Continuing with The Good Wife
Apr. 9th, 2019 03:12 pmI'm into season 2, which means I can read the AV Club's recaps and -- maybe more importantly -- ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
selenak's episode posts as I go.
I highly recommendselenak's TV writing, I've followed her for a really long time, and while I rarely disagree with her opinions, she's very good at articulating things I can only vaguely gesture at.)
So far, my take on TGW is that it's full of really interesting, complicated female characters, which makes the awfulness of the men, and the less interesting women, stick out like a sore thumb. Which is frustrating, but also possibly also one of the reasons I'm so engaged with it?
Take Kalinda, for example -- I go back and forth over whether she's a badly written character or if Archie Panjabi is just not a very good actress, or if she was a good character in 2009 who has dated poorly. (I suspect it's a combination of all three, but I also like to fantasise about what it would be like if Kalinda was played by an actress who didn't lapse into an English accent every three words.)
On the other hand, Kalinda is still a million times more likeable than Will "I'm meant to be the love interest but I'm only watchable when Alicia and I are in separate scenes" Gardner or Blake "Literal black hole of charisma, bad writing and terrible acting, why is this even happening?" Calamar. He looks like his stubble was airbrushed onto his chin. I can't believe he gets the privilege of a squid-related surname.
Basically, the only male regulars I don't hate are Peter and Eli. Probably because the writers seem to realise they're terrible people, which minimises the cognitive dissonance.
(Oh. And Cary. I don't hate Cary, I just keep shouting YOU'RE FIVE YEARS OLD at him. How is he a lawyer? HE IS FIVE YEARS OLD.)
This may sound like a litany of complaints, but shouting at The Good Wife is half the fun. Here's an incomplete list of things I've shouted so far:
Like I said, the shouting is half the fun. If Lockhart Gardner has a HR department -- and it should -- I have to assume it spends a lot of time drinking and crying.
But I am genuinely enjoying it -- the procedural side, with the legal stuff, is a mixture of interesting and ... not, but the political stuff (which apparently most people hated?) is my favourite so far. The stuff with Alicia's kids is fine, it mostly makes me think of the YA novel The Fixer by Jennifer Lynn Barnes, and how that came so close to being good, but never quite clicked for me. That's how I feel about the teen subplots as well.
But I'm intrigued by seeing the way society has changed in just ten years -- as much as some aspects of the story and the way it's told feel dated, you can see how this universe was strong enough to evolve into The Good Fight. But at the same time, I can't see how that evolution would be easy -- the whole series is steeped in a sort of self-satisfied "white people joking about living in a post-racial society but isn't it weird how many African American characters are disposable" attitude which really hasn't aged well.
And the whole "loyal upper-middle-class political wife goes back to work after her husband is involved in a career-ending sex scandal" is a weirdly universal story? Universal enough that there was a Korean adaptation in 2016, and a Japanese version earlier this year, anyway.
Of course, it's debatable whether those adaptations were actually good. My BFF watched the Japanese series, but cannot remember having any opinions or feelings about it at all -- and it only finished airing in March. And this Singaporean review of the Korean version makes it sound pretty bland.
It has me wondering if an Australian version would be possible -- and I think yes, but with some pretty key changes: we don't directly elect crown prosecutors, and there'd have to be a revolving cast of barristers to represent clients in court. Also there is just one firm in the country which employs its own investigators instead of outsourcing as required -- but I suspect the reality there was fudged to start with.
selenak's episode posts as I go. I highly recommend
selenak's TV writing, I've followed her for a really long time, and while I rarely disagree with her opinions, she's very good at articulating things I can only vaguely gesture at.)So far, my take on TGW is that it's full of really interesting, complicated female characters, which makes the awfulness of the men, and the less interesting women, stick out like a sore thumb. Which is frustrating, but also possibly also one of the reasons I'm so engaged with it?
