There’s a problem with ripped-from-the-headlines storytelling that sinks many shows too reliant on it. It’s impossible to capture the immediacy of an event, the pain and anguish or the real, complicated, messy discussions it encourages from the safe distance of a television production cycle.
Every storyline in “Hail Mary” rockets forward from the word go, as Diane and Kalinda fight to save Cary from prison while Alicia weathers some tumultuous debate prep. Throughout these plotlines, the characters mostly feel separated, by distance or by the secrets they are keeping from each other.
There’s an old legal adage that a case can often turn on what the judge ate for lunch. On the surface it reads as cynical, crassly undermining the idea that our ideal of impartiality is lived up to on the ground. But there’s a realism to it that cannot be denied.
Peter Florrick is a piece of shit. We’ve known this for a long time; in fact, its baked right into the premise of the show, revealed in The Good Wife’s very first scene. Peter is not some permanent penitent who learned from his mistakes, at least not in the long term.
It’s a painful truth, not often acknowledged, but perspective is everything. We never really know the people around us, and they never fully know us, either. All we have is our perception of them, and that is a thing all too easily manipulated.
This week, Alicia Florrick takes a stand. This season has been shaping up to be an examination of Alicia’s morality, and so far, it has given us frequent cause to question where she stands, and if she stands anywhere in particular at all.
Elsbeth Tascioni is one of the great recurring characters The Good Wife has ever come up with. She’s whip smart, eccentric but never in a way the show judges her for, and incredibly, fascinatingly good at her job.
“Shiny Objects” is full of the sort of The Good Wife-specific flourishes that show up a few times a season when the show needs a filler episode. The episode brings back Elsbeth Tascioni, comes up with a fascinating case of the week, and manages to comment on technology at the same time.
This season is quickly shaping up to be about Alicia Florrick’s morality, or rather, he frequent lack of strong ethical convictions. Alicia spends less time thinking about “right” and “wrong” than she spends thinking about “convenient” and “inconvenient.”
Periodically throughout a season, The Good Wife likes to throw its characters for a loop by forcing them to advocate in a forum unlike the ones they do battle in on a daily basis.