'Damages' gets its ducks in a row

So, I guess that final shot on last week's "Damages" wasn't so ambiguous after all, huh? But other than that, tonight's pieces-moving-into-place episode didn't give us a whole lot.

Spoilers coming right after I clean out my closet.

I suspect, after all the UNR board-room maneuvering with Claire and Kendrick and the apparent implosion of Patty's marriage and Phil's bid for energy secretary, that the most relevant bit of business from this episode (at least as far as the legal case is concerned) might be the fact that Patty had her man Malcolm pinch the SUV where Finn Garrity was getting his trading orders. Patty surmises that the GPS might have been used to relay instructions, and her own personal CSI says he'll work on hacking it.

If that's what I'm fixating on only two episodes before the end of the season, that's probably not good. But I couldn't help thinking about how the machinery of setting things up for the climax was visible this week. The possible GPS breakthrough? Check. A spurned Claire turning on Kendrick and doing what she can to help Patty? Check. Phil's shenanigans finally coming back to bite him? Check. Taking them one by one:

The case

Patty the lawyer has really been relegated to the back burner this season in favor of Patty the force of nature, and the UNR case has become just a backdrop for all the other things these people are trying to do to one another. I'm no legal scholar, but I'm guessing that hacked GPS information from a stolen car wouldn't hold much weight in court. So whenever CSI: Hewes does crack the code, Patty might gain some leverage against Kendrick and UNR but not much else.

Meanwhile the case has morphed from an environmental action to an economic one, yet we've met none of the non-Frobisher shareholders who are presumably getting hosed enough to sign on as plaintiffs. Kendrick has proved himself to be an abundantly bad man, and we all know how much Patty hates a bully, but the fact that the lawsuit has receded so far has made the show's framework a little flimsier.

UNR

Claire now fully realizes how much Kendrick has been using her, and she's understandably pissed about it. But her "Hey, maybe I can push him out" idea seems half-cocked at best. The power play she works with (and on) board member Mitch isn't a bad one -- she's a smart woman and knows the players involved quite well, after all -- but Kendrick is way, way deeper in the amoral muck than she is, so of course he outfoxes her and gets her fired, with a little help from the Deacon and his surveillance footage of Claire and Daniel in flagrante.

That sends Claire to Patty, and though she can't offer up anything that can be used in court, she does tell her one-time adversary that everything she's accusing Kendrick of is true -- and oh by the way, Patty can trust Daniel now. Purcell seems to have redeveloped his conscience and now wants to make sure that the damage UNR is doing gets cleaned up.

All that, however, will have to wait.

The power couple

After Patty stops letting Ellen use the firm to investigate Frobisher -- not an unreasonable thing, given the federal investigation -- Ellen finally hires her own PI. Mostly he's checking into Calder Security, the firm that hooked up Frobisher with Daniel's killer, Detective Messer, but she also asks him to check on this other hunch she has, one about Phil possibly having an affair.

Her guy confirms it, but she's at a loss about how to use the information. Agent Werner smartly advises her to keep it to herself, especially if she doesn't know how Patty will react. Ellen's not the keep-it-in-your-pocket type, though, so she makes sure Patty gets the photos, and that she's there to see Patty get the photos. (All of this occurs, of course, while Patty and Phil are being profiled as the ideal New York power couple. Oof.)

The affair goes public when Patty herself leaks the photos to the press, causing Phil to have to withdraw his bid for energy secretary and giving us a great little scene from Michael Nouri as he barks "Excuse me!" at a cameraman in his path. Ellen arrives at Patty's to find her in her clothes-strewn bedroom, where Patty tells her she knows Ellen sent the pictures, even if she's not quite sure why. "Maybe you're just being vindictive," she says. ("Ya think?" a nation replies.)

Ellen then asks why Patty leaked the photos to the media. "That's my business," she says (although I'm guessing that she noticed something about Phil buying into UNR after Malcolm handed over the results of his digging into Phil's financial records). "Maybe we're both vindictive people," Ellen says as she leaves. ("Uh, yeah," we all respond.)

That brings us up to the flash-forward, which is starting to lose its potency. We end the episode with Werner discovering Patty slumped in the elevator, calling in the fact that his informant shot Patty, then heading upstairs to arrest Ellen. Sure, great.

A couple other notes:

• Detective Messer isn't getting much help covering his tracks, is he? Frobisher has given him the cold shoulder, and now the folks from Calder Security are washing their hands of him as well. "As far as Calder Security Services is concerned, you don't exist," are the Calder man's exact words. I'm not seeing a tidy ending here, especially since we have yet to see the full context of the hit Wes puts on the unfortunate soul in the Town Car.

• Glenn Close did some great non-verbal acting in the scene with Phil and Michael, doing a slow boil as Phil explained that the most important thing was that Michael treat his 40-something girlfriend (whom Patty hates) with respect (which would presumably include not cheating on her). It wasn't so much "if looks could kill" as "if looks could say, 'You hypocritical prick. You're going down.'"
• Things still not fully explained with two episodes to go: The aforementioned Wes hit; Tom's apparent firing and banning from the Hewes offices; and the motive for the murder of Daniel's wife (or maybe that plot thread has just been buried so deep that I've forgotten).

How'd you like "Damages" this week? It's about time for the show to get around to the business of telling us what's going on, isn't it?