Damages
“But You Don’t Do That Anymore”, Season 5 Episode 10
Requested By
What do I know about this series going into it?
Nothing. I assume based on the name it’s a legal show, and also about damaged people.
Previously On
A man has secrets about PTSD treatments. A woman is testifying against Patty in a child custody case. A woman is sick. An old man is giving his son the house. Mr. Simon leaked something about a bank. There’s a law firm called McClarenTruth.
Recap
Glenn Close comes downstairs in the middle of the night. An old man named Lyle1 (the one who is giving his son the house) is waiting for her. “What happened to your little girl?” he asks. “She was stillborn,” Glenn answers. He points a gun at her. “You’re lying,” he says, and points to a little girl locked on the porch. Glenn objects: that’s not my little girl, that’s my granddaughter.
Lyle tries again, this time pointing to a woman in the dining room. But that’s not Glenn’s daughter either – she’s covered in blood, and she too pulls out a gun. She shoots at Glenn, who wakes up.
Opening credits.
A woman with a bob haircut, who I recognize from the Previously, is in a doctor’s office. She’s under stress: suppressed immune system, anemia. “You need to rest,” says the doctor. She says she’ll rest after the upcoming trial, but the doctor warns her even that much may literally be too late. What? She’ll literally die from stress?
I thought bob-haircut-woman (identified in captions as Ellen) was a lawyer, but turns out she’s actually a witness, in a custody case against “Ms. Hewes”. The custody case is between a man and his mother, and both Ellen and “Patrick Scully” are going to testify in favor of the man.
There’s discussion about “Torben and Herreshoff”, who are dangerous. I didn’t understand it.
Aha, some context arrives. Glenn Close is fighting for custody for her grandson against her son. Ellen is supporting the son. There’s a legal case against “Torben”. John Hannah is pretending to be on Ellen’s side in the Torben case (Ellen is a lawyer after all) but is actually working for Glenn Close. I can’t tell if this is the same as the custody case or not. I’m drowning in names and details here.
While trying to figure that out, I missed most of a scene between Glenn and somebody else. The somebody else asks Glenn if she has decided to “let him give Michael the land”. Between that and the Previously, I now have some more context. Glenn’s son is named Michael. In the Previously, the old guy from Glenn’s dream said he wanted to give Michael his land when he dies, even though Michael knows Glenn will object. There is also a custody battle between Michael and Glenn over Michael’s son. I am getting a strong feeling that Glenn is the bad guy.
Meanwhile, Ellen and “Mr. McClaren” are meeting with a representative of the VA. Somebody stole medical records from the VA and gave them to McClaren, who published them on his website; the VA representative says that if McClaren doesn’t give up the source, he’ll charge McClaren with “unauthorized procurement and dissemination of military records”.2
McClaren and Ellen bring this development to McClaren’s source, an active-duty soldier named Tony. For the convenience of us new viewers, Tony explains that his leak proved that the military sent soldiers with PTSD back into combat on meds instead of treating them. Will he give himself up to keep McClaren out of prison? No, because if he does he won’t have a future or a pension. He can’t do it.
Ellen is working late at night. David3 is there waiting for her, and asks her what she plans to do. She’s adamant: McClaren’s her client, and to protect her client she’ll gladly turn in the soldier (Tony) who “helped Chris”. Who’s Chris?
David tells her he loves her, but they were never right for each other. (Did they break up in the past or is this them breaking up now?) He tells her to make sure she can live with the decision she makes regarding Chris, whoever that is.
David leaves, and moments later VA Man shows up.
It’s the middle of the night, so he clearly isn’t showing up uninvited; she plans to turn Tony in. But the show cuts away before she does so. Did David convince her to change her mind? (I bet he did, or they wouldn’t have cut away.)
A flashback from a year ago shows a series of disjointed scenes about Torben and Herreshoff that I have a lot of trouble following. All I got was that Rutger Simon (the guy played by John Hannah) hacked into “Naomi”’s email account, and Naomi found out, saying that Rutger and Herreshoff et al. are going to pay.
Back to the present. Glenn comes into Ellen’s office. She tells Ellen she’ll be adding Rutger Simon to her list of witnesses in the custody battle. I don’t see the connection between the custody battle and the financial fraud case, and also how can Ellen be both the lawyer and a witness in the custody battle?
