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TV Tonight: The Damages Season Two Finale

BuzzSugar — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 15:30:17 -0700

I'm both relieved and dismayed that Damages ends its second season tonight. The relief comes from finally putting the pieces together - whom does Ellen shoot? what is UNR really up to? - after another breathless season of twists and flashes through time. The dismay comes from knowing it will be a year until I get to see this show again.

No show keeps me guessing quite like Damages, and after the first season, I learned to trust the writers: they delivered a finale that wrapped up a satisfying amount of loose ends and left me with something to look forward to in the next batch of episodes. I'm hoping for the same result tonight, since we already know the show will be back for a third season.

Have you been watching this season? Which characters do you think were the best additions to the cast? (I've been loving The Wire alumni Clarke Peters as Dave and John Doman as Walter Kendrick.) Which twist knocked you on the floor the most? By the way, if you're recording tonight's finale, double-check your DVR: The episode's set to run 92 minutes. For now, you can check out a preview for the episode, titled "Trust Me," if you read more.

Watch more Damages videos on AOL Video

Photo courtesy of FX

Glenn Close and the Damages Crew Hint About Season Two

BuzzSugar — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 05:30:35 -0800

The new season of Damages starts Wednesday, and I have a feeling it's going to be good. The first three episodes are just as tense and twisty as I'd hoped, and I think untangling the web of who knows what is going to take the entire season - if not well into the next one.

Recently, the show's creators and its star, Glenn Close, hopped on a conference call with reporters to talk a bit about season two, which premieres Wednesday at 10 p.m. on FX. Here are some of the highlights:

Patty has a lot to deal with this season. "She’s been highly, highly traumatized. I think the Ray Fiske suicide spun her into a place that she’d never been before; she lost control, she put a hit out on Ellen, there’s a lot that she regrets, and you have to take that into consideration," Close said. "People do not easily recover from that, and it actually, informs, I think, the entire second year."
And get ready to see her at home. "We’re going to see much more of Patty’s personal life," creator Todd Kessler said. "Her relationship with her husband, Phil, and her relationship with her son, Michael, her relationship to Uncle Pete, who is played by Tom Aldridge, who is a man that probably she has known for longer than anyone else in her life. We’re going to explore all of that."
William Hurt's character isn't just Frobisher 2. "He enters sort of the opposite way, where he has a past with Patty and Patty actually starts the season trying to help him," creator Daniel Zelman said. "And it was important for us to have a different dynamic in that regards, but at the same time William has a lot of scenes with Glenn; a lot more scenes with Glenn than Ted had last year. And so it was even more important for us that we have an actor who really can hold his own in scenes with Glenn . . . The dynamic between his character and Patty’s character this season is quite different from the dynamic between Patty and Frobisher last year."

To hear what's coming up with Ellen and why the paranoia you feel while watching the show is a good thing, just read more.

Ellen's coming into her own, bigtime. "We have kind of realized that the first season in many ways was Ellen’s birth into the professional world and taking her up to kind of pre-adolescent, and this season we’ve come to realize it as potentially Ellen’s adolescence where she is rebelling against the parental figure or the boss in that of Patty Hewes," Todd Kessler said. "And so this season will follow a trajectory of that rebellion, and then coming out of the end of the second season, heading into the third, our desire is to explore a more kind of adult relationship between these two characters as they are functioning together."

Patty has one consistent motivation. "She really genuinely hates bullies," Zelman said. "Her compass is sort of always attuned to where the bullies are in society, and she’s always looking to stand up for the weak against the bullies. That’s something that we feel is genuine to who she is and genuine to her experience in life."
The time structure isn't going to get any less complicated. "It’s something that continually challenges us and inspires us, to work in two different timeframes," Todd Kessler said. "So what started as a way of just telling stories in the first season in a significant way has emerged as a signature to our storytelling for Damages."
Feeling paranoid? That's a good thing. "In terms of character and story, another thing that became, to us, a terrific one of our mantras is that nothing is as it seems," Glenn Kessler said. "It seems that the audience very much got on board with that. So that there was a level of paranoia, even amongst viewers as they were watching, that when they were watching people lie they suspected it and when they were watching people tell the truth they suspected them of lying . . . There were a lot of twists and turns to the story, and we kept them guessing to the end."

