In the middle of this morass is new associate Ellen Parsons, played by the wide-eyed Rose Byrne. Like almost everyone in the series, she's been lured -- first by the thrill of working for famous Patty -- onto a dangerous path. Early on in her employment there are what should be warning signs that she has entered a world of duplicity and deceit. Yet the perks, such as a new Upper West Side apartment for her and her physician fiancé, are too good to resist. In this noir world, nobody remains wholly innocent for long.

We grasp that almost from the start, because the series opens in a present that follows Ellen, bloody and clothed only in underpants and a raincoat, staggering through the streets of New York. The story then flashes back to six months earlier, when she first got a job with the Hewes firm. It will take many episodes to get from then to now, and to learn exactly how and why it all went so wrong.

Knowing from the outset the key elements of the ending, which includes a grisly murder, does not spoil the thrill. Despite its fantastic nature, the story is an onion with a thousand layers, each one a satisfying mystery of its own. The only drawback is that "Damages' can't be consumed in one sitting or out of order. To feel the menace here, and follow the progression of its many characters through hell, you'll have to watch it religiously.

[Janice]

I enjoyed it a great deal. Great acting all around, interesting plot and stylish show. I have high hopes for the show.

[rosered]

Who else is still watching this show? I can't believe how good it is, and how I can't ever tell what twists are coming.

Who attacked Ellen? Who killed her fiancee? I can't wait until the flashbacks catch up to the present day, because I really want to know how Patty is involved in all of this!

I'm loving the suspense though. And Glenn Close and Ted Danson are both doing amazing jobs.

[Janice]

I haven't missed an episode, and I'm really enjoying this series. It's hard to tell who's the bad guy, although with Greg getting tossed out with the trash, I'd say Frobisher isn't looking too great.

I like the character of Frobisher's lawyer, Ray Friske. He's got the Southern accent going on, and his bio states he's Yugoslavian-born. He's a wonderful actor.

Patty Hewes, what a witch. She wants to OWN people. I feel bad for Ellen, and poor David. This is a real mystery. Tom, one minute I think he's helping Ellen, and the next, he's in thick with Patty. This is a fantastic show.