Damages: Patty’s Pete

Lest you thought Patty came to be an ultra-competitive, power hungry, cold-blooded monster without reason, this most recent episode revealed that Patty grew up with a broken home, abandoned by her father when she was a child, and deeply reliant on Pete, who stepped in after her father left.  So when Patty gets the call at the end of Wednesday night’s episode that Pete died, those were real tears.  More importantly (and unbeknownst to Ellen) Patty wasn’t the one who killed him.

Turns out the person who ultimately widowed Magda was not Patty, or Pete himself, but Patrick, the guy that Pete hired to kill Ellen, and then later told to get out of town.   Because Pete’s attempt to kill himself last episode failed, the FBI ratcheted up the pressure to squeal on Patty, or face life in prison.  Patty, in the only truly unselfish thing we’ve ever seen her do, told him to save himself.  The FBI, having bugged the hospital room, heard all of this, but probably believe Ellen when she told the FBI that there is no way that Patty meant it.  But we, the audience, know better, because we know that Patty probably didn’t order the hit on Ellen, that Pete orchestrated that, and hired Patrick to carry it out.  And we know that Patrick took out Pete because Patrick thought that Pete would rat him out, which led to the most fraught scene this season – Ellen listening to Patrick from the FBI van parked outside, having no knowledge at all that this is the man who tried to kill her.

And with Pete dead, there’s no one to tell Ellen that Patty may have never tried to kill Ellen at all.  Oh yeah, except Magda, who will go through Pete’s things after his death, will find a file on Ellen, and give Ellen this file.  Which will probably have something to do with a vengeful-looking Ellen and a scared-looking Patty sitting across from each other in a room that looks a lot like Room 1910 when a gun goes off.  Twice.

Am I getting ahead of myself?  It’s soooooo hard to know with this show.  But, the really important thing to know is that this episode contained the great reveal of who exactly Ellen is going to shoot later.  It’s Patty.

I think.  You see, the camera went dark right when those shots went off — so for all we know there is someone else in the room entirely.

Meanwhile, (meaning meanwhile right now, not meanwhile in the future. . . .have I mentioned that it’s really hard to explain the timeline of the show on paper?) predictably, Frobisher’s whole zen thing was pretty short-lived. Last week, he was wearing all white and doing the right thing by UNR’s shareholders.  This week, he’s doing coke with prostitutes and ordering hits on vengeful attorneys.  His guru must be so proud! But his guru has only himself to blame – he told Frobisher that he could either 1) run for the rest of his life, or 2) face up to what he had done.

Now, I don’t know how attuned a guru is supposed to be to the nature of the person he is advising, but how did this dude (who, I hate to say it, but comes off as a more banal Mohinder) really expected Frobisher to respond?  Of course Frobisher would just decide to off Ellen!  And, frankly, this storyline was not that suspenseful, because we already know that Detective Metzer is going to end up in Ellen’s hotel room with a gun and a silencer.  I suspect the show really just wanted to find a way to write a scene that would incorporate a guru, a hired assassin, and a cute, little, white bunny. (Don’t ask me to explain the bunny.  I still don’t get it.)

I also don’t get why Ellen wasn’t more emotional when she saw David during a hallucination.  I don’t know if it was just bad acting by Rose Byrne, or the way the scene was written, but I found the scene where David tells Ellen to open her wedding gift strangely unaffecting.  (Or maybe I’m just done with departed lovers giving messages beyond the grave.)  I totally buy Wes’s theory that Ellen’s not opening the gift because she really doesn’t want to move on, although he may just as easily have said that to manipulate her.  I can just as easily believe that Wes will ultimately end up helping Ellen as I can believe he will hurt her.

Also, I don’t entirely trust Susie, the hooker with a heart that Tom has hired to dig up info on Finn Garrity, the energy trader who appears to be manipulating the market for Kendrick.  And I really don’t trust Patty’s husband Phil, who is apparently secretly investing in UNR on a tip from Dave Pell. But I have no idea how either of these storylines will play out.

But, I suppose that’s the beauty of the show, right?

Season 2, Episode 8: They had to tweeze that out of my kidney. (originally aired February 25, 2009)

For another take on this episode, check out Remember Your Demons by Kaitlyn Edsall.

For more on Damages, click here.

Wednesdays at 10pm E/P on FX

Photograph courtesy of FX and IMDbPro