'Damages': For Pete's sake

"He's my mother's brother, and he's the most loyal man I've ever known." So says Patty of Uncle Pete on this week's Damages -- and so did he prove her right by the end of the episode.

The service that these spoilers provide is purely social.

Pete has been poking around the Hewes and Associates offices for a season and a half now, but apparently Ellen didn't pick up on his general shadiness until this week, when she happens to see him skulking around in the evening and goes to the FBI with the thought that he might be the way to get at Patty. And wouldn't you know, Pete McKee (as we discover his last name to be) still dabbles in unlawful activities with guys about 50 years his junior, while looking after his ailing wife.

Now, why Pete would still be running his racket when Patty presumably takes good enough care of him at the firm is probably something we shouldn't think about too much. But he is, and when his guys get popped one of them flips, and the FBI then uses the guy to get at Pete. Agents Harrison and Werner lay out Pete's options: Either spend 10 years in prison, during which time your wife will almost surely die, or give us all you've got on Patty.

After the feds twist the knife a little and remind him of the little time his wife has left -- pricks -- Pete finally agrees to give up what he's got on his niece. In a nicely edited final scene, we see his wife struggling with her inhaler while Pete leads the feds to his storage unit and tells them to look in a certain trunk. His wife finds a note taped to the bathroom mirror that says "I'm sorry -- Pete," while Harrison and Werner open the trunk and find it empty. The wife finds an empty bottle of pills, and the feds find Pete in convulsions on the ground.

So, yeah. Pete is one loyal guy. And although this episode didn't provide a ton of forward momentum -- there were a couple partial reveals, but nothing too concrete -- the focus on Pete does set the table for things to come.

Elsewhere:

The UNR case: The price Patty has to pay for securing Frobisher as her lead plaintiff is praising her former adversary up and down at a press conference announcing the shareholder suit. (Maybe the best moment of the hour was Frobisher mouthing the words he wrote for her as she spoke them.) Frobisher explains that he wants his reputation back, and spiritual motives aside, he actually seems to believe that helping bring Kendrick and UNR down will balance the scales.

Kendrick, meanwhile, is counting on a brilliant but coke-addled trader (Kevin Corrigan in a fairly brief appearance) to swing some deal that will make up the loss he incurred with his merger, which he figures will make the suit go away. Except the trader also gets busted with an escort. Kendrick's fixer gets his name out of the police report, and Claire gets the escort off with probation, so the trader is able to do his thing, and despite Tom's digging everyone's tracks seem reasonably well covered.

Frankly, I don't quite get what was going on with the trader (aside from a product tie-in), but I'm assuming more will come to light in the coming weeks.

Ellen: Once she picks up her jaw from the floor after seeing Frobisher chatting with Patty, she (not without justification) questions what the hell Patty is thinking in bringing this man into the case. Patty sells a line about keeping enemies close and notes that getting carte blanche to dig into Frobisher's financial records could turn something up to tie him to David's murder.

There is something, although it's not much. Frobisher has had a security firm on retainer for the past year, and the missing (or, you know, dead) cop who was tailing Katie did some work for said firm. Ellen is a little bummed that there's no line item that says "Daniel hit," but she nonetheless thanks Patty for getting Frobisher involved in the case.

She's also continuing her shooting lessons with Wes and getting (a little) better at wielding a gun. When Wes tries to move things beyond firearms a little, however, she shuts him down. Which may turn out to be a bad idea, because ...

Wes and Detective Messer -- who had earlier threatened Frobisher to cut ties with Patty, or else -- are continuing their cryptic association. They've confirmed that Ellen is talking to the FBI, and Messer is peeved that Wes hasn't been able to get her to open up more. Wes asserts that he has to take his time lest Ellen shut him out completely, but Messer is not a patient man. He advises Wes to try a new tack -- go after Katie. Which he promptly does, showing up at a bar where she and Ellen are having a drink and turning on the charm, but quick.

We're still a bit away, I think, from finding out exactly what their deal is. If Messer were just worried about loose ends with David's murder, I'd think he could handle them in a more straightforward way, so I'm betting we'll find out there's more to it. Isn't there always with this show?

What did you think of this week's episode? Will the FBI keep after Uncle Pete, assuming he survives his overdose? And how do you think will Patty react to the news that Pete flipped on her?