"December" Talking Meme post #8: Favorite and least-favorite character(s) on The Good Wife
zulu asked me to talk about my favorite and/or least favorite character on The Good Wife, which it turns out (not surprisingly) is not easy. One of my favorite things about the show overall is that I like or love most of the characters despite every single one of them doing things that make me uncomfortable or sad or angry. It's like they're complex human beings! (And you could not pay me to live any of their lives. SO STRESSFUL.)
I'll start with least-favorite, so as to end on a high note. *g* But how to choose? I admit I find Alicia's kids dull a lot of the time. Jackie can be horrendous, but she's played so well, and her tactics are almost admirable in their lack of subtlety that even when I cringe I often enjoy her. So I spent a while trying to decide whether the crown of My Least Favorite should go to Will or Peter.
Peter drives me up the wall with some of his choices (okay, with a lot of his choices), but in other ways I respect him. He's a terrible husband in most ways, but I appreciate his intense "I will protect my family and will fuck up anyone who tries to hurt them" streak (which of course is undercut by the fact that he's hurt his family most). And I'm wary of people who go into politics, but Peter is a good politician, with all the things that means. He's smart, and he seems to have genuinely good intentions that are thwarted sometimes by his pride and his personal weaknesses. I often want to smack him upside the head, and it distresses me that Alicia doesn't simply leave him (although she has her reasons for not leaving entirely, and some of them are good reasons), but I get the feeling he's trying, even if he's not trying to do the things I think he should be. I don't like him, but that degree of highly-qualified respect keeps him from being my least favorite.
Because then there's Will, who isn't a quarter as charming as he seems to think he is (and I'm glad the show highlights that sometimes). Will is a selfish ass. He wants the best for the firm, but he wants it on his own terms and often without consideration for what other people--like, oh, his partner--think is best. Maybe he loves Alicia, but he loves her like a small child loves: he wants her all to himself, on his own terms, and even though he made efforts (when they were relevant) to act in better ways than that, they always felt like conscious decisions to do what was clearly the right thing. Which is far better than not doing the right thing, and if someone's not necessarily prone to being that way then it's good to consciously choose to do the right thing, to be selfless, etc. in the name of making it more of an actual habit. But Will never makes those choices often enough for it to count for much with me.
He and Diane have frequent conflict over their goals and values, and part of my response to that conflict is due to the fact that I almost always think Diane's in the right, but I do appreciate their partnership a lot when they're acting in concert. It's by far my favorite thing about him; with her, if with no one else, he sometimes does set aside his own agenda, and the two of them are formidable. Good! A point for Will!
But he's just so petulant and petty when things don't go his way, as this season is showcasing, and I can't stand it. (It doesn't help that this season he's also actively going against Diane's interests and concerns to make himself feel better. Grow up, Will.) I think he has the dubious honor of being My Least Favorite.
Choosing a single favorite character is even harder! So I'm just going to write a bit about three of them.
Kalinda is traditionally my favorite (I say, having just said it's hard to choose! I know, I know), and oh, I love her. I love how complex her relationship with Alicia quickly became, and how focused and kickass she is, and how competent she is. I like that her vulnerabilities are both weapons and soft spots. I just wish the show were better at giving her good storylines or generally making better use of her, because it so often falls down on that front, especially in the last few seasons. I'm so sad that the show seems to have no intention of ever letting her and Alicia repair their relationship or build a new one, because their friendship was wonderful and complicated, and Kalinda was so clearly at least half in love with her, and aargh, show! It was one of the best things about you! (I've seen a couple of people on my flist mention that Julianna Margulies has said they're not likely to reconcile. BAH, I say.)
Cary is my favorite in the sense of "I shouldn't love this person, but I do". Cary looks out for his own best interests, but he's good at genuinely aligning his interests with other people's, and he has his own sense of fair play and an excellent sense of humor. I always feel like Cary understands the ridiculousness of it all in a way most people don't. He smiles most of the time, and that smile almost always looks the same, but you can tell when he's furious underneath or humoring someone or just laughing to himself. He respects his friends even when he's moving against them, which he does--again, he's looking out for his own interests, but he makes me believe he wants good things to result from them for other people, particularly Alicia and Kalinda. And he's so good at letting bygones be bygones unless there's a practical reason not to be. Cary doesn't forget, even though he may forgive, and it's not easy to tell when the forgiveness is genuine or when he's biding his time underneath it, because he wears that same smile over both of those things.
And then there's Diane. Diane is just such a fantastic character, and Christine Baranski plays her so gloriously. Like Cary, Diane sees and can laugh at the ridiculousness surrounding them, but she doesn't distance herself the way he does. She has one of my favorite laughs ever (and I love that she and Alicia both have that, that when they laugh it sounds like real people appreciating the situation or the joke, even if it's on them). She's principled and brilliant and determined, and by God she climbed her way up to where she is and it was (and still is) a brutal road she's chosen, but she actively works to make it smoother for the women coming up after her. The balance there is excellent: she demands everything her employees have to give, and she demands it equally from the men and the women; she also mentors both men and women, but she's intimately familiar with the glass ceiling and tries to equip other women to smash at it from their side while she attacks it from theirs. She's vocally and fiercely feminist, and I love that about her. I also love that she's capable of finding balance in her life, and that she falls in love with someone whose political views are the very opposite of hers in many ways (wow, the US would be so much better off if more right-wingers were like this man). The latter is hard, and the show doesn't back away from it being a crisis of conscience for her or from letting them disagree profoundly on some things while having a profound appreciation for each other.
[Since I'm carrying my answers into January, I'll take requests this month too, if anyone happens to have anything they want to ask. Let me know here (or here on LJ). ^_^]
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