The Good Wife continues to take a back seat

Week after week this season, The Good Wife continues to confound me. When the show manages to stumble into the courtroom, with Alicia and company battling it out for the win, it’s awesome. But when Peter gets involved, or Will and Diane are fighting for supremacy at the firm, I glaze over. So you can guess how I felt last night.

Miranda Cosgrove guest starred as Sloan, a teen sensation churned out by the Disney machine (iCarly, Cosgrove’s show, is actually on Nickelodeon, so I’m guessing she was poking some fun at her rival). The whole thing seemed totally out-of-character for The Good Wife, as teens and technology aren’t really the show’s beat. The tablet computers that Derrick Bond introduced at the firm recently were the exception, not the rule.

The case also brought out a side of Grace that I found sickening. I don’t particularly care about her either way, but why was she acting like such an idiot, watching the Taiwanese video, sneaking into court, and calling her mother Alicia? She should have been grounded; instead Alicia allowed her to giggle in the background. My impression of both Zach and Grace is that neither should be allowed to have friends … their ability to block out peer pressure is pathetic at best.

Inside the firm, the battle lines are being drawn between Will and Derrick, and Diane and David Lee (Zach Grenier), divorce lawyer extraordinaire. Why do we care? Can’t the firm just be a firm? Instead we need intrigue inside and out? This partner wants to do this, while that partner wants to do that. Okay, so let Diane leave with David Lee, and let us move on with Will and Derrick. It would make for a much more peaceful, and enjoyable, experience anyway.

Peter’s campaign isn’t going well (shocking that the corrupt sleaze is struggling in the polls), and he got an offer to assume the Chairmanship of the local (city or state?) Democratic Committee. The offer reminded me that we don’t know if Peter actually has greater political ambitions, but either way I felt as if we were being needlessly distracted from what’s important on this show. Who cares what happens to Peter?

And now we’re exploring the world of Wendy Scott-Carr (Anika Noni Rose) in addition to Eli? Come on! Why does it seem as if the writers fear focusing on Alicia too much? Am I mistaken, or didn’t Julianna Margulies get nominated for an Emmy for her role, and win a Golden Globe? I don’t think she should have won, but she did. So why has season two of the show sought to minimize her role so considerably?

It was great seeing Gbenga Akinnagbe again as Pastor Isaiah Easton, and Frankie Faison as his pop Jeremiah, but I didn’t enjoy what we saw them doing. What kind of a person screws their kid over like Jeremiah did? And what kind of a man of principle caves on his position not to endorse a political candidate? And why must we spend even more time out of Alicia’s life? I don’t get the thought process there.

An all around poor episode for me. Let’s get back to basics, and back to court.

Clacked by Aryeh S.
on Nov 17, 2010 @ 16:34 EST5EDT