Damages

People (rightfully) go on and on about the brilliant, nuanced, novelistic tendencies of HBO miniseries such as The Sopranos, The Wire, Deadwood and Rome. Off in the shadows — way, way off in the shadows, unjustly and unfortunately — is the FX serial drama Damages. In scope, language and quality, it measures up to its far more famous rivals.

If you caught Damages in intermittent snatches and one-off episodes, you were probably impressed. The writing is tight, taut, sharp-edged, cliche-free; the characters are vivid, multi-layered and alternately sympathetic and repulsive; and the plot has stomach churning twists and turns that feel believable — and thus pack an emotional punch. Watch an episode, and you catch the scent of its brilliance. Watch the series, and the freight train basically rolls right over you. In the characters of super-litigator Patty Hewes (Glenn Close) and industrialist Arthur Frobisher (Ted Danson) the creators of Damages have brought two fully-realized and chillingly credible monsters to life. Although the story largely rises and falls on the functionaries, parasites and everyday people who facilitate, profit from, and are ripped apart by the kraken-versus-whale deathmatch that defines the arc of the first season, it's Hewes and Frobisher who are the wheels around which all other action turns.

Hewes is brittle, arch, exquisitely manipulative, justifiably paranoid, relentless and pitiless, prone to humiliating and bribing subordinates in order to break them down and own them rather than punish or reward a particular form of behavior. Frobisher is bluff, charming, vain, affable, impulsive, gregarious, callous and full of buried rage.

For all of Frobisher's charm, you can't help but notice that he's a self-centered bastard who would rather kill an innocent witness than do the right thing and pay out to a group of employees who lost their jobs and pensions due to his flawed and fraudulent management of his company. And for all of Hewes's venom and menace, you can't help but notice a woman who can never truly feel safe, who is played for a chump by her own nastily brilliant son and is — in a way — actually pursuing justice by pursuing Frobisher.

And then, beneath them, you have the henchmen. Ray Fiske (Zeljko Ivanek) is the courtly Southern legal assassin who carries Frobisher's water. Tom Shayes (Tate Donovan) is the genial vegan whose loyalty to Hewes tears up his life. And below them, the victims and/or foot soldiers. Ellen Parsons (Rose Byrne) is the up-and-coming young associate who gets the opportunity to serve as Hewes's protege, with all the Shakespearean horror that comes with the job.

And then there's victim after victim of Hewes and Frobisher's battle royale, struck down by laywers and the legal system, hired goons, payoffs and threats, fake praise, lies, manipulations, and good old fashioned murder. Good drama, yes. A lot of fun, sure. But in its razor-sharp writing and deep knowledge of power and its consequences, Damages is more than just a diversion; it's a detailed and scathing indictment of the Hobbesian world of big money and power in modern America. And even over at HBO, that'd be a pretty big accomplishment.