Damages has held onto its established MO -- show the end result of a crime, then fill in the gaps along the way -- for so long that when the show does something different for a little while, those episodes feel like failures.
And yeah, last week's installment -- which just about jettisoned much of the season's main story to focus on subplots and interesting yet inessential characters like Arthur Frobisher -- felt irresponsible this late in the game.
But this week, despite being free of any flashbacks or forwards (unless you count Ellen's dream about her childhood), helped move things forward a good deal, adding new wrinkles to the story, a series of unexpected betrayals and new ways of looking at crucial characters.
For example, there's Leonard Winstone/Lester Wiggans. When he went home to visit his mother a few weeks ago and had a confrontation with his father -- in which the father threatened to blow the whistle on Len's real identity -- it seemed like Dad Wiggans was another variation on the Backwoods Blackmailer (see also: the really crappy, boring scenes with Katee Sackhoff earlier this year on 24.)
But as we learn tonight, he's not just a blackmailer, he's a grifter, one that apparently taught his son the family trade, and one who's smart enough to realize Louis Tobin has money stashed away somewhere.
Maybe in Stuart Zedeck's foundation. As Zedeck tells Len tonight, he wants to keep Marilyn Tobin away from the foundation -- even though it means she can't take her beloved goodwill trip to Africa -- because it would put too much scrutiny on what they're doing.
Meanwhile, Tom's starting to crack -- paying for three mortgages and chemotherapy adds up, I'm sure -- and pushes Tessa Marchetti too hard. Tessa runs to the DA; one of Ellen's DA co-horts rats her out, and Tessa's arrested. If Jack Bauer was here, he'd point out that she was Their Only Lead. (Also: Damn it!)
And Tessa's arrest probably also means the end of Ellen's job with the DA. But Ellen has bigger things on her mind. As the episode ends, she's off to see Anne Connell, her (probable) biological mother. Where or how this fits in, I don't know, other than it gives her and Patty something else in common: Patty lost a daughter, Ellen a mother. As long as we don't learn Ellen really is Patty's daughter.
Other thoughts:
- Not sure if it was necessary for Albert Wiggans to actually spell out that he was a con man in this episode. The way he waltzed in portraying Len's former law school professor kind of gave us the idea.
- Why is it that Patty's dreams are sort of vague, while Ellen's present a mystery that can be solved in under an hour?
- The scene where the judge gives Ellen a week to come up with new evidence was like the most polite version ever of the Angry Black Superior scene from countless crappy cop movies.
Tom Coombe
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