Revisiting Spoilers

The topic of spoilers, meaning  revealing information from a story people hadn’t experienced yet, is a very relevant topic when you hang around geeky sub-cultures revolving around media consumption, and role-players for instance tend to read books, everyone watches television/films, and there’s obviously the anime sub-culture. I’ve changed my stance about “spoilers” back and forth over the years, so I think I’ll spend some time discussing it.

Some spoilers have been memefied.

Israel usually receives films 1-2 weeks after the USA, so as a teenager who spent time on international fora/chats, I was always worried and annoyed about sequel spoilers, such as spoilers for The Matrix Reloaded. I wanted to experience the film myself, I wanted to come to it fresh, and these people with their inconsiderate actions robbed me of that opportunity.

Damages (TV show). Not so Cliched.

This is about the TV show Damages. The one that has Glenn Close in it.

Anyway, this will be mostly about the first season, because the second season is currently airing here and we’re only at the third episode, I think.

Ok, when I originally saw the show, I thought to myself, “Good show, but cliched.” I think that overall, it’s both true and misses the point.
It’s basically a thriller movie, or a really well written thriller book. It has flashback, or future-flash glimpses. Where you get to see several moments of what happens, and then the main story is “6 months ago”. Each episode you get to see another several moments of the “now” while the “past” keeps progressing, until at some point they meet.

Politics, subterfuge, lies, relations. It’s a really tight show, with really great acting by most players involved. Shout-outs to Glenn Close, Rose Byrne, and really, most of all, to Zeljko Ivanek in his role of Ray Fiske. BTW, we were watching this while watching daily Becker reruns, and it was quite a shock to realize Ted Danson is so old, and over-tanned :D

So. Here is why to say Damages is cliched misses the point: It is cliched if you look at it as a suspense novel, or even a suspense book. But see, when you switch your medium, and you make something work? That takes skill, that makes it no longer cliched, in that medium.
Each episode of Damages is like a really good part of a movie, and the series as a whole is just really good. And you know, it reminds me of a discussion I’ve had with my mother regarding season 1 of Prisonbreak before, I’ll need to get back to it.

This gets a 9 out of 10 for superb acting and plot-construction. Watch it, y’all.