I Need to Win

Fiction, my professor said, needs a protagonist and an antagonist. Their encounters create the conflict that leads to the result of the story. In this last series, everyone seems to be an antagonist. Like the two men facing off in the California desert in Erich Von Stroheim's "Greed," there is a death tussle, leading to the destruction of both men. The two women here are poisonous. The case they are trying is of no importance, only the destruction of the other. Ellen, beautiful, and young, says she wants to the attention a victory will give. She has so much time and experience in big cases. She can call shots till the cows come home. Patty is the burr in her saddle, the itch she can't leave alone. So clients be damned! They are going to go at it; winner take all. We've been offered some scenes of the future, but after four previous seasons, things may not be all that obvious.