Review: 'The Good Wife' - 'Pants on Fire': Stroke of genius
Matthew Perry returns and Alicia and Jackie battle for Peter's heart
Chris Noth in "The Good Wife."
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A quick review of last night's "The Good Wife" coming up just as soon as I give you a friendship bracelet...
"Pants on Fire" was a mix of satisfying moments and frustrating ones. Chief among the latter was Jackie taking a page out of the Livia Soprano playbook and faking a stroke to get her out of a jam involving her son. There are times when "The Good Wife" does an outstanding job of dealing in moral shades of grey, and other times when it paints its heroes and villains in stark black and white, and both Jackie and the Matthew Perry character were so clearly eeevil last night that their scenes were even accompanied by melodramatic string music just to be sure we got what a danger they posed to Alicia.
I also find that the longer this series is around, I enjoy its ripped-from-the-headlines stories far more when I'm unfamiliar with the headline in question, so doing a female spin on what happened to the three guys from the "Paradise Lost" documentary proved unsatisfying for me. The details were changed a lot, but when you start out from a point that's well-known to a viewer, it can be hard for that viewer to pay attention to the story as a story, and not as a series of divergences from the truth.
On the other hand, I thought all the Eli material was terrific this week, whether trying to get Alicia to let go of her righteous fury over Mike's lies or being stuck in a lousy position by the Democratic Party and choosing Peter over his ex.
What did everybody else think?
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Login or create a HitFix account Login SignupAdam B.
April 16, 2012 at 10:00AM EST Reply to CommentBest thing in the episode: Eli's bed-head.
Worst things: weak case-of-the-week. Truly messed-up timeline for gubernatorial campaign -- if it's a 2012 race, it's spring of 2011 by which point the serious candidates would have needed to start.
Stacie from St. Louis Eli's bed-head made me laugh out loud. LOVED that!
April 16, 2012 at 3:29PM ESTFran Eli's bed-head made me think of Alan Cumming in "Cabaret," which was... a weird juxtaposition.
April 17, 2012 at 8:18PM ESTblingbling
April 16, 2012 at 10:16AM EST Reply to CommentI think the toughest challenge for Alicia's character is trying to figure out how close to the dark side they want her to go without making her a villain or an idiot.
That struggle was apparent in the INFURIATING exchange with Eli over Matt Perry's character lying to her. I mean, what? This is a longtime political wife suddenly grappling with the notion that her estranged husband's future opponent might actually be attempting to USE her and other people close to her? Sometimes I think they have to sell Alicia's essential goodness with way too much naiveté.
Also, Alan, I share your frustration with the oversimplicity of the writing for Matt Perry and Mary Beth Peil's characters last night. If you give these two actors quality material, you get quality performances. Last night, they were both cartoons.
And I admit this is a strange nitpick, and I don't know if this is age or something else, but Matt Perry's voice sounds downright shrill. Not sure if its the lousy dialogue or age or if he's doing something to sound more Snidely Whiplash, but there's something really odd about it.
Two things I hope for: That there's more to Perry's character than what we've seen already and that if they're going to turn Alicia into a true player they do a better job than they did last night.
blingbling Oh, and as an Illinois resident, NICE Blago shout-out. Believe me, he's made us all proud.
April 16, 2012 at 10:19AM ESTscoopie77 Matthew Perry's had some health problems. Maybe it affected his voice. Or maybe he's trying hard not to sound like Chandler.
April 16, 2012 at 2:54PM ESTBrian I noticed it too. Is it possible that he is trying to do a Chicago accent and its just coming off really weird?
April 17, 2012 at 9:49AM ESTRamave He sounded the same way on Comedy Central's Comedy Awards recently too, so I doubt its a character and it is probably his voice. Don't know what it is, but it was kinda driving me crazy too. I thought it sounded almost lispy.
