#peter florrick

[mikelogan]

THE GOOD WIFE 3x22 The Dream Team

+ bonus:

[warningsine]

[marchdadness]

vote for your favorite, or the one you think is the best, or the hottest, or whatever! the winner will advance to face the winner of match 4

[hitchell-mope]

She should’ve left the whore monger for Will.

[verocd]

[batsplat]

okay what’s up with the good wife out of all the media you reblog this is the most random one ?

it's not RANDOM omg that is a top three rewatch show to me... I love my silly little lawyers.... perfect mix of fun week to week cases, excellent side characters, interpersonal mess between the main cast, plus all the ways they'd imaginatively tackle Current Events. the good fight had a similar appeal - minus the focus on week to week cases and plus far more explicit politics. didn't always work, but it's one of those shows where I just kind of appreciated how willing they were to take a swing at it and get a bit weird about it. even in the good wife, they had so many Good Bits... the nsa agents who were super invested in the main cast's relationships, the liberal judge with all his Causes, the wife killer, LOUIS CANNING!! obviously, the 'in your opinion' lady, the google guy... also this is from the good fight but the federal investigator lady who always had the birds fly against her office window was a+ plus, it's such a dumb bit but it got me every time as a great appreciator of dumb bits. such a corny pair of shows that are very much like,, About Liberalism and a reckoning with that entire era of american life from an unabashedly liberal perspective, with all the inherent pitfalls and shortcomings of that pov... but does consistently manage to do interesting stuff with that starting point. a lawyer show that's also a bit of an autopsy of a mostly dead vision of america, kinda all you need sometimes

and I love alicia and will, my tragic heterosexuals!! the forbidden love of it all!! I love how cruel and selfish alicia was a lot of the time and how she's mostly in control of that relationship even though will SHOULD be the one in the position of power, how she's constantly using him and then pushing him away while will is so obviously besotted, how she simply keeps finding excuses to stop herself from being happy... does she even love him at all or does she just like him in theory, does she just want to be desired... how they always have 'bad timing' and just cannot figure their shit out... "it's romantic because it didn't happen".... "my plan is I love you" the unapologetic melodrama of it all!! the deleted voice message is?? crazy?? (eli goated character btw, the cheese lobby episode is still one of my favourite episodes of anything ever.) that lift scene is peak romance... when she leaves the firm and he feels so betrayed... his tantrum!! "I took you in when nobody wanted you"!! "you were POISON"!! "you're awful and you don't even know how awful you are"!! he's so pathetic and angry for half a season that he's resorting to just arguing with her in his head!!! always with their failed communications via phone and lift doors and loaded gazes across office spaces and delicate finger touches... the romance of it all, how they really could have worked but it's also so glaringly obvious why they kept falling apart... in the end all these repressed losers create their own misery... elite

[abhiraj1981]

The Good Wife - Will Gardner Is Shot

While Diane argues a case in her courtroom, gunfire rings out in a nearby courtroom where Will is defending Jeffrey Scott in a murder trial.

[abhiraj-yahoo10]

The Good Wife - Will Gardner Is Shot

While Diane argues a case in her courtroom, gunfire rings out in a nearby courtroom where Will is defending Jeffrey Scott in a murder trial.

[pebblysand]

[on writing] the corruption of alicia florrick (or: 'show, don't tell' pushed to the brink)

i've touched on this really briefly already but i've recently engaged in a partial re-watch part of TGW (s1 to s5e2 - if you've also seen the show, you know why i stopped there) and i've been having a lot of thoughts about it, lately. this will probably be of interest to no one (apart from @tessiete, maybe, hello 👋 tess) but i still reckon it felt like something i wanted to write about, so here, this is my tumblr, and i can ramble on about whatever i want.

rewatching this show has led me to a lot of reflections about the portrayal of anti-heros in media. particularly: how to introduce one, and how to write one. and that's what i wanted to talk about here.