Photos courtesy of FX

Check Out This Spooky New Promo For Damages

BuzzSugar — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 16:30:57 -0800

I first saw this promo for the second season of Damages before Saturday Night Live last week, and it caught me completely off guard. It looked so slick that I assumed it had to be part of the show, and I kept waiting for it to get funny.

Around the point that Ellen steps on Patty Hewes's throat, though, I started to understand what I was actually dealing with.

This is the first promo FX has released for the new season, which premieres Jan. 7. There's no new footage, unfortunately, but we do see both Ellen (Rose Byrne) and Patty (Glenn Close), and via a voiceover we learn a bit about what's been going on with Ellen since last we saw her. Specifically, she's now fabulously wealthy and working at the right hand of Patty - but she's clearly not forgiven her boss for that attempt on her life.

It seems consistent with what I heard back at the TCA press tour about Ellen really coming into her own this season. But can anyone scare Patty Hewes? To take a look at the promo for yourself, just read more.

Photo courtesy of FX

Live From the Emmy Press Room: Glenn Close

BuzzSugar — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 21:14:59 -0700

Glenn Close gave one of my favorite acceptance speeches of the night when she won her Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series, and she was just as gracious a few moments ago in the press room.

"It really is the ride of my career," she said of playing Patty Hewes on Damages. "To have this magnificent part that is as good as any part you would find in a feature film, and to develop her and have it evolve with such an amazing ensemble of writers . . . I'm thrilled."

Close also talked about the "TV Sisterhood of Divas," the "club" she mentioned in her speech with Helen Mirren and Dame Judi Dench. "After my first movie, I was told by my first agent when I was offered something that it would actually be detrimental to my career if I did something in television, and I just couldn't figure it out," she said. "The English do it, why can't we? I really have for all those years thought of actresses like Helen Mirren and Judi Dench who have done TV series and all kinds of television movies and theater and great - as we know - roles in film. I think the most important thing is go where there's great material because that's how you grow as an artist and that's how you're challenged."

Source

Get "Damaged" With FX's Saturday Marathon

BuzzSugar — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 12:30:00 -0700

FX's thriller-mystery series Damages, starring Glenn Close, was one of the best entertainment-related things to come out of 2007, period. It's dark, edgy, and so well written, it succeeded in becoming another one of FX's shows (along with Nip/Tuck and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia) that brings the cable channel into a whole different league. These shows have way more in common with stuff you'd see on HBO or Showtime than say, USA. In fact, as Broadcasting & Cable points out, "Damages, along with AMC’s Mad Men, became the first basic-cable drama series ever nominated in the Golden Globes Outstanding Series category."

The show won't pick up again with new episodes until 2009, but if you missed the first season last Summer, FX is reairing the entire season tomorrow, Saturday Aug. 9, starting at 7:00 a.m. To find out what I love so much about this show, read more.

Glenn Close plays ruthless litigator Patty Hewes and Rose Byrne is Ellen Parsons, Patty's young, doe-eyed employee. Together with senior associate Tom Shayes (Tate Donovan), the team is embroiled in a class-action suit against billionaire CEO Arthur Frobisher (Ted Danson). Yet when murders start occurring - including the murder of someone close to Ellen - Ellen realizes the stakes are way higher than she'd originally perceived. Intricately-woven mysteries, red herrings, and crazy plot twists (like even more shocking murders) abound.

It's most fascinating to watch the dynamics of Rose Byrnes and Glenn Close's hero-villain dichotomy, partly because it's refreshing to see two female leads in a legal/crime drama. In particular, Close engages the audience in a constant push-pull; just when we think of Patty as the most evil, amoral snake imaginable, she somehow gains our sympathy - for just a moment. But that moment is enough to keep us riveted.

