Damages

And so, two minutes into a new season of “Damages” (premieres 10 p.m. Monday, Jan. 25, on FX), things are already getting creepy, and we can’t look away. And that’s before we find out about Patty’s current case, prosecuting Louis Tobin, a Bernie Madoff-type financier who pulled off the biggest Ponzi scheme in history, that’s before we see that Ellen (Rose Byrne) has left Hewes & Associates to work for the city prosecutor’s office, that’s before we witness a mysterious accident, meet a strange homeless man with secrets, and discover a dead body in a dumpster. Somehow, the writers of “Damages” take a crude little whodunit and weave it into a masterpiece of suspense and provocation. Somehow, by simply presenting a volley of edgy, brief scenes and odd little clues, they pull us in: Who is this Julian? What does he have on Patty? Why is Patty messing with Ellen? Where is Tobin’s money stashed?

Is my wiring really so easily jumped? The mind reels. Why in the world do I care?

It would be easy enough to reduce “Damages” to the status of a pulpy page-turner. After all, it’s all plot, right? Start with a story that we’re already invested in (Bernie Madoff) but that’s still shrouded in mystery even now that Madoff is doing time, throw in some high stakes for everyone involved, toss in a mystery man and a murder, and we’re sold.

“Damages” could be far worse and still have an audience, as evidenced by the glut of lackluster whodunits on the air. Despite appearances, though, this show transcends the base level of twisty procedurals with one thing: Patty Hewes. Like Tony Soprano, Vic Mackey or Al Swearengen, Patty Hewes is that formidable villainess that makes the whole crazy mess sing. “Oh sure, she hisses at people. How compelling,” you’re thinking, and who would blame you? The world tends to encounter the nasty, powerful female character as a stroke of genius even when her evil is limited to a few cutting words and a willingness to slash someone across the face with her pointy red nails.

But Patty Hewes is different. She’s a self-serving manipulator, sure, but she’s guided by some odd mix of vanity, pride, vengeance, a commitment to appearances, a genuine desire to seek justice for the underdog, and the vaguest outlines of a conscience. Even after two seasons, during which Hewes has proven that she’s willing to screw over almost anyone to win her cases and have her way, we’re still not completely sure what the woman is and isn’t capable of. She is haunted by her crimes, there’s no doubt about that. It’s hard not to be a little bit daunted when your husband ditches you and your own son tells you, “People either leave you, or they die. Those are the only two endings possible.”

What’s interesting about Patty is that she keeps thriving in spite of everything — or is she just appearing to thrive? Glenn Close shows us so much of Patty’s emotions, but she also keeps a tight lid on Patty’s deepest desires. When Patty is offered a chance to bring love back into her life, will she take it? We can’t tell. She’s utterly unpredictable, and that brings  a palpable charge to every scene she’s in. She moves through the world as this confrontational, straight-talking lawyer, but in truth she’s unable to speak honestly or directly to anyone in her life, sending Ellen odd gifts (As a sign of allegiance? Remorse? Because she wants a favor?), making warm, friendly statements that can also sound like veiled threats.

But when Julian refers to her “mask,” Patty really does seem to believe that with her, “what you see is what you get.”

Of course, the most dangerous people in the world are the ones who have mastered the art of self-deception. And if there’s one thing Patty Hewes is better at than fooling others, it’s fooling herself. Even if Patty seems benign at the outset of Season 3, even if that seething, enraged dragon lady is nowhere to be found, in Patty’s own words, “She’ll be back. Trust me.“ 

But  bad parenting was a running theme all season, with Ellen’s sister smoking meth despite having a young baby at home, Marilyn Tobin allowing her son to kill his own daughter, Tom Shayes blowing the family fortune, Patty trying to pay off her son’s older lover, then having her sent to jail for sex with a minor, and poor Leonard Winstone’s real father blackmailing him to get his hands on a little Tobin cash. If a morality tale can be likened to an ethical fender bender, then “Damages” represents a 15-car pile-up straight out of “CHiPs.”

On Monday night, after a season of wondering who killed Tom Shayes (Joe Tobin, in the bathroom, by drowning him in toilet water in a fit of rage) and who crashed into Patty’s car (her son Michael, also in a fit of rage) and who else would end up dead (Marilyn Tobin, by suicide) and who would land in jail (Arthur Frobisher, Wes Krulik, Joe Tobin, Michael’s girlfriend Jill), the finale was so packed full of last-minute twists and turns that the show’s writers could hardly smash them all into the 90-minute episode. The writer’s accomplished everything they set out to accomplish. But is it worth it?

