The Good Fight, Season 2
Amazon Prime put up the second season of The Good Fight, which I just finished marathoning, with great delight. My continuing impression: the spin-off gives me all I’d liked about the parent show without the things I came to dislike, and manages to improve on its successful first season by getting rid what few nitpicks I had there. Also, it unabashedly makes the Orange Menace and all he stands for the primary Antagonist (aka Big Bad), which means they don’t have to invent an arch nemesis for our characters to defeat only to keep trying to top this in the next season and failing. And nobody can accuse them of going over the top with their Big Bad, because, well, #45. Definitely (not just) the lawyer show for our time.
(BTW: the main villain being the current real life, not fictional, President of the country the show’s produced and set in - it’s a first, isn’t it?)
So one of my few complaints last season was that while the first season gave us a good sense of who Adrian Boseman was, Barbara remained vague. (And hadn’t gotten much narrative room to define her beyond „female partner, is opposed to Diane“.) Which meant that while the show was set within a mainly African-American law firm, the primary protagonists - Diane, Maya, Lucca and Marissa, were, with the exception of Lucca, all white. Apparantly, the production people had come to similar conclusions, because they promptly wrote her out and brought in Liz Reddik Lawrence from The Good Wife, and lo, Liz got all the character and narrative attention Barbara was lacking, and then some. This is partly due to a shift in writing emphasis - after the first two episodes, Maya’s story with her parents and the Ponzi scheme is essentially wrapped up, and from then on, she never gets the central focus of an episode anymore, instead being used as a supporting character in Lucca’s or Marissa’s stories. Which means screentime for Liz which Barbara hadn’t gotten. But part is also how that screentime is used: Liz isn’t defined by her relationship to any one of the firm’s partners, we get to know her in connection to all of the previous regulars, and in her own context (the first episode in which she takes central position as a lawyer dealing with a case involving that well-known-to-watchers-of-The-Wire-curse to US schools, stats and tests, she was inspired to take due to the plaintiff being her son’s teacher). And part is Audra McDonald’s great performance in the part. Since Diane also took a step back in terms of screen attention for two thirds of the season (until the last few episodes), while Adrian Boseman was a central character throughout, this meant the second season felt like fulfilling the promise of its set-up.
The cases of the week were mostly the usual witty, clever fare both the parent show and this one excell in, but as mentioned above the cut, while there were ongoing storylines like the lawyer killing or Lucca’s pregnancy, the main antagonist turned out to be none other than the current President of the US and the climate that brought him to power and surrounds him - fake news versus trivialisation of important news, racism, demagogery. The sheer insanity of life under the Orange Menace being such that when Diane dreams of Trump keeping pigs as pets in the White House, she can’t tell anymore whether this was actual news or just an hallucination. Our protagonists get directly tied to the various symptoms of said insanity, whether it’s the firm’s investigator, Jay, nearly getting deported by the ICE due to his Nigerian birth, Trump’s appointments of cronies and incompetents leading to one of the judges our heroes have to deal with, the lawyer-killing spree during which Adrian nearly loses his life being used as a pitch by the NRA to sell even more guns, or Diane ending up getting indicted for conspiracy. In between, you get a client swearing she’s one of the Moscow prostitutes from the Steele Dossier and our heroes wondering whether this is a set-up by Project Veritas, as well as Diane being approached by Stormy Daniels a former porn star turned presidential nemesis. Meanwhile, the show hasn’t forgotten to excel at presenting scheming among its own side as ruthless, too: Margo Martindale’s (high, Claudia!) operator from the DNC turning out to being as cut throat as they come and ready to throw our heroes under the bus if it means a chance to get rid of the Orange Menace.
All of which wouldn’t work beyond emotional venting if the characters weren’t interesting and endearing in varying degrees so this watcher cares what happens to them. And three dimensional. Adrian Boseman realising how he failed one of his former students and not being immune to the vanity that comes with being a tv pundit being but one example of how the show doesn’t forget to keep its characters flawed. (With the arguable exception of Marissa, who remains a perky competent ray of sunshine throughout.) The friendships started in s1 get stronger, the new relationship between Liz and Diane starts out as contentious but ends up as firm allies, and we get to know several of the families - for example Lucca’s brother, mother and father, Liz‘ son and husband. Colin’s mother Francesca strikes mea s hailing from the same school as Peter Florrick’s mother Jackie - one of the few of the show’s (fictional) caricatures of a certain type yet within the context she’s put in just about believable.