Photo courtesy of FX

Glenn Close and Damages Hold Court at TCA

BuzzSugar — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 15:30:56 -0700

The first season of FX's Damages was enthralling and chilling, and from just the couple of minutes we got to glimpse Tuesday morning at the TCA press tour, the show still has its captivating qualities. The show's main cast - including two of the three new cast members, William Hurt and Timothy Olyphant - was on hand to discuss a bit of what we'll see in the coming months, and I already feel sucked back in to the Damages universe. Some of this is spoilery, so if you don't want to know anything about season two, stop here - but if you want to hear about the new characters, the evolution of Ellen, and the fate of Arthur Frobisher (well, maybe), just read more.

First things first: Ted Danson attended the Damages panel. But does that mean Frobisher is alive? Apparently, we shouldn't go that far. The show has so many flashbacks and flash-forwards that it's hard to say exactly when and in what context we'll be seeing Danson's character. (Although, it's worth noting that FX President John Landgraf said earlier in the day that Frobisher "did survive.")

Moving on, one of the biggest changes we'll see in the new season comes is the evolution of Ellen. In the clips we watched, she's bracing and in control, telling the agents she's working with that she wants to wear a wire while Patty talks to her about the Frobisher case and telling someone (who wasn't visible in the clip) that they should be terrified. "We all wanted to approach Ellen in a very different way to make her more of a warrior in season two," Rose Byrne said. "This season she's kind of made of steel a little bit more, which is really interesting to play. The first season, the audience was so much ahead of her . . . This season, it's sort of the reverse."

Ellen is also in therapy, which is where she encounters one of the show's new characters: Wes, played by Timothy Olyphant. According to executive producer Daniel Zelman, he's "a mysterious figure who comes to be a confidant of Ellen's because they've both been through similar traumas recently. What the future of their relationship will be is something for the audience to guess at and wonder."

As for the other newcomers:

William Hurt plays Daniel Purcell, a figure who enters Patty's life in trouble - though we don't know what kind of trouble - and seeking legal aid. It seemed from the clip that his story would form the basis for this season's new case.
Marcia Gay Harden, who was not present because she'd only just been cast, will play a high-powered attorney for an unspecified company who appears to be behind some equally unspecified wrongdoing.

If you're getting the sense that there are a lot of secrets, it's true - but there's also a lot that's left to be figured out. The producers emphasized several times that they liked to keep things fluid, and all of the actors mentioned that their stories could (and did) change up until the very last minute.

As for Patty Hewes, Glenn Close says Patty seems to be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder as well. "She still has a lot of very unresolved issues going on that take more energy to cover up than before," she said.

A couple of other interesting tidbits:

Here's how Close described the typical reaction she got to the show's twists and turns from her family and random strangers on the street: "Tell me what's in the box - don't tell me!" They all seemed to have a huge respect for how engaging the show can be, especially Hurt, who said he stayed up till 5 a.m. watching episodes when the idea of taking the role first came up.
About those flashbacks: The show is still going to play with time; Zelman called the flash-forwards and flashbacks "a signature of the show." But he said the producers' goal this year is to make them slightly easier to grasp this year.
Throughout the session, Damages was occasionally referred to as being like a novel, with each season telling a full story. It's interesting to think about that and try to imagine what season three will look like (since FX has already committed to it). Presumably Patty and Ellen will still be around - but will anyone else?
Danson wouldn't tell us how often Frobisher will be on the show - and he insisted that's because he doesn't know.

Photos courtesy of FX and Source

PaleyFest: Scoop from Damages and Dirty Sexy Money

BuzzSugar — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 08:30:16 -0700

I may be back in sunny San Francisco, but the Paley Festival is still going strong in LA. This week kicked off with panels for Damages and Dirty Sexy Money, with more to come from The X Files and Mad Men.

I was worried that neither the Damages nor the Dirty Sexy Money events would be very well-attended, because last week I got an e-mail from the Paley folks offering up free tickets to either panel. Sure enough, The Futon Critic reported that the crowd for Damages was "surprisingly thin." Who turns down a chance to chat with Glenn Close?

