The Good Wife finally gets angry

We like gossip, don’t we? We love a good piece of juicy gossip that we can chew and chew, rehashing it over and over again until we’ve milked the last one-liner from it.

Who cares who it hurts? What does it matter if the person on the other end is watching, has children, is trying to rise above it all, or doesn’t deserve the fallout? We need to gossip — it fuels our lives.

I’ve never really found myself interested enough in a stranger’s life to talk about it with others, but I suppose I can understand the allure. What I can’t understand is what we see time and again on The Good Wife: people feeling it necessary for Alicia to see, hear, and watch as she’s ripped apart by strangers. What’s that about?

This woman’s sin was trusting a man who didn’t deserve it. So “punish” her by putting her through a divorce. Or by breaking her heart, which I’m sure she’s currently experiencing. But this? Being dragged through the mud along with her louse of a husband? Being seated in front of a computer monitor as his prostitute talks about their sexual experiences? Being confronted by the prostitute at work? Alicia doesn’t deserve any of that, and she finally said so.

I was proud of the fact that she finally emoted, after all these weeks. Disappointed that she kissed Peter at the end (we get points for finally doing what we should have instinctively?), but glad that she finally told him “Enough!” This all had to stop, and it was his mess to make go away…. Well it’s about damn time.

Beyond that main emotional rollercoaster, there were a handful of interesting developments that will be prevalent going forward:

• Jonas Stern and his competing firm. If I was a judge seeing him in my courtroom, and knew nothing of his past, I would never take him seriously as an attorney looking the way he does. But apparently he’s a force to be reckoned with … until his illness takes over. That was a bit of a stupid plot point, because we’ve never known Alicia to be invested in this guy, so who cares? Plus it lines up an inevitably boring story about his fighting his demise … we’ve all been there, yada, yada, yada.
• The thought that Peter had been set-up was floated early on, although I think more in the form of Zach thinking the sex and drugs may have been embellished. The hint that Stern dropped to Alicia opens up an interesting road for the show, and it also gives good reason to keep Peter in jail forever. Of course questions of “why” and “who” abound, and I’m sure we’ll get there. I just hope it doesn’t require Alicia to chase after Stern.
• Not necessarily prevalent going forward, but I loved the Muslim prayer music that Zach played a few times. Cute, a little offensive, but definitely an enjoyable smirk amidst a serious show. But will anything come of everything Jackie (Mary Beth Peil) found in her grandson’s room? And is she somehow involved in whatever it is that Peter really did do?

Finally, there was a great example of how off-topic we’re prone to get in our everyday conversations. When Alicia sits Zach and Grace (Makenzie Vega) down to talk about the prostitute’s interview, the conversation devolved into the following:

“It’s not a three-way; it’s a threesome.” – Zach
“Yeah, but you can still say three-way.” – Grace
“No you can’t.” – Zach

Ah, to be young again.

Clacked by Aryeh S.
on Nov 25, 2009 @ 13:00 EST5EDT