Complaints: nearly none. Julius Cain still needs fleshing out beyond „black Republican, decent“. (Given Julius is around more than Kurt who is the show’s other example of a meant-as-sympathetic Republican yet has a personality beyond this, I don’t know why this hasn’t been managed yet, but hope it will in s3.) And while I’m glad Liz didn’t suddenly forget she used to prosecute Lemond Bishop, I really don’t need to see him and Colin Sweeney again, no offense to either actor - I was past wanting to see them in The Good Wife already. But that’s it.
This entry was originally posted at https://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1345717.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
(BTW: the main villain being the current real life, not fictional, President of the country the show’s produced and set in - it’s a first, isn’t it?)
So one of my few complaints last season was that while the first season gave us a good sense of who Adrian Boseman was, Barbara remained vague. (And hadn’t gotten much narrative room to define her beyond „female partner, is opposed to Diane“.) Which meant that while the show was set within a mainly African-American law firm, the primary protagonists - Diane, Maya, Lucca and Marissa, were, with the exception of Lucca, all white. Apparantly, the production people had come to similar conclusions, because they promptly wrote her out and brought in Liz Reddik Lawrence from The Good Wife, and lo, Liz got all the character and narrative attention Barbara was lacking, and then some. This is partly due to a shift in writing emphasis - after the first two episodes, Maya’s story with her parents and the Ponzi scheme is essentially wrapped up, and from then on, she never gets the central focus of an episode anymore, instead being used as a supporting character in Lucca’s or Marissa’s stories. Which means screentime for Liz which Barbara hadn’t gotten. But part is also how that screentime is used: Liz isn’t defined by her relationship to any one of the firm’s partners, we get to know her in connection to all of the previous regulars, and in her own context (the first episode in which she takes central position as a lawyer dealing with a case involving that well-known-to-watchers-of-The-Wire-curse to US schools, stats and tests, she was inspired to take due to the plaintiff being her son’s teacher). And part is Audra McDonald’s great performance in the part. Since Diane also took a step back in terms of screen attention for two thirds of the season (until the last few episodes), while Adrian Boseman was a central character throughout, this meant the second season felt like fulfilling the promise of its set-up.
The cases of the week were mostly the usual witty, clever fare both the parent show and this one excell in, but as mentioned above the cut, while there were ongoing storylines like the lawyer killing or Lucca’s pregnancy, the main antagonist turned out to be none other than the current President of the US and the climate that brought him to power and surrounds him - fake news versus trivialisation of important news, racism, demagogery. The sheer insanity of life under the Orange Menace being such that when Diane dreams of Trump keeping pigs as pets in the White House, she can’t tell anymore whether this was actual news or just an hallucination. Our protagonists get directly tied to the various symptoms of said insanity, whether it’s the firm’s investigator, Jay, nearly getting deported by the ICE due to his Nigerian birth, Trump’s appointments of cronies and incompetents leading to one of the judges our heroes have to deal with, the lawyer-killing spree during which Adrian nearly loses his life being used as a pitch by the NRA to sell even more guns, or Diane ending up getting indicted for conspiracy. In between, you get a client swearing she’s one of the Moscow prostitutes from the Steele Dossier and our heroes wondering whether this is a set-up by Project Veritas, as well as Diane being approached by Stormy Daniels a former porn star turned presidential nemesis. Meanwhile, the show hasn’t forgotten to excel at presenting scheming among its own side as ruthless, too: Margo Martindale’s (high, Claudia!) operator from the DNC turning out to being as cut throat as they come and ready to throw our heroes under the bus if it means a chance to get rid of the Orange Menace.
All of which wouldn’t work beyond emotional venting if the characters weren’t interesting and endearing in varying degrees so this watcher cares what happens to them. And three dimensional. Adrian Boseman realising how he failed one of his former students and not being immune to the vanity that comes with being a tv pundit being but one example of how the show doesn’t forget to keep its characters flawed. (With the arguable exception of Marissa, who remains a perky competent ray of sunshine throughout.) The friendships started in s1 get stronger, the new relationship between Liz and Diane starts out as contentious but ends up as firm allies, and we get to know several of the families - for example Lucca’s brother, mother and father, Liz‘ son and husband. Colin’s mother Francesca strikes mea s hailing from the same school as Peter Florrick’s mother Jackie - one of the few of the show’s (fictional) caricatures of a certain type yet within the context she’s put in just about believable.
Complaints: nearly none. Julius Cain still needs fleshing out beyond „black Republican, decent“. (Given Julius is around more than Kurt who is the show’s other example of a meant-as-sympathetic Republican yet has a personality beyond this, I don’t know why this hasn’t been managed yet, but hope it will in s3.) And while I’m glad Liz didn’t suddenly forget she used to prosecute Lemond Bishop, I really don’t need to see him and Colin Sweeney again, no offense to either actor - I was past wanting to see them in The Good Wife already. But that’s it.
This entry was originally posted at https://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1345717.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.