Damages

All I can say about this show is wow! This is one of the best shows I have seen in years. It begins with a young woman stumbling down the streets of Manhattan covered in bloods. When she is picked up by the police we learn that she is Ellen Parsons (Rose Byrne), a young lawyer at Hewes and Associates. In flashbacks we learn how she came to work for one of New York's toughest litigators, Patty Hewes (Glenn Close). Hewes is working on litigation against businessman Arthur Frobisher (Ted Danson). He encouraged his employees to buy stock in the company and sold his before it went belly up. The employees lost their entire life savings and he became a multi-millionaire (think Kenneth Lay). Now Hewes is suing him on behalf of those employees. While Ellen is lead to believe that she was hired simply for his mind we soon learn that Patty had ulterior motives. It seems that Ellen's future sister-in-law, Katie Connor (Anastasia Griffin), catered the party where Frobisher spoke with his stock broker about the situation. Patty needs her to verify that this meeting occured and make Frobisher pay and she will stop at nothing, even murder, to win this case.

I LOVE this show. The first episode was commercial free and it did not seem to last over an hour. Close is wonderful as the single-minded Patty Hewes. Byrne is wonderful as the naive Ellen. She plays the character with just the right amount of sweetness and innocence. I can not reccomend this show enough - it keeps me on the edge of my seat!