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

[http://users.livejournal.com/_profiterole_/]

they all seem to have forgotten that the original L&G firm is now owned by Louis Canning
Oh yeah, I forgot about that too. XD

I would have stopped watching at the end of the season even if the show hadn't been cancelled. I don't understand how we went from the first 5 seasons, which were so good, to the last 2 seasons.

[frelling-tralk.livejournal.com]

Yeah I felt like that when I first heard the spec that there might be an 8th season, everything about the show feels so tired and ready to be over that I could not have sat through another season. I was more of a fan of season 6 then most were, I really enjoyed the first half at least, but season 7 has been all over the place when it comes to having the cast isolated in their own storylines. There was next to no attempt to give Alicia any connection with Diane and Cary all season, and now we're supposed to buy Diane suddenly being all gung-ho to go into partnership with her? And I can't even follow what's going on with Peter lol, surely it would have made more sense to bring back some bombshell from the past to shock the audience with there, instead of having an indictment for something that there's never even been mentioned before? (at least I don't think we've heard of it anyway)

What is the most bizarre to me is that they seem to have dropped any attempts to set up interesting relationship dynamics, Alicia is almost more alone now that she was at the beginning of the series!

[http://users.livejournal.com/_profiterole_/]

I don't really know if S7 is worse than S6 or if I just got tired of the averageness. A few average episodes are okay in the middle of great episodes, but there aren't any great episodes any more. As you say, Alicia is alone in her storylines and everyone else is kind of alone too, with alliances changing every 2-3 weeks. :/

[frelling-tralk.livejournal.com]

Yeah the writers could have chosen to build up a closer Diane and Cary alliance even for season 7, just *something* to get you invested in these characters and their interactions with one another, but they seem to have completely lost sight of the fact that it was the people first and foremost that got audiences to care when it came to all the political manoeuvres and firm politics. The firms upheavel in season 5 being the prime example of that with Will and Diane feeling so betrayed by Alicia and Cary, the history that those characters had with one another really made you believe it and be torn on who to root for when they were facing one another in court, whereas you can't hope to repeat that in season 7 when none of these characters seem to even like one another very much any more/barely appear in scenes together