Monsters of Television

“Can’t go 10 feet in America without having your death recorded.”

With everything from the finale now neatly taken care of last week, I feel like the show can properly start getting to work on telling this season’s stories. Yes, of course, the show is a very subtle serialized character drama so this season’s stories are connected to last season’s stories. But there are new stakes now and thus new stories to tell in relation to this serial.

But, as if to also take a narrative cooldown lap, “Breaking Fast” is largely one of those procedural episodes that the show excels at balancing against its character serialization. This, of course, isn’t a complaint. If you’re a regular reader of the blog, you already know that I love procedurals, and that I love serials. So I like when a show manages to execute both well, and I get very frustrated when the balance is thrown off in ways that simply don’t work for me.

Take Burn Notice, for example. A show I railed against most of the summer (a show I do kind of like, really, I promise) since it couldn’t balance its serialized elements properly with its Client of the Week elements. Of course, this isn’t a completely fair comparison. Burn Notice‘s serialized elements are more plot than character-driven (though, Jesse was a nice variant on this during the summer portion of the season) making the doling out of information seem more important and slow than if I’m finding out about Alicia’s family in “Breaking Fast”, where it would make sense of these character beats to be held back until it was organic to the plot.

And this is what The Good Wife does well: organic developments. It makes sense that trackers would hone in on Alicia’s brother while he’s at Chicago (they probably would’ve gone to Oregon, but for the sake of ease…). And since Owen is outside of the show’s central narrative, he wouldn’t be aware of the trackers. We can’t even be sure that the kid is a tracker until Owen mentions YouTube to him, and then, due to our privileged position, we already know what’s going to happen (hence the very quick cut to Eli choking on his lunch).

By drawing Owen in this way, we actually have an reasonable way to have Owen introduced. He’s not randomly knocking on the door saying “Hello!”. Instead, due to this plot beat, we get character beats about why he wasn’t around last season if he cares so much about Alicia’s well-being (“And you were in Oregon.”). Pile on scenes between Alicia and Owen drinking wine and then Peter and Owen in the kitchen (that kitchen is privy to a lot of intense conversations), and the show actually manages to sketch out a pretty decent drawing of Owen and his place within this family, even though we’ve never seen him before tonight.

In this sense, Owen’s appearance is characteristic of most prominent guest stars: developed enough to stir up a little bit of trouble and then departs. It’s a self-contained character beat. Contrast with the on-going character serial issues between Blake and Kalinda. Kalinda herself is already an on-going character serial as we try and figure out who Kalinda is (and where she buys her boots and how she can walk with so much confidence in them), but if we toss in Blake’s mysterious past, weird games with Kalinda’s name (major foul playing them in front of Alicia, man), his basketball game with Will, and his community outreach to Chicago’s hooker population and we have two enigma plots butting up against one another.  Perhaps since I’m not a die-hard Kalinda fan or because I find Blake’s games incredibly childish, I find this story a bit dull, but based on the preview for next week, some movement may occur.

Within all these character beats though, we have a well-deployed and interesting procedural about suing the state’s attorney office for malicious prosecution and then not only finding the man who should’ve been put in jail but finding the necessary evidence to put him in jail. The firm’s investigations and maneuvering with Childs (which ties into Peter’s story) never feel like separate goals within the episode, but part of a coherently done episode, which is something a show like Burn Notice has never been able to really achieve. Both stories are compelling and interesting (The Good Wife excels at in media res storytelling), but neither one feels dominant or subordinate to the other. That’s good television.

FINAL THOUGHTS

• I wasn’t keen on Eli’s slapstick run for the stairs, but if every episode is going to have Eli doing a bit of comic business, I can get down with that.
• Worst. Yom Kippur. Ever. “What is with you kids and this romanticization of Hamaas?” “So you don’t put the pork and cheese together?” “No, I’m one of the good Germans.”
• I avoided spoilers for this show (and every show), so Dallas Roberts showing up was a complete and total surprise, but a very welcomed one. He walked away with this episode.
• “Afraid of the Alicia Stare.”