Season 1 gripped me and each ending lured me into the next episode. My thirst for justice hooked me and being a sucker for a resolution meant I had to keep faith. The great camera work and competent acting earned my loyalty enough to see me through to season 2. Unfortunately I would have been happy to walk away at the end of season 1. I got a little closure and, even if my conclusions were wrong, I wasn't going to pine for more revelations.So season 2 had to convince me to stay and with episode after episode becoming bleaker and bleaker I was running out of reasons to watch. It wasn't just that no one had an ounce of moral fibre, or humanity looked so jaded, the evil just got boring and all the little devices got jarring. Another side plot would have added a dimension but all we got was more of the same, burying all my passion beneath a plot I had no desire to bear.But what really did it for me was that vindictive, calculating Ellen just wasn't believable and I got sick of hearing her swallow that scotch or whatever it was supposed to be. What is it with this type of programme and drinks? The gold standard is Breaking Bad but Damages is pretty run of the mill in comparison.I'm not hard to please and season 1 would get an easy 8 but I fear 6 would be generous if I'd felt the need to endure season 2 to the end. I'm a little sad because the production was great and the plot had potential.

I watched the first season in a day. Now, I'm not proud of binge- watching 13 episodes, but so gripping is season one, that I just had to keep watching. A twisting plot, brilliantly acted and with all the ingredients that make a compelling thriller. Glenn Close plays the main character to perfection, in some ways it was reminiscent of her "Fatal Attraction" role; she plays a cold, calculating, manipulative character with so much going on in her life that you wonder how her head doesn't explode. Rose Byrne plays her role to perfection as her life slowly spirals out of control. What makes this series so good is that the plot is so believable. Gripping stuff, I wonder how long season two will take me to watch!

I'll review Season 1 since that's the only one I've seen. The first episode hooked and reeled me in straight-away, a cinematic fisherman hunting for viewer-ship game. In the first minutes we see the front of a high-rise apartment in New York. The color of the visuals are rather strange, a kind of washy yellow somewhat blurred. The camera then zooms to an elevator and a young woman, 30-ish, emerges, bloodied. She runs from the elevator, into the lobby, and out into the streets of New York. She's eventually found by law enforcement and brought to a precinct where she is held for questioning. Her name is Ellen Parsons (Rose Byrne), and she's a "plaintiff's attorney", a lawyer who represents clients who have civil grievances against other individuals, groups, corporations, even government agencies. She works for Hewes and Associates, a plaintiff law firm run by an effective but amoral attorney, Patricia "Patty" Hewes (Glenn Close), who uses ruthless tactics and endless negotiations to get the law suit outcomes she wants.A subtitle then states "6 Months Earlier". The blurriness disappears and the colors appear back to normal. This is how the series is organized. We flash back and forth between the events of "now", which is shown as yellow-blurred, while all flashbacks are shown in normal color, until by the series end, the two eventually merge. Parsons is being offered a job at a relatively prestigious law firm, but she turns down the offer, eventually working for Hewes and Associates. Hewes and Associates captained by the uncompromising Patty Hewes are involved in a class action law suit against a billionaire magnate, Arthur Frobisher (Ted Danson), brought by his former employees who accuse him of dumping millions of shares of the company stock, thereby making their stock options worthless. Also, we learn Parsons' soon-to-be sister-in-law, the brother of her fiancée, also has information and connections to Frobisher.The series moves between the two periods of time, the "now" and the "then", and more pieces of each part of the puzzle are revealed, although the only way to tell if we're in the past or the present is the visual look. In the present, we soon learn Parsons had been attacked at an apartment flat. At first we are led to believe the apartment is hers, but then we find out she was staying at the apartment belonging to Patty Hewes. We also learn she has not only been attacked but she's accused of murdering someone else. As the series progresses, the flashbacks move closer and closer in time to the "now". The series balances between interesting corporate intrigue, like you might find in "The Insider" to urban violence, similar to "The Firm" and "Michael Clayton". This is quite a compelling series from start to finish. Excellent performances by Rose Byrne as the young upstart attorney, Noah Bean as David Connor, Parsons' fiancée, Zeljko Ivanek as Ray Fiske, Frobisher's personal attorney, and Anastasia Griffith as Katie Connor, the future sister-in-law of Parsons. These are all "A" performances. The "A+" performances go to heavy hitters Glenn Close as Patricia Hewes and Ted Danson as Frobisher. I was particularly impressed with both actors in this series. The cutting stares and elongated silences of Close as Hewes practically draw blood, while Danson has a fascinating take on corporate magnate Frobisher, who flip-flops between moments of fair-minded reasonableness and ruthless detachment. Frobisher in particular is in constant denial about what he's doing, whether in work or pleasure, either cheating on his young wife or hiring hoodlums to carry out "dirty work". Similarly, we learn Hewes also plays a deadly game of lawsuit "cat and mouse", not only against her courtroom adversaries but even her own employees. I can't think of another actress who'd be able to play Hewes as effectively. This is an extremely well-written and well-acted series. The only reason I give it 9 stars instead of 10 is I felt the number of episodes were too many. The story probably could have been told in about 7 45-minute episodes but instead the producers opted for 13. There were a few episodes in the middle, around 5 through 9, where I was getting impatient to get to the final denouement, and it felt like the story was being drawn out unnecessarily. Some of the forward-flash scenes, the blurry ones, were repeated several times with little new information, and I felt just a bit frustrated. Still the ending of the first season was a satisfying ending with the plot twists revealed, making sense more or less. I'll have to try the second season at some point, although I may have to wait to "recover" from this one.

From the beginning, Damages has been slick, beautifully photographed and wonderfully acted. Glenn Close, for one, is superb all the way through. Season one was tense, tricky, well-written and suspenseful. The repetition and flashbacks were a little difficult at first, but seemed to work; the approach felt very new. By the fifth season, the flashbacks seemed contrived and the endless repetition unnecessary. That, along with the many protracted scenes of long stares and needless dialog, made you feel as if a twenty-minute story was being inflated to 45 minutes. The writers/directors were toying with you all the time, as if that were the only purpose of the exercise. Behaviors were not just unexpected, they were unbelievable. The story line twisted around itself to the point of self-strangulation. I would have accepted a "happy" ending or one that ended in tragedy for at least one of the principles, but there was no ending, no resolution -- nothing that felt right. With this frustrating final season, I had to give a "fair-to-middling" rating to what started as a smart, good-looking series. Except for the inevitable cliffhangers, I expect it would have been best to stop after season 2 or 3.