The Good Wife 4.01 + 4.02
Oct. 9th, 2012 09:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakAnother year, another case of Alicia is good at law, Will and Diane scheme to keep the firm together, Peter campaigns, Eli is comic relief. It's not that I really mind the formula, it feels like wearing a comfortable slipper every time I watch the show, but I miss the sense the show actively challenges me which I had in the first season which has sort of slipped away when I wasn't looking. It might think it does that with the Kalinda storyline, though. I'm, well, I'll get into that beneath the spoiler cut. Overall verdict: I enjoyed the first two episodes, muchly, but no longer in a main course manner, more like you enjoy appetizers in a meal.
I like Zach and I like Zach showing he's his parents' son by cleverly investigating, but the whole time in the first episode I couldn't shake off the nagging feelings of "didn't American tv teach me Alicia should have dismissed that officer early on during their encounter?" But I'm a hapless German who got out of an American speeding ticket by looking like an extremely helpless tourist, so what do I know.
Anyway: the cases of the week were never the main attraction of the show (though they always provide entertaining actors as guest stars). The s3 cliffhanger led us to finally meeting Kalinda's husband, who turns out to be Mark Warren, which is good casting as Mark Warren has experience in playing creepy (see also: Hogfather, the film version). However, I severely have my doubts about the storyline, not least because I suspect that this is what they were originally going for with Kalinda and Blake and those weird sexualized confrontations before realising that no, they can't sell Kalinda/Blake hate sex and fatal attraction, not least because they never bothered to give Blake a personality, and wrote him out of the show. The reason why I don't think they can sell it this time around is that I've seen reviews of the season premiere which weren't sure whether the Kalinda/Her Husband sex scene was meant as rape or not or thought it was rape. Whereas I thought what the show is going for, which they also do in the second episode, is "emotionally abusive co-dependent relationship" (which was why Kalinda ran when she was Leela) combined with irresistable sexual attraction (and some rough sex but not non-con). But it's really tricky to do such a storyline without infuriating or splitting at least half of the viewership (see also: ongoing debates, a decade later, about season 6 Buffy/Spike; and Kalinda looking at the bruises at her wrists at work reminded me of Buffy looking at the bruises at her wrists in Dead Things (an episode where she ends up brutally beating Spike in a non-sexual context).
The most interesting thing about this storyline to me is that suddenly the show decided to pointedly parallel it with the Peter and Alicia relationship, and the interest here is that so far the later has always been kept ambiguous, i.e. the show neither presented it as something Alicia had to turn her back towards for good nor as something she actually should return to. (Thus leaving their options open as to where they were actually going with this part of Alicia's overall story.) Paralleling it with a clearly not healthy relationship seems a hint they settled on ending it for good in the long term (i.e. make the separation a divorce), though then again Peter himself keeps being played as shades of grey rather than negative as his Kalinda's husband (i.e. on the one hand, we see Peter threatening the other state's attorney - as he did last season's school mistress, on the other he's not following Eli's lead in pretending to marital bliss but says he and Alicia are separated when Mattie asks and has now avoided pressurizing Alicia in any way to return him in any way for more than a year).
If I were an Alicia/Kalinda shipper, which I'm not (I find the relationship intriguing and rightly a core of the show, but "shipping" would mean seeing out fanfic, wanting them together forever etc., and I don't), I would be crushed by the fact that while Alicia listens to Kalinda's advice and tries to get rid of Marc Warren as a client immediately, she doesn't in any way ask Kalinda how this sudden appearance of the ex affects Kalinda, and this despite having gotten just enough info to deduce Kalinda's marriage was No Good Thing. Not even a "how are you feeling about this?" Tsk. No wonder nobody has asked her out for just a drink (I suppose Kalinda doesn't count, who tried this when they were still estranged?) for over a year. This is not what I'd call being a good friend.
