What I’m Watching: The Good Wife (Series Finale)

The Good Wife: Season 7, Episode 22 “End”

It doesn’t feel like this show ran for seven years. I wasn’t fond of the pilot at all, giving it a C-, but I was recapping it for another site anyway, and so by the time I got to episode seventeen, I decided I like it and started reviewing it regularly. Looking back through my reviews, I realized that I found the show to be consistently great from halfway through season one until season five, right up until the point that Will died following an extraordinarily explosive and exciting change of pace with Alicia leaving the firm. While most considered that a creative resurgence, I think the show never got bad until after Josh Charles left the show. Unfortunately, following his departure things went downhill, and the show was never the same. The fact that the show ends on a note related to Peter and yet another corruption charge shows that it didn’t grow in the way that it should have, since by the time Alicia left to start her own firm, Peter and her standing by him was a distant memory. That all came back front and center in this season, and then there was Eli, a great character trapped in poor plotlines, shopping Alicia as a political candidate without letting her know for the umpteenth time. Scoring one year of parole without any jail time was huge, and I really don’t understand why everything had to be drudged up about Lloyd Garber’s guilt. It’s a weird note on which to end this show, and it also meant that Alicia, who was helping to defend a man to whom she didn’t want to marry, put Kurt on the chopping block and made Diane suffer as a result due to the public question about Kurt’s affair. Diane slapping her in the final moments of the episode was memorable and perfectly in character for her, but I don’t believe that Alicia would do that. Apparently, a spin-off with Diane and Lucca has officially been greenlit, which is puzzling to me since the political storylines are really all that had to be retired. Everything about them should remain the same, and I’m not sure why it needs to go on. I liked the addition of Cush Jumbo as Lucca and Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Jason this season, but I don’t feel that this show ended on the most satisfying note. I much prefer the earlier seasons and the direction in which the show used to be headed.

Series finale: B-
Series grade: B
Season MVP: Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Jason
Season grade: B-
Series MVP: Josh Charles as Will
Best Season: Season 2
Best Episode: Hybristophilia
Bonus: The Top Ten Episodes