Still, it sounds like the Damages panel was well-received by those who were there - including TeamSugar's own Phasekitty, who wrote up a great rundown of the night's discussions and revelations. Among them:

Damages is the first legal show ever to air on FX, because the network had never before found one that fit its brand. That said, the creators said this is more a drama about the "social dynamic of power in the workplace" than a legal show; in 13 episodes from the first season, only part of one scene took place in the courtroom.
FX initially suggested Close for the lead role because of their good experience with The Shield. That got Ted Danson to pay attention, and he was looking for a different sort of project anyway. As you'll hear him say in the video clip below, he didn't want to do another half-hour comedy because he'd even ceased to amuse himself.
David's stalker, Lila, was always intended to be a red herring, never the actual killer.
The show has been renewed for two more seasons, and while the creators said they want to make it easy for new viewers to jump in, they also like the mystery format. The base of the show will always be the relationship between Patty and Ellen.

For some of the highlights from the Dirty Sexy Money panel and videos from both events, just read more.

Once again, the crowd was small for Dirty Sexy Money. I wish I could have been there for that one, as I've really enjoyed Peter Krause's return to TV. If I'm being honest, though, Donald Sutherland is my favorite part of the show, and he wasn't there, so I suppose I'll live.

Both The Futon Critic and TV Squad were there, though, so I'll leave most of the talking to them. Just a couple of things that jumped out to me:

Billy Baldwin didn't merely know about his character's relationship with Carmelita, his transsexual lover, before he took the role - it was a reason for him even taking the role in the first place.
Spoilers or teasers about the second season were hard to come by, but there were some hints that Dutch's murder would be solved in the upcoming season, and had the strike not happened it would have been solved in the first season.
The show is apparently incredibly expensive to produce. Hey, all that jewelry doesn't come free.

Here are video highlights from both panels:

Damages:

Dirty Sexy Money:

Source

What to Netflix: New DVD Tuesday

BuzzSugar — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 10:29:32 -0800

All of the new DVD releases hit stores (and Netflix) on Tuesdays. So each week in What to Netflix: New DVD Tuesday, I sort through the best of the batch and tell you what to add to your queue. In addition to the titles below The Invasion and Rocket Science are available for your viewing pleasure.

Damages
If you missed FX's summertime legal drama Damages, it's worth viewing now on DVD if only for Glenn Close's performance as Patty Hewes. She's already won the Golden Globe and was nominated for a SAG award for her work on this dark show. It's definitely a treat to check out this stunning Glenn Close performance from the comfort of your own home.

Like Lost, the plot line has a lot of twists and turns, making it a hard one to just jump into mid-season. However, the finale ties everything together in an exciting way and easily sets up an awesome premise for the next season. Special features include a look behind the scenes, audio commentaries and the funny but potentially useful featurette "Understanding Class Action."

A couple more fun choices for you Netflix queue, so read more

Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 6
For those of you who have fallen for the cranky, self-defeating charms of Seinfeld co-creator Larry David, the sixth season of HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm will not disappoint. Even among some pretty surprising plot lines (Cheryl tires of Larry and announces she wants to leave him - actually, that's not a huge shock, she was totally a saint living with that guy, and it coincided with Larry David's real-life divorce) Larry and his cast of semi-real characters will get you laughing. The DVD includes all 10 episodes from the sixth season and my favorite special feature, the Gag Reel.

King of Kong
So, this is a documentary about playing Donkey Kong. To some of you that will sound really geeky, to others amazingly cool. But whether or not the old video game sets off happy nerd bells in your head, the movie is an entertaining look at a serious rivalry, a theme that's fun to watch no matter what the context. In this instance the challenger is Steve Wiebe, an average guy from Redmond, Washington who attempts to beat the cocky Billy Mitchell's long-standing Donkey Kong record.

It's a fun and strangely compelling dive into this world, especially when the film reveals how far someone like Mitchell will go to stay on top. The DVD includes several special features including a segment catching up with the main players post-production, and "The Stylings of Billy Mitchell" in which Billy's parents and friends talk about his tendency toward 80's clothing.

Damages Will Be Back - Twice!

