Damages: Patty’s Redemption

Hmmmmmm.

I’m not one to be coy, so let’s just start with the ending.  Ellen’s at David’s grave, telling him of a new job offer and that she got what she wanted from Patty.  Patty is at her house by the lake, telling Tom that she thinks that Ellen will be back.  “Trust me.”

Do you?  Do you trust Patty?  This didn’t end the way I thought it would.  Ellen wasn’t working for Patty all along, which I think actually would have been a better ending than the one we’ve got.  There was no big reveal in the end, really; just a lot of tying up loose ends.

First off, Ellen did end up bribing that judge.  In being so insistent that she do so, though, she tipped off Patty that something wasn’t quite right.  Or maybe Patty’s spidey sense was just a little extra sensitive since meeting Purcell in prison, who told her that the only difference between the two of them is that he’s confessed his sins. He also asks Patty to relay the message to their son Michael that “He doesn’t have to be like us.”  At this message, Patty’s face displays. . .fear?  anger?  disgust?  All of the above?  None of the above?

You decide.

What is clear here is that the final episode of Season 2 is not about Ellen’s revenge as we have been lead to believe; it’s about Patty’s redemption.

Patty is so reluctant to bribe a judge that she goes to Finn Garrity for help, of all people.  And while I didn’t buy for a second that Patty would rely on someone as emotionally unstable as Garrity (not to mention the guy’s a cokehead), the scene did provide the best line of the night: after Garrity professes to know nothing about Mrs. Purcell’s death or the toxic chemical aerocyte, Patty says “Maybe not, and I don’t really care. I’ve been having one hell of a shitty month and someone’s gonna pay.”  It’s not the line itself that sells it – it’s Close’s delivery.  Close doesn’t infuse the line with anger. . .it’s Patty’s nonchalance and shrug of the shoulders that lends the scene the aura of inevitability.  So Finn panics.

Finn goes to Kendrick and Pell and says that if Kendrick doesn’t give him an ownership stake in UNR, he’s going to work for Patty.  Oh, Finn.  Don’t you know that playing both sides of the fence never works out for people on this show?

Poor Wes tried to have it both ways.  He wants to be Ellen’s boyfriend, but he’s got to get Messer off her back.  As I called it earlier, Wes is there when Messer shows up in her room.  Before Mesesr can approach Ellen in the shower, Wes has a gun pressed to the back of Messer’s head.  He guides Messer right out the door, and Messer warns “You can’t protect her everywhere.”

Valid point.  So before Messer can insinuate himself into Ellen’s life by posing as a concerned detective looking into David’s death, Wes shows up in Messer’s back seat.  Messer sees him in the rear view mirror and mumbles “shit.”  And Wes puts a bullet in Messer’s head.

Well, that was certainly one way to solve the problem.

And although Wes just killed someone in this episode, I still find him to be profoundly less threatening than Michael Hewes.  Patty found out Michael hadn’t applied to college, and when she confronts him, Michael tells his mother — his mother! — that he’s staying home because she needs a man in her life.  Ewwwwwwww.  You guys, Michael is so evil I can’t stand it.  He’s not just another character on this show with ulterior motives.  Kid’s a sociopath, if you ask me.

And although this mother/son storyline has served virtually no purpose in advancing the plot, it still provided the most disturbing scene in the season finale.

Michael brings his cougar girlfriend Jill home, for the sheer pleasure of flaunting the girlfriend in Patty’s face.  He goes to his room to grab something, then yells and comes downstairs.   Patty’s gotten rid of all of his stuff and sent it to Jill’s!  Because I cannot do these lines justice, I’ll just have to quote them verbatim: [to Jill] “[Y]ou don’t have any children, it’ll be nice to have a boy around the house. . .[to Michael]  And when I want another man around the house, I’ll go out and find myself a real one.” Gotta say, on the family dysfunctional meter, this scene wasn’t “fun”, it was more “funct”.  It was actually rather disturbing on many levels, yet also satisfying to see Patty put Michael in his place so thoroughly.

Anyway, I’m thinking that Michael will have to obtain redemption in a later season.

But back to Patty.  Following that confrontation with her son, she has a dream starring all her demons.  Phil, Pete, Michael, Ray Fisk, Tom, and Kendrick sitting round her dinner table (What, no Frobisher?) smoking cigars, drinking whiskey out of sifters, and laughing the loud obnoxious laugh of men in power.  (The only thing missing were the poker cards and stripper waitresses). Patty spies Ellen in the kitchen who tells her the (new?) news that everyone hates her.  Trust no one.