That’s a good question. “Damages” is that odd show that offers intriguing dialogue and smart, weighty scenes, but the final pay-off, even though it’s thrilling and unpredictable, still feels a little empty. Once all the cars go smash on “CHiPs,” you have to stop and ask yourself, was it really worth wrecking all those perfectly good Buick Regals? Do we necessarily buy that Marilyn Tobin would, on the one hand, stand back and let her son kill his own daughter but then, on the other hand, try to take the fall for Tessa Marchetti’s death? Do we really believe that Joe Tobin, a man who was consumed by big moral questions at the start of the season, would get drunk and drown Tom Shayes in a toilet bowl?

Even those twists can be forgiven, though, since they’re part of the fun on a splashy, suspend-your-disbelief thrill ride like “Damages.” The major disappointment at the end of season three was the retreat to easy Evil Career Lady/Bad Mommy stereotypes in the 11th hour. Last season we found out that Patty had a stillborn baby. Revealing that the death was her choice certainly fit neatly into the premise, and dovetailed with the many strained relationships on the show that reflected the constant need to rebalance personal life against the pressures of career success.

Somehow, though, on a show with two unconventional female leads who never fit into the typical sexed-up notion of femme fatale or devouring witch, who battled each other with strange passive aggressive slights instead of jumping into the nearest pool and ripping each other’s blouses off, it was sad to see everything get boiled down to a homemade abortion. “Is it worth it?” Ellen asks, but we can see the answer in Patty’s grim look, and in the flashback to her weeping all over her dead baby’s grave. After weeks of restrained one-upmanship and seething and careful chess moves, after three seasons of demonstrating that Patty is emotionally withdrawn and retreats into work not because she craves success more than anything else, but because she can’t handle the discomfort and unpredictability and lack of control presented by intimate relationships, after months of presenting this riveting character as one that defies outdated archetypes, it all boils down to this: A dead baby, and a bad Mommy.

Is it worth it? 

Perhaps it’s this historical depiction of females as unable to confront each other without jumping into the nearest swimming pool and ripping each other’s blouses off that makes the growing love/hate chess match between Ellen and Patty on FX’s “Damages” so compelling. Having indoctrinated Ellen (Rose Byrne) into the cutthroat world of high-priced lawyers by baptizing her in her fiancé’s blood, Patty (Glenn Close) still refuses to acknowledge any animosity between the two of them. Instead, she gives Ellen expensive gifts, sends Ellen’s “replacement,” Alex (Tara Summers), to Ellen for advice, or calls Ellen at 4 a.m. to invite her over for dinner, purposefully telling her the wrong night so that she’ll show up and find Alex and Patty working closely together over a bottle of red wine.

At first, Ellen is straightforward. She tells Patty, “If you want to talk to me, don’t play games. Just pick up the phone and call.” She believes that working for the assistant district attorney is her true calling and will deliver her from the evil of Patty’s ways. But as the Bernie-Madoff-alike Tobin case unfolds, Ellen realizes that Patty gets results in ways that her naive and politically motivated overlords never will. She’s also romanced by Patty’s odd mix of flattery and ulterior motives; she’s transfixed by this woman’s manipulations, her deviance, all hidden by her “Who me? Don’t be silly!” mask, which Close brings to life with some deliciously malignant undertones.

This subdued standoff was the highlight of Monday night’s episode, which left us guessing about what the hell Patty is up to, what Ellen is trying to pull, and whose side anyone is on in the end. What’s brilliant about “Damages,” though, is that the exact alignment of these women, what their aims with the Tobin case are, or whether they love or despise each other underneath it all, hardly matters. They’re locked in some twisted battle or dance or duel or sophisticated game of one-upmanship, and they’re both being fed by it. The best moment of “You Haven’t Replaced Me”? When Ellen, in bed with her new do-gooder boyfriend who’s obviously a pawn and not a real partner, puts down the phone after Patty’s rude, aggressive 4 a.m. call, and smiles. She matters to Patty — either as a pawn herself, or as an ally, or as a foe. Somehow, this gives Ellen a charge. Whoever wins or gets the last word or falls the hardest for the other’s charms/trip wires, one thing is for certain: In Ellen, we’re seeing a young Patty, drawn in by the lures of intimidation, power and victory at any cost.

