And finally the bubble burst. It was bound to happen, I didn't expect every post-Will Gardner episode of The Good Wife to be perfect and we finally found the one that wasn't. The reason, at least for me, was in the storyline. The “case of the week” involved a college student with cerebral palsy, and the son of a Lockhart, Gardner, & Canning client, who is accused of working with Silk Road. Yes, THE Silk Road. Tackling current topics like the NSA or cyberbullying is something that The Good Wife always did well, but this episode didn't do it for me.
It also didn't help that the episode tried way to hard to be funny. Now The Good Wife is no stranger to some humor, sometimes hilarious humor, but they never tried hard at it. Usually it was always situational, take for example the call between Alicia and Will in “Hitting the Fan”, it was awkward and that's the best type of humor, but the buffering on Alicia's Netflix going backwards and the “wow, you really are bored” comment when Alicia decided to have lunch with her mom were a little cringe worthy.
It also didn't help that the writing was incredibly shoddy with lines like “it feels like he's still there” and “I don't what to do with my life, mom.” It all felt so insincere when usually the show is actually really natural with their dialogue. The weird, and slightly forced, storyline of Alicia having the day off, something that we all know is not a good idea, didn't work for me. Or at least, it didn't reach its full potential.
The one good part of Alicia's storyline was her subtle romantic subtext with a juror she met during void dire. Alicia wasn't conducting the void dire, she was on jury duty. The reason this storyline worked? Alicia always had some underlying sexuality that she always exuded and this storyline went in line with that, but when she professes to her mom that she wasn't sure if she wanted to be a lawyer I was confused. I thought the point of this day off was to show that being a lawyer is wired into Alicia's brain, but then they went back on that.
The storyline with the juror did bring us some clarification on where Alicia is right now. If she got anything out of Will's death, it is her finally cutting any ties to Peter emotionally, but she still needs some type of companionship whether she likes it or not.
We do get some payoff from the storyline when Alicia breaks down with her mother as she realizes without any companionship, she doesn't know who she is, but it still feels like a step backwards.
I haven't spoken much about the Silk Road case because there was nothing really to note, it was just a cut and dry Good Wife case. Although it did produce the line: “Kalinda, how do you always get into crime scenes”, she responds “you know, cops like me.”
Overall, the episode was underwhelming and a little sloppy. The serial story elements didn't seem to fit into the trajectory of the series other than Finn's campaign storyline, which was elevated by Alan Cumming, but even that felt incomplete. With two episodes left, I'm hoping the show can recover and stick the landing.
Hey, I'm Karl, founder and film critic at Smash Cut. I started Smash Cut in 2014 to share my love of movies and give a perspective I haven't yet seen represented. I'm also an editor at The New York Times, a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, and a member of the Online Film Critics Society.