When I wished Glenn Close a happy birthday a week ago I raved about her show Damages and said that I should probably devote an entire post to the show - which is what this is going to be.

The premise of Damages centers on a young attorney by the name of Ellen Parsons (Rose Byrne) and her experiences working with high powered attorney Patty Hewes (Glenn Close).  Hewes is high stakes litigator that is known for helping out the “little guy” and going after evil corrupt corporations.  However to do so, she sometimes has to undertake some underhanded methods - which is where the title of the show comes into play (the effects of doing whatever it takes).  As Patty Hewes works to right the larger scale wrongs of the world, smaller people are hurt both by her and her opponents.

To get at the heart of why I think Damages is so darn awesome you have to look beyond the basic entertainment factor. On the surface, the show is ridiculously entertaining simply because you never know who you can trust and because you get to see people engaging in some pretty outrageous behavior.  But once you get past those basics you are left with a show that really confronts the morally ambiguous world that we live in.

Take this season for example - Patty Hewes is trying to take down a company that is producing a chemical that is extremely toxic and is poisoning an entire town through their water supply.  That is of course awesome, as we all wish that companies that hurt the environment would go down, but to make her case against UNR (the bad environmental company) Hewes does a lot of things that are pretty bad herself.  Which begs the question  - is it OK to break the law or engage in morally bad behavior in the name of the greater good or are you just making the world more corrupt as a whole? And is there a greater evil and if there is one how do we go about shutting it down? Seeing as we live in a time of deregulation, global warming, dirty water (which we’ve been blogging about all week) and AIG bonuses, it isn’t hard to imagine, that even as ridiculous as Damages might seem, there is a fair amount of reality in the ethics and plot of the show.

Damages also stands out for the fact that the main two characters are women - and not just any women - smart, beautiful, powerful women - who seem to place their careers first but still have families and lovers.  And in both seasons their opponents have been powerful men.  It is great to see television that is centered on women who want it all - something I feel we rarely get to see.

Add to all that the fact that the cast is perhaps the best in television - Glenn Close, Rose Byrne, Ted Danson, Zeljko Ivanek, Marcia Gay Harden, William Hurt, Timothy Olyphant, Mario Van Peebles, John Doman, Clarke Peters, Garret Dillahunt, Kevin Corrigan, Tom Noonan, Tate Donovan - and I honestly don’t know why everyone isn’t watching Damages.

Head on over to HULU where you can watch the entire first season of Damages and then, since the 2nd season plot centers on dirty water, takepart today with Food and Water watch - a perfectly moral and legal way to help keep water clean!