A few months ago, I wrote a lengthy, complimentary feature on the powerful themes of The Good Wife. It’s a show that grew, year-by-year, into something cynically brilliant and effectively complicated.
The Good Wife kicked off its sixth season by continuing on this trajectory, going darker, delving deeper, tightening its focus. Having Alicia Florrick (Julianna Margulies) run for office, and follow in the footsteps of her scummy husband, seemed inevitable considering the show’s mythology, not to mention the way it interprets ideas of power and identity. And while the circumstances of Cary Agos’ (Matt Czuchry) trial in the background were, to be clear, a little too broadly high-stakes, the character drama that show creators Robert & Michelle King mined out of it was both immense and important.
Many critics have taken the latter half of this sixth season to task. Among the primary complaints: Alicia’s campaign arc went on way too long, and never took off in the first place; character interactions were less frequent, less fun and less rich; principals like Cary and Eli (Alan Cumming) hovered in the background without anything substantial to do; and the show was guilty of repeating itself, especially in regards to the climactic voter fraud scandal. Now, at a certain point, every work of television shows its age. That The Good Wife is near-universally considered to have peaked in its fifth season, over 100 episodes in, is something of a miracle. And although Alicia’s run for State’s Attorney certainly lacked the essential elements of tension or intrigue, it at least had the arc of Alicia Florrick firmly in mind. Depending on who’s asking, the question “Why is Alicia even running?” could either be construed as layered commentary on a character who’s profoundly lost, or as a criticism of a show that might be spinning its wheels for the sake of it.
When all was said and done, I fell somewhere in the middle of that debate. Individual moments certainly provoked thought -- mainly, the money train, from the monstrous Lemond Bishop’s PAC to Ed Asner’s gropey Democratic donor -- and the devastating climax landed exactly as it should have. But it did run too long, and even if it was the point, having Alicia not really care one way or the other made for a tedious run of episodes.
But last night, the show shifted its focus to the real, glaring problem of this season of The Good Wife: the departure of Kalinda Sharma (Archie Panjabi), a character imbued with enough secrecy and peculiarities to make any fan curious, but whose relevance to the show stopped at her relationship to Alicia. When the door to that friendship closed in season two, she either complimented Cary’s character development or got thrown into some bizarre, ill-fitting subplot. Season six sprinkled a little bit of both in, but as her conclusion neared, it honed in on a life-and-death storyline involving Mr. Bishop that was both excessive and uninteresting.
It’s been written about to death, so I’ll keep this brief: the fact that Archie Panjabi and Julianna Margulies would not, for whatever reason, appear in a scene together has tarnished the show. I’ll explain why more broadly in a bit. But even limited to the character of Kalinda, the Kings perpetuated an awkwardness and limitation that prevented her from making any real impact. The show refused to deal with the behind-the-scenes tension, which could have actually fed into the show. (The presence of an actual fight between the characters, for example, would give Panjabi some relevant material to work with.) Instead, the characters were acquaintances who hadn’t appeared together in over 50 episodes of TV -- even as, for a fair bulk of them, they were on good terms and working in the same office. Without even a mention, The Good Wife inadvertently undercut its carefully-realized work with Alicia and Kalinda in earlier seasons. If we, the audience, couldn’t feel anything but behind-the-scenes awkwardness, how was any of it supposed to matter?
Rather than make this acknowledgment, The Good Wife closed out Kalinda’s arc on the show by doubling-down. It wasn’t enough to send her off because of her betrayal of Mr. Bishop; something had to be felt within the show’s construct as we know it. The Kings decided to frame her exit around Alicia -- a decision that couldn’t have gone worse. Her final scene places her in Alicia’s empty apartment, holding back tears as she looks at family photos and recalls the friendship she could never fully repair. No, even for this final scene, Margulies and Panjabi still wouldn’t appear together. But even if they did: how could this moment possibly make sense? Not for dozens upon dozens of episodes has the friendship between Alicia and Kalinda been mentioned even offhandedly. Emotionally or otherwise, it hasn’t fed into an ounce of the show’s progression since season four (at best). Part of this conclusion points to the ultimate weakness of Kalinda as a character. But it also demonstrates a severe lack of judgment on the part of the show’s writing team. Did they expect audiences to buy this -- the tragedy of Kalinda leaving a note behind to the woman she may have very well been in love with? How could we possibly connect to this? The significance of their relationship was rendered near non-existent years ago, with a faint mention of it in the episode “Mind’s Eye” notwithstanding. Frankly, these writers didn’t earn this moment. They undermined these two characters’ interactive relationship, and yet felt it appropriate to bring it back years later, without still addressing the elephant in the room.
