The Good Wife keeps it curt

Another unconventional case-of-the-week from The Good Wife last night. After missing for most of the current season the show finally scored again, with a solid balance of the unusual and a potentially enjoyable Cary.

I’ve been all over the place about Cary. While at times I feel like I’m growing to like his character, my opinion is often changed by how ridiculously childish his attitude toward Lockhart/Gardner in general, and Alicia in particular, can be. Grow up, guy! That — and his relationship with Kalinda — has always left me kind of cold on Cary.

But despite the fact that her very existence is somewhat inexplicable, I think that Dana (Monica Raymund) has the potential to change all that. If Cary were to become a more well-rounded character, more than just the sum of his anti-Lockhart/Gardner parts, with his own universe over in the State’s Attorney’s office, I’m thinking I could actually get on board the Agos Express. I’m still withholding judgment for the time being, but it could happen.

I will say that going after Will for either of the reasons that Peter articulated aren’t going to help, but I do applaud Peter for finally (FINALLY!) realizing just how much conflict of interest there is between him and that firm. Plus Cary flourishes when he’s bucking against authority, so maybe introducing a new person to oversee his cases could make for interesting conflict.

It was fun to see former State’s Attorney and current Assistant U.S. Attorney Glenn Childs (Titus Welliver) again. He was also petty and childish when in office, but in his new professional role I actually enjoyed his sparing with Diane and Alicia.

In addition to Glenn, Alicia danced with two other outsiders this week. One gets a thumbs up, the other a thumbs down.

First the good: Bob Balaban, who played both Russell the NBC exec who falls in love with Elaine on Seinfeld, and Phoebe’s father Frank Buffay on Friends. Here he appeared as Gordon Higgs, the guy from Treasury assigned to question Alicia. Him I liked. Her? I get Alicia’s hesitation, but Diane made this out to be some sort of post-lawful society craziness … did she miss the fact that this was law by executive order? I guess we’re supposed to applaud Alicia’s innate ethical pull, but by placing that before answering Higgs’ questions she was actually breaking the law.

The bad was Alicia’s lawyer, formerly Peter’s lawyer, Elsbeth Tascioni (Carrie Preston). We’ve seen the “shark” play doe-eyed innocent before, namely by Nancy Crozier Mamie Gummer, and she did it superbly. Elsbeth, on the other hand, was really grating, and Alicia smirking at her stupidity was disappointing.

As for the case itself, Hal Ferris (Jay O. Sanders) was a ton of fun as the judge, and I loved how creatively Danny’s (Waleed Zuaiter) team of attorneys ferreted out bits of information from the limited discovery that they were given. The food order to prove Danny was at Camp Whitcomb; the abnormal length of the doctor’s last name (they got very lucky there); the machine redacting the adjective “curt.” Fun stuff!

The Alicia and Will stuff was ho-hum as usual — what were we meant to get from the sexual harassment video scene? — but what was up with Diane and how she was acting toward Alicia after hearing Alicia’s phone ring in the background during Diane’s conversation with Will? Is she really that petty that she’d get mad at Alicia to the potential detriment of a client? How very name partner of her.

Clacked by Aryeh S.
on Nov 07, 2011 @ 13:30 EST5EDT