Comments | selenak: The Good Wife 4.12

selenak

The Good Wife 4.12

Jan 16, 2013 17:53

You know, I'm starting to suspect one member of the scriptwriting team has European issues to work out. :)

( Mais nous aimons les Americains, je promesse! )

episode review, the good wife

Comments 8

mamculuna January 17 2013, 07:39:08 UTC

I really love how Alicia gets to be bad mistress and good wife at the same time with the same guy. Very clever.

selenak January 17 2013, 10:25:56 UTC

abigail_n January 17 2013, 09:39:57 UTC

I also enjoy Elsbeth, but as with Canning last week, I wonder if the writers haven't taken her "quirks" to extremes. I had always assumed that, like Nancy Crosier and Patty Nyholm, Elsbeth's weirdness is at least partly an act - maybe less so than Nancy and Patty, but still, the woman made it through law school and has a successful career in a cutthroat business, so she can't be as loopy as she comes off. And yet this episode has her not only fail a psych evaluation but clueless about how to do so. It feels of a piece not just with Canning but with Christina Ricci's character a few episodes ago - who couldn't curb her outrageous behavior when her career and millions of dollars were on the line - and maybe even Nick and Kalinda too. As if the show has lost its grip on its character writing and is now just playing up its most outrageous characters in order to get a laugh ( ... )

selenak January 17 2013, 10:25:24 UTC

It's one thing to say, as Geneva points out to Peter, that the white characters don't listen to the black characters and don't get to know and like them the way they do other white characters. But you could do that without encouraging the audience to do the same, and here I think the show has failed.Oh, I agree. (I would except Dana, but she's gone.) Geneva herself is a good example - outside of this scene, she's rarely written as likeable and/or interesting, we already know Laura Hallinger, who is new, much better than Geneva who's been around since when, season 2? And Matan who has been around since s1 remained throughout on the same level than L & G's one black partner - he had a function in the plot but was never fleshed out in terms of personality ( ... )

reverancepavane January 17 2013, 12:06:53 UTC

The thing about Elsbeth is that she is brilliant. Definitely super-genius material there. She sees connects and links continuously that most people are blind to. She knows that not everyone else can see the links, but do realise they exist when pointed out by her. She probably had the benefit of being able to deal with intelligent people who recognised this in her during her life. But she's definitely not a mandane lawyer - a standard law practice would have resulted in her hanging herself in short order. And she must have an excellent personal assistant (Catherine IIRC - only name-checked once and never on screen) that keeps her roughly on track and deals with the minutia ( ... )

ide_cyan January 17 2013, 20:51:50 UTC

I worry the show's going to overuse her and overemphasise the humour in her scenes to the point of turning her into a joke, as with the psych evaluation and handwriting in the court scene, but otherwise -- wow, do I love Elsbeth.

She's exactly how a female version of the Doctor -- if Doctor Who weren't all about the Doctor's stupid manpain anymore -- should be. A lateral thinker, quirky enough to be underestimated or dismissed as kooky if you're not paying attention to the meaning behind her digressions, but brilliant and able to save the day with unexpected approaches to problem-solving.

Thread 5

daybreak777 January 21 2013, 19:24:54 UTC

Gosh, that was really fun! And yeah, one of the writers definitely has issues but how amusingly he or she is working those out in the script!

Elsbeth is Rambo. And Eli needs Rambo.

Alicia is in a FWB relationship with her husband. Interesting. :-)

And no, I don't think we are supposed to agree with Eli 'win pretty, win ugly, as long as we win' stance. No. And I'm positive that Peter pissing off the people of color at that meeting will come back to bite him and come back soon, probably when Eli is off the campaign.

'Cause that's how this show rolls. I'm left to wonder if Peter really is biased or not. He had good reason to fire those people but he really did promote Cary because he liked him. Even Cary was surprised and uncomfortable with it. I wonder if the show planned that string of firings to later make that point, or if they noticed it what they'd written long after the fact and then decided to bring it up further in the canon of the show? Hmmmm.