Damages: Difference between revisions

* [[Ate His Gun]]: {{spoiler|Ray Fiske does this in front of Patty after she blackmails him near the end of season 1.}}

* [[Badass|Bad Ass Lawyer]]: Say what you will about her methods but Patty Hewes will always get her job done.

* [[Beard of Evil]]: {{spoiler|Rick Messer}} sports one of these.

* [[Big Bad]]: Arthur Frobisher in season 1. Pell and Tobin for seasons 2 and 3 respectively.

* [[Broken Bird]]: Ellen by the end of season 1, and it's heavily hinted that Patty has this in her backstory.

* [[Career Resurrection]]: For [[Ted Danson]]. While he hadn't completley gone away after ''Cheers'' he had sort of fallen into has been territory with parts in unsuccesful films, a failed sitcom (''Ink''), a fairly unpopular one (''Becker'') and cameos as himself on ''[[Curb Your Enthusiasm]]''. However, when the first season of ''Damages'' made it onto the air though critics couldn't stop talking about his suprisingly strong dramatic performance as Arthur Frobisher which gained Danson his first Emmy nomination in 15 years (including two more for his guest appearances in the subsequent seasons).

* [[Chekhov's Gun]]: The phone calls one of the FBI agents in season 2 keeps on getting and says are from his wife actually end up being important.

* [[Cleanup Crew]]: Uncle Pete calls one in to {{spoiler|get rid of the evidence that someone attacked Ellen}}.

* [[Corrupt Corporate Executive]]: Arthur Frobisher. Walter Kendrick. Dave Pell. George Moore was actually listed in the credits as "The Executive" for a while.

* [[Detective Mole]]: {{spoiler|Rick Messer retrieves the one piece of incriminating evidence at the David Connor murder scene by flashing his badge and walking straight in the front door.}}

* [[Dirty Cop]]: The favored henchman of the show's villains. It makes cleaning up after a bit of [[Dirty Business]] much easier.

** Same with Rose Byrne, who's movie career has taken off as well, during the course of the series run.

* [[Dramatic Irony]]: An enormous source of tension for the show, provided by the [[Anachronic Order]].

** {{spoiler|Season 2 -- Uncle Pete after being nabbed by the FBI.}}

** {{spoiler|Season 3 -- Both Marilyn and Louis Tobin. Louis by poison, Marilyn by drowning.}}

* [[Dying Clue]]: Whoever {{spoiler|Arthur Frobisher}} got to kill {{spoiler|George Moore}} should have been fired. They didn't check his pockets for the key piece of evidence that ended up blowing the case wide open.

* [[Even Evil Has Standards]]: Ray Fiske, who doesn't have the stomach for what he's gotten into. {{spoiler|He [[Ate His Gun]] for it.}} Initially, Arthur Frobisher as well.

* [[Good Is Not Nice]]: Define "good".

* [[Guilt Ridden Accomplice]]: Arthur Frobisher's Achilles' heel.

** Season four takes the cake with Jerry Boorman; a corrupt CIA Agent who has gleefully broken EVERY law imaginable, all in the name of ensuring no one can out him for the laws he has broken part of the "War on Terror". Seven episodes into the season, pretty much EVERY act of murder or violence can be linked to Boorman, either directly or through him forcing his cohort, Howard Erickson, into doing it under threat that if he doesn't and Boorman gets busted, that he will take Erickson down with him.

* [[He Knows Too Much]]: Chris in season four

** Also {{spoiler|Wes in season 2.}}

* [[Heel Face Revolving Door]]: {{spoiler|Frobisher.}}

* [[How We Got Here]]: Each season had numerous [[Flash Forward|flash forwards]] throughout, but you're not given the full context until the very end.

* [[Idiosyncratic Episode Naming]]: Each episode is named after a line of dialogue spoken by a character in said episode.

* [[I Was Quite a Looker]]: Marilyn Tobin murmurs something along those lines to herself in the season 3 finale,{{spoiler|right before she commits suicide}}.

* [[Jerkass]]: Arthur Frobisher, who continues to see himself as [[The Woobie]]. It apparently does not even enter his mind that he has actually done some very bad things, and has therefore earned the bad things that keep happening as a result.

* [[Jumping Off the Slippery Slope]]: Frobisher does so with gusto once he gets past his conscience. He starts out as a [[Family Values Villain]] and goes downhill rapidly.

* [[Killed Off for Real]]: Everyone the show kills off is actually dead, although some keep coming back in dreams and flashbacks.

* [[Photo Psychic]]: In Season 3, Ellen only learns that {{spoiler|Carol Tobin}} visited {{spoiler|Danielle Marchetti}} on the night she died because she happened to be in the picture that Ellen wanted a witness to identify {{spoiler|Joe Tobin}} from.

* [[Pretty Little Headshots]]: Frequent.

** The few supporting characters of any given season that don't get killed off usually end up getting put on buses at the end of their season.

* [[Reformed but Rejected]]: Frobisher plays at being this, but it's fairly obvious that, his claims of spiritual renewal aside, he's still every bit the selfish and egocentric bastard he was before.

* [[Ripped from the Headlines]]: The season-spanning plots are made of this. The first two seasons split up the juicier details of Enron's collapse. With a company rife with accounting irregularities and professed ignorance of wrongdoing by subordinates, Frobisher is a take on Ken Lay; UNR's manipulation of the energy grid by traders to rack up huge profits fictionalizes Enron's role in the California electricity crisis of 2000-2001. In season 3, Louis Tobin's ponzi scheme has many similarities to Bernie Madoff's while season four is pretty much Blackwater and Erik Prince vs Patty Hewes.

* [[Sacrificial Lion]]: Both {{spoiler|David}} and {{spoiler|Ray Fisk}} in season 1.

* [[Shoot the Dog]]

* [[Sickbed Slaying]]: The fate of {{spoiler|Uncle Pete}}.

* [[Sliding Scale of Cynicism Versus Idealism]]: Firmly leaning towards the cynical.

* [[Stepford Smiler]]: Ellen became this after her fiance's murder in season 1 in order to keep working for Patty. {{spoiler|In fact this was noted by the FBI who persuaded her to help them bring Patty down}}.

* [[Straight Gay]]: Ray Fiske.

* [[Ugly Guys Hot Daughter]]: With inverted gender roles for Patty Hewes and her son.

* [[The Un-Reveal]]: The contents of David's wedding gift to Ellen.

* [[Wham! Episode]]: The use of [[Surprise Tropes]] is this show's trademark, though the heaviest hitters usually come towards the end of each season.

* [[White Collar Crime]]: How every one of Patty's cases starts. They never end that way.