Ellen smashes up her desk in anger and frustration: she now knows she’s going to lose.
So she contacts Evil Guy #2 (who works with Herreshoff, I’ve forgotten his name) and tells her about Rutger working with Glenn – whose name, I finally learn, is Patty Hewes. “I don’t care what Herreshoff was up to,” she tells Torben. “You need to help me against Rutger Simon.”
We flash back again to Naomi threatening Rutger. The emails are being passed around on a disk-on-key. Naomi and Herreshoff were having an affair, and Rutger tells Evil Guy #2 about it.
To fix the problem, they hire some guys to kill Naomi in the bathtub and make it look like a suicide. I think all of these are flashbacks but I can’t tell (nor can I tell how much of this is new information and how much was seen in previous episodes).
Back in the present, though, the bad guys aren’t happy that Rutger is working with Glenn on the custody battle. He reassures them that he’s entirely in their pocket, oblivious to the fact that they’re clearly planning to kill him. Or never mind – he was just playing oblivious, because as soon as he leaves he calls the airport to buy a ticket to the UK.
The custody battle begins, and the case is called Walling vs. McClaren. Hewes is about to begin her opening statement when her phone vibrates. News about Rutger, I assume: did they kill him or did he successfully flee? Hewes approaches the judge: he fled, it turns out. Which means she has no case, and she’s dropping the suit.
In the car afterwards, Ellen gloats to her friend about the victory, who congratulates Ellen on a job well done - even though she didn’t actually do anything; she just got lucky. But I finally learn that this wasn’t the custody trial. This was a different lawsuit, in which a client of Hewes is suing a client of Ellen. Yet she’s testifying in a separate custody case against her opposing lawyer? How is that not a conflict of interest?
Meanwhile, Channing(?) is having doubts about his future:
Okay, we have a bit more information, so let’s try listing the cases again. Channing McClaren, who runs McClarenTruth.org, was being sued by Naomi Walling.4 That’s the case in which Rutger was supposed to testify before he ran away. Walling’s lawyer is Patty Hewes; McClaren’s lawyer is Ellen Nolastnameyet. Simultaneously, Ellen is defending McClaren against the VA’s accusations that he stole and published classified information. And simultaneously, Ellen is testifying in a custody case between Patty Hewes and her son named (I think) Michael. And simultaneously there’s some other case involving Herreshoff, in which Walling had something to do with leaked emails? The number of completely different legal cases involving the same group of people is insane.
Anyway, Ellen has returned home, where she finds that Chris – I finally learn who Chris is, he’s Ellen’s SO – is leaving her because she turned Tony in. Tony took a risk only because I asked him to, he says, and you’re putting the case ahead of me! Ellen doesn’t deny this, but also says she’ll make it right.
The next day, Patty is approached by a man who I think is named Scully.
She had hired him to kill Ellen, and Ellen found out; there’s a business card with his blood on it as proof. Scully tells Patty that Ellen has obtained immunity for him if he testifies. Patty offers to pay him not to take the deal - but that conversation itself was a trap. Scully’s already working for Ellen, and recorded the conversation with Patty. Revealing this in court will swing the custody battle in favor of Patty’s son.
Meanwhile, Patty visits the old man (her husband?) in a hospital bed. “I made you tough,” he says, so maybe he’s her father? She reminds him of his drunken rages, tells him how much she hates him, and says that after he dies she’ll sell all of his land to the lowest bidder.
Later, in Patty’s house, Michael is playing with his daughter, Catherine. She doesn’t even yet know that Michael is her father. Patty offers Michael 50/50 custody, a sign that she’s unsure of her chances of winning. He says no, they’ll let a judge decide. She’s surprised and worried at this expression of absolute confidence in victory.
It’s the day of the custody hearing. Scully is waiting to testify, and Ellen is supposed to testify too, but she’s late and not answering the phone. Did Michael’s self-assurance up against his clearly dangerous mother get Ellen killed? Ellen’s investigator, named Cooper, calls the police, who arrest Patty. And he continues calling Ellen, to no avail.
