“This guy said he was me?” – Stuart Zedeck
You know that when Pattie Hewes (Glenn Close) puts on those dark shades and looks all melancholy and contemplative that things are going to get interesting…
And there’s quite a lot of storylines swirling around to perk up interest, indeed. We have Pattie dreaming of broken walls and horses, Leonard Winstone (Martin Short) going back to the “long con” game with his pops to extort the Tobins (an all-time extortionist clan, as it turns out) to save himself and keep the plummeting life and times of Tom Shayes (Tate Donovan) afloat (before he goes kerplunk in the flash forward, that is!), the endgame of the hunt for the Tobin fortune, the case of Michael Hewes and the $500,000 payoff that didn’t quite send his older fiancé away (where’s Messer when Pattie needs him most?), and if that’s not enough, Frobisher (Ted Danson) and the murder of Ellen’s (Rose Byrne) fiancé (see: Season One) are still hanging about. No wonder the season finale got extended to 90 minutes!
On that latter bit, we get the welcome return of Timothy Olyphant as Wes Krulik (and fun to see him here as his terrifically fun new show, Justified, also airs on FX), and in the midst of a two or three minute scene, enormous amounts of plot from Season Two are rounded up and tidied up for us. Wes was blackmailed by Messer (David Costabile) to track Ellen, what happened between Wes and Ellen was “real,” Messer killed David (Noah Bean) on behalf of Frobisher, and Ellen states that Wes killed Messer and the former doesn’t deny it.
Wes claims that he has now “changed sides” and wants to help put Frobisher away, but Ellen doesn’t want him to take the risk. In the end, Wes turns in both Frobisher and himself for their respective murders. This felt like a fairly too tidy wrap on events that had taken place in earlier seasons, and I felt that while Danson was terrific on the show, why were we subjected to all of Frobisher’s revelations and new age enlightenment and environmentalism and Hollywood flirtations again?
Over the course of this season, we’ve learned a lot about the Saga of the Tobins. One of the things that has come out over the final stretch of episodes is that Joe Tobin (Campbell Scott) was and is the Major Screwup that somehow led his mega rich father Louis (Len Cariou) to create a huge Ponzi scheme that left thousands high and dry. Now sonny Joe has isolated himself from those closest to him, and even so mamma Marilyn Tobin (Lily Tomlin) tries to throw herself in front of the bus, so to speak, to save her son. Once Pattie sets her sights on a target though… it’s going to take a bigger one to get her to change course.
Speaking of courses, we finally get the main course on so many of the flash forwards we’ve seen throughout the season. The scene with Tom and Winstone battling it out with Zedeck’s (Dominic Chianese, or Uncle Junior as I like to say) goon takes on a tragic Shakespearean flavor, while meanwhile Winstone plays out his final cards on his role in the drama. He places the evidence in the “famous” woman’s handbag (Ellen’s) that we’ve seen throughout the season. Tom’s death, as it turns out, comes at the hands of a newly off-the-wagon Joe Tobin himself, and man, it is brutal. The fact that he ends up riding the rap for his crimes doesn’t seem close to paying back the damage he caused all told. Even Marilyn, his mother and loyal to the end, took her own life before fully acknowledging the monster her son had become.
As for the car crash that we saw previewed a dozen or more times, it seems that sonny Michael made a mad dash for his own mother there. Though it was a mighty coincidence with relation to the other events going on, that piece of the storyline didn’t add a lot to the overall tale, beyond yet another juicy Pattie chess match against an inferior foe, of course. What is interesting is the toll that Patties pyrrhic victories are having on her. The memories and dreams of horses (and hallucinations, it seems, with her “architect”?) tie back to a miscarriage that she literally willed herself to have. To sacrifice for career. What happiness has it brought her? Michael telling Pattie that everyone in her life leaves or dies permeates the final scene of Pattie and Ellen contemplating the future at the edge of a dock, Pattie’s favorite place.
If nothing else, the (dock) decks have been mostly cleared for a fourth season, if there is one. Overall, I thought Season Three was entertaining as hell for the most part, and would be delighted to see Pattie, Ellen, and crew back in business for new adventures. That said, I think they’ve set things up in such a way that they can literally “start over” with a core cast of Close and Byrne. With the Tobins out of the picture (most likely), Tom dead, and Frobisher and Wes off to jail, they can totally reinvent the show in any way they wish.
More thoughts on “The Next One’s Gonna Go in Your Throat”:
- There’s a theme lately with gruesome names to season finales. Just this past week we had Spartacus: Blood and Sand with “Kill Them All” and now Damages with “The Next One’s Gonna Go in Your Throat.” Who knows what will see next with Lost, let alone that creepy-looking “happy town” project!
- “This guy said he was me?” – Stuart Zedeck
- Michael Hayes’ fiancé didn’t really think she would get away with double crossing Pattie on the $500,000 payoff, did she? Talk about the long con, Pattie set up that sting a dozen chess moves in advance.
- “I’ve got a date with a sexy lady who’s intrigued with my depravity.” – Arthur Frobisher to a beyond the grave Ray Fiske (Zeljko Ivanek) at a New York City nightclub
- It’s fun watching Martin Short and Rose Byrne on screen together, they’re both terrific.
- Why didn’t Tom rush himself to the hospital instead of stumbling home, covered in blood?
- One thing we sadly don’t get to see: the stolen money actually getting back into the hands of the families it was stolen from.
From Around the Web: Damages, “The Next One’s Gonna Go in Your Throat”
- A.V. Club: To that end, “The Next One’s Gonna Go in Your Throat” was bursting at the seams with just about everything needed to properly settle not only this season’s mysteries, but the dangling threads from seasons past, as well as to bring some semblance of closure to Patty and Ellen’s character arcs. But not all of it worked, just because so much of it seemed perfunctory.
- IGN: If Fiske’s ghost was someone who Frobisher communicated with more consistently it would have made more sense. The first time we saw them together we could buy it because Frobisher was probably drunk and out of his mind on drugs. But the second time it was just the two of them together and it didn’t ring true. Again, I liked that they brought Wes back, but I just wish that there had been a bit more too it.
Some stats and info about Damages, “The Next One’s Gonna Go in Your Throat”
TV SHOW – Damages
SEASON/EPISODE – Season 3, Episode 13
AIRED ON – April 19th, 2010
NETWORK/STREAMING SERVICE – FX
GENRE – Drama, Crime Dramas, Thrillers
CREATED BY – Glenn Kessler, Todd A. Kessler, Daniel Zelman
CAST – Glenn Close, Rose Byrn, Tate Donvan, Zachary Booth, Ted Danson, Anastasia Griffith, Michael Nouri, Noah Bean, Tom Noonan
This review originally appeared on TV Geek Army.