The Good Wife, The Good Fight, and acting classes.
Over the past couple of weeks we’ve finished watching the final season of The Good Wife which has been entertaining, although I try not to think about whether it was worth using up over 100 hours of my life. We regularly rolled our eyes at obvious breaks with how-the-world-really-works in order to move the plot along, and groaned whenever something tedious was signalled in advance (oh no, Alicia’s going to fall for this guy… yawn). But we also cheered whenever a favourite character reappeared or Alicia got serious and kicked some ass (which didn’t happen often enough).
We’ve now progressed to the follow-on series, The Good Fight, and watched six of the ten episodes. It does at least make clear the strengths of its predecessor. I hadn’t realised how well Wife balanced Alicia’s storyline and those of all the supporting characters. Without her, and some of the other main characters, Fight feels a bit empty, like a vehicle continuing its journey despite the driver having got out. Series can work without a central character: Game of Thrones, Treme, E.R., etc. etc. But Fight, so far, feels like it’s struggling to find the balance. It’s not quite Diane’s story, or Maia’s story… but there aren’t enough other stories to make it a varied ensemble piece either.
Unfortunately, while Wife had occasionally unrealistic moments, episode six of Fight surpassed it by far. ChumHum, this universe’s Google/Facebook, gave a room full of lawyers a few hours to write the service’s acceptable use policy for its social media service. A room full of lawyers who obviously hadn’t given the issue a moment’s thought before. And then it got worse… any user who was automatically banned due to their posts could appeal, and the appeal involved two sessions arguing their case, in person, in Chicago, with a panel of the law firms’ partners. Something tells me this wouldn’t scale. Bizarre, especially when Wife was, compared to many shows, not terrible when it came to its tech-related storylines.
I kind of want to know how Maia gets on but otherwise little is grabbing me. What I really want is a spin-off following Elsbeth Tascioni’s practice, with Marissa Gold as her investigator. That would be so much fun.
Away from TV, and in the absence of any work at the moment, I’m doing a couple of acting classes a week. I’ve joined a course that’s part-way through, and which I did last year, learning the Meisner Technique. One class in, it’s enjoyable to be going over this again, now I don’t have to struggle so much with keeping all the new things straight in my mind.
I’m also doing occasional “drop in” classes, working on the first few pages of Uncle Vanya with a partner; I’ve spent some of this weekend learning my lines for our next class.
And that’s about it at the moment. Have a good week.
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