I also have a major beef with Lindsey Vonn, who insisted on making a huge spectacle of how fast she was going down that steep hill on her skis without falling once. How ridiculously insensitive was that to the woman who had a terrible wipeout on that exact same hill just minutes later?

But that wasn’t enough for Vonn. Next, she had the audacity to shout happily and take off her helmet and unleash this torrent of long, blond hair, and reveal her beautiful face, which seemed to sneer directly at the rest of us at home, presumably for not being a sexy elite athlete like she is. This is exactly the sort of thing that fosters a climate of intolerance for sedentary people with bad hair.

And what’s with Johnny Weir, all plucky and delightful and clever? Did you see how he just relished rubbing our gracelessness and lack of flair in our faces the other night during the free skate program? How dare he make us feel like the lumpy, useless heterosexuals that we are? What kind of message does this send to young people who can’t ice skate and aren’t attractive and don’t have an original thought in their heads?

I hereby officially call on the IOC and NBC and the Olympic athletes themselves to refuse to perform sports or engage in interviews that in any way promote or endorse the kind of strength and determination and courage that could end up making talentless, clumsy kids and awkward, unlikable scaredy-cats and chubby old people feel bad about themselves. We need to send a very clear message that we are not going to tolerate the glorification of hard work and excellent coordination and charisma and intelligence, because such glorification inevitably incites low self-esteem and frustration among the lazy, the soft, and the deeply mediocre.

Damaged goods

If only my call to arms could end there, but alas, the world is positively filthy with hateful misconceptions and insulting messages, and someone needs to stand up to the bullies out there, mostly by sending out press releases and holding press conferences and staging lavish promotional events.

Naturally FX’s “Damages” (10 p.m. Mondays) has been treading on thin ice for quite some time now, with its irresponsible depiction of the most vaunted corridors of legal power. The drama, which is really heating up lately and never fails to draw me in with its twists and turns, nonetheless does the working public a huge disservice by implying that those of us who aren’t beautiful, powerful, menacing lawyers might as well just sit around eating mini ravioli out of a can and feeling sorry for ourselves for the rest of our lives, because we’ll never live such glamorous lives – or amount to anything, really. Maybe we were going to do that anyway …  but still.

The show’s flagrant disregard for the very real challenges faced by people in crappy outdated clothes with mundane, tedious jobs, people who don’t have the luxury of throwing their weight around every time something doesn’t go their way, really sets my teeth on edge. No, not all of us can threaten or harass or murder people whenever we feel like it. Go ahead and rub it in our faces, why don’t you?

If the rest of us could just make a phone call to a discreet, high-priced thug who could quickly and efficiently bust in the kneecaps of that really irritating co-worker who always steals the best doughnuts on Doughnut Fridays, do you really think we’d feel half as powerless and defeated as we do? Do you really think that, if we could just pick up the phone and say “Code red” or “Do it” or “Project smash-knee is in effect,” we would slouch and mumble like this?

How dare they taunt us with the flash forwards to Tom Shayes’ (Tate Donovan) body in the dumpster and Patty’s (Glenn Close) panicked, regretful phone calls to some unseen shadowy right-hand man, hinting at the kind of terrible power that will never be ours! As usual, white-collar criminals and the people who write about them for television don’t give a second thought to how cruel and unjust it is that the rest of us can only dream of using brute force to bend our enemies to our will.

Furthermore, this depiction of regular, everyday people as “fearful” of lawyers or “confused” about the law or “paralyzed by terror” over how much they’re being charged every second they’re in a lawyer’s company is simply offensive in its accuracy. Likewise, Ellen (Rose Byrne) and Patty’s recent talk over tumblers of fine liquor once again suggests that rich lawyer types can blithely sup at the finest restaurants in town or traipse off to day spas or lounge about sipping on pricey cognac. That’s just irresponsible, and undermines those of us who spend most of our time in our dirty sweats, boiling water for mac and cheese.

