Quick spoilers for last night’s The Good Wife below:
“Getting Off” was the first of a two-part season finale, so it seems to make sense to withhold judgment on the episode, by and large, until the season wraps up. The confrontation between Alicia and Kalinda was more satisfying than the legal case of the week; pairing the ongoing story about the fallout of adultery with a case involving an adultery-oriented website was a triple-underline that Alicia’s story didn’t really need. Archie Panjabi was (unsurprisingly) compelling showing Kalinda’s carefully crafted defenses breaking down, and Julianna Margulies managed to make Alicia’s rage convincing while leaving room for our sympathy for the other woman.
(OK, one quibble: having Alicia comment that Kalinda had known about the affair for her entire friendship with Alicia only emphasized that the story felt like a retrofit.* If Kalina so rarely opens up to anyone, why would she do so with the one woman in the office with whom that’s most dangerous?)
But this would be a good week to think about what has worked so well about The Good Wife this season—and some of my concerns going forward.
What I love about this show, among so many things—the crisp writing, the moral shadings, the rich bench of recurring judges and adversaries—is that it was a high-concept show that proved much, much better than its original high concept. A legal drama about a political wife moving on and overcoming her humiliation was intriguing—for half a season or so. But some where in the last half of season one, and continuing through this year, The Good Wife turned into a professional drama about power, ethics and the balancing of the personal against the practical.
Alicia’s complicated relationship with Peter was and is interesting, as was its impact on his candidacy and her career, and it will continue to be: having her ex as a rival in the State’s Attorney’s office may be very interesting next year. But the show no longer needs to prolong the “Can she forgive him?” storyline to be compelling.
Which is why, though I’ve been happy with the execution, I have mixed feelings about the whole Peter/Alicia/Kalinda storyline. It feels as if—because the title is “The Good Wife”—someone has decided that the show’s identity depends on Alicia and Peter’s relationship, and the question of betrayal and forgiveness, being an issue on the show forever. Unearthing the Kalinda affair (no matter how long it was planned in advance) feels like a way of unnecessarily resetting the show to its premise. (Albeit with some different dynamics, such as the breakup of the two women’s friendship while they continue to work together.)
One thing that distinguishes The Good Wife from many broadcast-network dramas is its willingness to be realistic about the way relationships play out—and in the real world, eventually bad marriages usually just end. So while I’m interested to see how the Peter/Alicia, proscecution/defense conflict plays out, one more infidelity story is enough. (Presumably, they can’t keep reuniting and breaking up for the entire run of the series.)
The Good Wife has become more than its title: it’s a fascinating legal/personal/political drama about the challenge of being a good mother, a good lawyer, a good friend, a good person. I hope, going forward, the show has the confidence to move on and be that.
* Update: I’m told (though I have not been able to check this against the episode itself) that early in the first season, Alicia asked Kalinda directly if she’d slept with Peter and she denied it. If that’s the case, this is not so retrofit-ty after all (unless at the time the writers thought Kalinda was telling the truth). But the second part of my problem here still applies.
