Monsters of Television

“You like to think that you’re a good person, and maybe at one time you were, but we both know you’ll do whatever it takes.”

Does the show need a villain? No. Am I glad it'll be Cary? Yes.

It’s a bit difficult to describe just how good a show can be. At the very least, you can tell a person that they need to watch a show and hope that they get around to it at some point. If you’re more aggressive, you loan them the DVDs of a show (if available) and hope that person gets around to watching them. If you’re really aggressive, you can tie that person down and make them watch the DVDs.

What can you do, however, to make someone watch a brand new show like The Good Wife? I was slightly badgered by a professor of mine and it just happened that there wasn’t anything on Tuesday at 10 so I tuned in. And with Lost ending this Sunday (must…not…cry…right…now…), I’m so thrilled that I now have a new favorite drama to look forward to in the fall, and, on the flip side, go through massive withdrawals for during the summer.

Because The Good Wife is just that good.

Now, I know that intro may’ve seemed like the intro I’d write for next week’s season finale, and you’re absolutely right. I could’ve easily written that intro for the finale, and just as easily could “Hybristophilia” been the finale of the season. But kind of like last week’s Community (and from what I understand, last week’s Modern Family (or maybe it was another show…)), “Hybristophilia” is an episode that could’ve worked as a finale but isn’t. Indeed, the episode sets everything up for the next season, and yet we still have one more episode to go.

First and foremost is Cary. Bitter from his hard work at L&G being overlooked for the sake of bringing in Eli and some of his clients, Cary is now back on a market that isn’t hiring. Again, this time through Cary, we see how the economic downturn is at play in the show, as he attempts to interview at a law firm where all the applicants look exactly like him (one of them is even wearing the same tie, except the stripes are going in the other direction) and are just as qualified as he is, as situation many people in many different fields are experiencing. I remain uncertain about how this plays out to an audience (I have the same issues with Cary that I did with Alicia last week), but again I’m happy to see a show addressing these issues.

Given the promos, it wasn’t much of a surprise that Cary would end up working for Childs, but it’s a wonderfully delicious development. As I point to in the caption before the jump, The Good Wife doesn’t need an antagonist since the show is significantly more morally complicated than one person struggling against another. However, Cary and Childs are both men with grudges against the Florrick family now, a united cause to destroy each spouse’s reputation. While I sincerely hope they don’t overplay the conflict between Cary and Alicia in the courtroom (don’t use him for every case!), I’m eager to see the two square off against one another.

Instead, the show allows the audience to interpret this through Alicia’s actions, forcing the audience to think through the show, and not just about the show.

The other story arc involves Peter being freed from house arrest. Now, I don’t know why Joe Morton’s Daniel Golden vacated to work for the White House, but I do know that I’m pleased as punch that Elbeth is taking the reigns. While I do love the character, her initial appearance had me worried that she’s feel out of place in this world, a world where people aren’t quirky: they just harbor deep dark secrets and repress their emotions. But her performance in court, capped off with her snide remark to the judge (“Yes, your honor, we’re all in awe.”) shows that she’ll actually work well in the show because she’s as ballsy as Eli, but unassumingly so.

The party to celebrate Peter’s freedom feels like the last scene of a season, including Peter setting Alicia up with the AFL-CIO representatives. It’s the kind of political maneuvering that Cary called her out for and that Alicia has been working so hard to avoid. Here’s what makes this good: The show has never once stated (at least since I started watching) that Alicia wants to avoid this because she doesn’t wish to be drawn more and more into Peter’s sphere of influence and that she wants that wall between her professional life and her married life to remain in place. Instead, the show allows the audience to interpret this through Alicia’s actions, forcing the audience to think through the show, and not just about the show.

I really want to emphasize how much that last point matters, and why it’s the key to understanding how good this show is. Maureen Ryan has a good write-up about the show, and I quote from it, “The show allows fans of both meaty procedural fare and cable-style complexity to have their cake and eat it too.” And Ryan’s absolutely correct (as she often is). Now, some of the commenter’s disagree, but very few shows in the broadcast line-up aim for this kind of complexity. And I don’t just mean narrative complexity, a trait we tend to identify as coming from cable, but also the emotional and character complexity that we tend to associate with cable productions (as Ryan does in that quote).

My aim in all of this is to emphasize, and perhaps the degree to which this blog covers broadcast and not cable indicates this, that television programs, regardless of where they originate, can be good, brilliant even, and to say that cable is better than broadcast is a cultural divide that has been created by the cable channels (“It’s not TV. It’s HBO.”) for the sake of market differentiation and perceived class status. And while cable has certainly been able to do things that broadcast hasn’t been able to do, broadcast networks are proving themselves capable of engaging in those same practices, and doing them just as well.

FINAL THOUGHTS

• I know there’s a fair amount I didn’t touch on, including the always amazing Dylan  Baker (providing a nice variation on his typical likeable nutjob work) or the brief scene between Alicia and Will about their relationship or the fact that the FBI is investigating both Peter and Childs or that I haven’t even supplied a Kalinda rant (even I get off my soapboxes sometimes). And I apologize, but I felt that last point was really important.
• I’m not a shipper, but I may be experiencing OTP feelings for Eli and Elbeth: He’s just so slick! She’s just so adorable! They’re made for each other!