The Good Wife
Talk about for better or for worse.
After her powerful state politician husband, Peter, is thrown in jail on corruption charges (he was also caught in a tawdry sex scandal), Alicia Florrick reboots her life as a defense lawyer and single mom. It’s easier said than done. Alicia must battle the shame that came with her husband’s personal failings and political missteps, the pain of losing friends, the heartache that comes from watching her children undergo a humiliation they never asked for and don’t deserve—all while re-learning a career she left behind oh-so-many years ago.
She signs on with a legal firm as a junior associate only to discover that she battling for a single opening in the firm against Cary Agos, a young, cocky, ambitious and insanely hardworking attorney.
Episode Reviews
October 6, 2009
TV Parental Guidelines Rating: tvpg
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Alicia takes on a new client named Kenny—an aimless but harmless teen who’s been charged with murder.
But the case is trickier than it looks. For one thing, Kenny’s buddy has turned into a prosecution witness, and he’s now lying that he saw Kenny kill the guy. For another, Kenny’s the son of one of Alicia’s ex-best friends—a woman from the same wealthy neighborhood Alicia used to live in when Peter was the county’s attorney general. (She didn’t want to have anything to do with Alicia after the scandal broke.)
We see Kenny cart around a small bag of weed for part of the episode. So it’s a little surprising that when the police arrest the boy, we don’t really hear anything more about his illicit drug problem. (He is eventually charged with trespassing and possessing a drug, and he’s sentenced to community service and mandatory drug counseling.) The light treatment makes it seem like his drug use isn’t that big of a deal—though when Alicia talks to the boy’s father, he expresses his pained disappointment. "I don’t know who he is anymore," he says.
A smattering of mild profanity includes "h‑‑‑" and "a‑‑." God’s name is misused. And someone makes an obscene gesture at a car (out of camera range). A flashback shows Alicia and Peter in bed together; Alicia gouges a fingernail into the headboard during sex.
It’s early in the season. At the time this review posted, The Good Wife was only three episodes old. But so far, it feels like a pretty typical legal procedural—season-long character studies studded with occasional foul language, (mild depictions of) sexual goings-on and relational skirmishes. All of that, of course, is used to augment the all-important "case of the week."