Tonight’s episode of The Good Wife is understandably a little shaggy. After a few episodes that have been building up and then playing out a narrative crescendo, “The Material World” plinks and plonks a hasty movement before the planned resolution. It’s an hour with strong moments, but it’s not a strong episode.
And, unfortunately, a lot of those strong moments were telegraphed in The Good Wife’s promos, including the one that immediately followed “Dramatics, Your Honor.” One is Diane Lockhart shoving David Lee’s preening David Lee-ness back into his face. The other is Alicia Florrick finally admitting to herself and Peter what she could never admit to Will—that she was in love with Will, and that it did matter, and it made everything different. It’s not exactly a spoiler when the studio just shows you what’s going to happen—and CBS seems anxious to keep viewers around now that its handsome male lead has bitten the dust. But it did mean the punches of “The Material World” felt a little pulled, even though it, like all episodes of The Good Wife, is nuanced and fantastic.
What I like about The Good Wife, especially in this fifth season, is that the arc of each episode is rarely predictable. In that way, it’s markedly different from a lot of legal procedurals—notably, Law And Order, which is so predictable you could set your watch by it. (Minute 11: The wrong suspect is questioned. Minute 34: The detectives return to question the suspiciously famous guest-star. Minute 41: Justice is served.) Instead, especially as it’s matured, The Good Wife flouts expectation. So if I hadn’t been looking for those moments in the promo, I’m not sure I would have seen them coming. It works well here, as the show is trying to capture the abrupt, unexpected grieving process—the storyline, like Alicia’s behavior, is erratic.
I feel like I’ve run out of ways to describe Julianna Margulies’ performance as Alicia—I’ve used “scintillating” and “transformative” already, haven’t I?—but “The Material World” is another brilliant showcase of it. The directors of The Good Wife (tonight, it was Griffin Dunne) have gotten into the habit of relying on Alicia’s face to tell part of the story—because Margulies can always sell it. The episode starts with Diane and Alicia getting sloppy drunk on martinis after the funeral, and one of the many things that Alicia says, apparently as a throwaway line, is that her mother wants her to “loosen up and get laid.” Naturally, I agree with her mother’s advice. But the line is clue to the rest of the hour. Alicia is always holding everything in—tamping down any inconvenient feelings and maintaining an icy façade. The Good Wife, the show, is about life breaking down Alicia Florrick. First, Peter’s scandals. Then the shame of not finding work, and the shame of staying with Peter. Struggling for money. Struggling in their marriage.