The Good Fight (season 4 review)
Courtesy of the Mouse, I was finally able to watch it. It's been literally years since I saw s3, but not for lack of affection for this show who imo belongs in the same category of Better Call Saul in being a spin-off which became very much its own thing and indeed something you very much would not have expected back when watching the parent show. In the case of The Good Fight, it's also perhaps the tv show most reflecting the present with its frantic surreallism and satire echoing the insanity of the Orange Menace dominated US. Making Trump literally the show's main antagonist, especially in seasons 2 and 3, was a bold move, but s4 impressed me especially by complicating the matter right from its opening episode onwards, which is one episode long dream/hallucination of Diane's, a "what if Hillary had become President" AU. (Which, btw, also hints at what the show had been like if, as it was originally conceived, it would have taken place in such a world.) While Diane at first is dizzy with relief at "waking up" in a world where Elizabeth Warren and Merrick Garland are on the Supreme Court and there's even a cure for cancer around, her joy quickly fades as she finds out there never was a #MeToo movement, Harvey Weinstein is still un-outed and a client of the firm. And then there are such zingers as when Marissa and Liz ask her re: the world with Trump as President which Diane now believes she must have dreamt and the horrors of which she lits: "And where were the Obamas when all this happened?" Diane replies: "Getting a deal from Netflix." Ouch.
Now, that's just the opening episode, and the rest of the season takes place in the Orange Menace's reign, alright, but it still moves him mostly to the background while concentrating on the corrosion of the judicary going on. Now, the whole "Memo 618" MacGuffin at first didn't really work for me, but then I bought into it. The Supreme Court is never mentioned, but the whole season asks that if you can't believe anymore there's any instutition where law prevails, when everything is so corrupt that it's impossible to achieve justice no matter how clever and resourceful you are, where do we even go from there? And because it's The Good Fight, it asks this not through serious ponderings but gleefully sharp, quick paced narrative explosions.
It wouldn't work if one didn't care about the charactes, though. Maia exited the show at the end of the previous season, and I was surprised how well this worked out for the series. Also, Julius, who in The Good Wife was the occasionally getting lines single black Republican, already in s3 had a subplot of his own pairing him up with Marissa (narratively! Not romantically, good lord, no!) as he campaigns for judge, but it's in s4 where he gets possibly the most challenging of the subplots, and the actor is more than up for it.
Speaking of narrative gambits, the season finale provides one mean riff on Citizen Kane. And Diane still gives the best "I am outraged about this and I will cut you" expressions. But I think I'll take a break between seasons before finding out how the series handles January 6th....
Now, that's just the opening episode, and the rest of the season takes place in the Orange Menace's reign, alright, but it still moves him mostly to the background while concentrating on the corrosion of the judicary going on. Now, the whole "Memo 618" MacGuffin at first didn't really work for me, but then I bought into it. The Supreme Court is never mentioned, but the whole season asks that if you can't believe anymore there's any instutition where law prevails, when everything is so corrupt that it's impossible to achieve justice no matter how clever and resourceful you are, where do we even go from there? And because it's The Good Fight, it asks this not through serious ponderings but gleefully sharp, quick paced narrative explosions.
It wouldn't work if one didn't care about the charactes, though. Maia exited the show at the end of the previous season, and I was surprised how well this worked out for the series. Also, Julius, who in The Good Wife was the occasionally getting lines single black Republican, already in s3 had a subplot of his own pairing him up with Marissa (narratively! Not romantically, good lord, no!) as he campaigns for judge, but it's in s4 where he gets possibly the most challenging of the subplots, and the actor is more than up for it.
Speaking of narrative gambits, the season finale provides one mean riff on Citizen Kane. And Diane still gives the best "I am outraged about this and I will cut you" expressions. But I think I'll take a break between seasons before finding out how the series handles January 6th....