Goodnight, Good Wife
Alicia Florrick has come a long way from her “stand by your man” beginnings…
The Good Wife Season 7 Saturdays M-Net (*101) 20:00
There’s a moment in The Good Wife’s (2009-2016) series finale on 4 June that so perfectly captures what has kept our eyes locked on lawyer Alicia Florrick (Julianna Margulies) for seven seasons. US Attorney Connor Fox (Matthew Morrison), who is working to put Alicia’s estranged husband Peter (Chris Noth) behind bars, tries to establish a personal connection with her softer side by recalling the younger, funnier Alicia he first met years ago. Instead, she promises that in exchange for a year off Peter’s sentence, “I will work up a demure smile for you,” and produces a robotically creepy expression that’s pointedly hilarious. Yes, the younger Alicia seemed happier, but at the time she was disempowered and vulnerable. “The show opened with a woman who was naïve – not just about marriage, but about the world. When you see her at the end of the series, she is completely aware of what she’s doing. It’s on her terms,” says Julianna.
But an encounter with her longtime friend and mentor Diane Lockhart (Christine Baranski) as the episode ends shows the price of Alicia’s change, as Diane slaps her for deliberately discrediting Diane’s husband Kurt (Gary Cole) in court to save Peter. “We talked about the victim becomes the victimiser. And that’s really the circle that we see with Alicia,” says series co- creator Michelle King. Her co- creator and husband Robert King adds, “This show is about a woman who becomes more and more confident, cunning and excited about her abilities and power, so that slap is very similar to the slap [that Alicia gave Peter] at the start [of the series].” Both the Kings see Alicia’s story as a tragedy in the end. That may be why they sent Julianna a bottle of wine to down with her final script! Juliana reveals that she cracked it open after her fourth readthrough, saying “I knew I loved it and I knew it was brilliant, but emotionally, I felt shaky after reading it.” With the finale really being all about Alicia (with a little Josh Charles as Will sprinkled in), it’s not the kind of episode that celebrates the show we’ve come to love. So here are our favourite moments from when The Good Wife wasn’t just good, it was great… The finale cliffhanger gave us Alicia choosing standing by Peter in front of the press or answering Will’s phonecall. But the episode before that gave us something lighter and funnier when Alicia walked in on Lockhart/ Gardner’s creepiest killer client Colin Sweeney (Dylan Baker) handcuffed to a corpse. It was also the first appearance of kooky Elsbeth Tascioni (Carrie Preston) on Peter’s legal team.