History YMMV / Damages

* AwardSnub: Averted in many regards, as the show became (along with ''Series/MadMen'') the first ever basic cable program to be nominated for Best Drama Series at the Emmys, with both Glenn Close and long-time character actor Zeljko Ivanek winning Emmys for their performances. However, Rose Byrne, wisely seen as a standout of the program for impressively holding her own off of Close, wasn't able to win. Similarly, Campbell Scott failed to attain much recognition for his work in Season 3, with most of the attention going to Martin Short for his subdued PlayingAgainstType character.

* DarknessInducedAudienceApathy: The whole series is about a bunch of jerks doing their damnedest to tear each other apart because they want to win the lawsuit and nothing else matters, trampling over people, tossing them to the wolves and ''killing them'' if needed. The series really has no heroes (and as a demonstration, Ellen Parsons (the NaiveNewcomer WideEyedIdealist protagonist) is a stone-faced sociopath from approximately the middle of Season One onwards--a straightforward example of BreakTheCutie).
%%* EnsembleDarkhorse:
%%** Ray Fiske.
%%** Tom Shayes.

* JerkassWoobie: Joe Tobin might have been completely irredeemable by the end of his story arc, but his parents' role in corrupting him and driving him back to the bottle removes all the satisfaction from [[spoiler:seeing him locked away for Tom's murder.]]

* MoralEventHorizon: In Season 3, the Tobin's start out as a reasonably sympathetic family, but they get progressively worse as the story progresses. You lose all sympathy with them when they [[spoiler: arrange the murder of Tessa, a schoolgirl who hadn't been given a choice about getting involved in the first place, and Marilyn Tobin knew to be her granddaughter]].

** Tom becomes this in Season 3, as he finds out that he and his in-laws lost an incredible amount of money in the Tobin's pyramid scheme. Additionally, in the finale, [[spoiler: he's killed by Joe Tobin via drowning]].
** Season four gives us Chris, who has a major case of PTSD from when, during a top-secret and ultimately illegal mission for Blackwater expy Highstar, the mission went horribly wrong and Chris was the only one who made it back alive. Made worse with the fact that Highstar's CIA contact deems him a "liability", going so far as murdering the shrink Highstar had him talk to (even though the shrink was pretty much bound by privacy rules to not reveal what Chris had done, the CIA agent had him killed because he didn't want anyone in a position to expose the agent's crimes) THEN convincing Highstar CEO Howard Erickson to not only lure Chris back to Afghanistan (where he is promptly held prisoner) and tortured/held in solitary confinement (which compounds his PTSD) and [[spoiler: possibly is decapitated on orders of Erikson, who by this point decides that they have to kill Chris in order to ensure that he can't tell anyone what Erikson did to him]]. [[spoiler: He survives]].
%%** [[spoiler:Ray Fiske]] by the end of his character arc.

* MagnificentBastard: Lenny Winstone proves to be one, given that he [[spoiler: successfully impersonated a lawyer for decades, brought down the Tobins, and pulled a KarmaHoudini with a duffle bag full of stolen money,]] all while remaining genuinely AffablyEvil.
%%** Patty Hewes is an exemplary example.
%%** Arthur Frobisher.

%%** Tom Shayes as well.

* MagnificentBastard: Patty Hewes is an exemplary example, as is her WorthyOpponent Arthur Frobisher.
** Lenny Winstone proves to be one as well, given that he [[spoiler: successfully impersonated a lawyer for decades, brought down the Tobins, and pulled a KarmaHoudini with a duffle bag full of stolen money,]] all while remaining genuinely AffablyEvil.

* EnsembleDarkhorse: Ray Fiske. Tom Shayes as well.

* LikeYouWouldReallyDoIt: Subverted in the season 5 premiere: [[spoiler: Ellen is this season's victim]].
** [[spoiler: Double subverted, she's not.]]

* TheWoobie: [[spoiler:Ray Fiske]] by the end of his character arc.

* MoralEventHorizon: In Season 3, the Tobin's start out as a reasonably sympathetic family, but they get progressively worse as the story progresses. You lose all sympathy with them when they [[spoiler: arrange the murder Tessa, a schoolgirl who hadn't been given a choice about getting involved in the first place, and Marilyn Tobin knew to be her granddaughter]].

* AwardSnub: Averted in many regards, as the show became (along with ''MadMen'') the first ever basic cable program to be nominated for Best Drama Series at the Emmys, with both Glenn Close and long-time character actor Zeljko Ivanek winning Emmys for their performances. However, Rose Byrne, wisely seen as a standout of the program for impressively holding her own off of Close, wasn't able to win. Similarly, Campbell Scott failed to attain much recognition for his work in Season 3, with most of the attention going to Martin Short for his subdued PlayingAgainstType character.

* CompleteMonster: [[BigBad Jerry Boorman]] from season 4 is a complete {{sociopath}} of a CIA agent and [[PsychoForHire mercenary]] who will ruin lives for the purpose of saving his ass from being punished for the vile things he has done as part of the "War On Terror". His most notable moment of cruelty comes when he is torturing an innocent Muslim-American into taking the fall for a murder attempt he carried out, at which point he admits to the man he is torturing, that he doesn't give a damn about America and [[ItsAllAboutMe only cares about himself]].

* FridgeHorror: At the end of season 5, the audience finds out that [[spoiler: Rutger is the one who killed Naomi.]] However, [[DramaticIrony none of the characters discover the truth.]] [[spoiler:Everyone, including her daughter, live on thinking she was an unstable woman who took her life.]]

* NightmareFuel: ''[[WhamEpisode There Is No "We" Anymore]]'', particularly the scene depicting [[spoiler:David's murder]].
** [[spoiler: Naomi]]'s murder in ''You Want To End This Once And For All?''

* TearJerker: Poor [[spoiler:Ray Fiske's]] final scenes.
** Chris's scenes at the end of the season four episode "Add That Little Hopper to Your Stew"; his friends, who betrayed him and tortured him, have abandoned him in a metal holding trailer, leaving Chris (who's sanity is already slipping due to the PTSD he has) to start to go full-on insane in the perpetually lit holding cell. By the end of his madness montage, Chris willfully pulls over his head a black hood that his traitorous friends had left in the cell, just to block out the light of the perpetually lit cell, while beginning to pray in a frantic tone as the realization that he is going to die overwhelms him.

* SeasonalRot: many fans feel the second season is inferior to the first and third due to a less focused plot and a lack of charismatic bad guys.