I’ve written before about how The Good Fight shares problems with The Good Wife, so I thought it’d be only fair if I went over its strengths, and since it’s me, I’ll also sprinkle in some criticisms here and there because every positive note to this show seems to be a double-edged sword if you analyze it as excessively as I do.

The Guest Stars

The Good Universe has always had a great list of guest stars, and it’s fantastic that this tradition didn’t stop with the spin-off series. Old guests like Carrie Preston and Matthew Perry (who didn’t get to complete his storyline in the original series) are standouts, but new players like Jane Lynch have just as much potential. The downfall to having so many great guest stars is the inevitable disappointment that comes with the writers not being able to create stories for them, leading to a situation where a lot of them just sort of… disappear. It’s jarring when so much weight and importance is placed on an arc, only for it to dissipate into nothingness later on.

Grabbed From The Headlines Stories

These generally aren’t the best Good Universe episodes, but they are the most fascinating. Little windows into the minds behind this show, their “hot takes” and personal feelings on a real life case or issue that bleed into the show through their characters. The writing team is clearly liberal, but they’re deeply self-effacing and critical of liberal culture, especially in Fight. Flaws to this approach to storytelling are apparent with the election of Trump, who so obviously changed the course of the season the showrunners were creating that it often felt jarring. For example, did we really need to bring back Julius Cain just to make him a black Trump voter? If you’re going to have a black Trump voter, don’t just have one to have one, say something about it.

A Sense of Fun

You’d think a show with premise of The Good Wife wouldn’t be as funny or lighthearted as it frequently was, but you’d be wrong, especially as the series grew older. The sense of fun and frantic energy that buoyed me through even the most nonsensical storylines remains in the spin-off. Sure, sometimes the jokes can be way off the mark (like with an old man who has too much trouble hearing for it to be feasible that he has the job that he does), there’s still that indescribable pace and content that is the Good universe.

There was a version of this article that was a lot longer, more detailed, and probably better edited, but since my laptop randomly shut off while I was typing it and for some reason nothing saved, I got screwed. The lesson here is to manually save often kids, auto-save is a crutch that will betray you in the end. Also, watch The Good Fight, it’s really great and has a lot of fun episodes and characters. Adrian is the new Will Gardner!

Quote of the Day:

“I’m-I am so sorry to disappoint you. I’m so sorry.”

Henry Rindell, Maia’s bitchley father. The Good Fight.