I’ve loved this season of “Damages” so far in spite of my constant outrage over it, mind you, but I really found the discovery of meth and a pipe in Ellen’s sister’s bag pointlessly soapy and sensationalistic, even for this show – and that’s not to mention what an insult that scene was to the many, many meth addicts out there who don’t currently have young infants in their care, believe it or not. It’s not like a little baby is endangered every single time someone decides to smoke a little drugs, and to insinuate as much sends a message not just that drug addicts are bad, irresponsible people — which most drug addicts would agree with — but that they’re the sorts of bad, irresponsible people who would refuse to call their rich lawyer sisters and say, “I’m getting high while raising my baby alone. Maybe you should get off your skinny ass, take care of this kid and send me to rehab instead of waiting for tragedy to strike, which it so often does on this soapy, sensationalistic show.” That, sir, is going just a step too far.

I also have a bone to pick about the portrayal of Louis Tobin (Len Cariou). Who would ever believe that a wealthy financier with all of the advantages in life that Tobin enjoyed could be evil and crafty enough to set up a Ponzi scheme, pull the wool over everyone’s eyes, and get away with it for decades? Furthermore, implying that investors are uninformed, money-grubbing sheep who would follow patently ridiculous returns to their own financial ruin is insulting and unfair. People just aren’t that greedy or that ignorant!

What’s more, suggesting that this nation’s regulatory institutions would ever fail to prevent such an elaborate and wholesale assault on the investing public’s trust from occurring is deeply deceptive to the American people. The smart and thorough human beings who work hard for our country’s fine government institutions are far more careful and unselfish than to neglect to investigate the kind of crime that could ruin so many people’s lives!

Podcast away

Luckily, there are some wonderful television writers and entertainers out there who are finding tasteful ways to rally around those with less talent and less brains in their heads than the average bear.

For example, remember that guy in college who never shut up about his big, crazy theories? Remember how he would always pull you into the most rambling, preposterous debates imaginable, because his lack of basic logic paired with his belief in the most absurd and patently impossible things created a gigantic conversational black hole from which there was no easy escape, particularly while stoned?

Well, there’s no need to fret any longer about how that guy probably ended up on food stamps or in some homeless shelter somewhere, babbling endlessly about how Belize has the atom bomb or old pillows are made primarily of dead skin or daycare workers in Minnesota were caught feeding crack-laced brownies to infants. Thanks to Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, co-creators of “The Office” and “Extras,” that guy and those of his ilk are finally being celebrated for the demented idiot savants that they are.

You see, that guy, whose name in this case is Karl Pilkington, was assigned to be Merchant and Gervais’ producer at XFM. Once they got to know Pilkington, though, they realized that they had to share him with the world, so they molded their entire podcast around him in 2005 for the Guardian. Now that podcast has been animated and transformed into HBO’s “The Ricky Gervais Show” (9 p.m. Fridays).

Yes, it’s called “The Ricky Gervais Show,” but the real star is that guy, Karl Pilkington. Billed as “a series of pointless conversations,” the show mostly features the animated faces of Gervais, Merchant and Pilkington talking into microphones. Occasionally, as the three hosts discuss monkeys flying to the moon or history or Pilkington’s strange stories, those things are animated, too.

“And you’re thinking, well, why are we doing a podcast?” asks Gervais during the first episode. “It’s because I’d like to be in a room with Karl Pilkington. You know how people go and help chimps? Karl Pilkington is an ongoing experiment for me, because I’ve seen him sort of blossom from an idiot to an imbecile.”

The madness always begins with a classic That Guy statement from Pilkington. For example: “We’re in that era where we’ve invented most of the stuff we need, and now we’re just messing about.”

What about airplanes, says Gervais. “Yeah, but, is that a good thing, planes and that?” Pilkington replies. “Do you need a plane, really?” Planes only allow you to fly to places that you need an injection just to visit, he explains. What’s the use of that? He wants to know. If we’re going to invent something, he says, we should invent a way that people could live to the age of 78, die, and when they die, there’s a little baby inside to take their place. Um, right.

In another episode, Gervais brings up Benjamin Franklin, and the fact that he coined the phrase “Waste not, want not.” Pilkington doesn’t know who Franklin is, and when Gervais tells him and explains the meaning of that phrase, Pilkington replies, “So, he was a bit of a hoarder, then.”

