The Good Wife 2.16
Mar. 3rd, 2011 09:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakAnother great episode of the show at its shades of grey best.
I think my favourite little detail is that it turns out the whole Sorkin vs Zuckerberg (aka Edelstein) episode was more than a standalone. The moment Alicia realizes that Lockhart & Gardner isn't fighting the good fight for Chinese dissidents but getting rid of the competition in China for Patrick Edelstein is one of those jawdropping yet completely sense making twists, and even within the episode itself it's prepared by the way Will originally pitches the case to Alicia, what he says it's about: the internet. Not "compensation for this poor dissident" or "stopping this company from haning over IP addresses to the Chinese goverment" - the internet. The episode even does not let itself a way out by claiming nice Edelstein would be more conscientious once he has the Chinese market about handing over IP addreses, but has Alicia ask Will point blank, and Will admitting, that Edelstein will hand over addresses, too.
The way this plays in the long term arcs is also fantastic. Choosing this plot to run along the long awaited showdown with the other partners means we can't really rejoice in Diane and Will's victory, which makes the still ongoing paper thinness of Derek Bond as the antagonist far more palpable. (Also, thanks, show, for not making this a racial team-up and adding more questionable subtext; I figured out Julius was playing double agent, but it was nice to see it confirmed.) Not that the firm doing ethically dodgy things is new, but Alicia herself hadn't been confronted with it for quite a while.
(On the matter of double standards and hypocrisy, the last defense line of the internet company being the Bush administration's endorsement of torture was an angry masterstroke on the part of the writers.)
Then there's the campaign plot also taking major steps forward by Childs tripping over his own rethoric and double standards (which also tries to make it believable Becca is still around - and oddly enough, this time it sort of works for me). The scene between Peter and Childs is an interesting contrast to the utterly silent scene between Bond and Will. Childs is the type of antagonist who definitely sees himself as the hero of his own story and the show lets him state that; Bond probably does, too, but we still haven't a clue to his own pov and why he schemed to begin with. Early on Will asks Alicia whether she wants Peter to win his campaign and she says she does, she just doesn't want things to go back to how they were before (i.e. before the scandal). In the middle of the episode we get that awesome scene where Alicia has figured out why Lockhart & Gardner took on the Chinese dissident's case and whom they're really working for, and Will says that if you look deep enough, everyone does the right thing for the wrong reasons. With Peter, Wendy and Childs you have three people who see themselves doing the occasional wrong thing for the right seasons; each one is convinced they're in this for the greater good and that questionable tactics are justified because of that. And it keeps being an open question; the internet company Lockhart & Gardner was after this week was guilty of basically handing over 50 people to be tortured and imprisoned... but the depressing truth is that the company replacing them probably won't do much differently. And that is the big campaign question running as subtext: between Childs, Wendy and Peter, would one of them do differently once they're elected? Childs wouldn't (we saw him at work in season 1), but he has dropped out now. Wendy talks the good talk, but when push came to shove, she was willing to go after the Florrick kids as a campaign tool. Peter is on ongoing trial by viewer (and Alicia), and the ambiguity of the character is that he might either fall back into the same old, or continue to try and be better, and you could believe it either way.
Kalinda and her handing out her new address made for two oddly vulnerable (I mean that in a good way! it made her more real than her sometimes too obvious too-cool-for-school scenes do for me!) character scenes with Alicia and Cary. With Childs resigned, will the investigation of Kalinda continue to be pushed further? I expect so since that's a seasonal plot needing to come to a head as well.
I think my favourite little detail is that it turns out the whole Sorkin vs Zuckerberg (aka Edelstein) episode was more than a standalone. The moment Alicia realizes that Lockhart & Gardner isn't fighting the good fight for Chinese dissidents but getting rid of the competition in China for Patrick Edelstein is one of those jawdropping yet completely sense making twists, and even within the episode itself it's prepared by the way Will originally pitches the case to Alicia, what he says it's about: the internet. Not "compensation for this poor dissident" or "stopping this company from haning over IP addresses to the Chinese goverment" - the internet. The episode even does not let itself a way out by claiming nice Edelstein would be more conscientious once he has the Chinese market about handing over IP addreses, but has Alicia ask Will point blank, and Will admitting, that Edelstein will hand over addresses, too.
The way this plays in the long term arcs is also fantastic. Choosing this plot to run along the long awaited showdown with the other partners means we can't really rejoice in Diane and Will's victory, which makes the still ongoing paper thinness of Derek Bond as the antagonist far more palpable. (Also, thanks, show, for not making this a racial team-up and adding more questionable subtext; I figured out Julius was playing double agent, but it was nice to see it confirmed.) Not that the firm doing ethically dodgy things is new, but Alicia herself hadn't been confronted with it for quite a while.
