Damages: Not Guilty, I Think

After two suspenseful, twisty, and nasty episodes, Damages got a little overly-confusing this week and didn’t help me figure out who Ellen shoots six months from now.  But it did add a new hottie to the cast.  So you know, you win some, you lose some.  Unless, of course, you’re Patty Hewes; then you never lose.

Determined not to lose Daniel Purcell’s dirty info on environment-poisoning Ultima National Resources, who Patty plans to sue for billions, Patty prepares to defend Daniel in his murder trial.  However, it’s becoming harder and harder to believe Daniel’s innocence.  After the affair with Ultima’s lead counsel Claire Maddox, the revelation of his wife’s domestic abuse report and subsequent restraining order, the missing ruby ring he only notices under police interrogation, and the fishy flashbacks, I’m beginning to think he absolutely did kill his wife.  Patty too questions all Daniel’s stories and makes him take an inconclusive lie detector test.  Not that it matters to Patty, she’s just after his testimony, and she and Daniel have quite the secret history.

Ellen, still trying to dig up or create some incriminating proof of Patty’s bad behavior, tries to figure out the connection between Patty and Daniel.  And she’s a good little detective.  Ellen discovers that 10 years previously Daniel blew an opposing testimony for her.  Ellen thinks maybe Patty paid him.  But she can’t prove anything.  So she does a little more digging and visits her good friend Mr. Nye (who set her up with the FBI squealing job).  Mr. Nye lets her know that Patty and Daniel had worked on a case together 17 years ago.  Clever girl that she is, Ellen puts the pieces together and discovers Patty’s secret.  Patty didn’t pay him off, at least not with money.  Patty’s son, Michael, was born nine months after Daniel finished his testimony 17 years ago.  Daniel is Patty’s baby daddy.  And Ellen’s primed to exploit it.

Meanwhile, Daniel’s current lady love, Ultima’s lawyer/adulterer Claire Maddox, runs off to her bosses asking if anyone knows anything about Purcell’s dead wife.  Creepy Ultima business guy sure seems to be hiding something and suggests that Purcell’s not stable (which I’m thinking is sort of true).  Maddox runs off and secretly informs Purcell that his own people are turning on him.  Are they his own people?  Was he ever working with the Ultima guys?  I’m so confused.  Furthermore, Creepy Business Dude convinces CEO Dude, Walter Kendrick, that their Purcell/dangerous contaminate issues are over.  Kendrick isn’t so convinced (rightly so) and orders his peon to up the ante on the security at the coal plant in West Virginia.

What coal plant, you say?  Enter new hottie.  Out on a farm in West Virginia, show newcomer and reporter Josh Reston (Matthew Davis, also known as the guy who dumped Elle Woods), examines a dead prize pig. The scared owner doesn’t want to talk about the local livestock dying.  But Reston doesn’t give up.  He gives a call to his buddy, Daniel Purcell, who doesn’t answer and then goes to steal a sample of contaminated water from the coal plant.

Back in New York, scared/guilty/I can’t tell Daniel is trying to flee the country, but the police catch him at JFK and wheel him in to custody.  Patty goes to visit him behind bars.  He’s still skeptical of Patty’s motives (can you blame him?) and makes her sign a document committing herself as his lawyer for his murder trial.  Only then does he agree to give her the information she needs.  What does he have for her?  He tells her there’s a reporter in West Virginia she needs to meet.

Flash to hot journalist Reston getting beaten to a pulp by Kendrick’s “security.”  Guess Patty will have to talk to someone else.  Yikes.

Flash back to Patty’s office.  Tom wants to know how the cops knew Purcell would flee.  She tells him she had her own guy watch him.  The cops sure love anonymous tips, and people always talk when they’re behind bars.  Wow, Patty, cold.  Patty’s also still not convinced of Purcell’s innocence, but she does recall Purcell’s wife wearing that ruby ring the night she was killed.  She wants to know what happened to it.

Flash to a pawn shop with a scraggly, blond haired man selling off the ruby ring.  It looks like Purcell’s story actually pans out.

He’s innocent after all … I think.

Season 2, Episode 3: I Knew Your Pig (originally aired January 21, 2009)

For another take on this episode, check out Promising by Alana D.

For more on Damages, click here.

Wednesdays at 10pm E/P on FX

Photographs courtesy of FX and IMDbPro