Exactly what type of show is FX’s new series, Damages? Is it a murder mystery? Is it a legal thriller? Is it something more personal? After watching the premiere episode, it seems unclear; I am not even sure that the producers could tell you.

It all starts off simply enough, with artistic shots of a dead man, in a pool of blood, on the floor in a bathroom. He is found by the police and a murder investigation begins. But then the series jumps backward six months, and we see the dead man at a birthday for his girlfriend. One of the women at the party is upset about something to do with a restaurant she wants to open. What’s going on? Who knows.

Soon, the haze clears and it boils down to this: the birthday party was for Ellen (Rose Byrne), the dead boyfriend is David (Noah Bean) and the woman with the restaurant problem is David’s sister (though if they state that in the episode I completely missed it), Katie (Anastasia Griffith). It turns out that Katie can’t get the restaurant opened because the money is coming from Arthur Frobisher (Ted Danson) who wants Katie to sign a confidentiality agreement that would cover goodness knows what. You see, Rose’s boss at her law firm, Patty Hewes (Glenn Close), thinks that Katie can give her information about Frobisher that will help her destroy him in a lawsuit Hewes is pursuing about Frobisher’s bankrupting his own company and selling out his workers.

Sorry, I said the “haze clears” and it really does not, does it? It is all so convoluted and makes little sense after seeing only one episode. And, as the episode flips back to the investigation of David’s death, one can only assume that you have switched the channels and started watching a completely different show. The deadpan discussion among the cops in the bathroom is hugely over-the-top, and is capped with the umpteenth derivation of Jerry Orbach’s Lennie Briscoe, with one of the detectives stating “good looking boy” as David’s body is wheeled out and the scene ends.