While countless sensitive readers will probably leap to the conclusion that this is yet another British comedy with a hopelessly abusive slant and a disastrously unkind central goal of shaming Pilkington over his lack of intelligence, think again, friends. Pilkington rather enjoys the hullabaloo and also, he’s as dismissive of what other people think of him as he is of facts and science and history. You cannot hurt this man with words, because he doesn’t believe anything you say. In other words, Karl Pilkington is a hero to confused but outspoken amateur theorists — and all dumb people, for that matter — everywhere!

Take the conversation in which Merchant and Gervais discover that Pilkington believes that humans and dinosaurs were “knocking about” at the same time:

Merchant: You know that “The Flintstones” is only partly based on fact? Dinosaurs and man did not coexist. Dinosaurs had long gone before man arrived. Extinct, kaput. What, you don’t believe us?

Pilkington: Why couldn’t that have happened? But why weren’t there dinosaurs back then just like we have dogs now?

Gervais: He’s watching “The Flintstones.”

Pilkington: I just think that there must’ve been a crossover point.

Gervais: Exactly. Why didn’t Hitler meet Nero? There’s must’ve been … they must’ve met somewhere!

In addition to giving ignorant weirdos a long-delayed chance to bask in the spotlight, Merchant and Gervais send a clear message to the heretofore scorned bullies and well-educated antagonizers of the world: Let your bully flag fly at last! “The Ricky Gervais Show” demonstrates that feeling superior doesn’t have to be quite so isolating, or induce quite so much self-hatred. Remember: You are not alone in your knee-jerk snobbery and loathing for the common man. You can even make a career out of it!

Conclusiastical remarks

Hopefully, some of the high-profile athletes in Vancouver will do a similar service to the old, the squishy and the dimwitted by adjusting their current campaign of shame against the unexceptional. Until they learn to play down their physical fitness and warmth and charm, though, they’re going to do enormous damage to the morale of millions of regular, ugly, unfunny, stupid Americans. It needs to stop. Today, we draw a line in the snow and say: No more!

The show’s sophomore season (premieres at 10 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 7) once again adds up to a delicious maze of interrelated schemes, cross-purposes and ulterior motives. This is “24″ with lawyers, a densely plotted roller-coaster ride of betrayals, yet somehow these master schemes feel far more compelling than the most elaborate terrorist plot to cross Jack Bauer’s path in years.

Strangely enough, though, after hissing and seething her way through the show’s first season, Patty Hewes feels like the least treacherous character in the picture this time around. Maybe that’s because Ellen Parsons (Rose Byrne) has learned a thing or two from Patty in their short time together as colleagues, and she’s staunchly determined to take her mentor down once and for all ­– which is not to mention her revenge fantasies involving Arthur Frobisher, the man who had her fiancé murdered.

Maybe Patty appears a little more sympathetic and fragile this season because she’s grappling with whether or not to take on the case of an old acquaintance, Daniel Purcell (William Hurt), for whom she obviously has lingering feelings. And maybe her eeevil nature is so well-established now that viewers need to start believing she can act in vaguely ethical ways again, just long enough for her next shrewd, duplicitous move to shock us all over again.

Whatever the motivation for this shift in dynamics, it works: Ellen’s victimization by Patty and Frobisher has transformed her into someone who no longer second-guesses herself, whereas Patty’s guilt over the death of Ray Fiske (Zeljko Ivanek) has turned her into someone who does think twice occasionally. With this transfixing role reversal, “Damages” is off to an electrifying start.

That’s no small order, either, given the labyrinthine, over-the-top plot of the first season. The show’s writers were faced with a tough dilemma: Cast off the Frobisher case and its aftermath to avoid retreading old ground, and risk alienating loyal viewers who might be less interested in a brand-new case on Patty’s desk, or revisit Frobisher and risk lingering too long over a story that’s at least partially resolved. The writers ended up making the transition perfectly, weaving some of the threads from the Frobisher era into the second season and keeping Ellen traumatized and borderline obsessed with vengeance, while dangling tantalizing clues of what lies ahead for Patty Hewes and Associates. In fact, it only takes two episodes to demonstrate that this season is going to be another wild ride, maybe even one that’s a little more nuanced and unpredictable than the first.