BACKGROUND:

for anyone who hasn't seen it, the good wife is a political and legal drama that ran on CBS between 2009 and 2015. it follows alicia florrick, wife of peter florrick, former US state's attorney for Chicago's Cook County. at the start of the show, she is presented as a housewife and a mother of two who, due to her husband's unconscionable behaviour (cheating on her with a sex worker and being accused of corruption in his office), is thrown into a sex scandal and turmoil that basically upends her life. she loses her house, her husband goes to prison, she has to go back to work as a lawyer - a profession she gave up to care for her family ten years ago - in an incredibly cutthroat and competitive environment, worsened by the 08 financial crisis.

now, as you may already know, a few years before the show aired, the early/mid-00s saw a resurgence of the anti-hero trope in american television. characters like gregory house or walter white became incredibly popular, as well as other main protagonists whose behaviour was portrayed to viewers as objectively immoral and objectionable, but for whom they were still encouraged to cheer (a more recent example of this would also be tommy shelby in peaky blinders). generally (though not always), these characters existed in a world of crime and/or drug trafficking, killed hundreds of people on a good day, but - deep down - kind of tried. had a good heart. or, at least, a moral code you could understand and relate to, or valid reasons for doing the things they do - even though the overall behaviour itself was criminal. even in the case of gregory house (who is not a criminal but still very much an anti-hero), he is someone whose impact on the world is at least partly positive because, well, he is a macho arsehole who treats people like absolute scum but, you know, he saves lives.

for a lot of viewers (and people who enjoy this trope - myself definitely included) the main appeal of these stories is this obvious tension between good and evil. no one is pretending these characters are good people - often, not even themselves. the interesting part is actually in whether you can (and should) root for a good person. and: this question as to whether good and/or evil exists, and this grey space in between. god knows i love reading (and writing) about that grey space. in the case of house or tommy shelby, there is something deeply fascinating about the knowledge that this person whose struggles you're coming to understand, and who you do empathise with, is objectively very problematic and questionable. these shows work because the viewer is constantly driven to question their own takes on the world, their own morals, the main protagonist's behaviour, and to try and understand their point of view. as a person, i'm generally pretty fond of this trope, because when done well, i find it very engaging.

MY POINT:

now, when it comes to the good wife, on the surface, alicia florrick is the complete opposite of the above. from the very beginning of the show, she is purported to be a Good Person™. she is dedicated to her marriage and to her children. she is intelligent and kind. she is a good lawyer and someone who exhibits a lot of empathy for her clients (in fact, the firm often assign her to "hand-hold" them). she is a bit of a relief. someone you can always root for, without having to check yourself and be like "omg, didn't she just kill three people in cold blood?"

and, of course, that is not to say she has no flaws. alicia is a fully-fledged person, and a very good character at that. she is a Good Person™ but also someone who is chronically incapable of making decisions. she can sometimes be cold and quite calculating. but, generally speaking, she is a Good Person™. she is trying to get her life back on track, to prove herself in her work, to raise her two teenage children as a single mother, and you end up rooting for her very easily. because her life is hard and even if you wouldn't necessarily react the way she does, or carry yourself the way she does (i - personally - probably wouldn't have tolerated peter's behaviour, etc.) you understand where she's coming from. the show tells you she is a good person, who is struggling and she is trying. it is mostly told from her perspective and really helps you see that she is always doing her best, and always having the best intentions (even though they don't always materialise). she's not some mass murderer, or sociopathic doctor who hates her patients, where you're constantly thinking: "omg, why am i rooting for this arsehole?" she is someone who tries so hard to be kind, and who tries so hard to always treat everyone with respect. because - again - she is flawed, but a Good Person™.

except, well, if you've seen the show, you know: she isn't.

and, if you have watched TGW, i'd be interested to know: think back. when exactly did you realise that? i don't mean: when did you start having doubts? i mean: when did you sit there and think "omg this woman is unbearable". for me, on first watch, it was probably somewhere between s5 and s6. on re-watch? probably as early as s2/3. i think everyone who was in the TGW fandom (and, to a larger extent, everyone who watched the show) had this thought once: when did this start? and where did Dark!Alicia (a characterisation i am stealing from @tessiete) come from?

and, honestly? looking back, i'm sorry to tell you this but: she was always there, you just didn't see it.

i only really realised this on rewatch but alicia is pretty much unbearable from the very start of the show. because, i mean, sure, she's a bit traumatised, but she's also: arrogant, self-centred, and incredibly hypocritical. she is (unlike peter, actually) a terrible parent. she is unforgiving of kalinda for Literally No Reason (other than archie and juliana not getting on, but that's a different conversation). she treats will appallingly, exploiting and toying with the fact that he's been in love with her for twenty years (which she very clearly knows), and after the event that must not be mentioned i am not over it romanticises their relationship like she ever gave a fuck about him. objectively speaking, and this throughout the show, alicia florrick isn't a Good Person™. she is a Fucking Bitch™.

