The Good Wife

While I absolutely hate how my taste is ever-changing, never knowing what I'll be interested in next month, having to repeatedly reinvent myself as my entertainment interests morph, having to perpetually succumb to an errant muse... At least it can be pretty funny sometimes, the tangential paths my interests take.

I believe it was exactly a year ago today when I watched my first episode of The Good Wife, strictly because the episode featured Miranda Cosgrove. At the time I wasn't interested in drama, so it was a fleeting experience. But now I've been powering through the series. I'm a handful of episodes into Season 2, and only a handful away from Miranda's episode!

The Good Wife is fast becoming one of my all-time favorite dramas. I haven't watched a drama in such rapid succession since Dawson's Creek. It presents the perfect balance of episodic punch and ongoing story to make it effortlessly enthralling. And its moral nuance makes shows I used to think were cool like Law & Order: Special Victims Unit look like a puddle of putrid milk, with their one-dimensional storylines and characters which are invariably caricatures of the most obvious stereotypes: the concerned father, the repressed mother, the sleazy criminal, an intern could write superior characters. And character development? There is none. o.e But back to a show that's actually good...

(Spoilers: Season Two ahead)

Season one was fantastic and I'm loving season two even more so far. Season two is making palatable things that repulsed me in season one, which is pretty darn impressive.

I absolutely couldn't stand the Will/Alicia romantic pairing in season one. And I still feel like for her to cheat would negate so much of her character, so much of what she did in season one (not that it wouldn't necessarily fit very much in line with where she's been going lately). At first Will just seeemed like an obsessive creep, a nuisance. But in season two Will seems to be getting a better wrap, he's being shown with other women and you can see what a catch he really has been all along. When the Childs deposition leaks and Will acts as Alicia's attorney, that scene was just awesome. Will was acting so powerful and protective. I still don't think Alicia should cheat but I can now get onboard for a hypothetical post-divorce relationship for them.

The Kerry/Alicia stand-off has been well-played thus far. Kerry was always sort of going back and forth on my "is he good or is he bad?" meter, but at this point I think it's safe to say that he's genuinely a good person. I can't think of anything he's done that is even in the legal grey areas that our 'heroes' frequently stalk. I'm really hoping he gets back to Lockhart/Gardner someday. But I digress. Alicia & Lockhart/Gardner of course win most of their cases but I don't think Kerry cares any less about genuine justice, he appears to care more. His assertions to Alicia that she is a bad person could be his attempt to psych her out and hurt her, but it's just as likely that he's being sincere. After all, what he's saying about Alicia is pretty much true.

Speaking of, Alicia's descent into the grey areas of the law has been very intriguing, and I feel like the intention behind it is to show you that this is exactly how it happened to her husband Peter. Peter Florrick starts out as this apparently corrupt guy, this borderline villianous figure and then through the series his profile has increased bit by bit. Then you see Alicia take the same path. She starts out as the steadfast moral compass, but then she, in her own words "grows up," she has to deal with real world circumstances. First it's just "sometimes helping people means being less than forthright, skirting the law a bit." Then it's "sometimes a lawyer has to help set free a murderer or a drug lord who isn't secretly innocent, and that's just part of the job. The justice system depends on mutual representation, right? My kids have to eat, right?"

Through Alicia you see how Peter must have fallen into the darker roads while always maintaining a genuine desire to do right. Still, I'm not sure WHY they're having us empathize with Peter, when it seems like Alicia is destined to leave him for Will. Are they just trying to make it hard on us? Make us understand the difficult position Alicia is in? Will Peter drop off the series if Alicia leaves him, or will he maintain a role like Kerry?

The ONE thing I don't like about this incredible season this far is... Kalinda's little feud with the in house supersleuth incurred from the merger with new firm partner Derrick Bond. It seems childish and unnecessary, very uncharacteristic for such a zenlike and intelligent character as Kalinda. I know from last season's director commentaries that in season 2 they're trying to dispel Kalinda's appearence of infalibility and expand on her character more, which is fantastic. But I don't understand her angle here, she's going to go berserk at this guy and yet she doesn't stand to lose anything? It's not like Lockhart, Gardner & Bond are going to fire one of their supersleuths, there's no need for the two to compete. Unless she's in love with Alicia and she feels that the new guy is relieving her of the role she has in Alicia's life. But I very highly doubt that. Love seems like the only angle that would cause such erratic and seemingly unnecessary action. If she's in love with the new guy then that's a major disapointment, I'm under the impression she's a lesbian. But I guess time will tell!

Now I'm off to watch some more...