Yes, the unsettling flash forwards of the first season are back. Yes, Ted Danson is back, along with Timothy Olyphant (“Deadwood”), Marcia Gay Harden and indie darling Tom Noonan. If watching serious actors play off each other’s strengths excites you even more than dueling lawyers, just wait for the scene in the third episode, in which Noonan, who plays a New York City detective, meets with Hurt’s Purcell. Noonan is the master of this flavor of smug, slippery smarts, and Hurt has cornered the market on the frantic victim with something to hide. Watching these two pros interact on-screen is just the sort of high-caliber treat we need to cleanse the bad taste of a lackluster fall TV season from our palates.

Best of all, though, the writing and story lines are confident and clever and twisted in ways that suggest that “Damages” co-creators Todd Kessler, Glenn Kessler and Daniel Zelman have already thought through the entire second season, and they know where this story is headed — namely, straight to hell.

But what else would you expect on a show where no one can be trusted, no one is safe, and everyone is damaged?

Lead characters still have back stories, but they’re usually accompanied by a psychiatric interpretation that justifies a whole host of dangerous quirks, from grandiosity to paranoia to sociopathic tendencies. Robert McKee’s screenwriting bible “Story” has been replaced by the DSM-IV: Writers simply close their eyes and point to a page, then delight in the possibilities presented by long lists of lively maladies and disturbing behavioral tics.

If our TV sets are fun house mirrors that reflect who we are (except with whiter teeth and more money), then it looks like most of us are ready for the funny farm.

Fatal subtraction
I bet the funny farm is a blast, though, judging from the good times all these lunatics on TV are having. Whether they’re running red lights with young kids in the back seat, blackmailing their enemies, or robbing banks with semiautomatics drawn, today’s criminals are tomorrow’s high-spirited heroes!

FX should be renamed the Nutcase Channel, given its preoccupation with characters who belong in the nut house or the big house or both. This summer, the narcissists of “Nip/Tuck,” the psychopaths of “Rescue Me,” the schizophrenics and histrionics of “Dirt” and that scheming tyrant on “The Shield” are joined by perennial wacko Glenn Close, starring as a high-stakes litigator with antisocial personality disorder on “Damages” (10 p.m. Tuesdays on FX). Close’s Patty Hewes considers herself a crusader for the little guy, but she appears to have even less regard for moral standards than the corrupt CEOs and careless corporations that are the targets of her lawsuits.

Close is deliciously evil here, as always. She embodies the sort of malignance you can’t peel your gaze away from: composed, steely eyed, fearless and vaguely amused. Patty Hewes’ raw power and powers of persuasion are set up to feel almost mystical. All of her underlings and rivals keep telling us the same thing: Fear her! She always gets what she wants! She’ll stop at nothing! And Hewes lives up to all of the hype, shifting from genial to icy cold in seconds, depending on her rapidly evolving strategy. In a less talented actress’s hands, this extreme psycho-lady act would ring false, but Close has always had a way of making her lunacy seem alternately smooth and just awkward enough to put us on edge.

Riveting as such an extreme character can be, the whole moral equation of the modern TV drama seems to have evolved to a point of no return. Beyond the usual “She’ll win at any cost” cliché, we’re prodded to find Hewes utterly repellent: In the final twist of last week’s pilot (Spoiler alert! Don’t read this if you haven’t seen it), we discover that Hewes has a dog killed in order to get the dog’s owner to testify. OK, I get it — she’s really evil. Vic Mackey and Tony Soprano could shoot an innocent man in cold blood, but kill a doggie? No friggin’ way!

But even as we’re prompted to be horrified by Hewes, her unrepentant nastiness, when paired with her immense power, leaves us very little to hope for here. Ellen (Rose Byrne), her new hire, might be one source of hope in the story, except that we already know, thanks to some gruesome flash-forwards, that Ellen’s life is going to fall to pieces in a few months, most likely due to some nefarious actions by her nasty employer. And it’s obvious that Arthur Frobisher (Ted Danson), the corrupt mogul who cashed in millions in his company’s stock right before it went bankrupt, is going down, the perfect post-Enron whipping boy — which is too bad, really, because aside from being evil, he’s one of the more sympathetic characters on the show.

There will be twists, of course. Twists are what shows like “Damages” are all about. It reminds me of the Grisham suspense thrillers of the early ’90s, that mix of twists, high stakes and evil characters with awe-inspiring degrees of intelligence, foresight and craftiness. The problem is that, unlike the short thrill ride of “The Firm” or “The Pelican Brief,” we’re supposed to stay interested in the very bad people of “Damages” for an entire season or more. If the show were more character-driven, like “The Sopranos,” we might be able to invest in a tireless sadist and her masochistic entourage. But this is a suspense-driven story, fueled by such extreme behavior that there is no up and down and no right and wrong. Without gravity, is a tightrope artist really all that impressive?

