(no subject)
Oct. 23rd, 2022 11:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretThe final season of the Good Fight is conceived in an apocalyptic mood. It represents the well-advertised ending of the show, but it is also advertising that it represents the ending of so much more. All of the illusions about the law that anchored The Good Wife are collapsing. As a casual aside, Eli Gold tosses out in Episode 3 that Peter Florrick has managed to find himself back in jail. It's a sort of meta-joke about the idea of closure. They're bringing back a ton of old characters, both from The Good Wife as well as earlier seasons of the Good Fight. Why? To say goodbye to them, but also... to Say Good Bye To Them. The world is ending.
Season 5 ended in a spasm of violence... as I observed at the time, the siege on Judge Wackner's court recognizably represented a literal pogrom, with Wackner (not identifiably Jewish, but played by Mandy Patinkin) and the Jewish Marissa Gold cowering in a closet as Nazis and Nazi wannabes trash his courthouse, in unambiguous parody of 1/6. This transitions into shots of violence spreading across the country on more and more screens until they're nigh uncountable. The virus of nihilism that has haunted the show from its famous opening shot, a nihilism taken to a new level in Season 5's narrative of the quiet overthrow of the court system by Judge Wackner's Courtroom 9 3/4, spreading uncontrollably.
Season 6 understands Season 5's conclusion as merely a spasm of violence, an apparent blip, another January 6th. Wackner is out of the story, Marissa has moved on with her life. The lawyers of Reddick and Associates are living upper middle class lives, not acting like they're living in a war zone.
But they ARE living in a war zone! Dozens of stories below their law office, unspecific protests wage on, increasingly violently as the season progresses. Fake grenades clearly presage real grenades to follow. A car bomb resounds above Diane's head. An assassination leads to large sections of Chicago being locked down by the police. Episode 6 ends with a dead body falling outside Diane's window. Nobody seems clear on what the protesters are protesting, whether it is right wing ('The Militia') or left wing ('Antifa') or something else. The protest isn't the point, the violence is the point. Reddick and Associates are pretending to be lawyers while the law doesn't matter.
This is something the show has feinted towards before, but I think this time it's real. There's much less cost to them swinging big because the finale is nigh. They've come up to the edge of this before, but always pulled back. This time I don't think they're pulling back.
Episode 4 is about many things, but one of the things it is about is what it's like being Jewish in the midst of massive political violence. Eli Gold stands in the bathroom next to Frank Landau- a Chicago political landmark we remember well from The Good Wife as a sometime rival and sometime ally of Peter Florrick. Suddenly a man runs in with a gun and shoots, shouting "Die, Eli Gold, you fucking Jew." Yet he shoots and kills the goyish Landau, missing Gold. Somehow this is almost worse for Eli. At the end of the episode Marissa hugs her father and sees him into a car and then quietly recites Tefilat Haderech, the prayer for a dangerous journey, as in the background protesters shout The Jews Will Not Replace Us. That chorus, along with other white supremacist anthems, recurs in subsequent episodes. Welcome to the apocalypse that is happening now.
Legal procedurals are called legal procedurals because they follow a process. And the process works because all of the principals of the show believe in the process... at its core, the law works toward justice. The Good Fight has never particularly been a show that believed in the process, which has led to many deviations from the procedural formula over the years, but at its core the show has had most of the structure of a procedural, and it has ultimately obeyed the genre rules it has threatened to violate. The characters have tested what it was like to act outside the law- Maia's flirtation with Roland Blum, some of Carmen's work, Marissa and Courtroom 9 3/4... but largely they've remained tethered to the legal system. But the end of Episode 5 shows Jay flirting with organized armed resistance, completely giving up on the law in a way you never see in shows like this, or at least, you never see it portrayed as a moral choice.
I almost can't believe it, but... the show has to be heading into absolute all out civil war as its finale, right? It's stunning, I've never seen a procedural do the things The Good Fight dares to do.
