Doing the Twist with the Creators of Damages

Sucks to be Tom.

Damages is one of those shows that I push hard on people, because I find it so unique and challenging. And also because I am a bit of a masochist. See, Damages doesn't operate like other television shows on air right now. It prefers to dangle things in front of viewers, show them bits of the "ending" right off the bat, and generally lead them in a direction where they think they know the answer to the mystery before blowing everything up. I chatted with show creators (and brothers) Todd and Glenn Kessler about about the general sense of the FX program and Season 3.

TV.com: I always have a hard time describing the show to friends. "Legal Drama" just doesn't seem to do it justice. How do you pitch the show?

Todd A. Kessler: We really think of it as entertainment, but it's a character-driven thriller. The thriller genre itself is a tricky one to do in television. People have said [Damages] is like John Grisham when he's at his best. There's character stories, there's action and suspense, but it's coming from a place that's all from character. It's based on people in high-stakes situations, forced to make decisions about who they are.

When we went to pitch the show to FX, which was the only network we went to sell it to, they had told us that they had been trying to crack the legal genre for almost ten years. They had The Shield, which was their cop show, and Nip/Tuck, which was their medical show, both of which were unlike any cop or medical show before. No one had pitched them a legal show like what we pitched them.

Do you enjoy teasing the audience the way you do? Because every time I watch the show, I feel like I'm being drawn and quartered with all the unexpected twists.

Todd: I really feel like what we're trying to do is entertain. For us, so much of television is predictable, we like to not be able to predict what's going to happen. We find ourselves watching a lot of documentaries, where you're hearing one person tell their story and you hear another character tell their story, and you wonder, "Where is the truth?" [Unpredictability] is something that we feel is missing in a lot of television that's out there.

What came first for you guys, the storytelling devices or the story itself?

Glenn Kessler: It really began with an exploration of power, then it moved to women in power. Once we landed on the genre of a legal show, we decided we wanted to arc out a long case over thirteen episodes. And once we realized that this isn't a show that takes place in a courtroom, [that it was instead about] back-door power manipulation and the kinds of deal-making that have to go on in these high-stakes cases, then we started to realize this is taking us out of the courtroom and into this world of intrigue where everyone has these agendas that aren't recognizable up front. We started to play with the idea of moving through time differently, letting the audience see parts of the ending so that there's an engagement with the present. It's not just about what happens, but how it happens and how we get there. There's no surprise in the end, in a way, because we gave you the ending. There's almost no surprise value to how the cases turn out. Most legal dramas get their stakes from the verdict. What we thought might be interesting is telling a legal story that rarely goes in a courtroom, and by the time you get there, it's not really about the verdict at all. Moving around through time allowed us to get out of the courtroom and take the stakes off of a verdict.

Do you think that Season 3 is spiritually like Season 1 or Season 2?

Todd: In Season 3, much like Season 1, in the end [of the first episode] we reveal that someone is dead. So it's a very clear mystery of: How did the person die? The storyline of Tom losing his life was something we discussed way back in 2005. We realized we tried something in Season 2, which was the mystery of Ellen holding a gun on someone, and then she shoots the gun, and we reveal more and more of what happened in that room. But we also realized that that in conjunction with the case in Season 2, it may have been an ambitious jumping-off point to not define the flash-forward mystery clearly enough, or to not define the case clear enough. And in this third season we feel that both are very clearly defined.

What was Tate Donovan's reaction to Tom's storyline?

Todd: We have a great relationship with Tate. Not only has he done phenomenal work for us as an actor, but he's directed episodes and has become a personal friend to all of us. When we made the decision to tell this story of Tom Schayes losing his life, we called Tate and talked him through the story. He said it sounded like a phenomenal story, and it will be so amazing to act it, but it just sucks that it has to be Tom. The other thing about it is that, by showing him dead in the first episode, we now have 12 episodes to write our asses off and give Tate the best material and have the character be front-and-center. He's such an integral part of the show, we're just happy to give him a terrific storyline.

It appears that Tom and Ellen may have had a romantic relationship at some point. Are you purposefully keeping this ambiguous?

Todd: In Ellen's entry into Hewes and Associates, the first person she ever met was Tom. The bond between Ellen and Tom is one we're continuing to explore this season, as we have the past two seasons, and it's a particularly strong bond because, having worked for Patty, they've both been "in combat." What we're interested in exploring this season is that bond between two people that happens in a work situation. I'm being intentionally vague because we're very excited about where the story goes. Ultimately, it's about bonding Ellen, Tom, and Patty together. We think in the next few episodes we're going to really deliver on what we've proposed and surprise the audience.

The way you write the show, I've learned to not trust any of your characters... there are just too many twists and turns. Does this mistrust help or hurt the writing process?

Todd: I think it is more challenging because an audience has lived with Patty Hewes and knows not to necessarily trust her. At the same time, one of the things we feel is interesting about it is a sense of paranoia. You can't live your life being paranoid and not being able to trust everyone. But the audience gets to feel like, "I know they're saying this, and I want to believe them, but I'm not sure that I can." It just seems like very rich terrain to mine that few shows have gone the distance to do.

Damages airs Monday nights at 10pm on FX.