![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatI think The Good Wife jumped the proverbial shark last night. We'll see if the writers can write themselves out of this...but I don't know. If they don't, I may not watch next season. This episode just didn't work for me on oh so many levels. Up to this point, while the political campaign has been outlandish at times, it's generally speaking worked. Or I've been giving them the benefit of the doubt - reading it as wicked satire. But last night, several things sort of felt like they were being thrown at the audience out of the blue - for shock value. And the satire lost it's subtle edge and just ...well, became unbelievable.
What happened? What went wrong? Why did I dislike it?
So, Alicia gets brought up on election tampering charges. But in reality the hacking was being done by the head of the Democratic Party, who was in charge of monitoring the machines and who admits as much on tape, not Alicia. Prady's guy wants a recount. Sandford Brown, a well-regarded attorney or political pundit (who we have not heard of until now but is being portrayed by the guy who used to play the villain on Alias, Ron Rifkin (?)) steps in to save Alicia and defend her against Prady's pit-bull.
Meanwhile Alicia's emails to Will Gardner, and his to her, are being paraded across the internet - where her daughter can watch them read aloud. (Seriously? You expect me to believe that someone as uptight and politically cautious as Alicia is, is going to be writing sexy emails to Will using her corporate email account? Particularly after she's managed to slay clients in the court-room - by revealing their email correspondence? This hacking storyline doesn't work with these characters. )
Back to the election tampering - Alicia tapes the guy. Sandford Brown reveals it at the hearing. The head of Democratic Committee is not brought up on charges. Brown finds evidence that the machines were hacked - but in 2012, during Peter's election. Eli and Peter and Alicia manage to convince Brown to back off. Then Prady's side discovers that the hack was during Alicia's campaign as well. (Oh by the way, the expert - is the same guy who helped fix the metadata for Kalinda, which helped get Cary's case overturned. And has both Kalinda and Diane in hot water - for falsifying evidence. Doesn't matter than Diane didn't know it was falsified. Weirdly the expert is not being brought up on charges for fixing the metadata. I guess he got immunity or something.)
Anyhow...Alicia and Eli are told by the cheating head of the Democratic Party (who basically deserves to have his balls surgically removed and without anesthesia), that either Alicia withdraws and takes a nice, lower position as head of the Gaming Commission like a good little girl, or he will ruin her politically. The reason he wants her to withdrawl is they were tampering with the machines - except not to help her, but to help a State Senator, who was falling behind in his district. And if he didn't win - it could hurt the party. So she has to withdraw to protect this Senator. She and Eli ask Peter what to do. Peter tells her to fight, with Sandford Brown at her side.
Bad idea. Alicia tells Brown about the Senator and what the head guy said. After she does so, Brown stands up and basically throws Alicia under the bus. Tells the commission she lied and convinces them to force her to withdraw in disgrace. Then when she confronts him on it - he has the gall to tell her not to take it personally.
Meanwhile, Diane and Kalinda and Finn decide to come clean to the Internal Affairs Commission - which results in Geneva Pine and the DA coming after them for criminal charges. Diane, who keep in mind knew nothing about the falsification, would be disbarred and serve up to three years in prison if she didn't serve as a witness against Lamond Bishop. Also keep in mind that Pine and the DA's office did falsify evidence against Cary and did entrap him in order to get Bishop, not caring that they were putting Cary's life in jeopardy, and demonstrating how horrible they were at protecting far better witnesses. (Can we say that the DA's office is not only corrupt but incompetent?) Plus, Pine fell down on the job because she was sleeping with her witness, the cop, who helped her entrap Carey. Has Pine been fired or disbarred? No.
Kalinda upset, because she's put Diane's life in jeopardy -- indicates to Carey that she plans on being the witness against Bishop. Carey won't have it -- and goes to Pine to tell her to turn Kalinda down, he'll do it instead. (Actually Kalinda would make a better witness, she knows more.)
Conveniently, Alicia has to step down from the office, in disgrace and in tears, standing next to a comforting and self-righteous Peter (who was far more corrupt and did cheat on his campaign), so that she can't intercede on either Diane or Kalinda's behalf, and fire Pine's ass.
At this point, I threw up my hands and asked aloud, WTH writers? Where is my show! I want my show back!!!
What happened? What went wrong? Why did I dislike it?