Season 5 ended in a spasm of violence... as I observed at the time, the siege on Judge Wackner's court recognizably represented a literal pogrom, with Wackner (not identifiably Jewish, but played by Mandy Patinkin) and the Jewish Marissa Gold cowering in a closet as Nazis and Nazi wannabes trash his courthouse, in unambiguous parody of 1/6. This transitions into shots of violence spreading across the country on more and more screens until they're nigh uncountable. The virus of nihilism that has haunted the show from its famous opening shot, a nihilism taken to a new level in Season 5's narrative of the quiet overthrow of the court system by Judge Wackner's Courtroom 9 3/4, spreading uncontrollably.
Season 6 understands Season 5's conclusion as merely a spasm of violence, an apparent blip, another January 6th. Wackner is out of the story, Marissa has moved on with her life. The lawyers of Reddick and Associates are living upper middle class lives, not acting like they're living in a war zone.
But they ARE living in a war zone! Dozens of stories below their law office, unspecific protests wage on, increasingly violently as the season progresses. Fake grenades clearly presage real grenades to follow. A car bomb resounds above Diane's head. An assassination leads to large sections of Chicago being locked down by the police. Episode 6 ends with a dead body falling outside Diane's window. Nobody seems clear on what the protesters are protesting, whether it is right wing ('The Militia') or left wing ('Antifa') or something else. The protest isn't the point, the violence is the point. Reddick and Associates are pretending to be lawyers while the law doesn't matter.
This is something the show has feinted towards before, but I think this time it's real. There's much less cost to them swinging big because the finale is nigh. They've come up to the edge of this before, but always pulled back. This time I don't think they're pulling back.
Episode 4 is about many things, but one of the things it is about is what it's like being Jewish in the midst of massive political violence. Eli Gold stands in the bathroom next to Frank Landau- a Chicago political landmark we remember well from The Good Wife as a sometime rival and sometime ally of Peter Florrick. Suddenly a man runs in with a gun and shoots, shouting "Die, Eli Gold, you fucking Jew." Yet he shoots and kills the goyish Landau, missing Gold. Somehow this is almost worse for Eli. At the end of the episode Marissa hugs her father and sees him into a car and then quietly recites Tefilat Haderech, the prayer for a dangerous journey, as in the background protesters shout The Jews Will Not Replace Us. That chorus, along with other white supremacist anthems, recurs in subsequent episodes. Welcome to the apocalypse that is happening now.
Legal procedurals are called legal procedurals because they follow a process. And the process works because all of the principals of the show believe in the process... at its core, the law works toward justice. The Good Fight has never particularly been a show that believed in the process, which has led to many deviations from the procedural formula over the years, but at its core the show has had most of the structure of a procedural, and it has ultimately obeyed the genre rules it has threatened to violate. The characters have tested what it was like to act outside the law- Maia's flirtation with Roland Blum, some of Carmen's work, Marissa and Courtroom 9 3/4... but largely they've remained tethered to the legal system. But the end of Episode 5 shows Jay flirting with organized armed resistance, completely giving up on the law in a way you never see in shows like this, or at least, you never see it portrayed as a moral choice.
I almost can't believe it, but... the show has to be heading into absolute all out civil war as its finale, right? It's stunning, I've never seen a procedural do the things The Good Fight dares to do.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-10-23 06:59 pm (UTC)Nevertheless, this is the kind of review that makes me sit up and take notice. Thank you for that.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-10-23 07:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2022-10-24 09:02 pm (UTC)I am reasonably certain when the finale airs, I'm going to go all the way back to S1E1 and watch it through again.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-10-25 02:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2022-10-25 03:15 pm (UTC)I hope the same because that would be deeply disappointing. I don't think they would? They've taken a lot of big swings they haven't walked back so far.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-10-25 08:37 pm (UTC)I think it's much better storytelling if it's the opposite, if they've been using their flirtations with All-A-Dream as devices to set up just how weird reality has become, but... we'll see.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-10-31 01:17 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2022-10-31 02:04 am (UTC)I was yelling bc I'd just been lamenting how the plot seemed to have dropped the "courtrooms" arc! VERY EXCITED.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-10-31 02:11 am (UTC)Also DAVID LEE. I seriously made a squealing noise when he showed up, and Zach Grenier played him turned up to 11 for the whole damned episode.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-10-31 02:14 am (UTC)