The season finale of “Damages” was almost entirely unsatisfying. More than anything it left me with a sense of “Wait, that’s it?!?”

A whole season’s worth of twists and turns were wrapped up way too neatly in the final 20 minutes. Yet there were still too many loose ends and things still didn’t make sense. Are we really supposed to believe the sting involving the crooked FBI guys came together in a few hours? Or that Patty sat stoically for 15 minutes without mentioning the fact that she had just been stabbed in the gut? Or that Ellen didn’t happen to spot the blood leaking out of her?

Let’s start with Tom and the sting operation. Was he really fired? (And didn’t they try that trick last season too?) I still can’t tell. If he wasn’t really fired, than his scene at Patty’s office where he tried to warn her was unnecessary. But if he really was fired, how did he come around so quickly to help her get the bad guys at the end? Wasn’t the timeline there about three hours? I don’t see how it all fell together to quickly. And what would Ellen have told Tom to get him to give her a gun? Especially if he knew Patty’s plan? Why let Ellen threaten her? Just doesn’t make sense.

The Patty-Ellen showdown in the hotel room was the key point of the season, and we’d seen snippets of it all season long. But at the end, I felt cheated. Ellen shooting the spy camera twice was stupid. Ellen replacing Pete’s evidence with a warning to Patty was inexplicable. What triggered Ellen’s change of heart? I might be able to buy how Ellen turned cynical and changed her mind, but we were never shown her doing that. And again, Patty suffering her stab wound in silence made zero sense. How many blocks away did that FBI guy park anyway? It must’ve been like a 20-minute run! Wes’ actions made no sense either. He followed Ellen from her room, but he didn’t try to bust in earlier, right after he heard gunshots? I don’t buy it. For someone that protective of her, who would literally kill to protect her, he would not have just sat back and let the gunshots go without investigating. The whole thing just smelled like the writers were stuck and came up with a simplistic solution to everything.

But really, what was resolved? Patty admitted trying to have Ellen killed. Sure, that’s big, but Ellen already knew that. Wasn’t her driving goal this season to find out who killed David? What happened to that? Pell and Kendrick went down, but in a fairly unsatisfying way, since it wasn’t really due to the case Patty built all season (the evidence that got them arrested came gift-wrapped in the finale). Kendrick, especially, was arrested too quickly and easily, seeing how he had been built up all season as a bad, bad man. His fall should have been more epic. And Frobisher is still out there reinventing himself — what was the point of that? His character was a complete waste this season. If Season 3 isn’t about Ellen taking down Frobisher and exposing him for the murdering, coke-and-hooker-loving sociopath that he is, then what was the point of even reprising his character?

Ketchup Cop finally got what was coming to him (I called that Wes popped him in the car, so it seemed somewhat anticlimactic), but it’s kind of a shame. He was a terrifically creepy villain. I’ll miss him. Even his death was a bit of a disappointment. He got caught red-handed in Ellen’s apartment by Wes and looked a little chagrined as he left, and he somehow didn’t notice the large man hiding in the back seat of his car as he entered it in broad daylight. Too easy. I did like his final word though. It echoed my reaction to the season.

In the end, there were too many red herrings. Too many extra, wasted characters. Daniel Purcell was great at first, but almost vanished as the season went on. (There’s a rumor that he was difficult to get along with on the set, and his role was rewritten and reduced.) Katie Connor was fairly useless. Michael and his cougar girlfriend were just annoying. Marcia Gay Harden was great at times, but underused. And of course, Frobisher — awesome character, pointless plotline.

Then there are the loose ends. What the heck was Wes doing with a closet full of Frobisher newspaper clippings? I had the sense that Wes was a much bigger piece of the puzzle than we were seeing, and unless he’s back next season, I have to wonder why he was underused as well. What ever happened to that reporter in West Virginia? Did Finn Garrity just get away scot-free? As well as Darrell Hammond’s chapstick-loving killer?

I’m all for suspension of disbelief, of jumping on board with a show and letting it take me where it wants. But in return, it has to deliver the goods. And this season didn’t. This season, “Damages” went the way of “24” and “Heroes,” following up a tense, compelling first season with a complete mess of a second one. The show tried to do too much, but in the end, not much was accomplished.