In conclusion: methinks the only functional and mutually respectful and considerate relationship between adults on this show throughout is the Diane and Will partnership. They actually learned their lessons from early on about not scheming against each other, are supportive of each other through all crisis and one gets the impression both get as much as they invest out of it. Huh.
I like Zach and I like Zach showing he's his parents' son by cleverly investigating, but the whole time in the first episode I couldn't shake off the nagging feelings of "didn't American tv teach me Alicia should have dismissed that officer early on during their encounter?" But I'm a hapless German who got out of an American speeding ticket by looking like an extremely helpless tourist, so what do I know.
Anyway: the cases of the week were never the main attraction of the show (though they always provide entertaining actors as guest stars). The s3 cliffhanger led us to finally meeting Kalinda's husband, who turns out to be Mark Warren, which is good casting as Mark Warren has experience in playing creepy (see also: Hogfather, the film version). However, I severely have my doubts about the storyline, not least because I suspect that this is what they were originally going for with Kalinda and Blake and those weird sexualized confrontations before realising that no, they can't sell Kalinda/Blake hate sex and fatal attraction, not least because they never bothered to give Blake a personality, and wrote him out of the show. The reason why I don't think they can sell it this time around is that I've seen reviews of the season premiere which weren't sure whether the Kalinda/Her Husband sex scene was meant as rape or not or thought it was rape. Whereas I thought what the show is going for, which they also do in the second episode, is "emotionally abusive co-dependent relationship" (which was why Kalinda ran when she was Leela) combined with irresistable sexual attraction (and some rough sex but not non-con). But it's really tricky to do such a storyline without infuriating or splitting at least half of the viewership (see also: ongoing debates, a decade later, about season 6 Buffy/Spike; and Kalinda looking at the bruises at her wrists at work reminded me of Buffy looking at the bruises at her wrists in Dead Things (an episode where she ends up brutally beating Spike in a non-sexual context).
The most interesting thing about this storyline to me is that suddenly the show decided to pointedly parallel it with the Peter and Alicia relationship, and the interest here is that so far the later has always been kept ambiguous, i.e. the show neither presented it as something Alicia had to turn her back towards for good nor as something she actually should return to. (Thus leaving their options open as to where they were actually going with this part of Alicia's overall story.) Paralleling it with a clearly not healthy relationship seems a hint they settled on ending it for good in the long term (i.e. make the separation a divorce), though then again Peter himself keeps being played as shades of grey rather than negative as his Kalinda's husband (i.e. on the one hand, we see Peter threatening the other state's attorney - as he did last season's school mistress, on the other he's not following Eli's lead in pretending to marital bliss but says he and Alicia are separated when Mattie asks and has now avoided pressurizing Alicia in any way to return him in any way for more than a year).
If I were an Alicia/Kalinda shipper, which I'm not (I find the relationship intriguing and rightly a core of the show, but "shipping" would mean seeing out fanfic, wanting them together forever etc., and I don't), I would be crushed by the fact that while Alicia listens to Kalinda's advice and tries to get rid of Marc Warren as a client immediately, she doesn't in any way ask Kalinda how this sudden appearance of the ex affects Kalinda, and this despite having gotten just enough info to deduce Kalinda's marriage was No Good Thing. Not even a "how are you feeling about this?" Tsk. No wonder nobody has asked her out for just a drink (I suppose Kalinda doesn't count, who tried this when they were still estranged?) for over a year. This is not what I'd call being a good friend.
In conclusion: methinks the only functional and mutually respectful and considerate relationship between adults on this show throughout is the Diane and Will partnership. They actually learned their lessons from early on about not scheming against each other, are supportive of each other through all crisis and one gets the impression both get as much as they invest out of it. Huh.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-09 08:23 am (UTC)Did you by any chance already see this?
http://sophia-gratia.dreamwidth.org/61387.html
no subject
Date: 2012-10-09 12:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-09 07:27 pm (UTC)Although the Harvard part was hilarious. Mostly because it's true. With only slight hyperbole. ;)