‘Damages’ Takes on Military Contractors

Well, this is one way to use current events to boost ratings: Jace Lacob, hot off the press call about the next season of Damages, alerted me to something I’d missed. The show’s going to have the main characters file a wrongful death suit against a military contracting company, headed by John Goodman. And Dylan Baker is also guest-starring as an Erik Prince-like figure, which after his stint on Kings, marks his second big turn as a militaristic industrialist,. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have made themselves felt on American television shows from ER to Arrested Development, and we’ve had one-off events like Generation Kill. But it’ll be interesting to have a long arc devoted to this facet of the war in an existing show. And after siccing Glenn Close’s legal pitbull Patty Hewes on corporate villains from Enron to Madoff-like Ponzi schemers, it’ll be fun, and maybe even fulfilling, to see her go after a new category of profiteers.