The Good Wife

[frelling_tralk]

I was really annoyed that they brought David Lee back into the firm in 612, Diane's reasons for joining up with them made sense, but ffs David Lee as well??? I was totally team Alicia when she's pissed at Diane and Cary inviting him back into the firm without even consulting with her. Okay she's been more involved in her campaign lately, but that seemed like such a passive-aggressive way of dealing with it when there had been no prior indication that they had even raised her campaign as being an issue, Diane was the one urging Alicia to stop calling her and to focus on her campaign in 610, now it's perfectly okay for them to take on a partner without even asking her because they couldn't contact Alicia for an entire hour?!? I did think that Alicia's self-righteousness was a bit galling when she had been railroading Cary with a lot of decisions with the firm as well, but eh to me that doesn't excuse Diane and Cary doing it either. If they felt that Alicia's political campaigning means that she no longer gets an equal vote, then they should have told her that to her face and talked it out long before

In 613 it was really sad to see Alicia accept the money from that homophobic and sexist old man, Prady turns out to be the most principled of the two of them when he calls the man out on disrespecting his opponent, while Alicia couldn't bring herself to say anything about his homophobic comments. But then the episode also had wife killer Colin Sweeney threaten Alicia with his knowledge of her campaign being funded by drug money laundering, so she's been morally compromised for a while now. I get the feeling that Colin Sweeney's 'confession' to Diane on the gloves was being played for humour, but for once I found myself rooting against the firm and their self-serving attempts to protect his reputation, but meh of course they found a legal loophole in the end. It's not necessarily even about the quality of the writing, I think that certain characters like Colin Sweeney are just starting to feel played out at this point anyway after prior seasons have already done so much with them. The "in your opinion" judge was a lot of fun in her first appearances for example, but in season 6 characters like that can get a bit same old, same old at times I'm afraid when it's just repeating the original jokes and quirks

And I wanted to like 614 more than I did as I've loved when TGW has used that format in the past, and I was looking forward to getting more insights into Alicia's mind, but I didn't feel like we learned anything new really? Maybe my expectations were too high as the episode description made me go into it expecting a classic, and while the episode had its moments, ultimately it all felt a bit self-indulgent and disconnected to me. I'm not sure that the show really needed another episode focusing on Alicia's inner thoughts at that point, it would have been nice to pull the ensemble cast into the storylines more instead

I liked 616 more actually as it was nice to get back to the firm, and the email scandal was pretty funny (if a bit overplayed in places, I couldn't believe the woman spitting on the door of a senior partner! Also some of the emails didn't ring true to the characters IMO, particularly Diane supposedly saying that Carey wasn't much of a lawyer and so not a total loss if he went to prison) But the continuity was really frustrating, why is Julias suddenly working for F&A, why are they talking about him having been away at their nonexistent New York offices?!? I actually didn't mind Diane joining up with the firm, and I could *just about* buy them moving back to the old offices, but it's like the writers completely forgot about F&A being a start-up firm, they did not have to bring Diane, David Lee, Howard, AND Julias back as partners, it just makes the whole firm division nonsensical. I wouldn't mind if it felt like the writers were deliberately making a point about all of Alicia and Carey's idealism ultimately coming to nothing and F&A just turning into another big law firm exactly like L&G, but it's just dumb to bring back all of the exact same people, I'm almost surprised they didn't bring Will back from the dead as well to keep that L&G feel!

Ultimately I felt like season 6's biggest misstep was to drop the law cases of the week. Normally I prefer shows that focus on a continuous narrative, but I think there could have been a better balance this year, previous seasons always had quite a few cases which would really draw me in. At some point though the show became all about the politics, and there was barely any legal drama going on at all. Also the main cast felt really disconnected from each other, it feels like something's been missing since Will's death? I'm not even Will's biggest fan, but at least when he was still around there was that sense of them all working as a team, and there were smaller moments when you saw a warm friendship between say Will/Diane, Alicia/Kalinda, Will/Kalinda etc. Season 6 had some nice moments for Alicia and Carey (if very sporadic), but otherwise there just weren't the same character moments and sense of closeness this year, there weren't even any particularly engaging cases of the week, the show became almost solely about exploring Alicia's character and her campaign. Even the final cliffhanger fell flat, season 5 has already explored Alicia starting her new firm, and that story had real impact with how betrayed Will and Diane felt, it's hard to feel very excited about her starting up yet another new firm when the stakes feel so much lower this time

Comments

[frelling-tralk.livejournal.com]

Yeah it's one thing to structure most of your episodes around your lead actress and her journey, it's another thing all together to not even give the two other main cast members a decent B-plot for those episodes. It does seem like there's possibly a character arc being set up for Carey now at last, but the premiere definitely wasn't so promising for Diane's character :(