May 7, 2012 at 4:49PM ESTRyanT
April 16, 2012 at 10:28AM EST Reply to CommentI don't know that both Jackie and Matthew Perry were drawn THAT black and white. For Jackie, we have her whole history with Alicia to corroborate her very desperate actions now. As for Matthew Perry, maybe it's because I have zero faith in our politicians, but I look at him and think to myself "yup, he's a politician all right." Even Eli says, this is what people do. We'll probably get some shades on gray on his character yet like we got with Michael J. Fox's character, but for now he's acting like a typical politician who'd do anything to move one rung higher on the political ladder.
Steve Eli's great quote: 'People lie and politicians are people.' Only someone that political would try to compare a politician to the average man on the street.
April 17, 2012 at 12:38PM ESTSmigglesby
April 16, 2012 at 11:00AM EST Reply to CommentAlan - last paragraph it's Mike's lies not Joe's. Who's Joe?
Tejanisima If Alan's a West Winger - I'm too new to this party to know - he may have confused Matthew Perry's lawyer character with one he did on TWW, Joe Quincy. It has been fixed now, so I may have missed a comment where this was explained already.
July 22, 2012 at 6:53PM ESTjenfullmoon
April 16, 2012 at 11:07AM EST Reply to CommentYup, that was an ass-kicking episode. Which also forces Alicia back to being with Peter (on that stage again!). Seems a little weird that her sheer rage at Mike drove her to sign up for that/tell Peter to run, but the show has been slowly edging that way for awhile now, between the breakup with Will and the apartment debacle.
I was disappointed that for all her rage, Alicia never got anywhere with anybody. I had been looking forward to the confrontation with Jackie, but that was a fizzle. (Peter, on the other hand....go Peter!) And of course you can't get anywhere with Mike. Sometime I wonder if Alicia is ever allowed to kick a little ass or if she has to be "too nice" in those particular situations.
evolution1085
April 16, 2012 at 2:43PM EST Reply to CommentI've said this before, but the show's charisma factor jumps leaps and bounds when Chris Noth is available. I understand it's Marguilles' show, but the ambigious/wishwashy way they write alicia makes it difficult to connect with her, and I find myself wishing I could watch a show starring Noth, Cummings, Czucchry, and the rest of the state's attorneys office/Peter's political machinations.
scoopie77
April 16, 2012 at 2:43PM EST Reply to CommentThis is probably lame to ask, but when did Chris Noth get all that white hair? I don't recall that in his last appearance. I do love it though.
Stacie from St. Louis I thought the same thing!
April 16, 2012 at 3:31PM ESTnm
April 16, 2012 at 3:00PM EST Reply to CommentI don't think Jackie faked her heart attack or stroke or whatever it was; I think she worked herself up into such fury at Alicia and distress about Peter that she had a real one. I know people who do that sort of thing regularly, and hey use it as a "look what you did to me" sort of thing.
klg19 Jackie totally faked that stroke. Didn't you see the satisfied smile on her face after her "panicked" call to Alicia?
April 16, 2012 at 8:12PM ESTJ
April 16, 2012 at 3:32PM EST Reply to CommentWould the hospital go along with Jackie faking the stroke? Aren't there some identifiers in the blood work like there would be with a heart attack? It did seem like she was faking when Peter showed up at her hospital bed.
Where was the "Welcome back to the dark side" moment with Cary that has been in the commercials, or did I miss it?
Did anyone else catch the ironic humor between Eli and ex-wife? The actor that plays Eli (Alan Cumming) is bi-sexual...in the scene where he had the bed-head, his ex was ribbing him about "wanting to get back to his boys"
Kalinda always impresses, I wouldn't mind a spin-off where she was the primary character.
What was the reason why the 3 girls couldn't have separate trials?
txt
April 16, 2012 at 3:59PM EST Reply to Commenti quite enjoyed the episode, one of my favorites this season. i didn't have that much problem with the case this week because there's so much going on. For once in a long time, Eli finally had something to do other than bitching around for no reason.
