The Good Wife

Peter McGinn

This show was recommended to us by a relative. It was running on a treating service we had, so we started watching it. We liked it enough so that when our service suddenly stopped running The Good Wife we signed up for CBS All Access. We have seen all seven seasons now and while I still liked it, the plots started to lag for me a bit in later seasons. Their professional relationships between different law firms or them personally kept changing, reminding me of the show Friends, where it felt like the main characters took turns dating each other. Another element of the plots that struck me was the formula they seem sped to follow. They used a long running plot, usually political, that ran for entire seasons sometimes, and also had cases they handled that wrapped up in one show. Those cases often ran the same course: first one side would do well in court, then the other side would introduce something that helps them, and then the first side would — you get the idea. I called them reversals and got so I expected them every ten minutes or so for each show. Plus their investigators seemed really good at digging up dirt Fast. It isn’t a terrible thing. They only have 40+ minutes for each show and they want to cram drama in where they can. Perhaps I just noticed it more because I write novels and do a lot of plotting myself. But we watched the entire seven seasons. I won’t be tempted to watch them again, but I don’t regret the time spent on them either. So now, before we give up CBS All Access, we need to try the sequel series, The Good Fig, and a show Alan Cumming is in that sounds good: Instinct.