Damages is an American legal thriller television series created by the writing and production trio of Daniel Zelman and brothers Glenn and Todd A. Kessler. The plot revolves around the brilliant, ruthless lawyer Patty Hewes and her protégée, recent law school graduate Ellen Parsons. Each season features a major case that Hewes and her firm take on, while also examining a chapter of the complicated relationship between Ellen and Patty. The first two seasons center around the law firm Hewes & Associates. Later seasons center more on Patty and Ellen's relationship as Ellen begins to distance herself from Hewes & Associates and begins an independent career.

Seasons

Season	Episodes	Release date	Rating
Season 1 Most of the season follows two different timelines. The primary timeline begins with Ellen Parsons' recruitment by Patty Hewes to "Hewes & Associates" and follows proceedings of a class action lawsuit against Arthur Frobisher by his former employees, whom Patty represents. The initial episodes fo…	13	2007-07-24	7.8
Season 2 The second season, like the first, follows two different timelines. The primary timeline follows Patty, Ellen, and Tom as the firm goes up against an energy company who have engaged in unethical practices. A former lover of Patty's, Daniel Purcell, brings the matter to her attention, but then ine…	13	2009-01-07	7.9
Season 3 Set a year after season two, Patty's focus now rests on Louis Tobin, the patriarch of a wealthy family, who has just confessed to orchestrating the largest Ponzi scheme in Wall Street history. The government has tasked Hewes and Shayes with finding the Tobins' hidden money and uncovering any evid…	13	2010-01-25	7.3
Season 4 The fourth season takes place two years after the Tobin case. Ellen has moved on with her life. Now an attorney at her old mentor's firm, she's content with her cases and colleagues. Deep down, however, she wants a bigger challenge. When she discovers her friend has been through a traumatic exper…	10	2011-07-13	6.8
Season 5 In the final season of Damages, Patty and Ellen are pitted against one another in two separate cases. The first involves a wrongful-death suit brought against Channing McClaren, the founder of a whistleblowing web site, who's implicated in the death of a trader for an investment firm. In the othe…	10	2012-07-11	7.7

What's left behind the scenes

The future scenes that opened and closed each episode were filmed concurrently with the production of each specific episode rather than at the end of the season. As a result, the screenwriters and especially the actors had no idea how the plot would unfold or what they were actually doing in those particular scenes.
Glenn Close signed on for three seasons even before filming began. Her fee was $200,000 per episode.
While preparing for filming, Glenn Close, Rose Byrne, and Tate Donovan consulted with corporate lawyers in New York.
Each season is based on real-life events. The first is based on the bankruptcy of the energy corporation Enron. The second season is based on the 2001 energy crisis in California. The plot of the third season was modeled after Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme. The fourth season was inspired by the story of the private military company Blackwater. The fifth season was based on the story of WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange.
The creators of the series were reluctant to cast Anastasia Griffith as Katie Connor. They felt it would be problematic for an Englishwoman to play an American, especially since Australian actress Rose Byrne was already part of the cast. Hoping to dispel their concerns, Griffith used an American accent during her audition, and once she was cast, she worked further with speech coach Deborah Hecht from New York University.