The Good Wife 2.08

[selenak]

In which my least favourite plot device on this show returns, but the case of the week almost makes up for it.



To start with the complaint: we get another case of the Romantic Misunderstanding Through Withheld Communication. Sigh. You know, after the erased voice mail in the opening episode I was really reassured by the way the season handled the Alicia/Will thing so far because there was no derailing of focus to romantic pining and everyone was very adult (which adults rarely are) about. So this felt like an unworthy drop to high school levels. OMG Alicia finds out there was a second voice mail message! Oh noes! Just when she comes to Will to talk about it his current girlfriend is there and Alicia doesn't know the relationship is only about sex! Woe!
... Oh, please. I don't ship Will/Alicia and still like Will only in non-Alicia scenes but at this point I'd prefer them to get it on already rather than to drag this out and continue with plot devices which really aren't worthy of this show's general level of quality.

Other than that: Diane, assuming the boys' club will screw her over, deciding to screw Will over first may be paranoid but with some justification, see the boys' conversation last week. Her automatic assumption Alicia will stay with the Will part of the firm makes me immediately suspect Alicia won't, and that this is how the show will get around the employer/employee squick. More interestingly, though, the way the firm in general and Diane in particular win their case of the week is TGW's shades of grey at its best. Not only do they know their client is in fact guilty of corruption (only not by the people the prosecution assumes) but Diane, who's an active Democrat, doesn't hesitate to use the bias - when she said "President Barack Obama", the emphasis on "Barack" was such that I was surprised she didn't go the whole length and said "Barack Hussein" - against Obama and the fear of bad PR related to this to get her client of the hook. It's shady as hell, but it's ruthlessly efficient and an example of the show letting not just the antagonists of the week but the heroes of the show use such tactics.

Speaking of shades of grey, I continue to love the way they use Cary instead of simpy villainizing him. While in previous examples this season there was a certain give and take whenever he helped Kalinda here it's not (yet?) apparant what advantage he'd have when covering for her and warning her of the way Blake framed her, other than last year's friendship and possibly sense of justice because he knows she wouldn't have done it.

I am a bit confused as to why a) Zach is still hanging out with Becca, and b) Jackie doesn't seem to recognize Becca as last season's troublemaker, not to mention that Childs Junior going to the exact same school like Zach and Grace is a bit much of a coincidence. (How many schools are there in Chicago anyway?) The reminder that Jackie is something of a racist is presumably a set up for some future plot development.

Comments

[viggorlijah]

I surprisingly liked the dizzying filming of Alicia just after the voicemail, where the camera stopped and started because it felt true to the experiences I've had of discovering a major relationship shift. I think they could handle it well if they showed that Alicia had in fact been covering and handling and burying down what she had felt as a huge disappointment that she was managing - because that Alicia, the one that deals and carries on, I would love to see her in love.

They had a nice touch with Will and the politician - someone he felt close enough to confide in about Alicia, someone he asked for advice and had inside jokes with, and to discover that he was corrupt, how Will still has a huge pedestal fetish and a very clear idea of what is moral for him.

[monanotlisa]

As ever, I agree with every word here, even and especially the Will/Alicia soapera moves on part of the writers. Why resort to such tropes in a show that does so well without, and is at its most brilliant when subverting them?