Episode 7.22 - The End of The Good Wife, and OUAT (not the finale of the series, just the arc)

[shadowkat]

1. Saw the finale episode of The Good Wife, entitled "The End" tonight and whoa, that was an interesting ending. It makes you think. And it fit the tone and theme of the show. While the writing was uneven in places, it was amongst the better series finales.


Most of the episode is about Peter's trial and Alicia persuading the prosecutor to provide a better deal for Peter. But at its crux, is Alicia's determination of who she should be going forward. Does she race away with Jason? Go back to being The Good Wife to Peter, or come into her own power, and be her own woman, owning her choices and not catering to others?

The Ghost of Will Gardner makes frequent appearances as she figures it out. And eventually says goodbye to him. Then chases after Jason, who seems to float away like smoke, there and then not.

On the side, we get bits and pieces of our supporting cast. Carey has become a law professor, and seems to slide into it as if it is second nature to him. And Diane is humiliated in court, when Luka reveals that her husband Kurt had an affair with the other ballistics expert, in order to besmirch his testimony along with the other witnesses. This at Alicia's urging, after Diane said no. It results in the ADA offering Peter one year probation, no prison time, in exchange for a guilty plea and resigning as Governor. Jason telling Alicia that she needs to be needed, or she'll tip off-balance. Alicia asks Jason to wait for her...but after the trial, she can't get hold of him and he appears to be gone. And the ADA prosecuting Peter, comments that he preferred the Alicia he meet four or five years ago, at a conference, where they chatted about kids -- she was more fun. Alicia retorts that perhaps after he gives her the deal she's been bargaining for, she'll give him that nice demure smile.

The final sequence is a twist on the opening sequence of the series -- where Alicia is standing with Peter on the podium and runs down the hallway backstage with him trailing her. Except this time, she pulls away from his hand not in pain or humiliation but with hope, thinking she sees Jason standing in the hallway. She turns her attention back to Peter for a brief moment, and then back to Jason -- only to find him gone, as if he'd never been there. When the press conference concludes, she leaves Peter's side, and goes to find Jason, running down the hallway, calling his name, as Peter chases after her calling her's and finally gives up. And Jason himself turns out to be little more than a pipe dream -- a bearded man who resembled him, nothing more. Turning back to the hallway, she runs into Diane, who calls her name and then brutally slaps her. Alicia falls for a moment, crying, rubbing her cheek, but only a moment. The last scene is Alicia pulling herself together in a hallway, wiping her tears, straightening her outfit, a grim determined smile on her face and striding towards her future, her own independent entity, under her own power. Empowered. She is no longer anyone's "Good Wife".

That's the end, and I had a chill run up my spine...because it worked. She was no longer The Good Wife. She had found her own power and her own resilience.

Definitely one of the better series endings.



Hmmm, the more I think about the episode, the more I like it and think it was rather brilliant in retrospect. I may buy that series someday on DVD and binge watch it. It interlinks quite wonderfully and references past seasons and past episodes beautifully.

2. ) Ah, Once Upon a Time, you are getting predictable and repetitive. I smell a reboot or curse or reset in our not too distant future, either caused by Henry, Rumple or Regina.

I'm sort of hoping they don't do that. Also hoping they don't use Robin's untimely and tragic demise to turn Regina evil again. Evil Regina screeches and grates on my nerves. I much prefer the male villains or the Snow Queen, none of whom screeched. I've decided Regina has the best wardrobe. Snow or possibly Belle the worst.



Not all that surprised that they killed off Robin. He had nothing to do. Seriously, the writers had no clue what to do with this character, outside of have him run around with Regina or stay at home to take care of the baby. What happened to his followers? Boring character, and I'm a life-long fan of Robin Hood. Damn show has managed to ruin my favorite Disney characters - Robin Hood and Belle, with poor casting and bad characterization. Regina and Rumple deserve better.

I don't think he'll stay dead, even though I sort of wish he does...which is a problem. I should have cared that they killed him. I didn't. I knew he was going to leap in front of Regina and take the brunt of the crystal, which in turn would result in Zelena doing the right thing.

Also knew they'd bring back Hook, because unlike Robin Hood, the actor is insanely charismatic and amongst the most interesting characters they've got. Also, bringing him back will most likely piss off Regina, and make her blame Emma for everything. (Sorry, Robin getting killed by Hades isn't Emma's fault, that's Regina's fault for insisting on going after the baby, and for telling her sis to trust Hades. Emma had zip to do with that. Regina isn't very good at taking responsibility for her own actions, instead she's the perpetual victim of her own life. Actually that's a good theme for Once, how the characters make themselves victims of their lives, by never taking ownership of their lives and actions. The characters who do own their actions and take responsibility, aren't victims and find happiness.)

