DAMAGES 2.9 - "You Got Your Prom Date Pregnant"

||SPOILERS|| I'm still not feeling the hunger to devour episodes of Damages like I did during season 1, sorry to say. I have the remainder of season 2 ready to view, but prefer to wait for the BBC1 airings every Sunday. I just finding some of its mysteries too impenetrable until the show gets around to explaining them (the sat-nav coordinates oddity, for e.g), and don't have the heart or enthusiasm to try and work out what's going on now...

A few thoughts on the big developments:

• Patty's husband Phil is being courted by UNR to join their Energy Department, so he wants Patty to drop the lawsuit against them. Is he saving her a lot of heartache for good reasons, or does he want her out of the way to take advantage of a business opportunity? He seemed like such a rock in season 1, but I guess some rocks are poreous.
  

• Ellen tells the FBI that she doesn't suspect Patty of Uncle Pete's death (and they believe her), while Tom asks a favour of his plot-device sister (a Justice Department lawyer) to see what the FBI have on Patty, and she discovers they don't even have a case-file about the investigation. Only... well, they do really, it's just totally off-the-record.
  

• Wes makes a move on Katie Connor, after his grief counsellor tells him to avoid a relationship with Ellen, but Katie realizes during their first date that he's fallen for her best-friend. But has he? Wes is actually working for the marvellously dour and creepy Detective Messer, who tells him to kill Ellen as his final job. Will Wes go through with the hit? I somehow doubt it; Wes seems like a nice-guy beneath it all. He's just being manipulated.
  

• Patty turns her attention to Lonnie, the prostitute involved with the trader behind the market manipulation scheme to benefit UNR, and gets her help by paying for her nightclass tuition and putting a good word in with a judge involved in her child custody case.
  
  
• And, in a flashback set two months ahead, we see that Ellen gets her gun to threaten Patty from Tom Shayes -- who has been fired by Patty for some unspecified reason.
  

And where in the world has Daniel Purcell gone, eh? It almost feels like he was in the previous season now. I just don't think Damages has the ability to make a stock market conspiracy really fly on screen, as it's just not as relatable as season 1's storyline and feels quite victimless in many ways. It was better earlier in season 2 when UNR were drawn as a nasty corporation polluting water, giving people illnesses and killing livestock. It's all gone very opaque and meandering just recently, and while the revelations are now arriving as we approach episode 13's finale... well, I'm just hoping the last episode rescues the story.


12 April 2009
BBC1, 11.05pm

Writer: Mark Fish
Director: Edward Bianchi