For many TV devotees, the best part of the Super Bowl is that it marks the end of the football season, which means no more games messing with the start times of their favourite shows. This year the Super Bowl not only restored order to the The Good Wife’s scheduling, but brought with it the announcement that the show is coming to an end.
Since CBS had the largest TV audience of the year captive to its commercials, it decided to use this spot to make the official announcement about its hit series. Oh how the world can come crashing to a halt in just 20 seconds! The network confirmed in a statement that the show’s finale will air in the US on 8 May, after nine more episodes.
Over the last month, there has been a slow rollout of news to get everyone acclimatised to the fact that the best show on broadcast television would be calling it quits after seven critically acclaimed seasons.
First it was announced that the series creators Robert and Michelle King would not be returning next year. When they made the announcement, the Kings said they always envisioned where Alicia Florrick’s (Julianna Margulies) journey would end and that she is about to arrive at that destination. This season has seen her go in a completely different direction. After many years weathering the politics at lawfirm Lockhart Gardner, Alicia struck out on her own with a new partner and a new love interest, played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan (who starts a prominent role on The Walking Dead next season). Her marriage seems to finally be at an end, she is getting over her romance with Will (Josh Charles), and she has weathered a political scandal of her own. This seems like the right time to leave her – after she has fully reinvented herself.
The show has been losing steam in recent times. While it’s still a superior drama, it’s not as continuously exciting or shocking as its landmark fourth and fifth seasons. That consistency – and later the lack of it – was only bolstered by the fact that The Good Wife aired 22 episodes a year, rather than the 10 or 13 that other prestige shows turn out.
But even long-time viewers have been tuning out, particularly after a scandal involving the finale of season six, when Emmy winner Archie Panjabi left the show. Her character, Kalinda, formerly Alicia’s best friend and co-worker, had one final scene with Alicia. It was later revealed that the pair shot their parts separately, and the scene was digitally stitched together later. Margulies, for reasons that are still unclear, refused to film with her co-star.
Just as that breakup was hard to swallow, bringing the show to an end is a strange move for CBS. The Good Wife is one of the few dramas on the network that is not a crime procedural. While all iterations of the NCIS franchise pull in far better ratings than The Good Wife, it was the show that got all the press attention. Not only did it win Emmys for Margulies and Panjabi, but it was the only drama on network television that was even a contender for the Best Drama trophy at the Emmys, which has long been dominated by HBO, AMC, FX and other strong voices on cable channels. While CBS may still have the largest audience on the small screen, it’s going to lose the one show that really defined it for millions of viewers.
Yes, it is time for The Good Wife to say goodbye, but nonetheless, TV in general and the US networks specifically will be worse off. Sports fans may be happy with how the big game turned out, but for fans of television, it was a huge loss.