At any rate, we'll see how much longer I stick with this show, it's making me tired.

Also, I kept wondering if they could rescue Milla and Auntie Em from the river of lost souls. Guess not. I really hope, King Arthur gets to stay as King of the Underworld, that role fits him well.
Although his reappearance was a bit contrived. It felt like the writers had forgotten about him, and then --

Writer 1: oh, we need someone to help Hook retrieve the pages, who can we use?
Writer 2: Well, there's always King Arthur.
Writer 3: Is he even still around?
Writer 2: Yeah, we put him jail, halfway through the end of the first half of the season. Remember?
Writer 3: Actually I forgot about him completely. But that could possibly work...
Writer 1: Nope. Won't work, he needs to be dead. Hook is in the underworld.
Writer 2: Oh that's easy enough. Just have Hades kill him.
Writer 1: But will the viewers buy it? I mean he needs a reason, doesn't he?
Writer 3: Nah, he's Hades, easily wankable. Besides we'll just have Arthur claim to be King of Storybrook and want to rule it...
Writer 1: But he's not King of Storybrook...
Writer 2: Hades doesn't know that. It'll work.

It didn't, but that's okay, I rather liked the Hook/Arthur partnership, one of the more entertaining aspects of the episode. Also proved my point that Hook would be back and the writers weren't done with him yet.



Television series do enjoy killing people off and bringing them back, don't they? Particularly fantasy shows and soap operas. (They think it is shocking, it's not. The audience is on to them.) Except, for some reason, it's only the leads that get this privilege, poor supporting characters or characters the writers are bored of...stay dead. Also actors that have either pissed the writers off or have decided to leave the series to pursue more lucrative and interesting gigs, tend to get their characters killed off. (That's when they'll kill off a lead character. It's actually the only time they will kill off a lead character.) See Grey's Anatomy, LOST, The Good Wife, Buffy, Angel, The 100, Vampire Diaries, etc...for examples. I'm a fan of a daytime soaps, so am used to this sort of thing.

So and so is in contract negotiations. Oh, it's not going well. Oh...they got another better role on another soap...or better yet a prime time television series??? Guess what their character just got shot and thrown in the river, the character is now deader than a doornail. Damn. I liked that character. Wait, no, the character isn't dead, they've been frozen, woken up, brain-washed, and had facial reconstruction, so alive, just being played by a new and better actor. After a while, I stopped caring when fictional characters are killed off on television series...other people get upset, I think, yeah well that was sort of predictable, and don't worry, they may be back next season in a different form. If it's a soap opera or a fantasy series...it doesn't matter if their organs were donated and they were cremated, the writers will find a way if they are so inclined. Makes it hard to care one way or another or to understand why other people get so upset about it. I remember being afraid they were going to permanently kill off Spike -- seriously? He was too frigging popular with practically everybody including the writers, but fanatical Angel and Bangle fans, who were woefully in the minority and still are. We were idiots. Hook is similar on OUAT. You can always tell which characters writers like -- hint, they get a lot of screen-time, great costume, and all the best lines. )

Comments

[liliaeth]

The only times these days that I really get upset about a character's death, is when they're poc or LGBT. If a black character is killed, the chance of them coming back for more than at most one ep, is near zero.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Eh. Well, not anymore. On a daytime serial, they brought back a black character whose organs had been donated. And well, Angel, brought Gunn back after he was allegedly killed, so there's that.

Also, in most cases such as Buffy and the 100, the character death was dictated by the story thread and worked to further plot, character and story -- it also would have happened regardless of the characters sexual orientation, gender, race, etc.

Examples?

1) Scenario 1 - Buffy the Vampire Slayer:

You have a character, W, who uses dark magic to handle grief or pain. She has a history of abusing magic. Falls in love. The writer decides from about the third season, when she's involved with a male character, that he's going to turn her dark in a few years by killing off the her love interest. This is before he had the character fall in love with a woman.
He builds the story in this direction. May have even written the scene. The actor portraying the male love interest takes off for a better series. But even before he took off, the writer came up with the idea to have the character experiment a bit and get involved with a woman...initally planning on having her end up with the male love interest. But he makes it clear he wants to do movies, and the new female love interest works better than expected. So, you go with that idea, all along not changing your course and building towards the female love interest's death. You'd have killed her if she'd been a guy. The goal was to explore W's emotional arc and how she handles power. No political agenda involved.

In that scenario, if the writer had chosen not to kill off W's lover just because she was a lesbian, I'd have been annoyed. Why -- because the writer would go against his story thread to service an outside political agenda. It's catering or worse coddling a special interest group. The character survives for no other reason than she's a lesbian? Really? Ugh. That's not how you change cultural perspectives or further social justice. If anything, it's condescending and offensive.

