The fourth season of "Damages" centers on a private defense contractor, played by John Goodman, right, with Dylan Baker.[Photo/The New York Times]

This season revolves around a private defense contractor, played by Mr. Goodman, doing some nefarious business in Afghanistan, which Ms. Byrne's character seeks to uncover. The show has jumped three years from the previous season; Ms. Close's character is now raising her 4-year-old granddaughter, appearing slightly softer for it. Meanwhile, Ms. Byrne's character has grown savvier.

"She has much more command, more than ever, in this season," Ms. Close said.

Ms. Byrne took a longer view: "I think Ellen was extremely na?ve in the first season. In a way she was like a child in the first season, a teenager in the next and fully formed into an adult in the third and fourth."

"Damages" has always been known for its roster of against-type guest stars — Lily Tomlin as a Mrs. Madoff and Martin Short as her slick family lawyer, and Ted Danson as a cheating Enron-style executive — though they have not always been easy to wrangle. "In the second season we didn't have the budget to have William Hurt and Marcia Gay Harden and Tim Olyphant in every episode," Mr. Kessler said.

Mr. Goodman said he signed on because he liked working in New York and thought his character and story line were juicy. "The company I had was loosely based on Blackwater," he said. "Just so they don't kill me in my sleep, it was very loosely based on Blackwater. Matter of fact, I've never heard of Blackwater."

This season, for the first time, there were two women on the writing staff, Mr. Kessler said. "I don't think we look at the story as, this is a great female story," he said. "We see the Patty-Ellen relationship as a universal one between anyone who has had a boss and goes into a job thinking that success is working hard and doing what the boss asks and realizing that it's only a small percentage of it." The show, Mr. Zelman added, is not about law, politics or headlines; it's about power.

But for Ms. Byrne and Ms. Close, it's inevitably about wielding that power as women. "I'm always trying to educate these gentlemen before the start of every season," Ms. Byrne said of the show runners, about the discrimination she hears about from female lawyers. And Ms. Close, the standard bearer for playing imposing women, is looking for nuance.

When the idea was first pitched to her, Ms. Close said, she told the Kesslers and Mr. Zelman: "Just being bad is boring. I've done that. I've played Cruella. Nothing is badder than Cruella.

"Patty is a complicated character," she continued. "She's not somebody who you can easily characterize. People tend to say she's manipulative and evil, which always makes me laugh, because I think women and power are still problematic, especially in this country. I take that as a compliment."