So, Alicia gets brought up on election tampering charges. But in reality the hacking was being done by the head of the Democratic Party, who was in charge of monitoring the machines and who admits as much on tape, not Alicia. Prady's guy wants a recount. Sandford Brown, a well-regarded attorney or political pundit (who we have not heard of until now but is being portrayed by the guy who used to play the villain on Alias, Ron Rifkin (?)) steps in to save Alicia and defend her against Prady's pit-bull.
Meanwhile Alicia's emails to Will Gardner, and his to her, are being paraded across the internet - where her daughter can watch them read aloud. (Seriously? You expect me to believe that someone as uptight and politically cautious as Alicia is, is going to be writing sexy emails to Will using her corporate email account? Particularly after she's managed to slay clients in the court-room - by revealing their email correspondence? This hacking storyline doesn't work with these characters. )
Back to the election tampering - Alicia tapes the guy. Sandford Brown reveals it at the hearing. The head of Democratic Committee is not brought up on charges. Brown finds evidence that the machines were hacked - but in 2012, during Peter's election. Eli and Peter and Alicia manage to convince Brown to back off. Then Prady's side discovers that the hack was during Alicia's campaign as well. (Oh by the way, the expert - is the same guy who helped fix the metadata for Kalinda, which helped get Cary's case overturned. And has both Kalinda and Diane in hot water - for falsifying evidence. Doesn't matter than Diane didn't know it was falsified. Weirdly the expert is not being brought up on charges for fixing the metadata. I guess he got immunity or something.)
Anyhow...Alicia and Eli are told by the cheating head of the Democratic Party (who basically deserves to have his balls surgically removed and without anesthesia), that either Alicia withdraws and takes a nice, lower position as head of the Gaming Commission like a good little girl, or he will ruin her politically. The reason he wants her to withdrawl is they were tampering with the machines - except not to help her, but to help a State Senator, who was falling behind in his district. And if he didn't win - it could hurt the party. So she has to withdraw to protect this Senator. She and Eli ask Peter what to do. Peter tells her to fight, with Sandford Brown at her side.
Bad idea. Alicia tells Brown about the Senator and what the head guy said. After she does so, Brown stands up and basically throws Alicia under the bus. Tells the commission she lied and convinces them to force her to withdraw in disgrace. Then when she confronts him on it - he has the gall to tell her not to take it personally.
Meanwhile, Diane and Kalinda and Finn decide to come clean to the Internal Affairs Commission - which results in Geneva Pine and the DA coming after them for criminal charges. Diane, who keep in mind knew nothing about the falsification, would be disbarred and serve up to three years in prison if she didn't serve as a witness against Lamond Bishop. Also keep in mind that Pine and the DA's office did falsify evidence against Cary and did entrap him in order to get Bishop, not caring that they were putting Cary's life in jeopardy, and demonstrating how horrible they were at protecting far better witnesses. (Can we say that the DA's office is not only corrupt but incompetent?) Plus, Pine fell down on the job because she was sleeping with her witness, the cop, who helped her entrap Carey. Has Pine been fired or disbarred? No.
Kalinda upset, because she's put Diane's life in jeopardy -- indicates to Carey that she plans on being the witness against Bishop. Carey won't have it -- and goes to Pine to tell her to turn Kalinda down, he'll do it instead. (Actually Kalinda would make a better witness, she knows more.)
Conveniently, Alicia has to step down from the office, in disgrace and in tears, standing next to a comforting and self-righteous Peter (who was far more corrupt and did cheat on his campaign), so that she can't intercede on either Diane or Kalinda's behalf, and fire Pine's ass.
At this point, I threw up my hands and asked aloud, WTH writers? Where is my show! I want my show back!!!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2015-04-14 09:30 pm (UTC)OTOH - Alicia was being spied on by Homeland Security for a bit, and knew it. As did Will. So you'd think?
Also there was that bit about people looking into each other's emails - when they were handling Chumhum.
And her daughter on youtube.
So, she'd be insanely cautious. And we're talking about an uptight character. I can see
it happening with Carey or even maybe Diane or Peter, but Alicia??? Alicia or Kalinda?
No way. It goes against character.
ETA: And it's not the first occurrence of an out of character moment for her this year.
The other one was the practical joke she played on the teacher that got her into trouble.
No way in heck would Alicia do that. The writer's did it for plot and theme and satire, but they went against the character's motivations and who she was to do it. They've been doing that a lot this season. A lot of the characters are acting "out of character" to benefit a satiric plot. Which is bad writing.