Pie, Then Confession: Madoff Case as Legal Thriller
“Damages” is “Law & Order” as rendered by Marcel Duchamp. The series rips a scandal from the headlines, then fragments it so artfully that it takes an entire season to see the whole picture.
This time, it’s the Bernard L. Madoff story.
Season 3 of this stylish legal thriller begins on FX on Monday with New York’s scariest litigator, Patty Hewes (Glenn Close), setting her sights on a crooked billionaire, Louis Tobin (Len Cariou). Tobin is under house arrest for a Ponzi scheme that bilked billions of dollars from investors.
The narrative is once again cut up into jumbled time sequences, but the Madoff scenario is a more plausible and inviting crime than the sinister energy-corporation conspiracy that Patty eventually took down last season. That story line presumed that corporate titans were not just greedy and murderous but also brainy, and that’s a bit much to swallow in the current economy.
The Madoff fraud would be even harder to believe, except that it just happened.
And viewers get to experience the moment the crooked financier confesses his crimes to his family - at Thanksgiving dinner, after pie is served. No one may ever satisfactorily divine what Mr. Madoff said at that moment, let alone explain what possessed him to deceive and ruin even close friends and associates for all those years. “Damages” posits a fictional scenario that may be the closest people ever get to the truth.
The main characters are back. The show’s ingénue, Ellen Parsons (Rose Byrne), has toughened up since the first season when she was a Patty protégée and lost her fiancé, then was almost killed. She was pretty hardened by seeking revenge in the second season, as well.
She flintily tells her new colleagues in the district attorney’s office that she is over Patty and at peace with their troubled history. That is revealed to be nonsense as soon as a package from her former mentor arrives at her new office.
It’s still not really clear what binds Patty and Ellen - who exhibit less a mother-daughter dynamic than a folie à deux one - but this time their positions are almost reversed. Ellen has the law on her side. Now Patty is the one who finds herself sitting in a police interrogation room, unable to explain why she was found covered in blood.
That is only part of her problems. Patty, who was under F.B.I. investigation last season, is now working for the feds. She was appointed by the government to recover the billions of dollars that disappeared at the hand of the crooked financial guru.
Government investigators - and Patty - suspect that Tobin’s family knows where the patriarch stashed money, despite their protestations of innocence, but the prosecutor, Curtis Gates (Ben Shenkman), also suspects that Patty is not exactly without guile herself. “Games?” Patty says sweetly when he says he fears she is playing them. “I think you overestimate me.”
It’s impossible to overestimate how delicious Ms. Close is as this fiercely driven, mercurial and manipulative woman. Last season she stepped out of the dragon-lady mold and gave viewers a glimpse of Patty’s inner demons, but without surrendering the character’s cool, commanding facade.
One of the other pleasures of “Damages” is the changing cast of guest stars. This season brings a new and equally compelling group of actors.
Two comedians who are famous for sunnily goofy characters are anything but in the roles of Tobin loyalists. Martin Short plays Leonard Winstone, the Tobins’ devious family lawyer who is tender with his clients and about as charming as Roy Cohn to everyone else.
Lily Tomlin is just as remarkable as Louis’s wife, Marilyn, who supports her husband while insisting she was blind to his financial chicanery. When Patty takes her deposition and asks her how she could not have known, Marilyn changes the subject. “Darling, can you get me an Earl Grey, no sugar, with a dash of skim,” she imperiously instructs a startled court stenographer. She turns back to him. “Make sure it’s skim.”
It’s a caricature of a certain kind of New York woman, but honed and muted. Ms. Tomlin, like Mr. Short, delivers a layered character threaded with comic undertones that never quite break the surface.
Campbell Scott plays Joe Tobin, the financier’s son, who worked with his father for years, but claims he knew nothing about the Ponzi scheme and certainly doesn’t believe his father hid money for the family. And Keith Carradine keeps showing up as Julian Decker, an architect who is either Patty’s suitor or a stalker.
“Damages” borrows heavily from the front page, and that keeps it interesting.
DAMAGES
FX, Monday nights at 10, Eastern and Pacific times; 9, Central time.
Created and written by Todd A. Kessler, Glenn Kessler and Daniel Zelman; Todd A. Kessler, Glenn Kessler and Mr. Zelman, executive producers; Mark A. Baker, producer. Produced by FX Productions, No Hands Productions and Sony Pictures Television.
WITH: Glenn Close (Patty Hewes), Rose Byrne (Ellen Parsons), Len Cariou (Louis Tobin), Lily Tomlin (Marilyn Tobin), Campbell Scott (Joe Tobin), Keith Carradine (Julian Decker), Martin Short (Leonard Winstone) and Ben Shenkman (Curtis Gates).
NYTimes