“Your honor, that’s a car commercial!”
Typical week, all calamity and injustice.The Good Fightended its jubilant third season with another overstuffed episode.
Can you imagine missing this wonder?
Credit: Patrick Harbron/CBS
It was lightning balls, swore the newscasters.
The city went dark, and then distant evening redness burned the skyline.
Could this be the Revelation foretold in the scriptures?
Was it a power plant, Chernobyl gone midwestern?
Or a government conspiracy, some experimental weapon?
Maia Rindell (Rose Leslie) watched the great fire on her laptop.
The walls around her lit up the color of her hair.
And she had her feet up on her desk.
When the end of the world arrives, pray you have a corner office with a nice view.
This year, she was broken, and breaking bad.
Inside the law offices of Reddick, Boseman, & Lockhart, all the atoms were highly excited.
The finale started with the kind of scene that might end lesser shows.
Julius (Michael Boatman) was off to his federal judgeship.
His pals wished him well, even baked some cookies shaped like his smiling face.
Despite ourselves, were family, Julius said.
Does everything have to be an argument, you guys?
asked Adrian (Delroy Lindo), behind his desk in his usual besieged-king pose.
Lindos so perfect onGood Fight, providing an essential counterweight to the shows increasingly loopy surrealities.
He doesnt talk to the camera.
He doesnt sing off-the-cuff solos.
Im a black man.
Reddick Boseman Lockhart is MY firm.
And I apologize for nothing.
Later, in his Ragnarok-darkened office, he sounded despondent.
The guard rails are gone, Diane, and I cant see the road, he said.
I used to think that something would save us: The law, personal conscience.
Now, I dont see anything.
Good Fights third season didnt seem to have any guard rails.
Showrunners Michelle and Robert King continued to find new ways to honorandexplode the sacred virtues of TV storytelling.
This was still a very good procedural, crafting solid episodic plots zipping along with lawyerly abandon.
The cases were intriguing, could reform your own perspective on current events.
The guest stars were always having a ball.
Its feverish normality would look unusual right now, when the most mainstream entertainment requires apocalyptic superpowers.
The opening credits played later and later every week, sometimes surprising you around the 17-minute mark.
The fourth wall was broken.
Major plots launched out of happenstance.
WhereasThe Good Fightis, more than anything, droll.
The climactic court subplot of this season was very fun, twisty, and loopy.
The twists involved some plot payoffs from throughout the season.
Diane made a partnership offer to Maia, a fig leaf that wouldve promotedanotherwhite lawyer above African American colleagues.
(The bad feelings have not dissipated from after a year of righteous debates about the offices internal culture.
In the briefest of shots, we saw all the new white employees in the mailroom.)
A bit of hope here, maybe.
With the Blum case going south, Diane committed to Operation Simplicity.
The Trump appointee made the smart decision for one very dumb reason.
He just couldnt stop thinking about Judy Giraffe.
Everyones a star onThe Good Fight, and the ensemble keeps swelling.
Rosalyn had a couple intriguing scenes, suggesting Jackson might have more to do next season.
And I loved how the episodes final act found everyone staring into some kind of abyss.
Will Lucca get to be partner?
I dont care anymore, Lucca said.
This whole year, I realized the best thing is not to care.
Marisa offered some acid.
The end times are beautiful, Lucca concluded whichalmostsounds like caring.
Jumbo was delightful at the center of some of season 3s most riotous arcs.
I dont like TV, said Lucca, a TV character.
Yeah, said Gary, But what isnt a lie these days, though?
Politics, art, science.
And thats a good thing?
No, its an important thing to know.
Is everything on television a lie?
Every week, the #Resistance subplot threatened to be just too much too allegorical, too on-the-nose.
But I think it was the Kings most brainteasing experiment.
In a stealth superteam of righteously angry women, Diane found new strength.
And then everything started to change, slowly, suddenly.
You could say: Their facts werent changing, just their delivery.
And then their delivery turned fatal, a Swatting prank that left one politician dead.
Throw awards at the actress and weep a little for the character.
It was, in fact, the scene thatstartedthis season.
And outside their door, the SWAT team arrived.
Tragic irony, you could say.
Now her allies are her enemies.
Hes the kind of guy who keeps a gun close by, remember, and accidents will happen.
Season Grade: A
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