The Good Wife

[frelling_tralk]

Urgh feeling really aggravated with The Good Wife right now! I know that most people liked season 6 the least, but for the first half of that season at least I was happy with the character work and relationships, when they all came together for Cary's defence it felt like they were people who cared about one another. But now? Diane and Cary barely felt like a part of Alicia's world for most of the season, it *should* have felt like quite a shocking betrayal for Cary to be pushed out in favour of Diane joining forces with Alicia, but these characters all feel so detached from one another these days that you barely get the sense that they ever did have a history with one another. When was the last time that Alicia was even in the room with them both at the same time?

In season 5 I cared about Cary and Alicia striking out on their own partly because of how that shock up some of the core relationships, Will's response to the news and his freaking-out at Alicia mattered to the characters, just as Will and Diane's relationship always made it easy to care about all of the firm politics going on, but now in season 7 it's very much a case of who cares. It feels like the only character that the writers care about servicing any more is Alicia, and their only goal is to end the season with Alicia divorced, independent, and a name partner with Diane. I don't get why Diane is suddenly now fixated on wanting to partner with Alicia though, she was the one that didn't want Alicia back at the firm a few episodes ago, and it was Cary's suggestion to bring Alicia back.

Seriously poor Cary! First Alicia convinces him to let Diane in on the start-up firm that was his dream, then they basically turn his ideal firm into a carbon copy of the firm that he wanted to escape from, and then Alicia lies to his face about Diane's plan to cut him out and have an all-female firm. Well not that I'm sure the writers have any of that straight, with Alicia's reference recently to how she was offered partnership in the firm by Will, they all seem to have forgotten that the original L&G firm is now owned by Louis Canning

If anything it would have made more sense to end it when Alicia and Cary started up their new firm as the new Will or Diane, or even when Alicia and Lucca were setting up their own practise, if they really wanted to end it on Alicia being in a good place and setting out on her own. This whole storyline is just a complete rehash of her becoming a partner at an established law firm (L&G in all but name frankly), only with barely any stakes this time

Comments

[malicat.livejournal.com]

It seems that I have cut my losses early enough... You are right,not all of season 6 was bad. The first half was actually excellent but that got overshadowed by the abysmally bad second half. But you know,even then I still CARED but when I was still watching in season 7 I didn't really care anymore. I have kept up a bit and read what happened and it all makes no sense to me. Like,I'm all for Girlpower11! and women kicking ass together and I always wanted that for Alicia and Diane but after everything that happened,why would they work together again NOW and kick poor Cary out???

[frelling-tralk.livejournal.com]

Yeah season 6 was already starting to lean a bit too heavily on only being interested in exploring Alicia's character towards the end, but there was still enough there to save it for me. But for season 7 Diane and Cary may as well have been on a different show to Alicia for all the relevance that their plots were having to the main character! And it does matter how the ensemble works together and the connections that different characters form, I can't understand why the writers suddenly decided that it didn't

There was a never-ending battle with Howard Lyman at L&A as well urgh, the writers seemed desperate to include that character again and bring him into the new firm. No wonder Cary was left disillusioned! Diane basically overruled everything that he didn't want when it came to his new firm being top-heavy with older partners who didn't contribute anything, then kicks him out the door for Alicia, even though the show had never gone with the narrative that Cary was a bad lawyer before. In season 1 it was emphasised that they were more or less on equal footing, and Alicia had to use her connections at the end of the year to get the spot, but suddenly Diane is entirely unimpressed by Cary's abilities and only able to view Alicia as someone worth partnering with. It all seems to again be about propping up the lead character at the expense of the rest of the cast, something that they never had to resort too with Alicia and Cary's competition in the first season