and, as a writer myself, what i find very interesting about this show is that until the very end, you're never actually told alicia is a terrible person. you're shown it, and in hindsight, given Many Many opportunities to make that determination yourself, and yet, didn't it take us all So Long to stop excusing her behaviour? to stop being like "oh, but peter cheated on her," and "oh, but she loves them both." as an example, in s5, the show even almost succeeds in making you think will's reaction to her leaving the firm is an overreaction when omg if you look at the facts, it Really Isn't. think about it this way: if you were one of will's mates and he was telling you this story, you would be Out For Blood, wouldn't you?

rewatching this show has really made me realise that the "education of alicia florrick" (which the writers pitched was the overall arc of the show - or, also as you might see it, the "corruption of alicia florrick") is actually an example of how 'show, don't tell' can be pushed to the brink. because, this isn't even 'show, don't tell', it's 'show one thing, and tell another' and let the viewer come to their own conclusions. and, whilst i think that most people started out going with what the show was telling the viewers, there is a point where they stopped empathising with alicia and constantly excusing her behaviour, even though the show kept telling us she really was a Good Person™ and was #trying. there is a point where #trying becomes #pretending, and #pretending becomes fake and unforgivable.

and, this revelation arrived earlier for some than others but generally speaking, i think took a really long time to dawn on most of us. to realise that actually, alicia florrick is an anti-hero with very few redeeming qualities who is constantly and inexcusably toying with people's feelings and then excusing her repeated fuck-ups by the fact that she's #wounded and #trying, while still being presented like a hero. she is a Fucking Bitch™ because on top of this, unlike people like house or tommy shelby who are, in no way, shape or form, pretending to be good people[1], alicia and the show keep insisting that she is good, (really, trust her), and there comes a point where as a viewer, you have to look at it critically and say: nah, you're full of shit. and, i think that is what is most disconcerting about the show.

and, don't get me wrong, in hindsight, i believe this was one thousand per cent intentional. i don't believe this is an emily in paris type case where the writers wrote a character as a hero when she was in fact an awful person, and it took thousands of outraged comments for them to realise it. i think with TGW, it was definitely done by design. you see examples of alicia's terrible behaviour very early on in the way she parents her children (zach "watching" porn, for instance) but she always finds excuses for herself, and you initially lean into that as a viewer. like: oh, well, she's just a bit conservative. or: oh, well, it's hard being a single parent. the fact that this escalated into her appalling behaviour of going no contact with her own son because, oh my god, he got his girlfriend pregnant and dared hide it from his mother, shouldn't have come as a surprise. it's there from the get-go. and, it's not that the writers didn't know this, it's that they gradually made it more and more heavy-handed until it became unavoidable.

and, i think as writer, what's also interesting is: when alicia's true nature was revealed, it actually alienated a shit tonne of people. they truly lost a whole chunk of their audience because of it. i even stopped watching the show, and that's someone who wrote thousands of words of fanfiction for it. i remember telling a friend "ugh, she's just become too unbearable." and, i wasn't the only one. i know so many other people in fandom who dropped off around s6/7. whereas, there is a case to be made for the fact, as someone who actually loves rooting for Bad People™ and loves the anti-hero trope, i probably would have been able to stand her, had the show itself portrayed her as a problematic person to begin with.

but the fact that we had genuinely rooted for, and excused the behaviour of, someone who was objectively unconscionable for so long was so disconcerting and disgusting and disappointing that we... stopped caring? and so, whilst in hindsight, i do think the general idea of this was brilliant, objectively, the execution... wasn't much of a success, was it? it cost them a lot of their dedicated viewership. or: was it such a success that it rightfully alienated people? was this the objective all along?

because: is the main goal of a piece of art to cater to its audience or is it to make a point?

---

[1] small caveat with tommy who does sometimes seem to think he's a good person, but it never lasts very long.

