THE BEST WORD to describe The Good Wife (2009-2016) in comparison to its prestige TV peers may be generous. Its predecessors (The Sopranos, The Wire, Mad Men, Breaking Bad) in the TV golden age of the early 2000s set the expectation that serious dramas on the small screen have seasons of about 13 episodes each and air on platforms you must pay for (cable channels such as HBO and AMC, and now subscription streaming services like Netflix). In contrast, less-than-highbrow thrillers with a bit of humor, like the police procedural NCIS, pour out nearly double that amount of content per season on free network TV.
But The Good Wife on CBS defied that expectation. Here was a network drama that was just as revelatory about humanity as the best of cable’s offerings while also being hilarious, accessible, and plentiful (seven seasons of no fewer than 22 episodes each). In a world where complex female TV protagonists are still too rare, revisiting The Good Wife is a holiday break well spent.
The Good Wife established a powerful narrative about whether to choose selflessness or selfishness (and not just in the number of episodes to give an audience per season). I’m talking about how much of ourselves to give to anyone or anything.
The series begins with selfishness. A male politician has an affair and confesses his infidelity to the public with his wife by his side. Suddenly, while he faces criminal charges, his wife, Alicia — who ended her law career to be a stay-at-home mom and potential future first lady — uses a college connection to become an associate at a firm, learning alongside young people not much older than her son and daughter.
“She becomes more sophisticated, with all the good things and bad things that word entails,” Michelle King, one-half of the married writing duo behind the show, told the New York Times in 2016.
Alicia repeatedly faces the question: My wants and needs or someone else’s? Eventually, the question overtly overlaps with others: Is there a God? Does any of this matter? Do I have to atone for anything? These musings on faith, morality, and politics parallel the legal dilemmas Alicia encounters, which range from domestic disputes to issues of race and NSA spying.
This might sound tedious. Watch instead for laugh-out-loud guests and recurring stars. Watch for how the show builds and then dazzlingly deconstructs its world, challenging every character. But most of all, watch because Julianna Margulies plays all the shades of Alicia expertly (winning two Emmys). From fun to grief, love to hatred, victim to victimizer, her performance is a gift.
Da’Shawn Mosley (dashawn-mosley.com) is a former Sojourners associate editor and lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
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