BuzzSugar — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 13:31:58 -0800

Good news, Damages fans: FX has finally made its decision about renewing the acclaimed but low-rated drama - and it's getting not just one but two more seasons!

The network has committed to a total of 26 new episodes - two 13-episode seasons - of the series, and it's expected to go back into production early next year (presuming the writers are writing again by then, I suppose). Glenn Close, Rose Byrne, and Tate Donovan are all signed on for the additional seasons - but there's no mention of Ted Danson. Is that a clue about the ultimate fate of Arthur Frobisher?

I said earlier that I couldn't imagine how the show could get a second season, but the season finale made me change my tune; I loved the dynamic it set up between Close's Patty Hewes and her young, now not-so-innocent associate, Ellen (Byrne), and I'm thrilled we'll get to see it play out. Do you think Damages can keep up its dramatic twists for two more years?

Photo courtesy of FX

Talking Damages with Glenn Close

BuzzSugar — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 07:00:00 -0700

The FX drama series Damages wouldn't have been nearly as compelling without Glenn Close in the leading role. The five-time Oscar nominee gave her character, Patty Hewes, the perfect mix of ruthlessness and compassion that always left me doubting her motives.

Last week, Close spoke with reporters about being back on television after her Emmy-nominated turn in The Shield, creating a character as complex as Patty, and the excitement of working on a show with so many twists and turns. She said she was discouraged from creating a back story for Patty, as the writers wanted to let things evolve. And she was candid about the challenges of playing - and being - a powerful woman. Here are excerpts from our conversation:

On how she ended up with her own FX series: When I finished The Shield, I loved working on FX a lot. I really had a lot of respect for Peter Liguori, who was the head of FX at the time, and John Landgraf, who is the head right now. I like the way they take risks and they give really gifted writers a lot of creative leeway. So I kind of casually said to John, “If you ever can think of anything in New York, just let me know.” And lo and behold, I guess it was about a year later, I was told that these three guys wanted to pitch me an idea.

Four more questions with Close, so read more

On how she prepared to play an influential attorney: I had gone with the writers to meet Mary Jo White and her partner. Mary Jo was just an iconic lawyer who was the DA here and we got a lot of information out of her. I knew that I wanted to be a woman who was at the top of her game, who was highly intelligent and highly capable, really formidable, because you have to be if you’re the head of a firm. To get where she is in this profession, you have to be a thousand times better than any guy that you’re going to be standing next to.

On how she followed the show's twists and turns: I was totally in the dark with the rest of you. I took this job on the strength of the pilot and so that’s as much as I knew. And the writers, because they were just leaping off the cliff together, they wanted to keep as much of their options open as possible. In the beginning before the schedule got kind of more crazy, we would have table reads with every script. People would laugh out loud or gasp or say, “Oh no,” because all of us were finding out at the same time what was happening.

On how Patty changed Ellen: I think over the course of these various episodes that Patty, whether she’ll fully admit it or not, develops a respect for Ellen’s talents and for who she is as a human being. I don’t think Patty considers herself a great mentor. I think she’s too competitive for that. And I think there are certain things about Ellen, her youth for one thing, that she has no tools to compete against. I think she’s always kind of hovering between developing her or nurturing her and making sure she’s not going to invade her territory. So I think it makes a very kind of juicy relationship. But I think as they bond with some of the things that they do that only they know about, that there is something that’s starting to form in their relationship, where I think Patty does care about Ellen and doesn’t just see her, as she did in the beginning, as only a means to get to Katie Connor.

On why so many renowned film and stage actresses have turned to TV: For me it’s simply because you’re given a great role. There used to be a huge snobbism between the film industry and the television industry. I produced and acted in my first - well way back - but the first thing that I produced and acted in was Sarah, Plan and Tall. And the only place to go at the time for really quality television was Hallmark Hall of Fame. And think how much television has changed since then. What should make something decide whether they want to do something or not is the quality of the writing and the people involved, not whether it’s a film or television. And I also have always felt that television has a huge potential for the kinds of audiences that some films would never dream or ever be able to have. So that potential is very exciting to me.

First photo Source
Second photo courtesy of FX