[soleadita]

top 15 tv shows (in no particular order)(ty for the tag @staybeautifulmp3 🫶🏼🫶🏼 i'm eyeing ur list and taking mental notes btw)

teen wolf (self explanatory)

stargate atlantis (self explanatory)

gilmore girls - it's comfy it's cozy it gives "show’s californian creator idealizes and pines after a new england small town experience" which. same, amy, same. also there's jess mariano. with paperbacks in his back pocket.

the bear - as larry the cucumber once said to bob the tomato: i laughed. i cried. it moved me, bob. (genuinely such an impeccably made show)

bridgerton but SPECIFICALLY SEASON 2 iykyk

the good wife - josh charles. also alicia florrick step on me what who said that maybe it was kalinda

sports night - again, josh charles. also baby peter krause. also dialogue speed that rivals lorelai gilmore's.

derry girls - the amount of times i’ve repeated the wee lesbian to myself in my head. unmatched.

crashing (2016) - go on. there are six 20 minute episodes. knock em out in an afternoon. you can do it. i believe in you.

bones - never have i ever seen so many characters with different flavors of autism in one space. it’s marvelous.

daredevil - love a sad catholic boy in a suit

andor - i know next to nothing about the greater star wars universe but diego luna star wars can stay

warrior nun - GLOWY LESBIAN FIGHTER NUNS I THINK ABOUT U DAILY <3

reservation dogs - okay full disclosure the first season emotionally decimated me so thoroughly that i haven’t been able to bring myself to watch the second season yet. or the third, for that matter. but holy hell. television amirite.

malcolm in the middle - watched purely bc of amanda’s reese mitm posting. no regrets. it’s so bizarrely good that my younger siblings, who barely like anything unless it’s pretentious or an anime or a k-drama, dropped everything to watch it with me last time i was home.

no pressure tagging @dauntingday @stardustsea @hotcinnamonsunset @scattered-winter @xandromedan @moonlightperseus @itwoodbeprefect + anyone else who wants to do it 💕

[tunemyart]

okay so i'm already past the juiciest kalicia parts of tgw and aside from my being really sad that the potential for their reconciliation (which it seems they wanted to arc out!) went thumbs down emoji, I'm so inevitably ahhhhhhhh about the roots and manifestation of kalicia at all! bc so much of both is down to kalinda's character - her mystery, her careful reservation and restraint in both her words and her bearing, her halting, repeated protests that she doesn't really have friends... with the implication, in saying this to alicia in various contexts, that alicia is an exception, and a big one at that.

how unfathomably huge an exception isn't more than hinted at in the subtext (which is there, sure! BUT) until that jawdropper of the way blake lays out what he's put together: how off the wall defensive and terrified kalinda becomes every time alicia or kalinda's friendship with her is threatened, and how that tell has led him to kalinda's buried past and how it was buried. and let me tell you i screamed when in the next episode's recap, which picked up at the precise moment of that very revelation, the line changed slightly - but dramatically!! - to be even more emphatic: "alicia. it's about alicia. that's what you care about more than anything."

uhhhhh??????

I don't know I don't know I don't know!!! but it was sure something to watch her spiral out of control while trying so, so desperately to keep a lid on it over the next few eps in a way that to this point, and without this layer exposed, might have actually seemed antithetical to her character... but it's not. why? bc it's alicia. it's what kalinda cares about. more than anything.

idk I'm just so feral about kalinda in this stretch of time, telling on herself in so many ways, none of which she would previously have allowed herself. shaken after the confrontation with blake, her first call is to alicia - just to hear her voice. she goes and talks to peter florrick, who correctly surmises that alicia learning the truth would destroy her - but only from the perspective of his own marriage to her. but you can see so clearly on kalinda's face and the things she's almost audibly restraining herself from saying - she knows it's going to be less about peter, and more about kalinda. and she's right. she hooks up with amanda rollins sophia russo, who if I'm not mistaken is kalinda's first onscreen woman lover, in what is 100% a reaction to the fallout with alicia, and - by kalinda's standards - loses her shit when she finds out that sophia's gotten married since she last saw her, that kalinda is, once again, albeit in a very different way, the person with whom a spouse is cheating.

but that's also the thing that I'm ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh about - bc kalinda has made exceptions for alicia. in friendship, of course - but holy shit, it's beyond obvious that kalinda loves her. and kalinda is very determinedly someone who does not do relationships, who doesn't want to let someone, anyone, close bc she's terrified of both being hurt and hurting them. so sex is practical. sex is fun. sex is no strings. anything else doesn't make sense to her. she and will have that conversation about how they're not normal, and will talks about being in the middle of an emotion and realizing he's not feeling anything, he's just acting. and as with so many other kalinda scenes, she says very little, but her scene partner manages to say so much about her, if only via holding up a (funhouse) mirror to her in their words, one that she acknowledges.

and so in light of all this, the idea of a kalinda/alicia relationship? in just what ways would alicia continue to be kalinda's exception? the thing that kalinda cares about - more than anything?

