Damages Season 5 Episode 10

This season left many unanswered questions:

What was the rationale for killing Samauri7 and who killed him?

Patty's sister never disclosed to Ellen that she was related to Patty. This certainly would be relevant to her working at Ellen's firm.

The relevance of Patty's father and Ellen's parents domestic situation to the case.

Is it normal for a pregnant woman to collapse in the street in a catatonic state one moment and alert the next?

The script was poor and disjointed.

What a way to end a magnificent series. Although the episode started off a little slow, the last half an hour was amazing and made up for any uninteresting scenes we had at the beginning of the episode. It was a fitting end for both characters Ellen and Patty and I felt satisfied... Well almost as I was also left feeling a little empty. Were was the trial?



I understand that Damages has never taken on the issues for an actual trial but it would have been nice to see both Ellen and Patty face each other over the course of the season but all we were left with was a four minute scene whereby Ellen won and Patty handed over the reins to her victory. But the scene later on with Patty and Ellen standing by the water and Patty revealing that she was never interested in beating Ellen, only seeing how far Ellen would go to beat her kind of made up for the letdown of the trail but I couldn't help but think... Someone was telling tittle tattles.



Patty DOES want to beat Ellen. its why she throws her alcoholic glass at the wall, gets drunk when she can't handle a situation when Ellen gets one over on her and then completely throws everything off her work table in a fit of rage. And apart from that green screen at the water that put me off, these were the only negative things about the episode.



Now on to the positive:



Where to start... Ellen collapsed in the alleyway was perfect and the fact that she turned out to be pregnant was a great way to keep Ellen with Chris. I knew she couldn't have fell off that roof as it was too high and for her to survive that fall would have been ludicrous to me. Yay writers.



But what a revelation when Ellen found Patty's son dead after being shot dead by the man who tried to kill Ellen in Season 1. it was perfect.



John Hannah's character was killed off brilliantly and it showed how far Ellen was willing to go to get Patty and beat her in court. Shocking yet fitting. But looking on, this series was about Ellen and Patty's relationship and while we didn't see the trial, I can understand why the writers wanted to stick to their hate relationship as it was more about inner demons and living with them for the rest of their lives. And Ellen won! Both the case and in life and Patty was left on her own, lonely and suffering in silence in the most gratifying scene of the series.



I was very happy about this season and thought that while it wasn't as perfect as season 1-3, it still was one of my best seasons and I will truly miss that feeling of the unknown of what Patty's move would be to screw up Ellen's life once more. Kudos writers. Plus I still think Chris Sanchez is the most amazing man I've ever seen. Those lips... Yum :P I'm just hoping now that the entire season comes in a blu-Ray box set as so far, only season 1 has been released. Lets hope...

So why did Ellen let Patty off for the attempted murder? Her stated reason -- that prison couldn't be worse than losing a child -- was unconvincing.

Death, duplicity, murder, lies, greed, power and money - all this and much more was seen on Damages. Five seasons of intrigue, drama and compelling performances. As a whole, it was a great show, a magnet of talented actors (Ted Danson, William Hurt, Dylan Baker, John Goodman...), complex and daring and unique with the case of the season and its trademark flash forward mystery. Although, I do think some seasons worked better than others, I truly think it never jumped the shark. That being said, as much as I loved the show, it was time to end it.

That being said, I thought the finale managed to pull all the pieces together and yet come back to the start of it all: did Patty try to kill Ellen or not? So, it was a moving episode that wrapped everything and came back to beginning.

-We've seen so much levels of damage that power can cause, to so many different people, directly, or indirectly. And thus, we reach the truly beautiful coda. Good thing there was a reason the purse strings had been as tight this Season and the production values went up for this episode, because it was much quicker and more beautiful than the episodes before, and the direction was excellent in the final minutes. And then the ultimate shot of the most damaged person in the series' world: Patty Hewes.

-In a way that was the ending I was hoping for: both women losing a lot, and those losses catalyzing their eventual, and final, closure. Michael's death scene was heartbreaking, I never liked him and still felt a pang of sorrow when I saw him foolishly threaten Scully.

-The pier scene was great, it was heartbreaking to watch Ellen once again fall apart upon realizing she had been played by Patty once more, this time into abstaining from every moral she'd claimed to have.

-Glenn Close had scene after amazing scene here. She absolutely killed the scene between Patty and her father, and that facial expression that closed out the series was deeply affecting.

Every Season of this show had all a good drama needs intriguing characters, clever plot twists and absolutly outstanding acting performance. The Series finale however was a bit of a letdown. There were to many misdirects and useless storylines. The whole father of Patty thing was a waste of time in my mind. It didn't have any big impact on either of the main charcters or storyline. If they had used the father for flashbacks and a decent backatory he would have at least served some purpose. Also i felt like the writers didn't have the gut for an ending with a bang. Coming to think of it all the resolved previous cliffhangers were to anti climatic for a final episode. A great ending that i would have liked to see could have been something like this. Ellen gets killed, not by Patty, but by her son. He plants evidence that make Patty look guilty. She goes to jail and has to watch as her son is behaving to cathrine as her father did to her. Realizing that in some she herself help create the man she hates the most in life.