The Good Wife: 2x01, Taking Control

I’m really happy with the way CBS is handling The Good Wife. With maybe the exception of Friday Night Lights, I think it’s the best network drama out there. (And is FNL still a network drama if it's aired on another channel first?) 

Julianna Margulies said she was looking to do a cable show—more flexible scheduling for an actress who has a family and meatier roles for women—but that she read the script for the show and fell in love with Alicia Florrick. “It was a cable show that just happened to be on a network,” Margulies said during The Good Wife cast panel at The Paley Center for Media in April.

I couldn’t agree more. It handles all the adult issues that its cable equals do and it does it with deft writing and stellar acting week after week.

On a channel that is known for its procedurals, CBS has let the creators of the show, Robert and Michelle King, forge their own path. As Margulies tells it, at first the scripts were monitored to be about 60% procedural, 40% character-driven, but after glowing reviews and nominations in its first season, the network has released the reins and let the show explore what it does best: layers. Not the layers of law, although there is certainly that too, but the deeper fibers of these characters and who they are, why they do the things they do, and what it means in the larger scheme of the show.

The season premiere was no exception.

Last year the show left us at a press conference of Peter Florrick’s. Alicia is waiting to “stand by her man” as it were, when she receives a call from her boss and old flame, Will Gardner (Josh Charles). She tells him she gets the romance between them (and so does everyone else, viewers included), but that she has a family, she needs a plan. As Alicia is about to step out into the spotlight to support her husband, her phone rings again. It’s Will.

The premiere on Tuesday night picked up where the finale left off: Alicia’s phone ringing, Will’s name on the caller ID. Being practically forced on stage by Peter and her husband’s campaign manager, Eli Gold (Alan Cumming), Alicia leaves her phone to the devices of Mr. Gold. Upon seeing two voicemail messages from Will—in one of which he confesses his love for Alicia—Gold deletes the message that could throw a loop into his grand plans to have Peter return to the state’s attorney’s office a renewed golden boy.

The chemistry between Will  and Alicia is one of many things that makes the show  great, these two characters with some sort of romantic past, but which the audience does not know much about, other than they knew each other in law school and Alicia ended up with Peter. I didn’t expect the writers to up the ante so soon by having Will and Alicia share a kiss late in season one, but it was done so beautifully that their relationship wasn’t cheapened. It breaks my heart to see Will and Alicia interact now—Will thinking that she got his messages and chose to ignore his confession, Alicia having listened to only the first message, therefore thinking he wants their relationship to remain purely professional—there’s so much sadness and confusion between them, but the complications in the relationship keeps them interesting and the audience’s anticipation high.

Even though I was hesitant to watch in the first place, because I didn’t want to watch a show about politicians’ scandals, something that seems to constantly be making the rounds in the 24-hour news cycle, I liked the season starting with a new scandal involving a politician from Colorado. It cleverly shows that no matter how much time has passed, it doesn’t reverse what Peter did to Alicia and his family. I’m guessing we will see Alicia realizing and dealing with that fact this season.

Other than the Alicia-Peter-Will love triangle, the premiere reminded me how strong the supporting cast is and how genuinely likeable they are. Once again, the writers are great about giving these characters’ storylines complications. In this first new episode, we saw a competing investigator, Blake (Scott Porter), go up against Kalinda (Archie Panjabi). He already seems to have flustered the unflappable Kalinda, so it’ll be interesting to see where that arc goes.

Diane introduced a new partner, Derrick Bond, to the firm of Lockhart and Gardner. Although it’s clear that Bond is someone Diane has dealt with in the past, the scene at the end of the episode with Will and Derrick “bro”-ing it in his office and Diane looking on was well-played. I’ll be curious to see if Diane starts to feel left out of the boys’ club this season. Maybe that means she and Alicia will get closer, which would be lovely. Any chance for more scenes between Baranski and Margulies.