The Good Wife has a continuity problem, and the exit of Archie Panjabi works as a perfect example. Partners will float in and out of the show due to the actors’ commitments, but again and again, the show appears content to let it go unmentioned, as if audiences don’t notice. Remember Taye Diggs’ attorney, who built the firm as we know it in season six as a core partner and hasn’t made a single appearance in 2015? What about Jess Weixler’s Robyn, the investigator second to Kalinda who -- according to the show’s creators, I swear -- remains a part of the firm even as she hasn’t appeared in over a dozen episodes? Michael Boatman’s Julius Cain went from a prominent recurring player -- because he was, you know, a partner -- to a character mysteriously gone for two years to an annual appearer. A simple “he’s on sabbatical” would suffice. But in the case of Diggs’ and Weixler’s characters, we haven’t heard a word. And Julius only mentioned he was in the “New York” office when he’d made his first appearance in nearly two years.
In the past few years, The Good Wife’s most exciting narrative arcs have involved the chaos of alliance-making between the firms. It’s why this lack of attention to detail -- or to be blunt, but correct, laziness -- is impactful. There’s a persisting wall of artifice in the way this show’s world operates, in which again and again the audience is treated like it either shouldn’t notice or shouldn’t care. But what of storytelling reliability? What of validity? It’s a problem that can seem innocuous, and then turn much more glaring in the case of one of the show’s primary characters. To not spend a minute of time, either physically or emotionally, wiith Alicia and Kalinda ultimately doesn't matter, the Kings and their writers seem to be claiming.
But imagine Tony Soprano and Jennifer Melfi’s parasitic relationship ending after two seasons, the show progressing without it in mind for a moment, and then returning to it years later for a single episode, only for the purposes of bidding farewell to Lorraine Bracco. When presented in hypothetical terms, the hollowness is crystal clear. It’s a cheap gambit, an ignorance of the importance of emotional and narrative continuity.
But imagine Tony Soprano and Jennifer Melfi’s parasitic relationship ending after two seasons, the show progressing without it in mind for a moment, and then returning to it years later for a single episode, only for the purposes of bidding farewell to Lorraine Bracco. When presented in hypothetical terms, the hollowness is crystal clear. It’s a cheap gambit, an ignorance of the importance of emotional and narrative continuity.
The Good Wife is a smart show, still capable of earned poignancy and scathing wit. But it’s also shedding credibility, episode by episode, scene by scene. If the show had, in retrospect, such a poor handle on Kalinda as a character, does it not alter the way we view the show’s other aspects? Maybe Christine Baranski and Oliver Platt spending three episodes blurting out liberal and conservative talking points is nothing more than intellectual masturbation. Maybe Alicia’s political arc really didn’t mean anything -- maybe it was just a waste of time.
I don’t know, Kings -- it’s your play, I suppose. Prove me wrong. I’m all for creative freedom and not letting fans dictate the direction of a show. And I have no doubt that the surge of Kalinda as a fan-favorite inflicted pressure on the show’s writers to give her more than a half-assed ending. But a television show has to respect its viewer. It has to present consistency, a narrative and emotional through-line. That’s what’s missing right now. The journey of each Good Wife character feels aimless right now; not at all informed by the past. This is especially glaring as Mad Men, always so assured with the progression of each of its principals, ends its run.
In The Good Wife, that continuity factor has been lost. But it’s out there somewhere. Hopefully, the Kings find it again before long.