Damages 4.03
Jul. 30th, 2011 09:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakIn which we find out (some of) what became of Michael, Aaron Howard finds Patty's and Ellen's relationship confusing and the seasonal villains step up their dastardliness.
This is the first episode to full out address the fact that last season, Patty's screwed up relationship with her son culminated in Michael attempting matricide after Patty got his pregnant girlfriend imprisoned, though arguably the whole Michael business has also been colouring the Ellen and Patty interaction so far. In addition to their own intense and vastly complicated backstory, it's hard not to see the parallels/contrasts there. Their relationship isn't parent-surrogate daughter, there are too many different elements there, but the mentor-protegé/pseudo parental thread exists, too, in the complicated web that makes their lives. Ellen is many things to Patty, the tool she discarded that grew into an (sort of) equal, the person she tried to kill who got over the vengeance (though not necessarily the fact it happened) and whom she can't do without now emotionally, a younger self, a different counterpart, a challenge, all of this, but the narrative from the moment it cut between Patty kneeling down on the grave of her unborn daughter and giving the order via phone to have Ellen killed in the first season also suggested her as the daughter Patty decided not to have. Ellen and Michael were both formed by Patty to a large decree; Ellen came to use her rage about how this happened to recreate herself and transcend the need to strike back in order to learn and grow. Michael, otoh, has more often than not been a darker rerflection of Patty, with her fondness for mind games and emotional power plays turned back on her but without her ability to channel the force of her personality against worthy targets and do something constructive with it, though arguably the whole interlude with Jill and the attempt to be an artist was Michael trying to do that, and that it failed was for once not his fault. Still, finding out that his eventual solution to post-attempted matricide shock and homelessness was to get into the drug business - and how he did it - ties with his earlier life. It's amoral, but it's not stupid (like, say, trying to make some cash as a prostitute would have been), it's using people and turning their weaknesses against them, which, again, is a darker version of how Patty achieves her success.
I appreciate that Chris Sanchez isn't presented as stupid, that the narrative allows him the intelligence to suspect he's been set up with the whole Mullah story and to make investigations of his own, and that he tries to give Ellen a message once he's coerced to false testimony. Also my current guess is that the taxi-driving son and friend (Nasir?) will come into the narrative later to tell Ellen the truth about the High Star mission. (It did occur to me he might be identical with Foreman's prisoner/guestage but no, the prisoner is the guy refered to as the justification of the mission Chris & friends were on.) Still, so so far the villains continue to be a bit on the thin side. Our Evil Henchman of the Season apparantly is a secret artist but otherwise continues to be Evil Henchmanly. While Aaron Howard is the Father Knows Best Convinced Upright Conservative kind of villain, but we already knew that, and at any rate, I can't help comparing him with Harry Groener as the Mayor of Sunnydale in BTVS' third season who for me played the ultimate version of that type of antagonist and did it with such zest and liveliness that Goodman so far pales by comparison.
If last episode Ellen got Patty to offer, this episode Patty got Ellen to ask, and I remain enthralled and ever so amused at their continuing chess games. Though more seriously, it's significant that Ellen refuses to take Tom's old office (and that Patty left it empty so far) - which I don't think is about Tom but about not wanting Tom's place in Patty's life (because let's face it, Tom may have been the ideal Trusted Lieutenant for Patty but that also depended on him never being able or comfortable with being his own man, and Ellen wants ally, not Trusted Lieutenant status, and most definitely wants to be her own woman). And that Patty when talking to her investigator gets the Ellen-for-Katherine idea when saying "I have no one I trust that much" because not inspite but because of all their games she has come to trust Ellen (in as much as she's still capable of trusting anyone). And yet the show evidently enjoys letting the audience unaware for a few moments during the Patty and Howard scene whether Patty is (as Howard briefly wonders) trying to doublecross Ellen in order to get the High Star case for herself, or whether this is mutual strategy; the ambiguity of their relationship and characters is such that it could be both.:)
This is the first episode to full out address the fact that last season, Patty's screwed up relationship with her son culminated in Michael attempting matricide after Patty got his pregnant girlfriend imprisoned, though arguably the whole Michael business has also been colouring the Ellen and Patty interaction so far. In addition to their own intense and vastly complicated backstory, it's hard not to see the parallels/contrasts there. Their relationship isn't parent-surrogate daughter, there are too many different elements there, but the mentor-protegé/pseudo parental thread exists, too, in the complicated web that makes their lives. Ellen is many things to Patty, the tool she discarded that grew into an (sort of) equal, the person she tried to kill who got over the vengeance (though not necessarily the fact it happened) and whom she can't do without now emotionally, a younger self, a different counterpart, a challenge, all of this, but the narrative from the moment it cut between Patty kneeling down on the grave of her unborn daughter and giving the order via phone to have Ellen killed in the first season also suggested her as the daughter Patty decided not to have. Ellen and Michael were both formed by Patty to a large decree; Ellen came to use her rage about how this happened to recreate herself and transcend the need to strike back in order to learn and grow. Michael, otoh, has more often than not been a darker rerflection of Patty, with her fondness for mind games and emotional power plays turned back on her but without her ability to channel the force of her personality against worthy targets and do something constructive with it, though arguably the whole interlude with Jill and the attempt to be an artist was Michael trying to do that, and that it failed was for once not his fault. Still, finding out that his eventual solution to post-attempted matricide shock and homelessness was to get into the drug business - and how he did it - ties with his earlier life. It's amoral, but it's not stupid (like, say, trying to make some cash as a prostitute would have been), it's using people and turning their weaknesses against them, which, again, is a darker version of how Patty achieves her success.
I appreciate that Chris Sanchez isn't presented as stupid, that the narrative allows him the intelligence to suspect he's been set up with the whole Mullah story and to make investigations of his own, and that he tries to give Ellen a message once he's coerced to false testimony. Also my current guess is that the taxi-driving son and friend (Nasir?) will come into the narrative later to tell Ellen the truth about the High Star mission. (It did occur to me he might be identical with Foreman's prisoner/guestage but no, the prisoner is the guy refered to as the justification of the mission Chris & friends were on.) Still, so so far the villains continue to be a bit on the thin side. Our Evil Henchman of the Season apparantly is a secret artist but otherwise continues to be Evil Henchmanly. While Aaron Howard is the Father Knows Best Convinced Upright Conservative kind of villain, but we already knew that, and at any rate, I can't help comparing him with Harry Groener as the Mayor of Sunnydale in BTVS' third season who for me played the ultimate version of that type of antagonist and did it with such zest and liveliness that Goodman so far pales by comparison.
If last episode Ellen got Patty to offer, this episode Patty got Ellen to ask, and I remain enthralled and ever so amused at their continuing chess games. Though more seriously, it's significant that Ellen refuses to take Tom's old office (and that Patty left it empty so far) - which I don't think is about Tom but about not wanting Tom's place in Patty's life (because let's face it, Tom may have been the ideal Trusted Lieutenant for Patty but that also depended on him never being able or comfortable with being his own man, and Ellen wants ally, not Trusted Lieutenant status, and most definitely wants to be her own woman). And that Patty when talking to her investigator gets the Ellen-for-Katherine idea when saying "I have no one I trust that much" because not inspite but because of all their games she has come to trust Ellen (in as much as she's still capable of trusting anyone). And yet the show evidently enjoys letting the audience unaware for a few moments during the Patty and Howard scene whether Patty is (as Howard briefly wonders) trying to doublecross Ellen in order to get the High Star case for herself, or whether this is mutual strategy; the ambiguity of their relationship and characters is such that it could be both.:)