Take Kalinda, for example -- I go back and forth over whether she's a badly written character or if Archie Panjabi is just not a very good actress, or if she was a good character in 2009 who has dated poorly. (I suspect it's a combination of all three, but I also like to fantasise about what it would be like if Kalinda was played by an actress who didn't lapse into an English accent every three words.)
On the other hand, Kalinda is still a million times more likeable than Will "I'm meant to be the love interest but I'm only watchable when Alicia and I are in separate scenes" Gardner or Blake "Literal black hole of charisma, bad writing and terrible acting, why is this even happening?" Calamar. He looks like his stubble was airbrushed onto his chin. I can't believe he gets the privilege of a squid-related surname.
Basically, the only male regulars I don't hate are Peter and Eli. Probably because the writers seem to realise they're terrible people, which minimises the cognitive dissonance.
(Oh. And Cary. I don't hate Cary, I just keep shouting YOU'RE FIVE YEARS OLD at him. How is he a lawyer? HE IS FIVE YEARS OLD.)
This may sound like a litany of complaints, but shouting at The Good Wife is half the fun. Here's an incomplete list of things I've shouted so far:
- THIS IS NOT HOW THE LAW WORKS
- YOU ARE ALL GOING TO BE DISBARRED
- DIANE, WHILE YOU'RE BEING A SMUG LIBERAL, YOU'RE LESS THAN A DECADE AWAY FROM A TRUMP PRESIDENCY SO MAYBE TRY TO BE, YOU KNOW, LESS SMUG
- KALINDA, WHAT IS YOUR ACCENT DOING???
- ALICIA, I AM CONCERNED ABOUT YOUR WIG
- PLEASE STOP TAUNTING THE JUDGE
- I DO NOT BELIEVE THE ENTIRE COUNTRY WOULD BE THIS ENGAGED IN THE ELECTION FOR A LOCAL STATE'S ATTORNEY
- OR WHAT AMOUNTS TO A PRETTY BLAND SEX SCANDAL
- WHAT WAS THIS BRAVE WORLD OF *checks* 2010 WHEN MARK ZUCKERBERG WAS A FOLK HERO
- CHRISTINE BARANSKI, YOU ARE AN ACCLAIMED, AWARD-WINNING ACTRESS, WHY ISN'T YOUR FOREHEAD MOVING?
Like I said, the shouting is half the fun. If Lockhart Gardner has a HR department -- and it should -- I have to assume it spends a lot of time drinking and crying.
But I am genuinely enjoying it -- the procedural side, with the legal stuff, is a mixture of interesting and ... not, but the political stuff (which apparently most people hated?) is my favourite so far. The stuff with Alicia's kids is fine, it mostly makes me think of the YA novel The Fixer by Jennifer Lynn Barnes, and how that came so close to being good, but never quite clicked for me. That's how I feel about the teen subplots as well.
But I'm intrigued by seeing the way society has changed in just ten years -- as much as some aspects of the story and the way it's told feel dated, you can see how this universe was strong enough to evolve into The Good Fight. But at the same time, I can't see how that evolution would be easy -- the whole series is steeped in a sort of self-satisfied "white people joking about living in a post-racial society but isn't it weird how many African American characters are disposable" attitude which really hasn't aged well.
And the whole "loyal upper-middle-class political wife goes back to work after her husband is involved in a career-ending sex scandal" is a weirdly universal story? Universal enough that there was a Korean adaptation in 2016, and a Japanese version earlier this year, anyway.
Of course, it's debatable whether those adaptations were actually good. My BFF watched the Japanese series, but cannot remember having any opinions or feelings about it at all -- and it only finished airing in March. And this Singaporean review of the Korean version makes it sound pretty bland.
It has me wondering if an Australian version would be possible -- and I think yes, but with some pretty key changes: we don't directly elect crown prosecutors, and there'd have to be a revolving cast of barristers to represent clients in court. Also there is just one firm in the country which employs its own investigators instead of outsourcing as required -- but I suspect the reality there was fudged to start with.
