The Good Wife 3.03 Get a room
Before I hop on the train to Frankfurt for the annual marathon of reading and chatting that is the Frankfurt Book Fair, some thoughts about the most recent episode.
Brother Owen makes a welcome return, but I continue to be slightly lost as to where the writing team thinks it's getting with Jackie's characterisation and the random acts of stalking. Other than to say Jackie is lonely and has no one else in her life but her son's family which is now partly inaccessible to her, but there are other ways to convey that.
I had looked forward to seeing Lisa Edelstein on this show, but I felt slightly let down by her character. The opposing guest lawyers are often so memorable - see Patty the motherhood user, or the All American Girl, or Michael J. Fox' character - and are shown to be really good at their jobs, using what are commonly thought as weaknesses (having a baby, a naive facade, illness) to succeed, so Alicia & Co. are really challenged. With Celeste you never doubted Alicia and Will could beat her, her attempt at manipulation was clumsy, and if she wasn't played by Lisa Edelstein you'd wonder why she and not one of the earlier mentioned guest stars would be of remote interest to Lockhart & Gardner.
Then again, the point this time of the case of the week wasn't to challenge Alicia as a lawyer but, through her last conversation with the mediator, demonstrate to her that she's become as adept at manipulation and playing people as any of her opponents, and to show the audience she feels somewhat uneasy about this. Apparantly, Alicia's image of herself still isn't someone who is great at playing people; it provides her with similar discomfort as Owen calling her a wanton woman as a joke. Whereas the way she responded to finding out via Owen that Peter had told their son the separation was his fault and the reason (btw strictly speaking Zach deduced it, and might have drawn the wrong conclusion at that, i.e. that Peter had another affair now as opposed to in the past; Peter's original phrasing wasn't "I slept with another woman than the prostitute" but "I hurt your mother in another way") come across as simultanously worried, touched and relieved at the way Zach was taking it. The final scene between them was just the right balance between sweet and realistic (Zach's "that's too much" crack). Of course, now the shoe is on the other foot, as Alicia's children still haven't the slightest idea about Will Gardner in their mother's life, though Owen does. Hooray for sibling scenes! Alicia saying "it's not love" so decidedly could mean two things on a Doylist level; either the writers are doing the usual romance thing and now that Alicia and Will are having sex use this as the next obstacle, i.e. Alicia's lacking admission that she is in love as something that will create problems until it's resolved in the season finale with a passionate outburst. Or, much more interesting (to me at least), we're actually supposed to take Alicia at her word, and Will wasn't just humoring Kalinda, either, two episodes ago when he said he doesn't feel much.
Speaking of Kalinda; very good scene with Cary, because I can see where both of them were coming from. Because Cary isn't wrong, Kalinda does use people and their affection for her, and from his pov they had a friendship going until she didn't need him anymore after the Blake threat was gone and dumped him. As the audience, we've seen Kalinda alone in her flat and the way she called Cary when she was feeling miserable, and I think she is not lying when she says she didn't fake affection, either.
Diane's clash with Eli: won't be the last, and this could be an interesting storyline, though I hope they won't play it strictly satirical for the season as they did here.
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/719515.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
Brother Owen makes a welcome return, but I continue to be slightly lost as to where the writing team thinks it's getting with Jackie's characterisation and the random acts of stalking. Other than to say Jackie is lonely and has no one else in her life but her son's family which is now partly inaccessible to her, but there are other ways to convey that.
I had looked forward to seeing Lisa Edelstein on this show, but I felt slightly let down by her character. The opposing guest lawyers are often so memorable - see Patty the motherhood user, or the All American Girl, or Michael J. Fox' character - and are shown to be really good at their jobs, using what are commonly thought as weaknesses (having a baby, a naive facade, illness) to succeed, so Alicia & Co. are really challenged. With Celeste you never doubted Alicia and Will could beat her, her attempt at manipulation was clumsy, and if she wasn't played by Lisa Edelstein you'd wonder why she and not one of the earlier mentioned guest stars would be of remote interest to Lockhart & Gardner.
Then again, the point this time of the case of the week wasn't to challenge Alicia as a lawyer but, through her last conversation with the mediator, demonstrate to her that she's become as adept at manipulation and playing people as any of her opponents, and to show the audience she feels somewhat uneasy about this. Apparantly, Alicia's image of herself still isn't someone who is great at playing people; it provides her with similar discomfort as Owen calling her a wanton woman as a joke. Whereas the way she responded to finding out via Owen that Peter had told their son the separation was his fault and the reason (btw strictly speaking Zach deduced it, and might have drawn the wrong conclusion at that, i.e. that Peter had another affair now as opposed to in the past; Peter's original phrasing wasn't "I slept with another woman than the prostitute" but "I hurt your mother in another way") come across as simultanously worried, touched and relieved at the way Zach was taking it. The final scene between them was just the right balance between sweet and realistic (Zach's "that's too much" crack). Of course, now the shoe is on the other foot, as Alicia's children still haven't the slightest idea about Will Gardner in their mother's life, though Owen does. Hooray for sibling scenes! Alicia saying "it's not love" so decidedly could mean two things on a Doylist level; either the writers are doing the usual romance thing and now that Alicia and Will are having sex use this as the next obstacle, i.e. Alicia's lacking admission that she is in love as something that will create problems until it's resolved in the season finale with a passionate outburst. Or, much more interesting (to me at least), we're actually supposed to take Alicia at her word, and Will wasn't just humoring Kalinda, either, two episodes ago when he said he doesn't feel much.
Speaking of Kalinda; very good scene with Cary, because I can see where both of them were coming from. Because Cary isn't wrong, Kalinda does use people and their affection for her, and from his pov they had a friendship going until she didn't need him anymore after the Blake threat was gone and dumped him. As the audience, we've seen Kalinda alone in her flat and the way she called Cary when she was feeling miserable, and I think she is not lying when she says she didn't fake affection, either.
Diane's clash with Eli: won't be the last, and this could be an interesting storyline, though I hope they won't play it strictly satirical for the season as they did here.
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/719515.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.