Damages, a legal drama that premiered last week on the FX cable network, follows the now customary FX approach of putting a veneer that is at once glossy and gritty on a basically conventional genre. In addition, like other FX shows, it looks very politically correct on the surface but underneath it all is much smarter than that. The show initially seems a throwback to the late 1960s and early ’70s, with big business figures portrayed as ruthless and indeed murderous, and a crusading attorney, played by Glenn Close, as the heroine. It manages to be both overly talky and absurdly melodramatic, as the grand self-images of several of the central characters threaten to make the show rather silly.
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