Scully sees something over the edge of the rooftop and, instead of saying what it is, tells Cooper to call Ellen again. They can somehow hear Ellen’s phone ringing from ten stories up, and see her dead body lying in the middle of the street. Patty must have run her over…
Flashback. Ellen didn’t get run over. The stress discussed in the opening scenes finally got to her and she had a heart attack in the middle of the street. Further flashbacks to the doctor’s office – it wasn’t a heart attack. She was pregnant.
Scully gives Michael the news: Ellen is dying in an alleyway. And since she’s the one who set up his immunity agreement, her dying means he won’t have immunity anymore, so he’s got no reason to stick around.5 And if she’s dead, he can just walk away, because she’s the only one who can identify him. Toodles!
But Michael calls him back into the room. I saw you there the night Ellen was attacked, he says. I can turn you in myself, if you don’t testify against my mother.
Outside, Cooper has managed to wake Ellen up. She returns to her office and finds that Scully has shot Michael dead.
In the interrogation room, the detectives deliver the news to Patty, who reacts with horror and despair.
Later, Ellen meets Patty on a dock.
Ellen is carrying a briefcase, which she says contains all of the evidence against Patty. But she’s not going to use it.
Patty says she’s proud of Ellen, and there’s a flashback to when Ellen spoke to Herreshoff’s partner. Turns out she wasn’t just lucky – she told the bad guys explicitly to do something about Rutger, and didn’t care that this action might include killing him. Which they did; turns out Patty was lying when she said Rutger left the country.
A few years later, Patty and Ellen happen to run into each other in a shop. Ellen has a daughter. She thanks Patty “for everything” – or so we think. Turns out Patty was imagining, nay, hoping, that Ellen would thank her. In reality, Ellen didn’t interact with Patty at all, and we learn that she has since left the legal profession entirely, apparently horrified at what she became, and at the praise that Patty gave her for doing what it took to win.
The closing shot is on Patty staring into the middle distance.
Unresolved questions
What happened to Catherine?
What does Ellen do for a living now?
Did Ellen quitting the practice of law restore her relationship with Chris, or is she married to someone else now?
Did Scully ever get caught?
Did McClaren continue operating his website, possibly from inside an Ecuadorian embassy?
Ratings
These ratings evaluate the finale-of-the-week from an angle that its writers never intended: how well it works as an individual episode watched in isolation. The analysis accompanying each rating is written from that point of view as well.
The ratings do not necessarily apply to the episode if it is watched in the proper context. And it should go without saying that none of them apply to the series as a whole, which I have not watched.
Story: 8/10. Four, possibly five, different legal cases happening in parallel made for a plot that was complex, interesting, and very difficult to follow. But I don’t penalize the episode’s plot just because I couldn’t understand it (that’s the Accessibility rating).
There were no major plot holes that I could see from where I was sitting, but a few minor ones. I mentioned most during the recap, but there are a couple more. For example, since when do you get immunity for an attempted murder charge by testifying in a custody hearing? It’s one thing if Scully was planning to testify against Patty in a criminal case, because then the government has a vested interest in the outcome and a reason to offer a deal. But so far as I could tell no such case was even mentioned; Scully was planning to testify only to Patty’s unfitness as Catherine’s legal guardian.
Writing: 3/10. The writers succeeded in subverting my expectations numerous times, and I respect that. But I just can’t give the writing high marks. There was too much focus on trying to make things dramatic rather than on maintaining coherence and consistency in the plot.
Why would Cooper suddenly decide to look for Ellen on the roof? What did he expect her to be doing up there? Why wouldn’t Scully shout “hey, I can see a dead body” as soon as he saw Ellen, instead of telling Cooper to call her? Because the writers wanted the dramatic-and-physically-impossible moment when they hear a phone ring from ten stories below them, in the middle of New York City, in the middle of the day.
Similarly, the scene in the doctor’s office made no sense. Ellen had gone into the office complaining of fatigue and anemia, the doctor does some tests, then calls her back into the office days later to hand her… a sonogram that shows she’s pregnant?
An ultrasound is not one of the tests you take to find out why you have fatigue and anemia. And while you might take one to investigate an irregular menstrual cycle, the results don’t need to be developed like a film camera; if you’re pregnant, you find out while you’re lying there on the table, watching the baby on the monitor. Did the doctor perform the ultrasound but refuse to let her look? Did she not tell her that she was doing an ultrasound?6
Production: 4/10. The episode had a very unique editing style. Almost every cut was a smash cut, even if it was to a flashback, and with the exception of very brief moments there was no soundtrack in the entire episode. The combination provided an unsettling, disjointed air, and I’m genuinely not sure if that effect is intended. As a result I went back and forth several times between grading it well and grading it poorly.
