The Good Fight Season 3

[JirinPanthosa]

Is anyone else watching the new season of The Good Fight as it rolls out?

I liked the premiere. Diane going further Trump-insane, arguing with a Trump face on her husband's buckshot wound. Taking on MeToo by having a now deceased former name partner accused of coercive sex, taking on NDAs in the process.

I particularly liked Melissa giving Maia "Badass short girl" training.

 

[Snaploud]

I'm still enjoying this show. I agree that the 'badass short girl' training was the highlight of the episode.

 

[Charles Phipps]

I'm excited for more of this show.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I'm excited about where the abortion thing is going.

I like how a show that unambiguously takes the side against Trump also lampoons the hysteria on the anti-Trump side a little bit. Diane literally going insane, seeing Trump everywhere, rationalizing backstabbing a frightened woman because paying for an abortion may just be the one thing that makes his core supporters turn on him.

And the thing they picked, Trump paying for an abortion, is one thing that's both plausible and something that would have the whole liberal side salivating.

 

[Snaploud]

I'm not sure which ending I want more: a) Diane finding out that the Trump mistress is a delusion or b) Diane coming to grips with her hallucinations, assuming the Trump mistress is just another delusion, and then finding out that the Trump mistress was real all along (immediately followed by absolutely nobody on the religious right caring about the story one iota).

 

[Guy Gardener]

Diane played Melania on Colbert the other night.

I liked it when she thought Lucus Buck was cheating on her with a sexy blonde.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I don't think the Trump mistress is a delusion, but I think she's going to destroy her life, it's going to have major professional consequences, and it's going to end up not even slightly hurting Trump because the religious right will assume it's fake news.

Remember last year Maia had sex with that woman in the office with the DNC cameras in the room? That hasn't been come back to yet, I think this is going to cause a falling out with the DNC and that footage is going to be used as some kind of blackmail or extortion.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Roy Cohn came to party!

 

[JirinPanthosa]

This season is getting over the top. I'm not sure I like the shorts. They'd be hilarious if I saw them on Youtube or a comedy show but in this show they feel like an obnoxious pace breaker.

I like the way they're angling Melissa toward following in Daddy's footsteps.

I wonder if we'll ever find out the fate of Alicia and Eli in this show.

 

[Guy Gardener]

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5797074/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_1

Howard and Eli took a trip together to Broad City a few weeks ago.

 

[Captaindemotion]

The show remains as compelling as ever in most regards and I loved Michael Sheen’s guest role but the cartoon shorts are already bugging the hell out of me. Please drop them.

 

[EnderAKH]

Ok, I loved the Good Wife. I love law shows in general (though I did not go into law myself, I come from a family of lawyers and paralegals), but I especially like law shows that try not to speed up the justice system. While The Good Wife was never perfect, as few law shows are, it usually gave me the feeling that cases were going on behind the scenes for months or years, and we are just tuning in as it finally goes to court. Compare this to, say, For The People on ABC which suffers from arrest to trial in about a week syndrome. All that said, having now caught up with season three, the law almost seems to be entirely removed. I remember a time when Lucca's video meme issue somehow would have ended up in court, whether suing the lady, suing the cops, trying to sue whoever posted the video, something. Maia's case just seems to be there to allow Michael Sheen the chance to go over the top.

Also, there doesn't seem to be a main character anymore, Diane's story is hardly what I'd call an "A" story, and I'm just not sure who I'm supposed to be rooting for anymore. It's not BAD, but it is SO different from The Good Wife and the first season (which was much too short) that I am definitely having mixed feelings about the show. It feels unfocused and scattershot. I like the characters, I just wish they would focus the writing a little more and have a bit more law in their law firm.

 

[Orac Zen]

The first two seasons of The Good Fight were quite brilliant. It was by some distance the best TV show I'd seen in years (as much as I enjoyed The Good Wife, this was several orders of magnitude better IMO). It featured some extraordinary characters, great writing, superb dialogue. The music was brilliant and the opening credits were something I could watch / listen to over and over. There was hardly a false step; it was must-watch stuff for me.

Given all that, I've found this season a disappointment thus far. I despise Trump as much as the next person but turning the show into a relentless, near-obsessive anti-Trump meme is becoming ridiculous. It's getting to a point where that's all the show seems to be about and it simply isn't interesting. Neither is it especially credible that the partners at one mid-size Chicago law firm are out to bring Trump down and (apparently) have little or nothing else to do. The musical shorts are becoming intrusive and boring (the impeachment one last year was utterly brilliant; none of these has come close to that quality). Michael Sheen's character is stupid, repellent and absurdly, ridiculously, idiotically over the top. Even the opening theme isn't as good this year.

Hopefully they'll drop the Trump obsession and return it to being one of the issues rather than the centrepiece. Get back to the other things the show was exploring. Going back is rarely a good idea but in this case it's near essential, because where it's going isn't interesting or believable.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I agree with that assessment. I like that the show has talked about the degradation of normalcy and sanity in the Trump era, but the shorts seem self indulgent and some of the stuff that happened this season is ridiculous. The completely over the top Blum character, and the whole business with the fentanyl.

 

[EnderAKH]

And... renewed for season 4.
https://tvline.com/2019/04/23/the-good-fight-renewed-season-4/

 

[Refuge]

I agree with that assessment. I like that the show has talked about the degradation of normalcy and sanity in the Trump era, but the shorts seem self indulgent and some of the stuff that happened this season is ridiculous. The completely over the top Blum character, and the whole business with the fentanyl.

This show wouldn't have a premise if it were not for Trump and the Trump haters. It's kind of pathetic story telling really.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I don't have a problem with the focus on Trump. Just in season 2 it was balanced with real believable court cases and interesting drama. In season 3 the storytelling has become completely self indulgent and gone completely off the rails about it.

 

[Refuge]

I'd hazard a guess that most USA TV shows skew toward using a Conservative Politician and their base as their foil, it's kind of what you expect. However that bias overlooked the balance is to make the main and featured characters still preferable and not ridiculous. That being said it's probably quite a good exposure of how things are in the US. The obsession with Trump has turned many of his detractors into raving lunatics so showing characters and in a sense writers coming unhinged over him is not actually far off the mark.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I see it as sort of riffing on the lack of normalcy and blurring of lives between the real and satire. You can’t just describe Trump as a conservative politician. Bush was a conservative politician. Trump is a fascist narcissist pathological liar who does something absurd on a daily basis.

The Good Fight has made itself absurd to riff on that and it isn’t working.

 

[Orac Zen]

I ought to have mentioned that while the show has been a bit of a letdown this season, one thing (Sheen's ludicrous character aside) has remained the same: The cast is absolutely stellar. Getting that much talent into one show is quite the achievement.

And the season has provided one incredible highlight. Christine Baranski and Audra McDonald doing "Raspberry Beret" makes up for all those self-indulgent and dreary shorts on its own.