Every season of "Damages" fictionalizes some real-life scandal. This fifth season, the material is Wikileaks and the sexual charges against Julian Assange. My understanding of this material is, as with every other season's, limited. But it was the first season whose references I broadly understood, which had me giddy in the same way a birder identifies the bird in front of him. That is to say, cursorily.
The plot of this season combines Assange's sexuality and the functioning of WikiLeaks. That word, leak, echoes around as a kind of innuendo, until in the third episode it reaches a pitch of conflation. Sitting on the toilet taking a leak, I come to the depressing realization that all of my thoughts on the matter of leakage hinge on an Anne Carson essay--depressing not because, gosh, thoughts come from somewhere, but because I've come to the conclusion that every essay that uses Anne Carson's work does so in the manner of quoting gospel, and the effect upon the essay is invariably death. She is so unassailably cool in the eyes of certain people (of whom I'm one) that she cannot be quoted without taking over as sole purveyor of meaning. Which is why it is better here to instead cite a glaring plot point. The "whistleblower", as those who supply information to the Assange analog are called, is a woman whose leak, when it gets leaked onto his website, for some reason contains personal emails detailing her, as a newspaper puts it, sexcapade. The leak, ostensibly about the leakiness of her company, is also, through some unidentified leak, about her sexual leakiness.
If I say leak one more time, I'll kill myself. Which is what the "whistleblower" almost but did not do in response to hers. In the events leading up to her death, she and whatever his name is meet in a hotel room, against protocol, to discuss the information she is to supply. He assures her that it will be confidential, then comes onto her. She pushes him away, and then says that "I'm afraid this isn't something I can follow through on" "What isn't?" he asks, and she says "the leak" (saving me, happily), but in what comes out of his mouth immediately afterwards it is not clear what, or rather which: "You think I can't take what I want?", "I think this is what you wanted", "If I give you what you want will you give me what I want?" (As he unbuttons his pants and forces her onto the bed.) I believe I've made my point as clear and articulate as a blog post demands. As for the show, what exactly is being said is unclear to me, but it sure is bludgeoning it into us.
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