The great thing about television is that it can react a lot faster to events in the news than movies can (but, you know, not as fast as YouTube). That’s why this season on The Good Wife we’ve seen plots hinge on an extensive email hack and a case about a baker who wouldn’t make a wedding cake for a gay couple.
The season finale, which aired on Sunday 10 May, used these familiar “ripped from the headlines” tactics (thanks, Law & Order) and tackled Chicago’s Homan Square, which the Guardian exposed as a “black site” where people are taken by the police and held using illegal tactics.
In the finale, Alicia’s (Julianna Margulies) client was taken to Homan Square after he expressed interest in procuring several marijuana plants to start growing legal medical marijuana. When Alicia finally tracked him down (with the help of the Find Your iPhone app) she discovered he was at Homan Square and denied access to him. It required several trips to see a judge before the cops finally complied and the confession that Alicia’s client made under duress was ruled inadmissible in court. Justice, as it usually is on these shows, was served.
While those who watch The Good Wife enjoy the way that it comments on topics that are happening in the real world, it also exposes news stories to a mass audience. While plenty of people tuning in will have known that Homan Square was real, hopefully a few others will have learned that the Chicago police department was engaging in such shocking tactics.
Last season there was an extended plotline where the NSA was eavesdropping on conversations between Alicia, her husband (Chris Noth) the governor of Illinois, and several other individuals in a continuously expanding web that seemed to have nothing to do with national security. It’s one thing to know that the NSA is listening to regular Americans, but it will really get people’s hackles up if they imagine that St Alicia is having to endure this injustice.
Naturally the season finale (which attracted almost 10 million viewers) wasn’t all politics and anti-government bluster. Alicia’s only friend Kalinda (Archie Panjabi), a character who had far overstayed her welcome, finally left town for good, with a drug kingpin hot on her trail. We saw Alicia, disgraced from an election fraud scandal and let go from the firm she created, start to take on clients who she thought really deserved her help.
Her old friend and flirting partner Finn (Matthew Goode) was helping her out, but, by the time she had exposed Homan Square and gotten her client released, Finn decided that their sexual tension was too – I don’t know – sexy. He decided that working with her professionally was a bad idea. She was left on her own before Louis Canning (Michael J Fox) showed up at her door with a proposition to partner up with her in her new effort.
This is the third season in a row to end with Alicia making a huge life decision that upends her professional life. Two years ago she and Cary (Matt Czuchry) decided to start their own firm, and last year she decided to run for state’s attorney. The twists are becoming somewhat predictable and almost a little pedestrian. So far the follow-through on them has been uneven (the starting of the firm turned out to be a brilliant move but the run for office was something fans really loathed), so we’ll have to tune in next year to find out if she really teams up with the duplicitous Canning and what effect that has on the show.
However, I really did enjoy this taste of Alicia fighting for deserving and underserved clients and trying to enact some sort of change for the better. Setting out on her own allows her to continue this pursuit of social justice in a way that will most likely call for more of the show’s stories to be culled directly from the front page. It’s always been one of the things The Good Wife did best, and has made it one of the best shows on television.