(On the matter of double standards and hypocrisy, the last defense line of the internet company being the Bush administration's endorsement of torture was an angry masterstroke on the part of the writers.)
Then there's the campaign plot also taking major steps forward by Childs tripping over his own rethoric and double standards (which also tries to make it believable Becca is still around - and oddly enough, this time it sort of works for me). The scene between Peter and Childs is an interesting contrast to the utterly silent scene between Bond and Will. Childs is the type of antagonist who definitely sees himself as the hero of his own story and the show lets him state that; Bond probably does, too, but we still haven't a clue to his own pov and why he schemed to begin with. Early on Will asks Alicia whether she wants Peter to win his campaign and she says she does, she just doesn't want things to go back to how they were before (i.e. before the scandal). In the middle of the episode we get that awesome scene where Alicia has figured out why Lockhart & Gardner took on the Chinese dissident's case and whom they're really working for, and Will says that if you look deep enough, everyone does the right thing for the wrong reasons. With Peter, Wendy and Childs you have three people who see themselves doing the occasional wrong thing for the right seasons; each one is convinced they're in this for the greater good and that questionable tactics are justified because of that. And it keeps being an open question; the internet company Lockhart & Gardner was after this week was guilty of basically handing over 50 people to be tortured and imprisoned... but the depressing truth is that the company replacing them probably won't do much differently. And that is the big campaign question running as subtext: between Childs, Wendy and Peter, would one of them do differently once they're elected? Childs wouldn't (we saw him at work in season 1), but he has dropped out now. Wendy talks the good talk, but when push came to shove, she was willing to go after the Florrick kids as a campaign tool. Peter is on ongoing trial by viewer (and Alicia), and the ambiguity of the character is that he might either fall back into the same old, or continue to try and be better, and you could believe it either way.
Kalinda and her handing out her new address made for two oddly vulnerable (I mean that in a good way! it made her more real than her sometimes too obvious too-cool-for-school scenes do for me!) character scenes with Alicia and Cary. With Childs resigned, will the investigation of Kalinda continue to be pushed further? I expect so since that's a seasonal plot needing to come to a head as well.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-03 09:04 am (UTC)I think it will, because Childs hasn't resigned from office. He's only quit the campaign, meaning he has six weeks to do whatever he wants, which I presume will be a very hard-nosed version of the "good" he feels he is there to do. He doesn't have to worry about how anything looks anymore!
no subject
Date: 2011-03-03 09:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-03 04:36 pm (UTC)I really hated this part of the plot because of how the show is trying to circumvent any hint of racism/white privilege by having the black guy do their dirty work. As far as I know, Julius has NO REASON to hate Bond -- and actually a pretty good reason to side with him, but I guess the show doesn't think it's acceptable to show two black men with a common experience or goals in a law firm -- except that it suits the purposes of the plot (and the white characters); I expect Julius to disappear for several episodes again as well and his desire for better minority hiring practices to not be mentioned. To me, 'more questionable subtext' would be for the white partners to fire the one black partner and for the show NOT to backpedal all over the place about the racial implications of that and their very white firm, Kalinda notwithstanding. I suspect that would make their white protagonists too unsympathetic, but at least they wouldn't be hiding behind their nice white liberal wall of privilege.
And there's further racefail re Zack, Becca and Eli's assumption that a black nanny -- off a photograph, no less -- must be 1) not Swedish and 2) an illegal immigrant. And the show proving them right. I get why it happened for plot purposes, but I don't like that they went there -- what's wrong with an illegal white Canadian nanny? except that she would not be racially profiled -- and so blatantly, without anyone calling Zack out on his racist statement/assumption. So, the racial profiling comes across as tacit approval from the overall show.
I just find it so frustrating that this show is good about so many things except race (over and over again), even within its inclusion of characters of colour. Though the Chinese dissident plot wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be (especially with the show highlighting the hypocrisy of the US government defining what is and isn't torture), largely because it wasn't really about the Chinese guy at all; I could've done without the computer guy going on about US imperialism via the internet into China and North Korea, though, or at least to have some privilege-check/contradiction from the show about it.
I thought Kalinda handing out her new address was going to be a fake-out for when her (ex?)husband comes looking for her (and I really hope this storyline isn't going to be racefaily too).
no subject
Date: 2011-03-04 04:01 am (UTC)I was waiting for her to be Swedish! I am foolish.