While I realize that his character was found to be a lawyer impersonator, I think there was a greater significance to Chris Bowers’ Ryan Alprin on this week’s The Good Wife. And I believe that that significance has to do with the trajectory that Alicia Florrick (Julianna Margulies) appears to be headed on.
First of all, we know that Alicia has a natural distaste for the politics involved in the game of law — exhibit “A” being her husband Peter (Chris Noth). But she seems to also be wary of the dollars and cents in play at a big firm … the billable hour requirements, the churning of associates, layoffs, etc. So what’s a woman newly returned to the workforce to do? Why, hang up her own shingle!
I’ll admit that for 50 minutes, that’s basically where I saw Tuesday night’s episode going: Alprin asking Alicia to come and work with him at his one-man operation. I was slightly thrown off that track when Will (Josh Charles) began discussing extending an offer to Alprin, but I quickly rejected that thought when I considered what Alprin would tell Will to do with his offer. So it was back to Alicia leaving the big firm for the small one.
The major flaw in that theory — aside from Alprin being a fraud — is that Alicia needs the guaranteed six-figure income that a first-year associate commands at a big-name firm. I was just watching a season four episode of The Practice, where Bobby talks about his first year in private practice: 17-hour days, three cases at a time, and he was just getting by. Even with the housing downsize and the kids in public school, Alicia could never get by like that.
But then I considered the John Grisham novel, “The Street Lawyer.” It’s a great book about a man named Michael Brock who makes the leap from partnership track to something of a legal clinic. It’s about altruism (Alicia’s got it), caring (yup), and to an extent making amends for your prior sins (I can see Alicia feeling the need to make amends for Peter’s).
So maybe it won’t be with Alprin, but Alicia spent a lot of time looking around at all of the people getting the axe, and I know that something was going on in her head (and with the show’s plot). Maybe Will’s ill-fated move against Stern will cost him, and he’ll leave and take Alicia with him, ala Eli Stone? But then I hope they bring Alprin in as a junior associate after he passes the bar; I liked him — save for his trying to pick Alicia up — and I can’t imagine they introduced him for only one episode.
On a side note, I like that Zach (Graham Phillips) is trying to investigate all of the dirt that seems to be swirling around his father, and that it hasn’t been made into a very to-be-expected brother/sister partnership snooping. I wonder if he’ll actually learn something exculpatory (although it’s tough to see where the womanizing and drugs end and the official corruption begins).
And specific to this week’s episode itself: a Kosher grocery store would never be open on Saturday. A grocery store that is Kosher would exist only to serve a clientele that would never shop there on Saturday, so being open would be akin to burning money. Also, it’s most likely that the shop would be Jewish-owned, likely by someone in that religious community, so they’d never have their business open on Saturday.
On top of that, if a Kosher grocery store were open in that neighborhood on Saturday, the community would have boycotted it long ago and run it out of business (assuming they didn’t first throw stones through its display windows). So even if Dawn (Jessica Bogart) hadn’t known that already when she went there, her bag full of groceries wouldn’t have existed to break and shatter glass when she pretended to fall.
Oops! Sounds like a case for Gardner, Florrick, and Alprin!
Clacked by Aryeh S.
on Nov 12, 2009 @ 09:00 EST5EDT
So interesting that you posted this. The reviewers for the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times reviewed The Good Wife this week off a advance copy of the show that had Cary come to Alicia and tell her that Will had donated his bonus to the case of the boy with the lead in the toy. This scene obviously was made to make Will and hence his large firm (as well as Cary for passing the info along after Alicia had asked him about it earlier) appear more altruistic and less self serving. This was a tie-in I guess to his not wanting to fire anyone else and his desire to rid himself of Stern – the big firm guy.
The decision to cut this scene whether a time constriction or a creative decision left Will seeming less the good guy and the store front lawyer more altruistic making it tough for Alicia to seem like the moral “Good Wife” when she stays with Stern etc.
I think the story is building to show how many different aspects of her life Alicia has to be “good”in. This episode really underscored not throwing a marriage away and being a good wife. But what does she need to do to be a good lawyer, mother, friend etc.
What version of the show did you watch?
*POST AUTHOR*
I saw the regular airing on Tuesday night (well, I watched it Wednesday, but you know what I mean). Actually, I had read the summary on IMDb beforehand, and, not only did I not see that Alicia found herself attracted to Alprin, but actually, his propositioning her totally took me by surprise, as I didn’t see that he was interested in her like that beforehand.
I think Will is better off as the bad guy. Not only have there been enough whispers up until now to have made the altruism unbelievable, but he also just seems kind of deceptive, no?
My only problem with the idea of her “being a good wife” is that it seems more a cross to bear than a personal decision. I’ve heard a lot about how the show title describes what’s to come, but I think it refers to what was – she stood by Peter as a good wife would … now this is her “after,” as opposed to her life had she not stood by him as a politician’s good wife would. Therefore I see her decisions being less dictated by “what the good wife would do,” so for instance I could see her leaving a big firm, even though the good mother wouldn’t for her family’s financial sake.
But we’ll see where things go.