WARNING: DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU HAVEN’T WATCHED SEASON 6 OF THE GOOD WIFE YET.
It’s that time of the year again: all the TV shows I like are coming to the end of their seasons and a long 4-month wait for the next season begins. “The Good Wife” is one of these shows and its season finale aired last week, with a cliffhanger weaker than the previous seasons.
After season 5’s shocking death of Will Gardner (Josh Charles), I was curious to see how the show writes would continue with an interesting story. They disappointed me a little at the beginning of season 6, creating a plot involving Cary Agos (Matt Czuchry) being arrested on drug charges. I didn’t understand why they had created that arc for him, but then I read last year that this season would be the last one for the investigator Kalinda Sharma (Archie Panjabi), so I had a feeling her exiting the show would have something to do with Cary’s storyline (as it ultimately did).
The most interesting thing about the season, for me, was Alicia’s (Julianna Margulies) campaign to become State’s Attorney. She had to lie, pretend to stand for things she really didn’t believe in, please people she didn’t like to get donations, etc. It was really fun to watch the entire process, as well as her interactions with Eli Gold (Alan Cumming), his equally amusing daughter Marissa (Sarah Steele), who becomes her assistant, and Johnny Elfman (Steven Pasquale), responsible for her campaign. Sadly, Johnny Elfman only appeared in 13 episodes (he goes away as soon as the election is over), but I thought he could be a love interest for Alicia.
After the election was over, I was glad she won because that meant the show would go on another direction and the interaction among the characters would be different. However, in the world of politics nothing is that easy so, even though Alicia won the election, she was forced to resign due to the Democrat’s party interests. That’s when the season started to get boring for me, because Alicia decided to open her own firm (again), and we already witnessed this process before. And the cliffhanger was extremely similar to season 4’s finale: someone on her doorstep offering her a partnership. So, will she or won’t she?
Finally, coming back to Kalinda’s storyline. I was glad she wasn’t killed off and had a proper exit from the show and I enjoyed seeing her with Alicia in the season finale (they hadn’t share the screen since season 4). The lack of interaction between the two characters, who were once best friends, was intriguing and the internet had been buzzing for a while about a possible feud between the actresses that would prevent them from being in the same room. I’ve always been skeptical about gossips involving backstage fights in TV shows, movies, etc. This week, however, I started to believe that this might be the case because it has been reported that Alicia and Kalinda’s final scene together wasn’t actually shot with them together! They were filmed separately and edited later (the lighting is different, the eyes aren’t really meeting in the same line, etc).
It’s true that Alicia and Kalinda interact frequently… over the phone. They didn’t see each other even when Will died last season. And the fact that this last scene may not be true at all disappoints me deeply: aren’t they professional actors? Shouldn’t they learn to act, even if for a couple of hours? You can watch the scene below and judge for yourself. All in all, it was a good season, with this tiny exception.
