A Good Wife series finale review, in five parts:
1) We’ll start at the end, with what has been the most contentious aspect of the finale among fans and critics: Diane slapping Alicia in the hallway after the press conference. The point of the slap, as showrunners Robert and Michelle King explained in brief post-mortem video released by CBS, was to provide a bookend. The series started with a slap by Alicia after a press conference in which Peter admitted wrongdoing, and so ending with one after another press conference like that was intended to highlight what a different person Alicia is now by bringing it full-circle. The innocent victim from the premiere is now a calculated (kind of) victimizer, the type of person who would embarrass and undermine her boss and friend by dragging her husband up in front of God and the jury to pepper him with questions about how he handles his firearms. (Pun intended.) The slapper has become the slappee, if you will.
Whether you buy all this or not… eh, your call. It felt a little forced to me, like the show decided on the bookending slap before they had a justification for it, and then had to hurry up and get someone mad enough at Alicia to throw palms. The Kings discussed some of the potential reasoning behind all of this in an interview with Variety today.
[W]e were with Alicia at the party episode, two back. And we saw Alicia watch Diane and Kurt McVeigh huddling and kissing, and her jealousy in many ways of their relationship. And you can’t say that that didn’t play into this end. At least Alicia should have known what she was playing with. Either there was a hidden side of her that did want Diane brought down to her level: “If I can’t have a husband that I’m perfectly happy with, then I don’t mind that it happens to this other person.” On the other hand, you can view that under the guise of zealously defending your client. So what I love about the ending in my mind is one could defend both sides of this.
And that doesn’t even cover the other kinda crappy thing Alicia did to a friend here. Ruining her own relationship with Diane is one thing, because it’s her life and she’s a fancy new name partner, so things will be really awkward, but whatever. Her using Lucca to do it, though… that was a little dicey, because Lucca is just an associate and very much in a position to have her work life made into a living hell by a slap-mad managing partner. Alicia hung her out to dry, right?
2) This brings us to the other side of the slap, and the more important question, I think: Do we even buy that Diane would do that? Man, I do not think I do. Kurt was in that position because Diane had asked him to play fast and loose with the facts earlier in the trial (part of the defense strategy), so going back to him in this situation seemed reasonable. It sucked tremendously for both Diane and Kurt, but it wasn’t totally out of line.
And I think Diane would have understood that, even as the questions ran toward affairs and other such improprieties. She runs hot, we know that, but less in a “Will Gardner sweeping a desk clean in a violent fit of rage” way than an “icy stare followed by a knowing smirk, like she always has a plan in motion” way. I wouldn’t picture her getting to the point of a slap, like that one character from that show about the slap. What was that called again?
Aaaaanywaaayy…
3) Hey, speaking of Will Gardner, welcome back, Will Gardner! Or should I say, Ghost Will Gardner!
This was weird, right? Like, not at first, though. The thing in the beginning where he was the third face she saw in her Kitchen Match Game hallucination worked for me, because it was a cool nod to the elephant in the room, and because Josh Charles is the best and should be in more things a lot. Bringing him back for that moment felt right.
Where it got weird was the way he kept coming back, like he had suddenly become her guardian angel, sent back to give the former love of his life advice about which of her potential non-him lovers to choose. (Honestly, I think Will would have told her to hook up with a sack of rabid possums over going back to Peter, so like, congrats, Jason, but only kinda.) The only thing that whole bit did was remind me how much I missed Will, and how much the show has suffered since killing him off a few seasons ago.
Admittedly, that one can’t really be pinned on the show because it was Charles’ decision to leave and it tied everyone’s hands a little bit, but when he was there — especially before the Will/Alicia thing really got heated up — he was often one of the two or three best parts of the show. The producers never found a way to fill that void, not even with virtuous attorneys who had great hair or with mysterious sexguy investigators. So bringing him back this way was nice because it meant he was back, but… it was weird.
4) What if the show had killed off Will, but then brought him back in this new guardian angel role in the very next episode? What if The Good Wife took a hard left turn and the entire home stretch became a supernatural series about a Chicago lawyer and the angel/lover who helped her win cases? Strangers looking on confused as she argues with an invisible partner in the elevators, Will getting pissed off during trials and pulling out the opposing counsel’s chair so he falls down in court. All that. You’d think it would be worse, but would it? (It would. But I would love it.)
5) All that said, the finale was pretty much perfect. Not perfect like “flawless.” It was definitely not that. I mean perfect as in “it was a perfect finale for The Good Wife.” In a post I wrote back in February about the show being one of the more underappreciated dramas of the Peak TV era, I pointed out how the things that handcuffed the show from being truly great — the need to churn out 22 episodes per season, the limitations of network television — were also what made it so admirable. It was competing against the Breaking Bads and Mad Mens of the world — its two Emmy nominations for Best Drama since 2010 represent half of the nominations for network series in the category over the period — with one hand tied behind its back. We shouldn’t overlook that when we discuss the show’s legacy.
Unfortunately, those pressures did occasionally lead to messy plots, and randomly discarded characters (miss you, Robyn), and things that just appeared to be flung up against a wall for undetermined reasons. Even at its most basic level, the show was still at least two shows most of the time (a standard legal procedural and a prestige drama about a conflicted protagonist), which was a byproduct of trying to make a smart, serialized show in a format best suited to having sexy sciencecops solve a new murder each week. It was trying to do a tango in a Vegas EDM rave, and sometimes that elegant dance ended up getting knocked off course by a loud drunken tourist, like Kalinda’s violent ex, Nick, who I immediately regret bringing up because now it means I’m thinking about his arc on the show again. No thanks.
But my point: The fact that the ending was a little messy and unresolved… I mean, sure. What else did you expect? The Good Wife was The Good Wife, up to the very end.
P.S. Cary definitely ends up getting fired from that law school for sleeping with a student. I wish I could bet all of my earthly possessions on this.