Iraq and a hard place
Speaking of walking a thin line, Spike TV’s “The Kill Point” (9 p.m. Sundays) struggles with a similar problem, trying to get us to identify with a team of thieves who set out to hold up a bank and end up taking hostages instead. They’ve got their work cut out for them, too: As the robbers are leaving with the money, a female FBI agent pulls a gun on them (bad move, lady!), and the robbers shoot her up but good.

But maybe they’re not such bad guys: Right after that, they take time out of their busy schedule to give the woman an emergency tracheotomy!

But she dies anyway, which means they are bad guys after all. In fact, they’re pretty much dead to us when the head robber, played by John Leguizamo, steps into the street and delivers a charming soliloquy on his time in Iraq and how he’s been mistreated since he got back. Ah, yes. The ever-popular “I’ve been screwed by The Man one too many times” card!

And who among us hasn’t been screwed by The Man? We see empathy and concern spreading across the faces of the bystanders on the street. “Maybe these guys aren’t so bad after all…”

But then, Leguizamo’s character, Mr. Wolf, becomes enraged when the power inside the bank is turned off. (Yes, the other characters have names like Rabbit and Pig, and they’re all shown in slo-mo striding into the bank. Can we please drop the “Reservoir Dogs” looting at long last? It’s been over a decade, people.) Wolf decides that his assigned crisis negotiator (Donnie Wahlberg) isn’t respecting his wishes. So he announces that he’s going to kill one of the hostages. An old guy, too! Big, bad Wolf!

But then the power goes back on, just when the old guy’s about to take a bullet in the head, and we remember that Wolf is probably just suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder, the symptoms of which include general restlessness, emotional detachment, depression, aggressiveness and a compulsion to wax eloquent on the ultimate injustice of serving one’s country and then losing one’s health benefits and being treated like a common street thug. Plus, the negotiator discovers that Wolf was involved in some questionable situation in Iraq that earned him a dishonorable discharge or the like. Clearly we’re about to learn that he was framed by his superior officers, and in fact, he’s a hero who saved his men from peril…

Yawn. Anyway, back to “The Nine”… I mean, “Standoff.” No, it’s “The Kill Point” — although, to be fair, “Standoff” would’ve packed all of these twists and this backstory into one episode. Even with lots of twitchy posttraumatic stress on display, “The Kill Point” feels like something of a retread. The moving soliloquy was a nice way of kicking our empathy up a notch, but it doesn’t change the fact that we’re still stuck in a bank. Why aren’t we in Baghdad instead? You get the feeling that these writers could tackle a war story with flair. But another bank robbery? We’ve been stuck inside a bank before, and frankly, we’d rather use the ATM.

Amazing Grace
Time to press on and tackle our next off-kilter antihero played by a big-name actor or actress on a cable channel: Grace Hanadarko, a self-destructive Oklahoma detective played by Holly Hunter on “Saving Grace” (10 p.m. Mondays on TNT).

Like Leguizamo and Close, Hunter plays a character who needs to seek the help of a caring professional: Grace is angry, depressed, drinks and drives, sleeps with her married partner, and seems to have very little concern for anyone around her, outside of her young nephew. Even so, instead of pumping up the suspense with threats of one bleak outcome after another, “Saving Grace” is all about encouraging us to hope for its lead character’s salvation, even as she dares us (and herself) to believe that she’s beyond saving.

Compared to “Damages,” “Saving Grace” looks like “Touched by an Angel,” and Grace is touched by an angel — albeit one who chews tobacco and chuckles and says things like, “I’m just FedEx deliverin’ the message.” (Is that an endorsement deal?) But even when Grace’s angel, whose name is Earl (Leon Rippy), says things like “Are you ready to turn your life over to God?” (Is that an endorsement deal?) he almost sounds like he’s joking. Of course, when he mentions that “there’s a lotta people goin’ to hell these days,” he sounds dead serious — and it’s tough to disagree.

