Close Makes Another Season of Damages Worth Watching

Are you looking forward to another season of Damages? The FX series, with its twist and turns is sometimes hard to follow, but fine performances by Glenn Close and crew have always made the effort to stick with its serialized plot rewarding.
Season Three of Damages, which begins Monday night, seems to be based on the recent headlines surrounding the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme that cost rich folks who should have known better billions.
Thanks in part to an interesting cast of new characters, the Los Angeles Times says this season may be the series’ best yet.
Len Cariou plays Louis Tobin, under arrest for bilking investors. And according to the Times, that’s just the beginning.
“For Season 3, the producers not only tapped Lily Tomlin to play [the wife, Marilyn, and Campbell Scott his barely recovering alcoholic son Joe, but they’ve also got Martin Short doing a fabulously sinister stare-down as the Tobin family lawyer, Leonard Winstone, says Mary McNamara of the LATimes.
Additionally Keith Carradine shows up as an architect who is either a suitor or a stalker paying attention to Ms. Close’s character Patty Hewes.
Even with the influx of talent, Close is the key to the series.
Says USA Today:  “Yet, as rock-solid as the entire cast may be, Damages still belongs to Close, who makes us embrace a character who in other hands might be repellent or, worse, ridiculous. Just look at Patty: She can be openly malevolent at times when such transparency makes no sense, tricky when a more straightforward approach would do, and clairvoyant to the point of omniscience.”
“It’s impossible to overestimate how delicious Ms. Close is as this fiercely driven, mercurial and manipulative woman,” the New York Times adds. “Last season she stepped out of the dragon-lady mold and gave viewers a glimpse of Patty’s inner demons, but without surrendering the character’s cool, commanding façade.”
For better or worse, Damages will again tell its story with a series of flash-forwards and flash backs that sometimes give away plot points prematurely and at other time simply make it hard to figure out what’s happening.
“If you’ve watched Damages, you also know some of those surprises will be partially revealed in a flash-forward — in this case, one with links to Patty’s longtime confidant, Tom (Tate Donovan), and her protégée/nemesis Ellen (Rose Byrne), who now works for the feds,” says USA Today. “By now the device feels a bit tired and more than a bit disruptive. But as with 24’s real-time gimmick, it is part of what makes Damages Damages, so you just have to go with it.”
I say go with it.