Matthew Perry's character was already established to be pretty cutthroat in the previous episode, i don't find him particularly evil, just bending the truth to how he see fit. all politics. i don't find Jackie all that evil either, at least, not much different from before. she's showing Alicia who's in charge. it was probably a fake out, but after her scene with Peter, I could understand why she would be sick. I thought she would have an heart attack right then and there.
Rufus Jones
April 16, 2012 at 4:44PM EST Reply to CommentI find the "Ripped from the headlines" approach works a lot better if you con't make the dramatization really stupid. The thing that made the Alford plea so gut-wernching in the West Memphis Three case was that:
1. Jessie Miskelley, who sunk all three by making a false confession (he has has an IQ of 72 and he was grilled for hours by the police without his father or a lawyer present), was willing to do whatever the other two wanted.
2. Jason Baldwin wanted to go to trial again-- did not want to give the state the satisfaction of saying that all three were convicted-- but knew (he was a juvenile when the crime occurred) the worst he could get was life imprisonment.
3. Damien Echols (who was 18) had been sentenced to death and was willing to accept ANY deal that would free him, even if it required a guilty plea, a conviction of first and second degree murder and status as a felon (which makes it impossible to hold almost any really good job).
The show turned it into crap by blaming the trial result on the former prosecutor's ineptitude, finding the killer and making the villain a greedy lawyer.
And of course there isn't any question that Peter (who's only running for Governor) is prepared to free three perps who (for all the voters know) killed a pretty girl (and a member of a minority group).
Do these writers know that real DAs NENEVR let anyone walk this easily? 50 years after Sam Sheppard was arrested, Cuyahoga County wanted to pretend he was the guy.
The producers threw away what could have been a brilliant multi-layered, multi-episode arc because they wanted to give so much time to soapy stuff.
This is why HOUSE became unwatchable-- the less and less attention paid to the patient/defendent (the reason all the cast members are there), the less dramatic tension there is in the story. Nothing we see them do has any impact because nothing they do means anything. It's all just the B-story they use to hang the cast's manic hijinks on.
I get that most people don't know that there is no county or state party with the kind of juice they claim Cook County has (and I used to live there), but viewers perceive that something doesn't feel right and it adds to the general air of unreality.
THE OOOD WIFE likes to imagine that it is a cable drama, but it's a lot closer to being REVENGE than MAD MEN. It's sad to think that GAME OF THRONES'S Westeros seems more realistic than THE GOOD WIFE's Chicago.
(And, no, hospitals don't mind giving away a bed in the ICU if it helps a person run a con. Especially a Medicare patient-- it's not like the government makes a federal case out of this stuff).
klg19
April 16, 2012 at 8:19PM EST Reply to Comment'I enjoy its ripped-from-the-headlines stories far more when I'm unfamiliar with the headline in question, so doing a female spin on what happened to the three guys from the "Paradise Lost" documentary proved unsatisfying for me.'
See, I have no idea what you're talking about. I didn't realize it was a real case, and I've never heard of that documentary. So it didn't bother me.
Sybil
April 19, 2012 at 2:30PM EST Reply to CommentI didn't think Jackie was faking her stroke: but she certainly milked it for all it was worth. A very manipulative woman, that one.
CarolA
April 21, 2012 at 9:55AM EST Reply to CommentI love this show for all the reasons everyone else who loves it, loves it. HOWEVER, in real life I do not respect women who publicly stand beside their cheating politician husbands in front of the cameras with a weak smile, grinning and bearing it, only to help them get re-elected or beg public forgiveness. I respect women who choose to work on their marriages privately should they so chose, but Alicia repeatedly coming back to being Peter's doormat in that fashion doesn't ring true for this character. In the beginning as she grappled with Peter's behavior, yes. But she's come so far, only to now once again portray herself as his loving "wife"? It really ruins the show for me. I think Alicia needs to formally move on and Peter can stay in the picture as an antagonist on some level, but the character needs to make a break from him already.
Janet Hoffberg
May 6, 2012 at 12:39AM EST Reply to CommentThe producers really need work on Matthew Perry's accent. He looks and sounds like he was the one who had the stroke.