Quick Take: Damages, "The Next One's Gonna Go in Your Throat"
"This guy said he was me?" – Stuart Zedeck
Review: Damages, "The Next One's Gonna Go in Your Throat"
(S0313) You know that when Pattie Hewes (Glenn Close) puts on those dark shades and looks all melancholy and contemplative that things are going to get interesting…
And there's quite a lot of storylines swirling around to perk up interest, indeed. We have Pattie dreaming of broken walls and horses, Leonard Winstone (Martin Short) going back to the "long con" game with his pops to extort the Tobins (an all time extortionist clan, as it turns out) to save himself and keep the plummeting life and times of Tom Shayes (Tate Donovan) afloat (before he goes kerplunk in the flash forward, that is!), the endgame of the hunt for the Tobin fortune, the case of Michael Hewes and the $500,000 payoff that didn't quite send his older fiancée away (where's Messer when Pattie needs him most?), and if that's not enough, Frobisher (Ted Danson) and the murder of Ellen's (Rose Byrne) fiancée (see: Season One) are still hanging about. No wonder the season finale got extended to 90 minutes!
On that latter bit, we get the welcome return of Timothy Olyphant as Wes Krulik (and fun to see him here as his terrifically fun new show, Justified, also airs on FX), and in the midst of a two or three minute scene, enormous amounts of plot from Season Two are rounded up and tidied up for us. Wes was blackmailed by Messer (David Costabile) to track Ellen, what happened between Wes and Ellen was "real," Messer killed David (Noah Bean) on behalf of Frobisher, and Ellen states that Wes killed Messer and the former doesn't deny it. Wes claims that he has now "changed sides" and wants to help put Frobisher away, but Ellen doesn't want him to take the risk. In the end, Wes turns in both Frobisher and himself for their respective murders. This felt like a fairly too tidy wrap on events that had taken place in earlier seasons, and I felt that while Danson was terrific on the show, why were we subjected to all of Frobisher's revelations and new age enlightenment and environmentalism and Hollywood flirtations again?
Over the course of this season, we've learned a lot about the Saga of the Tobins. One of the things that has come out over the final stretch of episodes is that Joe Tobin (Campbell Scott) was and is the Major Screwup that somehow led his mega rich father Louis (Len Cariou) to create a huge Ponzi scheme that left thousands high and dry. Now sonny Joe has isolated himself from those closest to him, and even so mamma Marilyn Tobin (Lily Tomlin) tries to throw herself in front of the bus, so to speak, to save her son. Once Pattie sets her sights on a target though… it's going to take a bigger one to get her to change course.
Speaking of courses, we finally get the main course on so many of the flash forwards we've seen throughout the season. The scene with Tom and Winstone battling it out with Zedeck's (Dominic Chianese, or Uncle Junior as I like to say) goon takes on a tragic Shakespearean flavor, while meanwhile Winstone plays out his final cards on his role in the drama. He places the evidence in the "famous" woman's handbag (Ellen's) that we've seen throughout the season. Tom's death, as it turns out, comes at the hands of a newly off-the-wagon Joe Tobin himself, and man, it is brutal. The fact that he ends up riding the rap for his crimes doesn't seem close to paying back the damage he caused all told. Even Marilyn, his mother and loyal to the end, took her own life before fully acknowledging the monster her son had become.
As for the car crash that we saw previewed a dozen or more times, it seems that sonny Michael made a mad dash for his own mother there. Though it was a mighty coincidence with relation to the other events going on, that piece of the storyline didn't add a lot to the overall tale, beyond yet another juicy Pattie chess match against an inferior foe, of course. What is interesting is the toll that Patties pyrrhic victories are having on her. The memories and dreams of horses (and hallucinations, it seems, with her "architect"?) tie back to a miscarriage that she literally willed herself to have. To sacrifice for career. What happiness has it brought her? Michael telling Pattie that everyone in her life leaves or dies permeates the final scene of Pattie and Ellen contemplating the future at the edge of a dock, Pattie's favorite place.
If nothing else, the (dock) decks have been mostly cleared for a fourth season, if there is one. Overall, I thought Season Three was entertaining as hell for the most part, and would delighted to see Pattie, Ellen, and crew back in business for new adventures. That said, I think they've set things up in such a way that they can literally "start over" with a core cast of Close and Byrne. With the Tobins out of the picture (most likely), Tom dead, and Frobisher and Wes off to jail, they can totally reinvent the show in any way they wish.
More thoughts on "The Next One's Gonna Go in Your Throat":
Video: Damages, "The Next One's Gonna Go in Your Throat"
Preview of the season finale, from YouTube:
Recap: Damages, "The Next One's Gonna Go in Your Throat"
Ellen and Tom take matters into their own hands in an attempt to win the Tobin case as Patty Hewes is haunted by the true price of her success.
From Around the Web: Damages, "The Next One's Gonna Go in Your Throat"