The acting, especially by the leads, was very good. But other aspects of the production did not serve the episode well. They suffered from the same problem as the writing, in that the desire for a dramatic image overrode in-universe logic:
The shot of Ellen lying in the middle of the street is certainly dramatic, but it’s the middle of the day in Manhattan. You’re telling me nobody walked or drove down that street for over two hours?
The scene in which Rutger calls the airport to try to flee the country takes place at night. But the immediately preceding scene, where he realizes Torben and Herreschoff plan to kill him, is in the middle of the day:
I praised the writing subversions earlier, but one of them was built on the back of a cheap trick by the director: if you collapse, and you lie there for two hours with your wide open and not blinking, it’s not because you’re exhausted or unconscious; it’s because you’re dead.
You’re allowed to let things slide in order to tell a good story, but you need to be better at hiding them.
Characterization: 8/10. Aside from the two main characters, few others had enough screentime to get to know them properly. But Byrne and Close brought enough depth to Ellen and Patty make up for it.
I want to highlight something interesting about Michael. His display of overconfidence in front of Patty was a (successful) attempt by the writers to fool us into thinking Ellen fell victim to foul play – but it also served a hidden second purpose. It foreshadowed the overconfidence he would display in front of Scully that led directly to his death. That type of throughline shows good attention to character on the writers’ part.
Accessibility: 3/10. A very weak 3, almost a 2. This finale was absolutely mystifying to a first-time viewer, even more than that of your average serialized show (this is not a criticism; it’s a statement of fact). I’m still not sure I have a complete and accurate list of the court cases involved, and I don’t understand anything about the Torben and Herreshoff subplot.
I was left with a lot of questions about how we got to where we are: How did Catherine end up in Patty’s custody in the first place, and why doesn’t she know Michael is her father? What was preventing Lyle from writing a will giving his land directly to Michael, without needing Patty’s permission? If Ellen was a witness in a case against Patty, why wasn’t she conflicted out of representing a client suing Patty in another matter? How was Naomi suing McClaren if she’s dead?
I can only assume that all of these questions had clear answers if you watched previous episodes, which is why I don’t consider them plot holes, and therefore they don’t affect the Story rating.
Closure: 8/10. Ellen’s decision to leave the legal profession is a natural end to the series, and we also know some of Patty’s fate (not paying for her crimes, whatever they were, because losing a child was “bad enough”). But the closure isn’t perfect, and some of the questions that occupied the majority of the episode’s attention remained unanswered: what happened with the investigation into Torben and Herreshoff; did quitting repair Ellen’s relationship with Chris; and does Patty still have custody of Catherine.
Do I want to watch the series now?
Sloppiness bothers me, especially if the sloppiness is an overt attempt to prioritize drama over sense. And the scene on the rooftop - consisting of one very silly thing after another, just so that the end of the scene could be suitably dramatic - was very sloppy. I might watch the show if reassured that the scene on the rooftop isn’t typical of how the show handles things, and if the legal issues that I brought up had good answers (maybe McClaren really did actively help Tony steal the medical records?), but I’m not very confident that is the case.
Name given in captions.
There are so many problems with this. First, the military code cited by the VA representative doesn’t exist. Second, since McClaren isn’t himself in the military, laws in the US military code don’t apply to him and he can’t be charged with violating them. Third, the 1971 Supreme Court decision in New York Times Co. v. United States firmly established a First Amendment right to publish classified information, as long as you did not conspire to obtain it in the first place. In the real-life Wikileaks case upon which this episode is obviously based, Julian Assange was not a passive recipient but rather actively helped Chelsea Manning steal classified information; as far as I can tell, writing this footnote at after the episode ended, McClaren did not do this for Tony.
Name given in captions.
I’m not sure how she can do this if she’s dead, but put that aside.
This is not how immunity agreements work. They don’t have a “as long as my lawyer is still alive” clause.
The image is from an intravaginal ultrasound, which I’m told is very hard to perform secretly.