Is everyone ready for the finale tonight? I can’t quite believe it’s really over. Here’s a recap of the penultimate episode, which was, on the whole, quite moving.
Tag / The Good Wife
Links We Loved This Week — 5/6/16
In the LA Review of Books, GD Dess holds up the failure of Purity as evidence that Jonathan Franzen is part of kitsch culture.
The tale at this juncture finally transmogrifies from a so-called realistic social novel into a novel of what James Wood has called “hysterical realism,” in which the conventions of realism are not abolished but, “on the contrary, exhausted, and overworked.” …Franzen has abdicated his writerly duty, and this dereliction demonstrates a certain authorial contempt for his readers.
Turns out Walt Whitman was really into “manly health” and cutting down on carbs way before it was cool.
Person of Interest executive producer Jonathan Nolan doesn’t just believe that Facebook will destroy the world, he takes it as a given (via AV Club):
A lot of things that Samaritan espouses are believed by the people who work for Samaritan, the same way that I’m sure people who work for Facebook don’t believe that they’re working for the company that will destroy the world. But, you know, they are. And everyone gets through the day rationalizing their own existence.
As you may know, The Good Wife will have its final episode this Sunday. Here are some of the best articles and interviews making sense of its incredible first few seasons, and (by almost all accounts) its struggling seventh:
- Alan Sepinwall at HitFix takes a look at The Good Wife as the last prestige network drama. “no show has dealt with the struggle to defy societal expectations and keep one’s feelings under tight wraps as often, or as well, as The Good Wife,” he writes. (Ignore the part where he says that Parenthood was a rival for this show. I just watched the whole thing. It wasn’t.)
- Salon jumps on the “there will never be a great broadcast drama after The Good Wife” bandwagon.
- At the New York Times, Christine Baranski has a very surprising favorite scene from the show; Michael J. Fox and other cast members also weigh in.
- Also in the NYT, James Poniewozik writes a good-bye-Good-Wife article notable for describing Jason as a “laconic, bearded sex cowboy.”
- The Kings looked back at the show. Robert King says, “On our show, no one’s really shooting at each other. Their words are the guns.”
The Good Wife Recap: 7×20 “Party”
Someone over there at CBS looked at my Secret Dream Diary of Guest Stars I’d Like To See and put them all in this episode. Veronica! Owen! Zach! Marissa (I guess)! Everyone but Josh Charles, who we’re still hoping is on his way back for one more appearance.
Anyway, we come back up on the same conversation between Jason and Alicia that ended last week’s episode. Alicia repeats that she wants Jason. Which is a huge step for her, just to say what she wants (even if what she wants is kind of stupid). Jason confirms that she’s not getting divorced because of him: it would be a bad idea because he doesn’t know what they are yet.
Men who are this afraid of commitment are really kind of arrogant, aren’t they? He’s acting like she’s too stupid to notice that they haven’t made any commitments to each other yet, or too blinded by love of him to understand what a risk it would be to give up marriage for undefined FWB situation. Calm down, buddy. I don’t think she’s going to perish for love of you quite yet.
Links We Loved This Week – 4/29/16
The AV Club wrote a fantastic article on how the Good Wife broke all the rules of TV legal dramas, and then broke itself. Also, the NYT did a great interview with Julianna Margulies and the Kings – though they got quickly shut down when they asked about Archie Panjabi!
Last week was Charlotte Bronte’s 200th birthday (read our piece on Villette here). Electric Literature ran an interesting piece (that we VEHEMENTLY disagree with) on rereading Jane Eyre and finding it somewhat less awesome.
We saw The Huntsman: Winter’s War last Friday. We were all really excited for it, and at least one of us was also pretty drunk, but we HATED it. Here are some takes from around the web:
Gizmodo says, “The fact that we get to see this pointless, silly movie made with an A-list cast… is one of the great marvels of our age.”
The Mary Sue laments that it’s “generic white male hero number eleventy five million.”
The Atlantic mourns the “bizarre camp classic that almost was.”
The Good Wife Recap: 7×19 “Landing”
We ended last week’s episode on what was supposedly a cliffhanger, but if you were looking forward to seeing the resolution of that big question (will Alicia wait to divorce Peter till after his legal troubles are over) happen onscreen, you’ll be disappointed.
That said, this episode finally zoomed up to full speed and delivered a whole bunch of major plot developments. I also had the privilege of seeing this screened with a large and very engaged audience at the Tribeca Film Festival (my write-up is here), which made it really fun.
The Good Wife – A Farewell at the Tribeca Film Festival
I went to a Tribeca Film Festival screening today of tonight’s new episode of The Good Wife, followed by a discussion with Robert King, Michelle King, Julianna Margulies, Matt Czuchry, and Cush Jumbo about the show and the upcoming finale.
First of all, the episode was fabulous. You should all watch it. The drama kicks up for both the clients and the main characters, and some of our favorite guest stars are back (notably Dillinger and the rest of the NSA crew, plus the inimitable Kurt McVeigh). Cary makes a sad-eyed appearance, and there’s also an amazing moment between Peter and Alicia that shows so many layers of how they feel about each other. I’ll be recapping it later on, but yeah. Tune in tonight.
The Good Wife Recap: 7×18 “Unmanned”
Max Medina Versus the Drone
Alicia is called to court one morning by Diane for another Dipple case. (For the uninitiated, Dipple is the Republican that has manipulated Diane into tying herself in knots playing “devil’s advocate” for various conservative causes.) In court, Diane’s on her own till Alicia shows up (late from a rendezvous with Jason and grinning to herself like a college kid who missed the first five minutes of a lecture because she was getting laid).
The Good Wife Recap: 7×17 “Shoot”
Guns
The episode opens with a shamelessly sentimental montage of a father and daughter as the daughter, Yesha, grows up: playing on the rug, going to her first day of school, planning on her education, going to prom. The father is played by Blair Underwood, who is not going to get a whole lot to do in the rest of this episode. After the prom, the little girl, now almost grown, shares a glass of chocolate milk with her father in the kitchen.
A car screeches outside, and the father leaps to the ground—but Yesha is shot in the neck. He yells to his wife to call 911 as he gathers her in his arms, both crying.
The Good Wife Recap: 7×16 “Hearing”
Y’all probably know if you’ve read our other recaps that I will wholeheartedly approve of anything that involves Stockard Channing. She’s back in this episode—and so is our long-lost Owen! Hi, Owen—and I have to admit, all the shenanigans made me laugh as hard as I ever have at this show.
But were there, perhaps, too many shenanigans and not enough actual stuff? (Objection: leading question.)
Previously on The Good Wife: Alicia and Jason made out. Cary and David Lee started running around like chickens with their heads cut off because they had developed a group hallucination that there was such a thing as an “all-female firm” and that Diane wanted to be that thing. Peter was in legal trouble, and it probably had to do with a rich donor, not with his vote-rigging, and thenceforth became boring to me. Elsbeth was brilliant yet unhinged and had an equally brilliant yet unhinged ex-husband. Oh, and there was this guy named Will Gardner who we have to try not to think about, in order to take seriously Alicia’s attraction to Jason. (By the way, I SAW JOSH CHARLES ON THE STREET THE OTHER DAY. It was everything.)
The Good Wife Recap: 7×15 “Targets”
Alicia’s Secret Mission
A GPS voice announces that a black, opaque-windowed car has arrived at its destination. Alicia is waiting on the sidewalk in a very fetching fur-collared coat, and gets in the back of the car with two agent types.
Adversion 