Summer of Netflix: Damages

Damages

I’ll admit up front this post is a little bit of a cheat. My wife and I watched season 1 of Damages about 2 years ago when we still had cable. So how is this summer of Netflix? They have both seasons 1 and 2 available for instant streaming right now. So no more than two days ago we decided in the massive drought to finally turn on Season 2 of Damages. That’s right, two days ago we started it, today I’m writing about it because we finished the whole season, it is that freaking good.

The quality of this show is unbelievable. Let me just throw a cast list at you:

• Glenn Close
• Rose Byrne
• Tate Donovan
• Zeljko Ivanek
• Ted Danson
• Timothy Olyphant
• William Hurt
• Tom Noonan
• Darrell Hammond

That is obviously not a full list, but if that list doesn’t get you a little excited than I don’t know what to tell you. You are looking at list with multiple Academy Nominations, Golden Globes, Emmys. This show packed the talent in and it shows.

Damages follows the story of Ellen Parsons (Byrne) as she takes a job at the most prestigious law firm in New York run by the infamous Patty Hewes (Close). The law firm is known for taking down big names with humungous class action suits. In season one they go after a man named Frobisher (Danson). He pulled a fast one in the stock market and left his employees with nothing. Now I know this sounds like a procedural, but it is anything but. If you are a fan of Lost or Flash Forward, any of the large season long sprawling shows, than this show is for you. The show immediately shows you snippets of what is going to happen, quick cuts of things coming, then smoothly transitions into the current (past) timeline where you see the dominos fall into place. All the while trying to guess what will cause what. They use visual cues throughout the season to let you know whether you are in the past or future and when it transitions from past to future, well, all I can say is that my wife and I both lost our shit over it. The show is never slow, there is rarely a filler scene, everything is taught with suspense and drama. Written and directed skillfully, this is honestly one of the best shows available on Netflix and I don’t say that lightly.

Season one has one of the most jarring and shocking scenes I have ever seen on TV or in movies. It is a scene that continues to play out through season two and I assume season three (only available on Amazon Instant right now), and it is exactly that kind of writing that makes for a show I love. You should have stopped reading this article a while ago and moved over to Netflix.com and added this to your queue. You will not regret it.