The last thing The Good Wife needed was that kiss

The latest case-of-the-week on The Good Wife was a creative attempt that didn’t quite live up to the hype. And in large part that’s because it collapsed under its own combined weight.

With not one, but two cases to win before their client, Tom (Alex Cranmer), could go free, Lockhart/Gardner didn’t have sufficient time to focus on either before the hour was up. Granted Tom’s case wasn’t all that interesting, and Ricky Parker’s (Michael Irby) execution appeal was the only thing that jazzed it up … but that didn’t make the ten or fifteen minutes we got of Ricky all that thrilling, either.

What I did like was the return of Weeds’ Romany Malco as Legal Aide head Justin Coyne. It wasn’t actually clear whether he’d accepted the offer we’re to assume Diane made to park his service under the firm’s roof; hypothetically one could explain his presence at the office as due to Diane approaching him about Ricky’s case and nothing else. I wonder why that wasn’t clarified after being made into a big deal a few weeks back.

Anyway, Malco is funny, and his presence brought a nice amount of levity to the situation. After he and Alicia discovered that Ricky had a solid and loving upbringing, he turned to Alicia and said, “We could always say he was too spoiled.” Cute.

And I did appreciate the fact that Lockhart/Gardner wasn’t painted as the unbeatable whiz kid that the firm sometimes can be made out to be. Their eventually losing the appeal was a much more realistic outcome than some of the verdicts they’ve managed to pull out of thin air. And as much as there was a hint of bleeding heart for the politics of capital punishment, for the most part defending Ricky was all about a different purpose: freeing Tom. Piggybacking the two was definitely an interesting approach … it was just one case too many this time around.

I love that Eli’s getting his own weekly story, even if this week’s was a little too silly. Mickey Gunn (Michael Kelly) returned, this time with his client Robert Mulvey (Paul Fitzgerald) in tow, and we finally got an inkling of why Eli’s wife suddenly appeared on the show. Will Mulvey be out of rehab in time to actually run against her for State Senate? That much remains unclear, but I’d love to see Eli running a candidate against his ex-wife. That would be awesome. But I do have to ask: if this former Republican Congressman has to take a step back and run for State Senate now that he’s switched political parties, how’s he going to be ready to run for President in four years, as is Mickey’s plan for him? Isn’t that a bit of a leap?

The kids got a ton of time to run around and play this week. Usually I’m in agreement with many of you that they should be neither seen nor heard … but wouldn’t it be interesting if Zach and Marissa Gold (Sarah Steele) actually do make a love connection? Would that better position Eli in terms of getting a handle on Alicia and Peter’s marriage, or would his head explode hearing about how far they actually are from reconciliation?

The part of me that enjoys a good cop show was into the shootout scene between police and the guy actually responsible for the murder that Tom was being accused of. But then I realized that that sort of thing doesn’t happen on The Good Wife. In fact, this might have been the first time we’ve seen gunfire on the show. And I feel like that’s been a good thing. So what was the purpose of breaking that streak? Did it really make that much of a narrative difference?

Unfortunately this was another off week in what’s been an off season.

Clacked by Aryeh S.
on Nov 15, 2011 @ 08:00 EST5EDT