The Good Fight 1.05 - 1.10.
Last year I watched the first four episodes of The Good Fight, and liked them very much, but then I travelled to New Zealand, and by the time I had returned, the first season, consisting of ten episodes in totem, was basically over. Consesequently, I didn’t have the chance to watch the rest of the episodes until now.
My initial impression stands: the spin-off has many of The Good Wife‘s virtues minus several of the flaws which in early s6 stopped me from continuing the parent series, which doesn’t mean it’s perfect. It definitely left me cheerful and glad I watched.
Nitpicks first: I could have done without another return of Colin Sweeney, but at least he wasn’t the main event of the episode he was in. As for all the other Good Wife hailing guest stars, I wavered a bit whether I would have wished the show would only present new clients/lawyers/judges or not, but then decided that this is a shared universe, it only makes sense that the firm would hire Elsbeth, that Diane would land Neil Grosse, etc. And of course my inner shipper was pleased to say Cary Cole as Kurt again, and that the show had him and Diane reconciled by the end of the season.
Of the new characters, both regulars and recurring, we got a good sense of who Adrian is through the season, but alas Barbara is still something of a mystery, and I hope the show figures out what to do with her in the second season. Lucca manages to both be herself and suggest some character relationship to Kalinda, a balance act aided by Lucca being a fourth year associate, not a detective. Marisa and Diane’s aide plus emerging junior detective is a delightful presence and the rapport she’s struck up with the firm’s actual detective is great.
Since I’ve heard the first season was originally conceived with the expectation of a Hillary victory and then had to be rewritten to reflect a Trump presidency, I do wonder about just how much rewriting there was (beyond the added scene in the pilot), because at least some of the episodes depended on the Trump context in several pot elements. (Such as the one where his tweeting changes it into a First Amendment case.) Anyway, the show doesn’t feel hastily rewritten, but pretty organic. Presumably the Milo character Felix would have been there in a Hillary context as well, but the stakes would have felt differently.
Maya’s arc through the season emotionally culminating in her court room appearance to save Lucca might have been predictable (there is only so much you can with „young ingenue coming into her own“ as well as „child of privilege finds out about her family’s dastardly deeds as privilege collapses, has to rebuild life“), but was so in a very enjoyable way. Her father Henry in the season finale deciding not to redeem himself by saving his daughter but to rather save himself from 35 years of prison, otoh, was anti cliché yet entirely logical in terms of his original crime and the sheer selfishness of it. I also liked that he wasn’t, in the end, presented as the helpless patsy of Maya’s mother and uncle which I’d been afraid of in the early eps. And the show did some exploration of Maya’s own state, asking whether it was really „I had no idea“ as much as „I don’t want to know“.
Lastly: despite my bitching about Colin Sweeney’s return - you know, given the US Ambassador we actually ended up with in Germany, celebrating his arrival by praising our current bunch of Neonazis, the AFD, and continuing on that note, I think Sweeney would have been preferable. But then I often think that about fictional characters versus the unspeakable bunch in power of a great many countries these days.
This entry was originally posted at https://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1302158.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
My initial impression stands: the spin-off has many of The Good Wife‘s virtues minus several of the flaws which in early s6 stopped me from continuing the parent series, which doesn’t mean it’s perfect. It definitely left me cheerful and glad I watched.
Nitpicks first: I could have done without another return of Colin Sweeney, but at least he wasn’t the main event of the episode he was in. As for all the other Good Wife hailing guest stars, I wavered a bit whether I would have wished the show would only present new clients/lawyers/judges or not, but then decided that this is a shared universe, it only makes sense that the firm would hire Elsbeth, that Diane would land Neil Grosse, etc. And of course my inner shipper was pleased to say Cary Cole as Kurt again, and that the show had him and Diane reconciled by the end of the season.
Of the new characters, both regulars and recurring, we got a good sense of who Adrian is through the season, but alas Barbara is still something of a mystery, and I hope the show figures out what to do with her in the second season. Lucca manages to both be herself and suggest some character relationship to Kalinda, a balance act aided by Lucca being a fourth year associate, not a detective. Marisa and Diane’s aide plus emerging junior detective is a delightful presence and the rapport she’s struck up with the firm’s actual detective is great.
Since I’ve heard the first season was originally conceived with the expectation of a Hillary victory and then had to be rewritten to reflect a Trump presidency, I do wonder about just how much rewriting there was (beyond the added scene in the pilot), because at least some of the episodes depended on the Trump context in several pot elements. (Such as the one where his tweeting changes it into a First Amendment case.) Anyway, the show doesn’t feel hastily rewritten, but pretty organic. Presumably the Milo character Felix would have been there in a Hillary context as well, but the stakes would have felt differently.
Maya’s arc through the season emotionally culminating in her court room appearance to save Lucca might have been predictable (there is only so much you can with „young ingenue coming into her own“ as well as „child of privilege finds out about her family’s dastardly deeds as privilege collapses, has to rebuild life“), but was so in a very enjoyable way. Her father Henry in the season finale deciding not to redeem himself by saving his daughter but to rather save himself from 35 years of prison, otoh, was anti cliché yet entirely logical in terms of his original crime and the sheer selfishness of it. I also liked that he wasn’t, in the end, presented as the helpless patsy of Maya’s mother and uncle which I’d been afraid of in the early eps. And the show did some exploration of Maya’s own state, asking whether it was really „I had no idea“ as much as „I don’t want to know“.
Lastly: despite my bitching about Colin Sweeney’s return - you know, given the US Ambassador we actually ended up with in Germany, celebrating his arrival by praising our current bunch of Neonazis, the AFD, and continuing on that note, I think Sweeney would have been preferable. But then I often think that about fictional characters versus the unspeakable bunch in power of a great many countries these days.
This entry was originally posted at https://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1302158.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.