Thursday, January 29, 2009

Payback is a ... on 'Damages'

Watch 'Damages' Second Season on FXBy LillyKat
PTR Senior Staff Writer


Payback is a b*tch.

Patty Hewes know this.

She's normally giving it, not receiving it.

But not this week.

Welcome once again to Damages, folks - the show that keeps you deliciously guessing at every turn while consistently giving you that OMFG moment.

The latest turn of events had me speaking OUT LOUD to the television screen (and the cat - who, naturally, could care less), "How do these guys do it?"

Daniel Purcell.

On the stand.

Totally fraking up Patty's attempt at filing a motion against UNR (read: evil energy company killing everyone with their polluted water in West Virginia) to start a class-action lawsuit AFTER he told her a) he'd run the test on the water that was snuck out of town by his on-the-down-low reporter, compliments of the Ellen and Tom Traveling Road Show; and, b) go on the record UNR doctored his original toxicity reports.

Psych.

Not.

Doh!

Did Patty's seething, silent rage just come blazing through the screen at the moment Purcell screwed her? There is nothing like Glenn Close and THAT look. You know the old saying: If looks could kill, we'd all have been dead a long time ago (at about the time Fatal Attraction came out).

Seriously, how rare is it to one up Patty Hewes?

I thought Ellen was the only one capable of this, but Daniel is fast becoming one slippery mo'fo'. Yet, the way William Hurt is playing Purcell ... I swear, I'm duped. He is just so good. Kind of sweet, then conniving, then silent raging, then pitiable.

Oh, and did we mention Purcell flipped on Patty AFTER she agreed to let her son Michael know Purcell is his father?

So much for kissing and making up.

Or playing nice.

Yet, his screwing over of Patty's case wasn't the only OMFG moment.

It was followed shortly thereafter (er, kinda simultaneously) by the reveal that he was IN on the murder of his wife. Perhaps not as much of a shocker, but I didn't expect that confirm to come so quickly. (Side note: how weird was it to see Saturday Night Live's Darrell Hammond as UNR thugbeat coordinating the whole murder-for-hire thing? I half expected him to break into his Bill Clinton impersonation.)

We still don't know (and won't know for a LONG time) who Ellen is killing in the flash forward sequence.

I'm now starting to think it might be Purcell.

Then again, I know better than to try and figure out the brilliantly tangled web that is Damages.

New episodes of Damages air Wednesdays at 10 p.m. on FX. To catch up on the Who, What, Where, When, Why and How of the show, head on over to the official Damages Web site.

1 comment:

TVFan said...

Another fan-freakin'-tastic outing! I didn't see the Daniel flip-flop coming until he sat down on the witness stand. Suddenly, I just had the feeling that he was going to screw Patty over. Of course, he did it b/c UNR paid him off, which wasn't much of a surprise because Daniel seems to be the type that doesn't stand for anything and thus, falls for everything, but I still didn't think he'd flip on Patty (or at least not this soon). I had my suspicions about his involvement with his wife's murder. I'm wondering if it has to do with his affair with Claire Maddox. But like you, I'm shocked they clued us in on his involvement this early on.

Darrell Hammond was so good in this role that I wasn't even sure it was him. In fact, I meant to check online and forgot, so I'm glad you clarified it here. WOW!

I, too, thought of the fact that Daniel screwed over Patty right after she let him meet their son, but I think the two things are separate as far as Daniel's concerned. One's personal and one's business. Men seem to be able to keep these two separate even when they bleed together. In his mind, he probably believes that what he did to Patty wasn't personal. Me thinks she isn't going to see it that way, though.