Episode Report Card LuluBates: B | 2 USERS: B- YOU GRADE IT Liar, Liar, Skirt Suit’s on Fire
By LuluBates | Season 2 | Episode 1 | Aired on 01.07.2009
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Last season the Frobisher case occupied every waking hour of our intrepid girl lawyer Ellen’s singular life. She was so busy she forgot her last name! Okay, that was me. But she did get a job, figured out she was hired because of a connection to a witness in the Frobisher case, lost her job for palling around with the SEC, get her job back, only to have her fiancé bludgeoned by sweet Lady Liberty herself. (Guess that’ll teach her to keep tchotchkes.) She was accused of murder, got the charges dropped, blackmailed Patty, won the case, and now continues to work with Patty in order to bring down Frobisher who was gut shot, but not dead. She’s also working with the FBI to bring down the Patty herself, who most likely tried to kill Ellen last season. Oh I am SO not doing Season One justice. There was so much murder and mayhem and pensions law you really need to just watch Season One. Suffice it to say, paying off law school debt is a bitch!
This season starts with Ellen acting crazy, but isn’t that sort of implied what with all the law school and murder and post-traumatic stress? But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, because as in last season, this season’s drama actually starts six months back. Six months ago Regis and Kelly (for reals!) interview Patty about the charity she is starting. She cares, people! In order to feed the starving masses, she needs money and will torture anyone and everyone to do right by the hungry people of New York. She’ll mostly be torturing, I mean, partnering, with Sam Arsenault, a rich guy who really needs Patty’s help. She’s made sure of that. He can’t wait to fund her charity after she promises to help exonerate his Yale-bound daughter who was mysteriously busted for possession.
William Hurt joins the cast (because cable television dramas are so where the action is these days) as Daniel Purcell, a guy with information that could bring down an entire industry. He needs Patty’s protection, but she’d rather protect his big brown box, which I can’t help but think is filled with Gwyneth Paltrow’s severed head. What, didn’t you see Seven? That movie ruined the reputation of big brown boxes everywhere. Patty changes her mind when Daniel’s wife is killed.
Ellen and her Frobisher revenge fantasies are hitting on my boyfriend, Timothy Olyphant, who has joined the cast (at least temporarily) as a gun-pushing member of Ellen’s support group. I’m not sure the support group is doing it for her since when she finds out that Frobisher is alive and hiding out in a hospital she pays him a visit. That can’t be therapeutic. What is undoubtedly more therapeutic are Ellen’s plans to bring down Patty. The FBI has a dummy case involving infant mortality that they will use to very very slowly entrap Patty. Ellen is eager and anxious, but gets Patty to take the case.
Back to the future, where crazycakes Ellen is waving a gun around. She admits that she lied too, then takes aim and fires. Should be an exciting season!
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Ellen has gotten in touch with her dark side. You can tell because she is wearing black eyeliner and, like Jenny Humphrey before her, wearing black eyeliner means you are a bad bad girl. Ellen is talking to an unseen audience. She is warning whoever it is (or she could be talking to herself) to be scared. She takes a drink of whiskey (another sign of her new and improved bad girl's ways; nice girls drink white wine and maybe appletinis if they're feeling frisky) and glares. She wants the person to say the words. She has brought along a little helper to get the dialogue flowing. She waves a cute little handgun around. This is going to be fun!
Six months earlier. Regis and Kelly host Patty Hewes on their show. I am not a daytime television aficianado, but do Regis and Kelly actually have lawyers on their show to discuss pension embezzlement cases? And even if so, do lawyers really brazenly discuss the fees they made and/or their cases in public? Especially when the defendant in the case was shot? Anyway, in this universe Patty gleefully comes on the show and glibly discusses how much money she made off of the settlement. They banter for a while and Patty announces that she is starting a charity to fight hunger with her take of the settlement. Everyone claps because what lawyers do is endlessly fascinating to alternate universe daytime television audiences. Regis explains that he met one of her associates backstage. They pan over to Ellen waiting in the wings. Her hair looks awesome. Patty introduces her to the viewers and explains that Ellen has been with the firm for less than a year, but she doesn't know what she would do without her. What's that noise? Oh that's the sound of thousands of first-year associates rolling their eyes and then grimly turning back to their Blue booking.
Ellen storms off set and into the waiting car of the FBI agents working to take Patty down. She growls that Patty is full of shit (she said it!) because a few months ago Patty tried to kill her and now she is acting like her best friend. The FBI has a case they want Ellen to take to Patty. She'll monitor the case from the inside and they will use all the information to bring her down. Ellen jumps up and down in excitement and the awesome Mario Van Peebles tells her to chillax already because it is going to take awhile to bring Patty down. Ellen barks that it is easy for them to say because they just want to arrest her; Ellen wants to destroy her.
Arthur Frobisher is not dead. He drags his gut shot proto-corpse through a field and towards a cabin. As he nears the cabin he is lunged at by a guard dog. He makes it past the dog and the door of the cabin opens. It is Ellen. He throws up his hands to defend himself. Ellen's revenge fantasy is interrupted by her grief counselor asking her about revenge fantasies. As she blasts Frobisher to bits in her dreams, she tells the counselor that she hasn't had any fantasies to speak of. Oh that? That wasn't a fantasy, that was pre-meditation. Cut to Patty's office where her aged P(I), Uncle Pete, is recounting Ellen's schedule. Patty tells him to not bother following Ellen anymore, it's all over. With a little pressure from Uncle Pete, Patty relents to have him keep watching Ellen, but she pretends it is for Ellen's own good. As the old man leaves, Tom comes in and pushes Patty to take a case. She promises to consider it. I am kicking myself over the fact that I saw Tate Donovan at Barney's last week and failed to ask him to submit to an interview. I just didn't want to be a fangirl stalker type. But, Tate! Call me!