The Good Wife: Winning Ugly

E: They picked the right word here: reason and the audience might have won, but man has it been ugly.  What they’ve done to Alicia not merely in this brutal episode, but over the course of the season leading up to this?  Ugly.

To sum up: this week was more exciting and better paced than most of the back half of this season, but seeing Alicia wrecked felt just as bad as I imagined it would.  We saw a whole host of legal-ish proceedings.  At the same time, we get a glimpse of the season — and probably the show’s — end game.

Also.  CBS.  What the heck?  And why, if you must make my show come on so late (even without football or March Madness as an excuse) why can you not put this information out in advance so my DVR can actually record the whole show?  Don’t you WANT us to watch the show?

The Good Wife: Loser Edit

E: You know who comes out of this edit feeling like a loser, right?  Me.  Because I spent the entire episode hoping that my beloved main character would be scandalized and humiliated and have to resign from the State’s Attorney’s Office, and I hate that it’s come to this.  I don’t like hoping to see her wrecked, and yet I can’t help feeling like that’d be a far better thing — both for the show and for her — than what’s happening now. At what point is there going to be a pay off to this benighted story line?  I genuinely don’t know what that might even be, or how they can wring something enjoyable out of the territory we’re headed toward. Every time Politician Alicia blanches, declares “I can’t possibly do that,” and then turns around, smiles, and commits that same soul-destroying act, more of my love for this show dies.

I usually avoid reading press about the episodes before I’ve finished writing about them myself, but I found this quote from Robert King instructive:  “We’ve been with Alicia throughout the show and she’s done some questionable things, but you often forgive her as a character. But now we see how the public might react to her. There are things that we know and love, but the viewing public in Alicia’s world may view it a completely different way.”  What I wonder if the writing staff has considered is the possibility that while the real world audience generally continues to care about Alicia despite her questionable and/or immoral choices, this doesn’t mean we have a rose-colored view of her as a candidate.  I think as viewers we’re all pretty clear that Alicia’s been perpetrating a kind of fraud against the voting public, and we’re not all rooting for her to get away with it simply because she’s the main character of the show.

Also: the show remembers it’s own history!  Yay, a continuity re-write.  And then, both detail and emotional continuity fail.  Sigh.  At least there’s more fun, smart debate between Diane and new found conservative foil R.J. Dipple, as well as more guest stars and more dang content than you can shake at stick at.

The Good Wife: Undisclosed Recipients

E: Wondering what’s newly disappointing on our favorite show?  The writing staff takes the idea of the Sony email hack and throws half the guest stars in their roster at it.  Eli teaches Alicia that you can catch more flies with honey than with a fly swatter.  Funny that she’s suddenly dumb enough to need a basic lesson in civility, isn’t it?  Ah, that’s why we watched sophisticated television, to learn valuable life skills we’d never pick up on our own.  Between spit and wrestling, the glass walls of Florrick, Agos & Lockhart take more abuse that we’ve ever seen.  Yep.  It’s happy days in the post-election world.

Anticipating Avengers: April Movie Preview

M: May 1st brings us the release of one of the most highly anticipated films of the year, Avengers: Age of Ultron, and the unofficial start of “blockbuster box office season.”

C: Wait… this isn’t May, is it? Because if so, the weather has some explaining to do.

M: No, it’s April, which unlike May, brings us nothing highly anticipated. However, perhaps in what it does bring there might be some hidden gems.

E: I think we have a few that will at least entertain us in a few months on video.

M: Also, in an effort to better serve you, our readers, we’re adding in couple features to the preview this month. First is a section at the top listing the different movies, where you can click on each one to jump right to our discussion of them. Second is a note next to each title (which will still contain the link to the trailer) letting you know if it’s going to be in wide or limited release.

C: Credit to M for both these clever ideas! Sound off below if you like the change and want us to keep it.

M: And without further ado…