You guys, all of my shows are about to start back up. On September 29th, the new seasons of Clone Wars and Merlin begin, and season two of Young Justice continues. On September 30th, in addition to the pilot of 666 Park Avenue (which I may watch, despite the silly title), the second season premiere of Once Upon A Time and the fourth season premiere of The Good Wife airs.
It’s The Good Wife, everyone. It’s extremely well done.
And you know that it has to be well-done, because I almost never watch anything that does not have magic or superpowers or spaceships, because not having superpowers is what I do in real life—I don’t need a television show for that.
I do make occasional exceptions to that. I have a few comedy shows that I watch (Parks and Recreation is amazing, and also starting up this month). Usually, unless a show really appeals to all of my harmful stereotypical instincts (like the Australian teen dance drama, Dance Academy, oh my goodness do not laugh at me it is way better than it sounds; I caught it by accident one night and just couldn’t stop watching), the only thing that gets my television-viewing outside of the interesting realms of fantasy and science fiction is one or more nightmarishly (and I use that word as a compliment) strong female personalities. The Closer. Major Crimes. Commander In Chief. Political Animals. Each of these has a female protagonist. Each of these has a powerful female protagonist.
I like powerful female protagonists. With The Good Wife, my cup runneth over.
There’s a set of three powerful women who dominate the show: Alicia Florrick (Julianna Margulies), the protagonist, who spent a couple of years as a lawyer after law school, but decided to be a stay-at-home mom while her husband entered politics and became the State’s Attorney of Cook County (which contains Chicago; “State’s Attorney” is Illinois gibberish for District Attorney, by the way). The very first scene of the series is her husband, Peter Florrick (Chris Noth)* resigning his office after numerous allegations of cheating and corruption surfaced.
Months later, as the story begins, Alicia has moved to earn money for herself and her two children. She is still married to, but in a strained relationship with, her husband. And she has gotten a job at a law firm—one of the partners being an old friend from law school.
The other two powerful female protagonists are law firm name-partner Diane Lockhart (played by the incomparable Christine Baranski) and that law firm’s enigmatic in-house investigator, Kalinda Sharma (Archie Panjabi). There are a number of other wonderful main and recurring characters (personally, I really love the two teenage Florrick children—though I like the son a lot more than I like the daughter).
Unlike with some shows that I watch which are tragically canceled, I am not the only one who feels this way about The Good Wife. In its first three seasons, the series and cast have been nominated for 21 Emmy awards, and they have won a few of those as well as a number of other awards, which I could list here but I’ll let you look them up yourselves.
Watch The Good Wife, you guys. If I could only recommend one show . . . other than Legend of Korra, that is . . . it would be The Good Wife. It’s too good to miss. If you’re as crazy as I am, you might even have time to catch up before too many episodes of this new season have aired.
*Yes, that’s Chris Noth from Law & Order and Law & Order: Criminal Intent. There is a lot of crossover on this show from three sources: Law & Order, The Closer, and especially True Blood. You know how Arlene on True Blood is kind of dumb and Russell Edgington is fairly menacing? Well, those actors repeatedly guest star a secretly genius attorney and an extremely goofy judge on The Good Wife, respectively.
