I wanted to like "The Good Wife", but it's making it hard
Since I like Julianna Margulies, Chris Noth and Josh Charles, I decided to give "The Good Wife" a try. After all, it's at least a slightly different setup (and topical!) for a show and I currently don't have a lawyer show that I watch, so what the heck. I watched about the first 10 minutes of the first episode and then took a long break before I could bring myself to watching the rest (mostly based on Mom saying she'd enjoyed it). I just watched the rest, and I'm not sure I'll bother with last night's episode.
Maybe it was because it was Christine Baranski in the role, and she's almost always playing Cut Throat Bitches, but as soon as the established female lawyer offered to act as a mentor to Margulies' character, I knew she was going to be one of those career women who undercut other females at every opportunity. And that's one of the standard Hollywood clichés I detest. I think it's a cheap and easy way to create an antagonist for the title character & was completely unnecessary. I told my mother that I figured that was where the character was going & she admitted that I wasn't wrong, but she still thought I should try the rest of the show, as she liked it. So I did.
And there were parts I did enjoy - I liked the acting, and the trial was entertaining. But when they got to a scene where Baranski's character is complaining to the partners about Margulies' character having completely changed the defense strategy & the Josh Charles' character makes some comment along the lines of "You always mentor the women associates until they start performing well & then you turn on them" I just about threw a show at my pretty TV. Bad enough that the character was exactly what I dreaded she'd be, but for the writers to baldly state it was lazy and annoying (and a bit condescending - as if to suggest they didn't think the viewers could figure it out for themselves.)
Still, I liked the actors & I like having shows to talk about with Mom when we go on our weekend walks. Maybe they'll have Baranski's character get hit by an epiphany bus and I won't have to fast forward her scenes. Maybe the other obvious character clichés (young male adversary in the firm, male partner in firm who is character's old friend/champion and probably unrequitedly in love with her) will actually go in different directions then I'm anticipating, which would be refreshing. But I'm not very hopeful.
(Post a new comment)
(Post a new comment)
|
