 | |
List Price: $49.95 | | Label: Sony Pictures
Salesrank: 2849
Released: January 29, 2008 |
| Our Price: $22.99 |
| Used Price: $21.86 |
|
MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Media: DVD |
|
Editorial Review:
Hot new legal thriller on FX! Set in New York's world of high stakes litigation, Damages follows the lives of Patty Hewes, the nation's most revered and most reviled litigator, and her bright, ambitious protégée Ellen Parsons as they become embroiled in a class action lawsuit targeting Arthur Frobisher, one of the country's wealthiest CEOs. As Patty battles Frobisher and his attorney, Ellen learns what it takes to win at all costs, and that lives, not just fortunes, are at stake.
Description of Damages: The Complete First Season:
Smart, sleek, and more than a little wicked, the Golden Globe-winning series Damages proves that legal programs don't have to follow a well-worn formula in order to prove completely addictive. In fact, the show (from Todd and Glenn Kessler and Daniel Zelman, whose credits include The Sopranos) steers clear from nearly all courtroom drama clichés over the course of its 13 episodes, and hews closer to classic film noir with the slowly-spun web of deceit that is woven around fresh-scrubbed lawyer Ellen Parsons (Rose Byrne). After joining the legal firm headed by uber-powerful litigator Patty Hewes (Glenn Close, who won a Golden Globe for her performance), Parsons lands a career-making case--a class-action lawsuit against millionaire Arthur Frobisher (Golden Globe nominee Ted Danson)--but discovers that digging deeply into the case not only reveals layers of corruption, cover-up, and potential scandal, but places her own life in jeopardy as well. Smart, mature writing and note-perfect performances, most notably by Danson as the perverse and complex Frobisher, but also by Tate Donovan, Zeliko Ivanek, Peter Facinelli, Philip Bosco and Peter Reigert, make Damages a genuine pleasure for law and mystery show fans, but also those craving a challenging series that delivers water cooler chat material in every episode. The three-disc set includes all 13 episodes as well as deleted scenes; among the featured extras are two choice commentaries, one with Close, the Kesslers and Zelman, and the other with Ivanek and the creators, both of which are chock-full of production and technical insights. A 30-minute making-of featurette, discussions about the characters by the creators, and a guide to class-action lawsuits rounds out the fine supplemental features. --Paul Gaita
Damages: The Complete First Season Reviews:
damages ok! 
2009-10-24 - The product arrived ok but the quality of the disc is just ok. It had some freeze spots during the first two stories. I hope the rest is ok. Bob Mangini
THE BEST PILOT 
2009-10-01 - DAMAGES has the best pilot I've ever seen in a drama show. It is very subtle and violent at the same time and leaves us wondering what that would lead to. I watched it and couldn't stop. The series, in general, is very good. The acting is magnificent. It's always a pleasure to see the many real faces of Glenn Close, her speech, and try to guess her caracter. However, I hope - I only watch this movies on DVD - that DAMAGES doesn't turn Glenn Close into that very pure-evil one-dimension woman that we've seen in Fatal Attraction. If that happens, the show would become, for me, just another kind of Mexican soap opera, and I'll loose the interest in it.
Excellent drama! Completely entertaining! 
2009-05-28 - I watched the entire series over 2-3 days. I thought the acting was superb, the plot was compelling and the suspense was wonderful. I highly recommend this series!
Damages leaves us begging for more
2009-05-18 - It takes a great deal to get me hooked to a show. Damages took no convincing at all. It is the best Drama ever written for television and will have you begging for more. Imagine reading your favorite novel that begs you to keep turning pages....you'll want to sit down over a weekend and absorb this mesmerizing drama. Glenn Close at her best!
...Ages 
2009-05-16 - Attention! Spoilers galore!
Never in my life have I watched a show that was so brilliantly boring as this one. After four torturous, seemingly neverending episodes I decided to watch the last episode and it fitted like a glove. In other words: in spite of skipping most of the show the ending made perfect sense, almost everything unfolded as expected and it probably had worked too if I had watched it after the pilot. The whole thing could have been done in 90 minutes instead of 9 hours.
Watching the remaining episodes was quite entertaining actually [hence the two stars instead of one] because the entire production had become completely transparant, which revealed the series' methods of manipulation; the re-composition of old [and proven succesful] hollywood formulas; the endless catalogue of slasher-movie like stupid behaviour ["Let's escape into this cellar cause there's no way out!"] of the main characters: the sister who brings THE tape to her brother IN PERSON while she is afraid of being followed for having it, thus causing his death; the embracing of her dead and bloody fiancé by our heroïne, thus becoming a major suspect; the unstoppable trust in her demon-strative evil boss, almost causing her own death; the hiding of the main witness with his female partner-witness in her home -though both of them are hunted by the 'baddies'- after nearly escaping his assassination while he clearly has enough money, for both of them, to go everywhere [he leaves his 'partner' a cheque of 127000 USD after he -surprise!- is run over in her street]. And so on. And on. And then...
There are also the completely improbable events like the one hour or so cleaning up of evil boss Patricia's bloodbath-with-corpse apartment before the police arrives. As if the police nowadays needs visible bloodstains. And half of NY can watch what is going on in Pat's see through Pad. Of course nobody realizes the unusual activities going on there. Yeah right. And this series pretends to show what is secretly going on behind/under the surface, all brilliantly directed by the very powerfull. Instead of that, Damages shows us that humans all too often are ruled by cartoonesque blundering evil idiots. Which is true of course, but certainly not the show's intention.
I found it also very annoying and SO predictable that the only likeable character [the boyfriend/surgeon] REALLY was killed. But of course the main character needs a raison d'etre in season two [revenge] so the poor young man remained dead. No twist there.
If the story of this complete season had been the pilot and the actual series had begun with the theme of the clever but -rightly so- angry girl who leads a double life [working for two adversaries -evil boss & the state] it might have been great. Thus season two sounds promising. I suppose however that watching the first and last episode[s] of that season will suffice too.
