DAMAGES - 2x02 “Burn It, Shred It, I Don’t Care” - Episode Review
Something tells me we’re in for a world of Hurt…
Plot Summary: Patty Hewes officially takes Daniel Purcell’s case after his wife’s murder; Tom Shayes (Tate Donovan) is given first chair on the FBI’s infant mortality sting case intended for Patty; Ellen not-so-wisely confides her Frobisher revenge fantasies to Wes Kurlick (Timothy Olyphant); Purcell’s former employers her big-business lawyer Claire Maddox (Marcia Gay Harden) to represent them; in the future, Ellen and Wes are having an affair and Tom gives Ellen a special gift.
This episode was pretty heavy on the set-up, light on the character. It also went by at a blistering pace, so that’s something too. Alliances are made and broken, suspicions wrought, loyalties bought and sold. Sometimes I feel this show needs a flow chart to keep track of every plot twist and every character’s shifting motives, but in essence, Agent Fox Mulder’s old adage serves as a useful guideline - “Trust no one.”
For, instance take the main plotline: Last week, Daniel Purcell came to Patty Hewes for help regarding his corporate whistleblower case, and to get her on the hook, he had mailed Patty a box of incriminating documents. Then the head of the evil firm (Brett Cullen, Goodwin from LOST) Purcell was working for came to him and threatened him to back off, and then an intruder killed Purcell’s wife. This week, Purcell lied to the cops regarding the intruder’s motive in order to protect his daughter (“I was stupid before”) and says the box with all the research proving the chemical’s deadly properties should be destroyed (hence this week's title). Patty pushes to have the real reason made public (Purcell will undoubtedly be the main suspect); she meets with a rep for EPA, who's working with Goodwin, who hires Claire Maddox, head counsel for the world’s third largest energy company; a woman that Purcell says “he’s heard of,” but at the end of the show, she's seen getting into a car with him, and asks “Did you tell any one about us?” Cut to: Purcell digging and burning something in a hurry. The end. (Whew).
No wonder they hired William Hurt to play Purcell, his characters always seem a bit … off.
In other developments, Tom Shayes seems developing into be the Ronnie Gardocki of the show, a more or less decent man who gets caught doing the lesser of evils for greater tyrants. Shayes is manipulated into offering a bribe to the “client” of the infant mortality case (Patty learns about this from a bug in his office); he is saved by her calling him off the case right as he’s about to give the undercover FBI agent the money and seal his fate (Obviously, the Bureau and Ellen are going to have to find an new inroad). What’s sad is that Ellen is so willing to sell Tom out, when it seems he’s he only one that truly supports her - six months later, after all, he’s shown giving her the gun that she shot someone with in the premiere flash forward.
Speaking of guns, Ellen’s new boy toy Wes (Timothy Olyphant) has a cabinet full of them, plus a whole wall of clippings of Frobisher and the case from last year. We learn this last, after he seems rather sympathetic to Ellen, telling her that a man like Arthur could easily destroy her after she tells him she had a chance to kill him last week. What made this reveal worthwhile was the hilariously overwrought hard rock riff that accompanied it.
At the end of day, Patty tells Ellen, “Everyone is looking to play an angle.” Some are more crooked than others.
Other notes:
• Noonan! The original Tooth Fairy, accept no substitutes!
• Wasn’t that bald guy (the one who told Patty about the bug) the one who let the witness get away last year?
• I got a SHINING vibe from the tracking shots in the flash forwards
• Ellen’s FBI handlers are getting a bit of a backstory; one of them is getting a divorce and the other (Mario Van Peebles) is getting fed up with it interfering with the job. Wonder how that’s going to pay off?
Episode grade: B-