[mikelogan]

THE GOOD WIFE 7x11 Iowa

[warningsine]

[angelofverdum]

The Good Wife

I finally watched The Good Wife, and I LOVED it. When I put this show on my watchlist I think it was on season 6 and a lot of things happened and I couldn't watch it, but I finally did and I'm so happy.

Also, I think I have never been happier to never have read a spoiler about a show.

First, I love Alicia. Lead characters are usually so boring, and even tho she was The good wife, she was growing, so we literally saw her go from wife to badass lawyer.

Julianna Margulis is a really good actress. I haven't seen a lot of her work, but she nailed it as Alicia Florrick. I always find it refreshing when the lead actor is good at their job.

Now, even tho I loved the show because some episodes were amazing (Looking at you, season 5). It had these storylines that they started and ended abruptly.

Characters disappear without explanation. The best example was Robyn. They knew they needed to replace Kalinda, so instead of sticking with Robyn, they forgot about her then they brought Jeffrey Dean Morgan to play Alicia's new love interest.

They also loved to go in circles. The whole plot about Alicia's campaign was a waste of time. The Lemond Bishop thing ended up with Kalinda just leaving, which doesn't make any sense to me.

The political plots were so boring. Anything that involved Peter was boring. Seasons 6 and 7 were awful. They focus too much on Aliica's love life.

For me, Alicia's most interesting relationship was with Peter. Not in a romantic way, I think Will was the right one, but how their relationship worked.

They should have made them friends. I know Peter sucked, and he was an asshole, but in the end, he was the only one Alicia didn't betray. I don't know; I liked their dynamic.

So the reason that I was so happy to never read anything about this show: Will's death. I was SHOCKED. I didn't even like him that much, but I was sad that he was gone.

The one thing I knew was that Archie Panjabi and Julianna Margulies didn't get along, and they couldn't be together in a scene.

So, when I saw the first season and Kalinda and Alicia's friendship started to develop, I knew I was en route to a lot of frustration.

When I met Archie she was doing the Fall (Gillian Anderson's best performance, btw), and I read about the thing with Julianna, but I wasn't expecting that she would leave the show.

I thought she finished the whole show, and that remarkable last scene between Alicia and Kalinda at the bar was one of the last scenes of the show.

Kalinda was my favorite character, and the way she was treated by the writers was terrible.

It annoyed me how they dressed her. She was an investigator working on the street. Wearing high-heeled boots and short dresses didn't make sense. Look at the way Robyn and Jason dressed. But of course, Kalinda was a sexy and mysterious investigator.

And the hair? In all 6 seasons, she let her hair down once, ONCE. Insane. Even in some sex scenes, she was having her hair up.

I wish they developed more of her character.

And I can't believe that Julianna and Archie hated each other so much that they couldn't suck it up and work together for the sake of the show. And they had a lot of chemistry, the way Kalinda went soft for Alicia only? Crazy. She got rid of her abusive husband because Alicia felt threatened.

And Kalinda and Lana? They had me giggling and twirling my hair every time they were together. Thank god I didn't watch this live because I could've died of frustration. I wanted more.

Look at this shit. I have watched her scenes together like 300 times.

I saw Eli was a fan favorite. He was ok to me, sometimes way too much.

Cary was also a favorite. Pretty privilege I guess.

Diane. I mean, how could you not love Christine Baranski. I think I have never seen her play a serious character before. I really liked Diane, but some plots were boring to me because I knew about the spin-off. So, some things weren't possible.

Last season was a drag. It was just so boring, and I couldn't wait to finish it. But seasons from 1 to 5 were fun. I was so invested in the show. I couldn't stop watching.

I find it funny how Jason ( who everybody loved bc JDM I know) was exactly Kalinda but male version.

P.S Alicia and Kalinda had one of the most devastating break up on tv

I'll watch the good fight now.

[hitchell-mope]

He’s an embezzling, whore mongering, dishonest, asshole and you’re better off without him

[verocd]