Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Of all the great things about television, the greatest is that it’s on every single day. TV history is being made, day in and day out, in ways big and small. In an effort to better appreciate this history, we’re taking a look back, every day, at one particular TV milestone.
IMPORTANT DATE IN TV HISTORY: July 24, 2007
PROGRAM ORIGINALLY AIRED ON THIS DATE: Damages, “Get Me a Lawyer” (Season 1, Episode 1)
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT: In all of the talk of the “Difficult Men” era of prestige television, its landscape studded with antiheroes and violent men and bastards seeking redemption (or not), the one exception when the question of “where are the anti-heroines?” was asked was Damages. There was no better fit into the Walter White mold than Glenn Close as Patty Hewes. We may not have seen the part where Patty starts off as a mild-mannered chemistry teacher (…law student?), but we definitely jump in at the point where she’s a morality-adjacent force of nature who talks a great game. Also the opening credits were completely ripped off by future Giant Bastard TV staple House of Cards.
While we’re on the subject of Damages, how were we to know, in the summer of 2007, what would end up becoming of Rose Byrne‘s career? By the time Damages premiered, Byrne’s movie career was starting to heat up. After her breakthrough as security decoy (and future Star Wars Card Trader superfluous duplicate) Dormé in Episode II: Attack of the Clones, Byrne went on to star in a series of action dramas that ranged from blockbusters (Troy) to underappreciated failures (Sunshine) to largely forgotten sequels (28 Weeks Later). Damages ended up being a huge step up for her career, earning her two Emmy nominations in the process. But it would’ve been awfully tough to predict that Byrne would then find her career’s biggest success in comedies, from Bridesmaids to Neighbors to this summer’s Spy. Ellen Parsons didn’t have a whole lot of room for laughs in between finding her fiancé dead plotting revenge on Patty.
[You can watch Damages on Netflix]
Joe Reid (@joereid) is a freelance writer living in Brooklyn. You can find him leaving flowers for Mrs. Landingham at the corner of 18th and Potomac.
Like what you see? Follow Decider on Facebook and Twitter to join the conversation, and sign up for our email newsletters to be the first to know about streaming movies and TV news!
