YMMV / The Good Wife

• Adorkable: For all her composure and classical beauty, whenever Alicia gets flustered or genuinely, unexpectedly happy, she shows an almost childlike glee that is very cute, as opposed to her more typical subdued nature.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Alicia Florrick:
    • Is she a noble, hardworking, single mother who faces adversity with integrity and honesty? Or is she an inconsiderate Jerkass who believes justice is sternly the law and constantly indulges in kicking or shooting the proverbial dog?
    • Was she really in love with Will? She seems to think so after his death, but when they broke off the affair, she tells Owen that she was mostly in love with the idea of Will. Star-crossed lovers whose timing stayed terrible, or unhappy people dreaming of their unrealistically perfect relationship?
  • In "Ham Sandwich", Lemond Bishop's wife's lawyer (and implied lover) angrily confronts Bishop and accuses him of having her killed after she conveniently dies in the middle of their divorce proceedings, only for David Lee to quickly move to shut him up. Was Lee simply trying to silence the man making incriminatory accusations towards his client, or, in a rare Pet the Dog moment, was he preventing him from revealing that he was sleeping with Bishop's wife and getting himself killed?
• Arc Fatigue:
  • Blake investigating Kalinda. The producers admitted that Scott Porter’s schedule forced them to drag the story out longer than they’d planned.
  • Alicia and Kalinda’s reconciliation. Taking a year might have worked for realism’s sake, but without their chemistry as a cornerstone the whole third season suffered.
  • How many times can Colin Sweeney go back and forth over whether he killed his wife? Though it finally gets confirmed by his third wife after Alicia gets her acquitted of murder.
  • Kalinda being stalked and harassed by her ex-husband Nick. It doesn't help that the storyline followed the same beats of Kalinda rebuffing him and the two threatning each other until they ended up sleeping together or him getting violently jealous of someone over and over again.
  • Louis Canning constantly coming back to antagonize the firm.
  • Alicia’s election storyline in Season 6.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: Elsbeth Tascioni, who's easily distracted by things surrounding her and led to flights of fancy by them.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Elsbeth Tascioni became an instant fan favorite for her quirky behaviour, Nice Girl personality and surprising skill as an attorney, which lead to her returning in a bigger role on The Good Fight and, later, being given her own spin-off show, Elsbeth.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Eli cracking about the various candidates in an early 2016 episode with "I don't know, I never thought Trump would get this far."
  • "The Debate" is about protests in Chicago over the Ferguson case and alleged police brutality against black people. Less than a year later, real-world Chicago had its own problems in that area.
  • In "VIP Treatment," a woman comes in accusing a powerful pro-female left-wing man of sexual impropriety. Leftist Diane is a fan, and struggles to not rationalize it away. ^note Diane is partially based on Hillary Clinton, with the obvious comparisons to Bill's indescretions. From 2017 to 2018, a number of sexual impropriety accusation scandals broke with big-name Hollywood leftists, including James Franco and Louis CK^note who has certain routines which are very popular with feminists, but he doesn't personally identify as feminist. Also, there were a number of lower-profile incidents with male feminists, including one alleged murder. Unlike Diane, the feminist community's response to these scandals was basically complete and unequivocal condemnation.
  • In the pilot, Kalinda asks Alicia why she stayed with Peter after the scandal, then says she'd "stick a knife in his back" if her husband got caught in a cheating scandal. This seems less hyperbolic midway through Season 4, when Kalinda's abusive husband shows up, causes trouble for a few episodes, and then mysteriously disappears without a trace.
  • Many things regarding Peter after Chris Noth was accused of sexual assault.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Jackie, who reveals in the Season 7 episode "Cooked," that her mother hated her laughter and made her eat a clove of garlic whenever she did. Suddenly her behaviour makes so much more sense.
  • Howard may or may not be this in Season 7—he’s incredibly incompetent (or, as it’s implied, just plain lazy), but he keeps suffering ageist harassment, apparently so bad that in "Payback," he shows Diane and Cary the adult diaper with the inscription ‘PROPERTY OF HOWARD LYMAN’ and the catheter in his drawers. Cary speculates he probably put them there himself. Though during this arc, Howard actually starts to work to earn his keep.
  • Glenn Childs, after his Villain Decay.
• Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: Colin Sweeney may be a creepy wife-killer, but he provides plenty of Black Comedy. Lemond Bishop is a murderous drug kingpin, but he's also effortlessly suave and charming and a good father. Amoral Attorneys like Louis Canning and Patti Nyholm use dirty tactics and represent very shady clients, but they're ultimately shown to be Affably Evil Punch-Clock Villains. Peter Florrick, on the other hand, is far more hated than any of these characters for being a lying, hypocritical serial cheater who always tries to manipulate Alicia into forgiving him.
