The Good Wife
Season 5
****
Excellently scripted, with a star-studded cast revelling in the cut-and-thrust of its dynamic repartee, season 5 of The Good Wife breathes new vigour into what was already an outstanding series. It does so, ironically, through the shocking death of one of its leading players and the rebirth of sorts of its main character Alicia Florrick, the titular Good Wife.
It begins with a messy split. Alicia and the baby-faced courtroom assassin, Cary Agos, are forced out of the esteemed law firm Lockhart Gardner for plotting to start their own operation. Cue a flurry of frantic calls and frivolous law suits as the rival firms battle it out for well-to-do clients. For Alicia, still maintaining an amicable front as the wife of State Govenor Peter Florrick, the consequences of war are stark. Her former lover, Will Gardner, stung by her betrayal, fights back angrily in a series of courtroom encounters in which long- subdued passions bubble dangerously beneath the surface.
And then, Will is no more. His sudden end in a chaotic courtroom shootout brings the backroom bitching and conniving to a shuddering halt. The repercussions are felt far beyond the scene of the crime.
For one, it leaves his fellow managing partner, Diane Lockhart, desperately short of allies as she tries to maintain the reins of the firm she started with Will. The wolves within her fraternity have smelt blood and start nipping at her heels, unswayed by her sorrow.
Even the hard-boiled investigator Kalinda struggles to make sense of it all, flitting from one bed to the next in a futile bid to soothe her pain.
But the person who naturally feels it the most is Alicia, now caught between playing happy families for the press alongside her husband, and mourning the loss of the man she fell in love with.
“I can’t compete with a dead man,” says Peter, though he does a pretty good job of seeing off his enemies in tandem with his mercurial chief-of-staff, Eli Gold.
Throughout season 5, Peter mostly takes a backseat to Eli’s incessant political manouvering, but occasionaly shows his hand with chilling effeciency, flexing the muscle of his newfound office. It is a power Alicia is only too happy to exploit as she finds her feet at the head of a fledgling firm, albeit conflicted by regrets over what might have been.
The unyeilding tension and drama of season 5 owes much to the powerhouse performances of its stellar cast. The standouts are Julianna Margulies as Alicia and Alan Cumming as Eli. Cumming in particular is an engrossing delight – a witty, conniving, pesky schemer at the heart of the series’ most poignant punchlines. A special mention also has to go to Jeffrey Tambor as Judge Kluger, whose world-wearly cynisim and dry humour surely make his courtroom assignments the hottest ticket in town.
Special features: includes deleted scenes, a gag reel, Requiem for a Friend which is an extended goodbye to the Will Gardner character, and a music video that will crawl below the surface of your skin, called ThickyTrick.