The Good Wife’s Awesome Season 2 Revelation, or, I Don’t Even Care What You Think, Haters!!!!

I’m writing down my thoughts on one of the major plot developments of the second season of The Good Wife because it was so damn awesome, and if you haven’t watched it or can’t deal with it or think you don’t care, then don’t click the “Read More –>”

SPOILERS FOR THE END OF THE SECOND SEASON FOLLOW.

I MEAN IT.

YOU WANT TO WATCH THIS SEASON UNSPOILED.

BECAUSE THE END IS GOOD.

REALLY.

UNLESS MY SAYING SO WILL RAISE YOUR EXPECTATIONS AND MAKE YOU ENJOY IT LESS.

IN WHICH CASE, IT SUCKS.

Like I said in my review of the first season, my favourite part of The Good Wife  is the relationship between the titular character, Alicia, and the in-house private detective, Kalinda. I wanted to write that Kalinda is one of my favourite characters, but that’s not true: Kalinda is my very favourite character when she’s with Alicia or doing something that has to do with Alicia. When she’s not, enh, she’s interesting, but it’s the dynamic between the two of them that really hits all the right buttons for me.

As you may have noticed, I am a super-duper sucker for characters who really care about other people but have trouble identifying or expressing it. Hence the love for Snape, Holmes, House, etc., even though they’re such jerkwads. Part of what I love about The Good Wife is how it has a character like this — Kalinda — who not only is still a total super problem-solver bad@$$ genius but is also female and queer*. And I like how she’s in tune with her physically intimate side but not her emotionally intimate side.

So what sells The Good Wife — what made me stay up watching my DVD set until almost 3am when I’d planned to go to bed at midnight — is the way the show demonstrates that Kalinda cares more about Alicia than she does about any other character we’ve met. We’re not sure about a lot of things about Kalinda, and sometimes they’re annoying and/or boring: why she works at Lockhart-Gardner; whether we’re supposed to believe that she just likes sexual relationships or that she’s playing some of her partners for professional benefits; what’s the deal with her name change and move from Toronto where she apparently had a husband (?). But we’re sure that she’s in Alicia’s corner and that she genuinely respects and cares about her as much as we, the viewers, do.

And I think the writers handled the bombshell in the final third of the second season beautifully: we learn that Kalinda had a one-night stand with Alicia’s husband, Peter, while she worked for him at the State’s Attorney’s office.

It was beautifully set up: there were so many WTF-is-Kalinda’s-deal moments all through the season, where the new private investigator poking around into her past got her mad enough to smash up his car and then him. In the first season, the way Kalinda acted with Peter when she went to visit him in prison and the look on her face when Alicia asked, “Did you sleep with my husband?” and she answered, “No” made the plot point very plausible.

Indeed, part of what made the set-up so great was that it wasn’t about unleashing this big surprise on the audience. It wasn’t like we hadn’t expected something like this to come out. What was a surprise was the focus of the reveal: it wasn’t just about OMG — poor Alicia. It was also about OMG — and poor Kalinda too.

The episode after Alicia finds out, she confronts Peter, which makes sense but was also frustrating. Because I don’t care about whether she and Peter can work things out. She doesn’t need him — he needs her. But Kalinda — she and Alicia do need each other.

And what I think is absolutely the most fantastic writing and acting the show has pulled off (so far! yay!) is the confrontation between the two women after Alicia finds out. It’s done so that the viewer feels upset and sad for both of them. Sad for Alicia, because she’s been wronged here, because she just found out that this woman she trusted lied to her for over two years and probably became friends with her out of guilt, and because now who has she got in her corner? Nobody.

And we feel sad for Kalinda because we see that she alone out of all the characters on the show who have done wrong has honestly repented. She’s genuinely sorry, not just sorry she got caught, and she’s changed her behaviour based on what she’s learned. She’d obviously do anything to be able to undo what happened, and not because she wants something from Alicia like political support or a relationship or help, but because she can’t stand having hurt someone she cares about. Maybe at first she did approach Alicia out of guilt, but however their friendship started, it grew into something real.

We also feel sad for Kalinda because although she isn’t the wronged party, she’s been hurt just as bad. I love the way Archie Panjabi plays the scene so for the first time in two seasons, we see how terrified and anguished Kalinda is — how  she leaves Alicia’s office wordless only to literally stagger into the elevator and bawl. And it’s especially sad because this is the way it’s gotta be — because there’s nothing Kalinda can do, no explanation or excuse that can make this better. She messed up. She shot her arrow over the house and hurt her brother. No amount of being sorry can take it back.

That’s the kind of adult conflict that The Good Wife‘s writers make look so easy but that’s so tough to make work and so heart-wrenchingly effective (and affective, I guess) when it does. What I love about this scenario is how clear it is that Alicia is blameless and Kalinda has behaved badly — how justified it is that their friendship should dissolve — but how sad it is nevertheless. It’s such brilliant writing to achieve this kind of cognitive dissonance in the viewer; I don’t want Alicia to forgive Kalinda because neither woman deserves that, but I also don’t want Alicia not to forgive Kalinda because neither woman deserves that. There’s no single right answer, no equilibrium, and that’s what makes this story so engrossing.

* I use this term not to try to label Kalinda’s sexuality, because the show does a good job of forcing the viewer not to do that and to instead take her actions for what they are. Instead, I’m trying to indicate how refreshing it is to have a super cool awesome character who sometimes happens to have sexual relationships with people of the same gender. (In a way that’s about her and not about another character being all like, “Wow, you are so hot, what with the two ladies making out and all.” or, “I love you, and it is the tragedy of the universe that you like chicks instead of me, a man.” or even “You are not 100% straight hetero, and because your sexuality is the only characteristic of yours that matters, now all other plot and characterization must stop so we can make A BIG HONKING DEAL about it!”)