'Damages' tries not to repeat itself

The beginning of the second season of Damages will feel familiar to people who watched the show's first year.

The season premiere opens on Ellen Parsons (Rose Byrne), who's swirling a glass of wine and talking to someone off-camera. You don't know who, and you're not quite sure what she's talking about. The scene fades to black, and the words "Six Months Earlier" flash on screen.

Welcome back to one of the twistiest shows on television. Season two of Damages (which premieres Wednesday on FX) features the same nonlinear storytelling style and likely just as many sharp plot turns, but one of the show's three creators thinks that fans have come to expect not knowing what to expect.

"One of our mantras is that nothing is as it seems, and it seems that the audience very much got on board with that," says Glenn Kessler, who created the series with his brother Todd and Daniel Zelman. "So there was a level of paranoia, even amongst viewers as they were watching, that when they were watching people lie they suspected it, and when they were watching people tell the truth they suspected them of lying. ...

"It very much feels like the audience has been educated on how to watch the show, and it's fun for us because you know things are working on more than one level."

The three producers and star Glenn Close, whose ruthless lawyer Patty Hewes is in Ellen's crosshairs as the season opens, spoke about the new season -- which features new cast members William Hurt, Timothy Olyphant and Marcia Gay Harden -- in a conference call in December. Some highlights:

No repeats

Zelman: "We don't want to repeat ourselves, and it is very true that we need to bring in a character [after Ted Danson's Arthur Frobisher] who is very strong in his or her own right to sort of go up against Patty. 

"But at the same time William Hurt's presence this year is very different from Ted Danson's, because he doesn't enter the story as a pure adversary of Patty's. He enters sort of the opposite way, where he has a past with Patty and Patty actually starts the season trying to help him. It was important for us to have a different dynamic in that regard. But at the same time William has a lot of scenes with Glenn, a lot more scenes with Glenn than Ted had last year. So it was even more important for us that we have an actor who really can hold his own in scenes with Glenn. 

"We certainly received that with William, who is incredible. But the dynamic between his character and Patty's character this season is quite different from the dynamic between Patty and Frobisher last year."

'Mega movies'

Close: "The New York Times came up with that phrase in an article that was about The Sopranos, Mad Men and our show. And it thrilled me, because I thought that it was true and that's what we're doing.

"In the big theaters now are, I think, very formulated movies for the most part. I think what Hollywood is putting out is kind of general entertainment for, what is it, 15-year-olds to 25-year-olds, so that's an entirely different thing than what we're doing. I think we're doing, as pioneered by The Sopranos, these dramatic, long, 13-hour, complex, character-driven mega movies."

Chill factor

Close, on working again with Hurt: "It was kind of a gift to have a character introduced that Patty actually has a past with and for me, as the actor, to also have a real past with Bill. We started out in New York together in theater and then, of course, our big connection was doing The Big Chill and that bonded us for life. So to have him come back, and he's such a fantastic actor, it was like skating on very smooth ice. 

"And I have to give it to Bill because the process is very demanding and we work very fast, and because our writers are not writing in any kind of formulaic way. It's a very organic process, so a lot of times you'll get something the night before or even the day of [filming] that's been refined. ...

"And for Bill, who is used to having a little bit more time to prepare, it was a hard thing to get used to and it was very difficult. And I really understood, because it was something that I felt last year. But to see him ultimately embrace it and start to really have fun in it was kind of an extra perk for me."

Playing it straight

Zelman, on red herrings and being honest with the audience: "We definitely like to keep the red herrings to a minimum, and we feel that certainly all the major questions that are proposed in a season we want answered for an audience.

"So, for example, last year at the end of the season we found out exactly what happened to David Connor, Ellen Parsons' fiance, we found out what happened to Ellen in that apartment, [and] the case was solved. So all of the major issues of the season were wrapped up. There was really one major red herring last season, which was the character of Lila DeMayo, who was kind of the stalker character for David. And yet even that character played a role in the night of David's death -- this is a small detail, but she had the keys to his apartment and she ended up leaving the door unlocked when the guys break in and kill him.  ...

"In terms of some of the smaller movements in the series, which comes down to can you trust everything that everyone says, we actually don't like to clarify that. So there are certain character moments where we feel, well, we're not sure if she's telling the truth right now, or we're not sure if a certain claim that is made by a certain character is the truth, and we don't mind leaving that out there as something that's gray."
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Damages premieres at 10 p.m. ET Wednesday on FX.

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