Patty wakes up.  She calls Ellen over, and tells her that the only one who has been loyal to her is Pete “and you.”  Uh oh.  Ellen says she doesn’t do it out of loyalty, she does it because she believes in what Patty does.  Ellen thinks they should bribe the judge: “We can both move on.”

And for once, what Patty’s thinking is clear on her face (although Ellen doesn’t notice.)  I imagine it’s “We?  What do you mean by we?”

Oh, Ellen, that was a mistake.  I know you’re a bit shaken up after seeing that picture of Pete with your attempted killer, which pretty much sealed the deal as to who was responsible for trying to kill you.  That picture, plus the stuff Magda sends you is all you needed to put Patty away.

So why didn’t you?

Instead, Ellen was oblivious of the meeting that Patty had with Dave Pell (at a church, of course — redemption!).  Patty is all, I know you’re manipulating the energy markets and Dave is all, I know you’re about to bribe a judge and Patty is all, Ellen’s an informant, isn’t she? and Dave is all, sho ’nuff.  So Patty says, let’s just make all of this stuff go away.  But first, give me Kendrick (to which Dave is like, sure, no problem) and also set Ellen up — make it look like she’s bribing the judge, not me.

And Dave does it!   He’s probably not surprised that Patty would make a deal with the devil.  But what he doesn’t get is that Patty only makes deals with devils she can trust, and Pell’s not one of them.

So, ultimately, I wasn’t surprised when after Ellen made that bribe, Ellen was arrested by Werner.  Or that Werner was arrested by an US Attorney right afterwards (Tom’s sister! Natch!).  Patty recorded that whole conversation with Pell, and Werner rolled over on Pell faster than Finn Garrity can do a line of coke of a hooker’s ass.

So that takes care of everything, right?  Patty knows Ellen’s a snitch, but she uses it to her advantage to put the judge in prison, as well as Werner, Pell, and Kendrick in one fell swoop.

See you next season!

Oh, wait, I forgot.  Frickin’ room 1910.

So Ellen didn’t shoot Patty.  (Duh!).  She met with Patty to ostensibly get the cash for the bribe.  Only she’s recording it, cause, y’know – snitch!  On Patty’s way up to Ellen’s room, she runs into Finn Garrity, who is looking even more ugly guy than usual.  Frantic, unstable, and probably coked out, he stabs Patty when Patty tells him that his opportunity to work with her has ended.  Patty is left alone in that elevator, freaked out, but a hallucination of Ray Fisk tells her to keep going. . .the truth is in that room.  (Geez, can they pummel the trust/redemptive theme any more in this episode?).

Patty soldiers on to that room, clutching her side, which explains why she always looked pretty immobile in this scene that we are finally seeing through.  She faces Ellen and Ellen confronts her.  On all of it.  But first, she takes out that gun, and fires. . .two shots, into the video camera, because she’s that good of a markswoman. Camera down, just her and Patty, Ellen tells her that she’s an informant, and she seems to think that Patty already knew that, although why she thinks so is unclear.)  She basically says it’s just you and me here, and I just want to hear you say it.

And Patty does.  She admits that she told Pete to have Ellen killed.

Bummer.  I really wanted to think that Patty didn’t do that.  It’s like, I have no problem with the legal and ethical lines that Patty crosses, but murder?  Really?

Still, Ellen was satisfied with this confession.  She tells Patty that they shouldn’t go to through with the bribe, but Patty says do it.  “Trust me.” And Ellen is just stupid (wise?) enough to do it, which allows Patty to bust the aforementioned judge, cop, Pell, and Kendrick.  She never realized, however, that Patty was dying there in her room, and ultimately, it is Wes who finds and saves Patty.

So the season ends solving the mystery it set out in the first episode — we now know what happens in that room.  Yet, Ellen never actually “gets” Patty.  She gets a confession, but she doesn’t put her behind bars.  Nor does she solve David’s murder.  Frobisher, after all, is alive and well in this episode, building a green office to begin his new company.   And with Messer dead and Ellen deeply involved with a person that she 1) trusts and 2) has no reason to ever tell her anything about Frobisher’s involvement, it’s unlikely that she ever will.   So, on that end, I’m not finding this season finale that satisfying.

Still, Glenn Close was good till the end.

See ya in Season 3.

Season 2, Episode 13: Trust Me (originally aired April 1, 2009)

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Photograph courtesy of FX and IMDbPro