Even with the obvious dorkiness of guardian angels with big, shiny wings and a manipulatively heart-wrenching child abduction storyline in the pilot episode, “Saving Grace” is my second-favorite cable drama this summer (“Mad Men” being the obvious front-runner), thanks to the excellent cast (Kenny Johnson and Laura San Giacomo, among others), and the fact that Hunter plays Grace with so much authenticity and scratchy sweetness. Grace may be borderline and an alcoholic to boot, she may be reckless and selfish, but she also has a way with kids, feels an almost debilitating amount of empathy for crime victims, and stands up to bullies without fail. Hunter makes Grace feel real and lovable without overplaying her vulnerabilities or making her bluster seem like a front. It’s a common miscalculation to suggest that tough female characters are just pretending to be tough. Grace has a lot of confidence and charm, and she also has some serious emotional problems, and Hunter pulls it all together with serious finesse.

“Saving Grace” is an odd bird, really, like some unholy offspring of FX and Lifetime, but its undeniable appeal highlights the weaknesses of both “Damages” and “The Kill Point.” Where those two shows feature stories that can have only a limited number of outcomes, all of them unhappy, “Saving Grace” could wander anywhere at all, thanks to the strength of Grace as a character and the willingness of the writers to craft scenes that pull at viewers’ hearts without making them roll their eyes.

Pet peevishness
And now it’s time to interrupt your regularly scheduled program with a short but important note to all of you second-rung cable channels out there: You know, you really wouldn’t seem like second-rung cable channels if you didn’t 1) have such tacky, blaring station identification graphics, and 2) cut off the ends of scenes with your tacky, blaring station identification graphics, thereby eliminating the emotional impact of the previous scene.

TNT, are you trying to look like Showtime’s desperate second cousin? Because if so, it’s working. Do us all a favor and watch HBO sometime. See how their promos make us like their TV shows more, instead of less? See how, whenever you’re watching HBO, you feel like it’s dramatic and exciting to be watching, a true privilege? That’s what they call good branding. True, there are no commercial breaks on HBO, but if there were, you can bet that they’d find a way to transition to them smoothly, without reminding us that they’re a station of tasteless jackasses. So, stop undercutting your best shows with crappy promos, and hire a new brand identity manager or whatever the hell you call the person who keeps you from wearing your proverbial tighty whities on your proverbial heads.

Nevermind
Now for our final big-name off-kilter antihero, featured on a show that’s so touchy-feely, it belongs on Lifetime: “State of Mind,” starring Lili Taylor. Oh wait, it is on Lifetime…

This show could’ve worked. Lili Taylor’s character, Dr. Ann Belowes, is a psychiatrist who experiences a life crisis when she discovers that her husband is cheating on her with their couple’s therapist. Not a bad premise. And the writing is reasonably smart, the subplots are compelling, and I loved to hate Lili Taylor on “Six Feet Under.” My main beef with “State of Mind” (9 p.m. Sundays) is that Ann talks to an imagined version of herself, and the imaginary Ann appears to be suffering from histrionic personality disorder … Either that or she’s overacting.

Imagining people who aren’t there went from delightful to annoying in about five short years, and it’s time to put the whole device to rest unless there’s a really good reason for it. Most of the time, it’s an excuse to show us what’s going on in a character’s head, something that we’d really rather see revealed in the way they fold their clothes or fiddle with their pens.

Subtlety may be a lost art on television, with all of the voiceovers and endless explanations and psychobabble, but the really good shows embrace it. Meanwhile, the bad shows are bad because they’re hopelessly obvious. I can’t even tell you how many of the fall pilots feature characters sitting around together, having these gratingly on-the-nose conversations about what’s going on in each of their lives. It’s just lazy and boring. Have them quarrel about the wine and let us figure out what it’s really about, for chrissakes.

A long talk off a short pier
Because we may enjoy crazy people, but we’re tired of therapy. Talking about your feelings is so late ’90s. These days, when we feel impulsive or enraged or entitled, we just eat something crunchy straight out of the bag and check out what Mr. Lee did today. This overheated big blue marble is too crowded with child snatchers and puppy drop-kickers for us to achieve some idealized healthy emotional state just by talking about it. Plus, it’s a lot cheaper to eat chocolate pudding and watch “Nobody Loves Chachi” instead.

Next week: Time for your summer reality roundup, from the narcissists of “Big Brother” to the angry backstabbers of “Top Chef”!