After last year’s shocking and disappointing finale of The Good Wife, I was more than ready to embark in this new journey with Diane Lockhart (Christine Baranski) in the spin-off called The Good Fight.
With only 10 episodes in this first season, the show has more freedom than its parent, since it is available on CBS on demand. This means that characters are allowed to curse, for example, or use more sexually explicit terms. This doesn’t affect, however, the quality of the story telling, which continues rich and intelligent.
Created by Michelle King and Robert King, the same creators of The Good Wife, The Good Fight follows the story of Diane when she decides to retire. As she is ready to do so, a new economic scandal breaks and she realizes that she lost all of her savings. Since she can’t go back to her old firm, she decides to join Reddick, Boseman and Kolstad, an all African-American law firm.
There, she rejoins with Lucca Quinn (Cush Jumbo), who also left their previous firm, although no much explanation was given as to why. She does mention Alicia Florrick (Julianna Margulies) a few times, but she doesn’t appear in the show. Lucca’s return is very welcome, since her character had a lot of room to develop in The Good Wife, and now the audience has another chance to see her in action.
The viewers also find out that Diane has a goddaughter, Maia Rindell (Rose Leslie), who is a new lawyer, fresh from law school and eager to learn and work. The problem, however, is that her parents (played by Bernadette Peters and Paul Guilfoyle) are being investigated for the economic scandal that left Diane bankrupt in the first place.
As it happened in The Good Wife, this show has a lot of references to current events, mainly political ones. The very first scene is Diane watching, in complete disbelief, Donald Trump taking the oath as President of the United States. The idea of bringing the political debate into a TV show is always welcome, especially when it’s done well. Not only are the topics brought up, but also a discussion among the characters arise, with different points of view.
Of course, the drama inherent to law firms is also there, with people fighting to be partners or to be promoted, etc., but they are quickly resolved.
The cast is extremely good, with Christine Baranski showing the audience that there was more to Diane Lockhart that had been shown before. Recurring characters such as Marissa Gold (Sarah Steele), Mike Kresteva (Matthew Perry), and Elsbeth Tascioni (Carrie Preston) are crowd pleasers and add more comedy (and a bit of drama) to the plot.
The character that stands out, however, is Maia Rindell. She is caught in the middle of the scandal, with her father going to jail and her mother with suspicious behavior, and she also has to deal with the pressure at the law firm and the constant threats she receives from people who also lost money because of her family’s schemes. Rose Leslie does an excellent job of portraying an initially naïve character, who slowly understands that no one is innocent. The last scene of the season made that clear, if she had any doubt.
All in all, The Good Fight is a great spin-off, with a format that leaves us wanting more, since 10 episodes are not nearly enough to cover all the drama in Chicago.