• Les Yay: Almost canonical, albeit perhaps one-sided, between Alicia and Kalinda; at one point in Season 4, Kalinda’s estranged husband hears Kalinda on the telephone, and concludes, based on her tone of voice, that she is having an affair with the person on the other end of the line. Of course, he also concludes that the person is Cary, with whom Alicia shares an office, but we, the audience, know that it was really Alicia.
• Magnificent Bastard:
  • Kalinda Sharma, born Leela Tahiri, is Lockhart/Gardner’s investigator and plays a vital role in the vast majority of the cases the firm wins. Kalinda excels in using her charm, sexuality and acting skills to gain access to crime scenes, uncover evidence and track down witnesses. While showing Undying Loyalty to her friends, Kalinda is absolutely ruthless towards her enemies. She frames Blake Calamar for having an affair with drug kingpin Lemond Bishop’s wife, and Damien Boyle for having betrayed his former clients in the mob, forcing both men to leave town or be killed, and she is heavily implied to have murdered her abusive husband Nick Savarese. When Alicia Florrick and Cary Agos leave Lockhart/Gardner to form their own firm, Kalinda expertly plays both sides, using Cary’s interest in hiring her to get a pay raise from Lockhart/Gardner, and manipulating Cary’s feelings for her to gain important information about Florrick/Agos. Kalinda brings about Bishop’s downfall by stealing the evidence needed to put him in prison from his computer, accomplishing in a matter of days what the authorities had failed to do for years, before calmly skipping town to avoid retribution. Unmatched in her field, Kalinda proves her worth time and time again as one of Lockhart/Gardner’s most valuable employees, arguably even more so than their lawyers.
  • Lemond Bishop is Chicago’s top drug kingpin and a top client of Lockhart/Gardner and later Florrick/Agos. A suave and eloquent man, Bishop has used his charisma and intelligence to remain one step ahead of the authorities for years, while establishing a chain of successful legitimate businesses with his drug money and making plans to retire from the game altogether. When Bishop suspects that there is a leak in Florrick/Agos, he cunningly feeds the mole and correctly determines that Alicia’s phone is being tapped. Hiding a terrifying ruthlessness beneath his friendly demeanour, Bishop is implied to have ordered his wife’s death while making it look like a drug overdose to prevent her from gaining custody of their son in their divorce, intimidates witnesses, including his own sister, and is the only person shown to be capable of genuinely frightening Kalinda Sharma. When he is finally arrested, Bishop’s only concern is that his son would have to witness this, as Bishop has endeavoured to shield him from his criminal life.
  • Louis Canning is one of Lockhart/Gardner’s most frequent and brilliant adversaries. Canning defends pharmaceutical corporations from lawsuits for developing unsafe medicines, and employs many dirty tactics in court, his favorite of which is to milk his tardive dyskinesia for sympathy from judges and juries. In his first appearance, despite being outargued in court, Canning gets the last laugh when he reveals that Lockhart/Gardner had underestimated the value of their case, allowing him to negotiate a settlement of less than half the lawsuit’s worth. Canning later teams up with Patti Nyholm to distract Lockhart/Gardner with a Frivolous Lawsuit and steal their top client, driving the firm into bankruptcy and almost putting them out of business altogether. Canning also schemes with David Lee to merge his firm with Lockhart/Gardner and ruin Diane’s attempts to merge with Florrick/Agos, ultimately driving Diane out of her own firm. Effortlessly charming and a loving family man outside of his work, Canning’s skill as an attorney is matched only by his wit and unfailing respect for Alicia’s own skills.
  • Patti Nyholm is a devious and brilliant lawyer opposed to Lockhart/Gardner. A highly skilled advocate capable of going toe-to-toe with Will Gardner in court, Patti’s unsavory clients include insurance companies and hospitals refusing to provide desperately needed emergency medical care, and she often uses stall tactics to pressure the opposition in these time-sensitive cases. When fired by her firm, Patti uses Lockhart/Gardner to bring a lawsuit against them, illegally feeding Lockhart/Gardner inside information on active cases in order to force her firm to give her job back. She is then able to return armed with inside information on future cases against Lockhart/Gardner, which Will cannot call her out for illegally using without himself admitting to perjury and risking his own disbarment. Patti later teams up with Louis Canning to steal Lockhart/Gardner’s top client. Despite appearing in only five episodes, Patti remains one of Lockhart/Gardner’s most memorable and formidable opponents.
• Narm: The scenes in Season 6 where Alicia and Kalinda actually spoke to each other earned this response from some. A few people noted that it looked as though the two shot their scenes at different times or on different stages, possibly as a result of the apparent feud between Margulies and Panjabi.
• Paranoia Fuel: Watching "The Week After" probably compelled more than a few people to put tape over their webcams. Also invoked In-Universe—the last scene involves Zack closing his webcam program just to make sure the green light goes out.
