Monday, March 07, 2016

TV: The Tired Show

THE GOOD WIFE is winding up it's seventh (and final) season on CBS and it couldn't happen a minute sooner.


tv

When ABC's REVENGE wrapped up last May, there were some who argued that the show had run its course and was out of twists and turns.

We disagreed on that but there truly is no where else for THE GOOD WIFE to go.

The show opened up with a wife disgraced by her husband's scandal as he was under investigation.

The show wraps up with Alicia (Julianna Margulies) again dealing with her husband, Governor Peter Florrick (Chris North), the subject of a grand jury investigation.

The show began with Alicia starting as a minor player at a law firm headed by, among others, the hideous Diane Lockhart (Christine Baranski) and, despite Alicia opening a firm with partner Cary Agos (Matt Czuchry) before moving on to her own practice, it winds down with her back at Diane's law firm as a flunky.

The good wife, the show appears to preach, is the consummate failure.

Seven seasons added up to nothing.

Alicia has no friends.

Does that not bother anyone?

At one point, she had Kalinda (Archie Panjabi) but, between Margulies inability to get along with co-stars and the show runners loathing of Kalinda after their attempt to turn her into a woman turned on by her ex-husband beating her backfired, Kalinda was sent packing.

There's been no one since.

And let's not pretend Cush Jumbo's Lucca is anything but a minor token added due to viewers' constant criticism about just how White this show has been -- Chicago (the show's setting) may have produced the first US President of color but, outside of drug dealers and other criminals, it hasn't really produced any characters of note in shades other than White.

That's the really sad thing -- or maybe honest one about this show.

It was created by preachy do gooders who think/thought they had all the answers but their stories, repeatedly told, were about White people who helped other White people and, every now and then, maybe a person of color.

For some unknown reason, they had a really hard time seeing people of color as attorneys capable of carrying storylines.

The closest they came to one was Wendy Scott-Carr (played by Anika Noni Rose) who was little more than a fictionalized Omarosa (the diva/villian of season one of THE APPRENTICE).

Seven seasons.

They could tackle racism as a storyline . . . via this minor character or that briefly appearing.


No one was supposed to ever notice or comment on that.


Or the somewhat weak stands for what was right became less and less as the show progressed.


There was the illegal spying, which the series came out on the right side of (against), but which the writing delivered Alicia from via blackmailing Senator Bill Nelson of Florida.


This season it's putting up the pretense that The Drone War is something to embrace.


It's not as bad as MADAM SECRETARY but few things ever are.

The show has been the biggest disappointment because it had so much promise.


Sunday saw Alicia explaining to her latest (White) lover that she and her husband had an arrangement -- they stayed together for the public relations and power but took to bed whom they wanted.


Alicia never seemed sadder.

By season seven, there's no one left to root for.

CBS' SCORPION is a hit not because of the plots but because you care for all the main characters.

On THE GOOD WIFE, there's no one left to root for.

The characters have become as tired as the repeating storylines -- and as dead end.












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