Wife is Good

With political sex scandals seemingly cropping up every couple of months, it was only a matter of time before someone took the opportunity to use this scenario as the basis for a TV show. In CBS’s The Good Wife, Julianna Margulies plays Alicia Florrick, mother of two teenagers and wife to State’s Attorney Peter (Chris Noth), caught on tape having sex with a hooker and jailed for abuse of office. Left as the breadwinner, Alicia decides to go back to being a lawyer, a job she abandoned thirteen years ago to focus on her family.

After more than fifty years, the legal drama formula doesn’t offer much in the way of surprises. These days, you know that the twist is coming, it’s only a matter of when. On that front, The Good Wife is no different; a murder case is turned on the discovery of a doctored video, a rape case hinges on a contaminated DNA sample. Yet with Alicia working hard to defend her clients (and Margulies working just as hard at combining strength and sympathy), the cases still prove stimulating.

What really makes The Good Wife more than a spinster variation on a theme is the excellent cast. In addition to Margulies (playing her second lawyer in two years, though she’s much softer here than she was on Fox’s brief but promising Canterbury’s Law), we are treated to the wonderfully haughty Christine Baranski (Cybill), whose clipped line readings never get tired; and Josh Charles, bringing the same air of confidence he exuded on the still lamented Sports Night.

Thus far the series strikes a nice balance between the court cases and examining the effect that Peter’s dalliances are having on the Florrick family. How do you shield your kids from a scandal that dominated the news? Does Alicia, the dutiful, “good” wife continue to stand by her man even as there's a chance he could be released on appeal? As the headlines have shown, politics are hard enough to deal with when they’re left in the office, and the answers don't come any easier when they’re brought inside the home.