• Real Life Writes the Plot:
  • Josh Charles decided to leave the show, so the writers killed off Will in a sudden courthouse shooting. Though unlike most cases of this trope, the decision was made a year in advance, so the Kings constructed Season 5 to set up for it.
  • Somehow averted: Something happened behind the scenes (very little is known about it) leading to Archie Panjabi and Julianna Margulies not appearing onscreen at the same time for over 50 episodes. Normally, the Kings would have adapted the storyline and found a reason why the characters are never seen together anymore, but the show is pretending that Kalinda and Alicia are still close friends, which is quite jarring.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Nicole Beharie recurred as an AUSA before becoming Lt. Abbie Mills.
  • Cary's incest-y cousin in "Nine Hours" became Supergirl.
  • Rachel Brosnahan played the class-action plaintiff from "Poisoned Pill" before breaking out as The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.
  • Homeless conspiracy theorist Onya from "Taking Control" became The Mother.
• The Scrappy: Kalinda’s ex-husband Nick, a violent homophobe involved in shady dealings, who spends his screen time stalking her, trying to have sex with her, and getting jealous of whoever she’s with. On top of this his actor chews the scenery like there's no tomorrow, while scenes with him tend to both drag on and have no importance to what’s going on with any of the other characters. Hatred of him was so high that the character was shuttled off the show for a few episodes and then quickly Killed Off for Real after he came back.
• Seasonal Rot:
  • Season 3 was considered a slight letdown from Season 2, featuring a more unfocused overall arc. Season 4’s first few episodes continued this trend with a storyline involving Kalinda’s husband that many fans disliked. Luckily, the second half of Season 4 and all of Season 5 rebounded from this greatly.
  • Season 6 earned accusations of this. Some criticisms included the lengthiness of Alicia’s election storyline (with very little payoff), the decision to shunt Cary to the sidelines midway through the season after giving his trial so much focus and weight early on, and the season finale introducing Louis Canning as a potential player ready to start a firm with Alicia, echoing the end of Season 4, where Cary did the same thing. Additionally, the apparent bad blood between Julianna Margulies and Archie Panjabi working its way into the show’s real-life plotting earned particular scorn, with some criticizing the show's attempt to elicit a passionate response toward Alicia and Kalinda’s friendship when the two hadn't been shown in the same frame with one another all season long.
• Shocking Moments: As the name would indicate, "Hitting the Fan." Also, Will’s sudden death, and the fallout from it.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Many of the secondary characters at Florrick-Agos disappear without a trace at the start of Season 6. Most notably, Clark Hayden's final appearance is in the Season 5 finale, while Robyn Burdine vanishes after the second episode of Season 6.
  • Taye Diggs has a four episode appearance in Season 6 as a prominent lawyer who Diane brought with her as she joined Florrick-Agos. Much is made of him, and yet he disappears as suddenly as he came, without a word said about where or why he'd vanished.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • After an entire season's worth of build up to her being elected, Alicia is forced to resign as State's Attorney before trying a single case, despite the huge story potential having her in this role could bring, especially with the potential for her to come into direct conflict with the firm she built or former clients like Lemond Bishop and Colin Sweeney.
  • At the start of Season 7, there was a new associate at the firm who mistook Cary's attempt to bond with the younger associates as flirtation. This generated some buzz about Cary being bisexual, which, given Kalinda's departure, some fans were happy to see as a possible storyline. However, it turned out to go nowhere, and the associate disappeared for several episodes, only to return, threaten to go to work with Canning, and get fired with his compatriots, with no mention of what happened between him and Cary, effectively ending any chance of that happening.
  • When Alicia calls the judge Jason punched to ask him about what happened, he tells her that Jason is a sociopath and a ticking time-bomb who she should stay far away from. This rather ominous statement is never brought up again, even as Alicia and Jason end up becoming romantically involved.
• Win Back the Crowd: As mentioned above, while Season 3 dropped a bit in quality, the second half of Season 4 (with episodes like "Red Team, Blue Team," "Death of a Client," and "What’s in the Box?") and all of Season 5 (particularly the show’s 100th episode, "Hitting the Fan"), have received widespread acclaim.
• The Woobie:
  • Alicia, at least until getting together with Will. And then Will dies, plunging Alicia straight back into this territory.
  • Diane Lockhart in Season 5. Peter screws her over and denies her the judgeship she always wanted. Her best friend dies. Lee and Canning plot to remove her as managing partner of her own company.
  • By "The Trial," Cary, once the defense and Lemond Bishop finally force him into pleading guilty and going to prison for 2 years. Fortunately, Kalinda arranges for him to be spared, but she has to leave his life, and Chicago, for good.

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