[SPOILERS] I waited patiently for 12 weeks... for that? Sorry, not good enough. For me, it highlighted a problem with Damages' time-structure of sandwiching episodes between flashbacks/-forwards -- the fact that 60% of this finale had already been drip-fed to us since the premiere...For that reason, "Trust Me" was like watching the previous twelve episode's flashforwards put into chronological order, at times. Now, thankfully some scenes continued to a twist resolution (like Messer arriving to shoot Ellen in the shower... but being prevented by Wes), but most weren't. And a few seemed like laughable cheats. The worst offender? Well, we'd already seen Patty stumble out of a hotel room smearing blood on the walls, assuming she gets shot by Ellen. But, no. The source of the blood turned out to be from an earlier attack in an elevator (where Patty was improbably stabbed by annoyed baddie Finn Garrity), meaning Patty sat being interrogated by Ellen with a near-fatal knife wound. Umm, no, didn't work for me.
Broadly, the finale wrapped things up competently enough. But it felt very anti-climactic to me. The entire season's machinations were overturned in a few minutes when Patty and Dave Pell agreed on a compromise -- Patty gets to prosecute Kendricks and UNR for poisoning people in West Virginia with Pell's evidence, if she promises not to pry into Pell's market manipulation and brownouts. Why didn't they have this chat, like, five episodes ago? It would have saved an awful lot of upset!
It felt like the writers didn't really have an effective way for Patty to win this case through legal means, so had to make its hero and villain compromise at the eleventh hour. And there wasn't much sense of fulfillment anyway, as we saw Kendricks get arrested in a scene lasting all of three seconds. Perhaps most depressingly, UNR got away with killing Daniel's wife because nobody discovered that UNR's "cleaner" had killed Christine after Daniel's attack.
We leave the season with Patty fully-recovered at her beach house, Tom back on the company payroll, and Ellen due to accept a new job having succeeded in forcing Patty to admit she tried to have her killed -- although Patty predicts she'll be back. Assumedly because Ellen's drawn to working with the absolute best, and at least working with Patty is never boring!
I really hope season 3 is a clean-break for Damages, but there are already some overspills to clear up. Ellen still doesn't know about Wes' role in events this season, Frobisher's still skirting the narrative (having started his new business venture at last), and Uncle Pete's murderer has yet to be brought to justice.
I suppose all those things need closure (and I'm certainly looking forward to seeing Patty go through a rocky divorce!), but hopefully the writers will take note of what didn't work about season 2 and give us a story we can get invested again. Murder and a billionaire losing his employees' savings and pensions last year? Yes, I'm all for that. Stock market manipulation and the poisoning of unseen people this year? No, I just didn't care.
Overall, "Trust Me" was watchable and didn't bore me, but it wasn't much of a thrill and it lacked the desired impact after twelve weeks of set-up. Still, it was nice to see Zeljko Ivanek back as Ray Fiske for a few dream sequences, even if his presence only served to remind me just how gripping and emotional season 1 was compared to this well-meaning but flawed follow-up.
Do you agree? Or did Damages season 2 ring your bell? Is it a show that demands to be watched as a box-set in a two-week marathon, to gloss over its cracks?
To end; here's an interview with Glenn Close and Ellen Page about their characters' evolution this year and where they might be headed next season (iTunes users, non-iTunes users). Also, pretty much the whole cast discuss the writing of season 2's plotlines here.
10 May 2009
BBC1, 10.20pm
Writers: Glenn Kessler & Todd A. Kessler
Director: Todd A. Kessler
