Review by Triseult

The Good Fight 2017

I was a big fan of The Good Wife and I loved the first two seasons of The Good Fight, but holy hell did it go to shit in the third season.

Let me preface by saying I'm a progressive and a staunch feminist. That being said, I still found season 3 unbearable. It's pandering, plain and simple: while The Good Wife regularly plundered the headlines and wore its politics on its sleeve, it still tried to tell a compelling story and presented its ideas in a nuanced manner. The character of Kurt, for instance, was created specifically to represent a more conservative point of view and present a foil for Diane's progressive views. In so doing, it gave us fantastic character drama.

Well, all that is gone in season 3. Now we get flashes of Eric and Don Junior as Diane throws axes to relieve her utter hatred of the Trump Administration. We get Diane arguing with a Trump-shaped bruise on her husband's shoulder, lamenting "Where did the men go wrong." We get Schoolhouse Rock-like interjections featuring shitty music that wink so hard at the audience that the writers must have sprained their eyelids writing them.

Again, my problem isn't with the show's political views. It's with the inane manner in which they've abandoned all objectivity and nuance to give us a bizarre, one-sided revenge fantasy where Diane rages on and on about Trump's existence. It's entertainment for the liberal echo chamber, not a clever discourse on modern politics.

And meanwhile, the characters have devolved into caricatures. If you liked how The Good Wife featured quasi-realistic courtroom drama, tough luck, the courtroom action no longer makes any damn sense.

And so I'm out. Although the first two seasons made it feel like The Good Wife could go on forever, I guess this is the moment I have to say goodbye. You folks had a good run, but somewhere along the way you bought your own cleverness and forgot to tell a gripping drama.

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2 replies

@triseult I feel like not even the first seasons compare to to TGW (S4 onwards). TGW was such a great show, and this is barely good, with all the tired ass ponzi scheme drama.

@ultrajante Yeah. Looking back, I think you're totally right. I think the first two seasons still feel part of TGW's universe, but you're right that they're not at the same level at all.

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