Who will Ellen be working for in season three of Damages?

One of the more intriguing questions that was raised during the season finale of Damages, at least for me, is who Ellen got a new job with. Deb speculated a little about this in her recent post, but I thought of a few new possibilities and wanted to throw them out there for some discussion. I thought one of the best parts of the Season one finale was how well it set up Season two. At the end last year we knew where season two was going to be headed; we knew that Ellen was working for the Feds and the she was going to be helping to take down Patty.

The Season two finale left us a little more in the dark. It’s not a bad thing, and it certainly opens things up to some good prognosticating. I think Season three is going to be heavily defined by the answer to this question: Who is Ellen working for?

Here are the options as I see them:

• Patty Hewes: This seems like the obvious choice to me, especially considering that Patty confidently told Tom that Ellen “would be back.” After everything that went down between Patty and Ellen, though, I have to wonder why either of them would want to work together again. That would certainly make it interesting though. How would Patty convince Ellen to come back to the firm, and what would be her motivations for it?
• Claire Maddox: After her unsuccessful seizure of power of Ultima Natural Resources, Claire found herself unemployed. She certainly has the experience (and as we saw in Season two, the chops) to start her own law firm. If the show wanted to keep around Marcia Gay Harden (and why wouldn’t they? She’s an Oscar winning actress), this would be a nice way to do it.
• Walter Kendrick/Dave Pell: I was a little disappointed that the last we saw of Pell and Kendrick had them being carted off to jail. I missed the law aspect of Season one, where we had a chance to see Patty completely destroy Frobisher. I’m hopeful that we’ll get to see some prosecution of Pell and Kendrick during Season three. If we do, they’re both going to need a good lawyer. Wouldn’t it be great to see Ellen and Patty go after each other in court? Though with the Feds involved, chances are Patty wouldn’t even be involved in the case…. No matter how it goes down, I’d love to see more of John Doman and Clarke Peters, and not just because they are veterans of The Wire.
• The Feds: We’ve seen that Ellen is perfectly willing to work with the Feds to take down crooked people with a lot of power before, so why wouldn’t she do it again? Of course, why the Feds would want to be working with Ellen again is another question. I think it would be fun to see more of Tom’s sister though.
• Hollis Nye: The kindly older lawyer tried to hire Ellen right out of law school, so why wouldn’t he swoop in and try to get her again after she hit the open market? I’ve always been fond of the character, so I wouldn’t mind seeing more of him in Season three. I think this is probably a bit of a long shot though.
• Arthur Frobisher: The most intriguing option, in my opinion. I think with everything that happened in this season, one of the things that didn’t get wrapped up nicely was Ellen’s need for revenge against Frobisher. I don’t know if she would be able to handle it, but what better way would there be to get close to Arthur than working for him? I think this would make for a really interesting season, and would be a great way to bring Ted Dansen back to the forefront of the show.
• Someone Else: The ubiquitous “someone else.” We’ve seen that Damages loves casting the big names, and they do it with good success. The only exception, in my opinion, was William Hurt. I think his performance was good, but the character of Daniel Purcell was a little annoying. If Damages decides to get another big name on the show, introducing him/her as Ellen’s new boss might work really well.

Clacked by Bob Degon
on Apr 12, 2009 @ 14:00 EST5EDT