2) Scenario 2 - Blacklist: Now, say, you have a storyline where L is the lead character, and the actress becomes pregnant. You write the pregnancy into the role, and decide to kill her off when the character has the baby, so the actress can go on maternity leave. With the idea of setting up L's husband in a spin-off with their baby. Two shows with male leads. The only female lead killed off because the actress has left for maternity leave? That's offensive. And not clearly storyline dictated. So, yes, I'd be upset.

See the difference?

Scenario 1 - is a well-planned story arc, where the character death would have occurred regardless of the character's sexual orientation, gender, or race. It's a color blind/gender blind arc - based solely on plot and character not isolated traits. W's lover is not killed because she's gay, female, or any other reason outside of the fact that she's in the wrong place at the wrong time and the writer wants to explore W's way of handling grief and anger.

Scenario 2 - is not well-planned. L is killed off because she got pregnant and planned maternity leave. She's killed in child-birth. And her husband is set up to be spun-off into his own series.

[dlgood.livejournal.com]

Turning back to the hallway, she runs into Diane, who calls her name and then brutally slaps her. Alicia falls for a moment, crying, rubbing her cheek, but only a moment. The last scene is Alicia pulling herself together in a hallway, wiping her tears, straightening her outfit, a grim determined smile on her face and striding towards her future, her own independent entity, under her own power. Empowered.

Wow, was that not my read on this ending. This is a woman who didn't really seem to decide what she wanted, only took half steps, and threw a lot of people over in pursuit of things she didn't care about. And has no friends aside from Lucca - who has a strange pre-occupation with Alicia's romance with Jason and almost no inner life. Independence does not really mean "empowerment" because Alicia is mostly independent by consequence of her inertia and screw-ups, and not so much by specific choice... who has sabotaged her alliances and friendships for no particular reason.

The show ends with her getting slapped because, well, she's not much different or better than Peter.

[atpo-onm.livejournal.com]

This ending reminds me of the famous one for The Sopranos, where you have no idea if they're all about to be wiped out in the next few minutes by enemies, or they do the wiping.

I initially saw this much as you did, but the thing is the empowerment concept works equally well, because we don't get to see what happens in the future.

There's an explanation by the writers about the episode and the meaning (as they intended it) of the ending here:

http://www.ew.com/article/2016/05/08/good-wife-finale-robert-and-michelle-king-interview

Earlier in the episode, by the way, "ghost Will" pretty much lays it out when he notes, not unkindly but just matter-of-factly, that "You really aren't terribly self-aware, are you?" (or words to that effect).

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

There's a New York Times Review that was equally interesting, with an interview between the writers that followed:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/10/arts/television/the-good-wife-finale-review.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/10/arts/television/robert-and-michelle-king-on-the-good-wife.html?action=click&contentCollection=Television&module=RelatedCoverage®ion=EndOfArticle&pgtype=article

MICHELLE KING She becomes more sophisticated, with all the good things and bad things that word entails.

ROBERT KING In our thinking, when we left the series, we knew we’d create an ending that would create some symmetry from beginning to end. So the audience would know that mendacity and bad things are not just out there; you’re not just victim of them, you perpetrate them yourself.

It allowed us to write to something. When you’re in the middle of these seasons, you need to always have your own first principle that you go back to. And our first principle was that you forgave Alicia for all these things she did over the years, but they do add up.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

I had mixed feelings when I initially saw it, but the more I thought about it...I realized that it's not that clear cut.
Do we know if Peter did what they accused him of? He says up until the end that he didn't? And to say that Alicia didn't care all that much about any of this is a bit harsh and goes against what we're told. She clearly does care whether Peter serves prison time, and goes out of her way to ensure he doesn't, pulling out all the stops.

Did she betray Diane? Diane, remember is the one who came up with the idea to do the ballastics and bring in Kurt, it wasn't Alicia's. And they do question whether Diane should stay on the case -- if there is a conflict of interest with Kurt as a witness. But Diane refuses to recuse herself or hand it over to Luka. Diane also knew going in that Kurt had a pre-existing relationship with the female ballistics expert. Diane was in the wrong on this one. She should have recused herself the moment the prosecution brought her husband back as a witness. From a legal perspective, Alicia was correct -- you zealously defend your client, if there's a personal conflict, you recuse yourself. Protecting Diane's from humiliation would have resulted in a conviction for Peter and 10 years in prison. So what do you pick? Humiliating your partner or your husband serving two-ten years in prison? Also keep in mind, it wasn't Luka or Alicia who humiliated Diane, it was Kurt, who had the affair. And would Diane have done the same thing Alicia did? Definitely.
She already has in prior episodes. No, it doesn't make it right. But.

It was a very layered episode. Lots going on, and a lot of it referenced previous episodes, some dating back to the first and second seasons.