DVD Reviews

The Good Wife: Season Two – DVD Review

By Patrick Luce Sep 29, 2011, 14:11 GMT

The Good Wife™ is a drama starring Emmy Award winner Julianna Margulies as a wife and mother who boldly assumes full responsibility for her family and re-enters the workforce after her husband\'s very public sex and political corruption scandal lands him in jail. In Season 2, even with her husband back home and planning to run for office again, Alicia continues redefining herself and her role in her family\'s life. ...more

The second season of The Good Wife finds the drama cranked up as Emmy-award winning actress Julianna Margulies’ Alicia Florrick is put through the emotional ringer and not sure of where she is standing by the time the season ends.

Alicia’s marriage to Peter (Chris Noth) continues to crumble as he runs for state’s attorney, and her feelings for her boss Will Gardner (Josh Charles) continues grow. She also suffers a betrayal from her friend Kalinda Sharma (Archie Panjabi) that pushes their relationship to the breaking point.

Along with Alicia’s personal relationships, the season sees the character continuing to attempt to find a balance between her role as a successful second year lawyer in her firm and her need to be an active mother in her children’s lives.

In as spoiler free as possible, the season does an excellent job showing the toil life in the spotlight can have on the family as Alicia and the kids have to deal with Peter’s political ambitions and the way the media sees their lives as headline fodder.

Along with the pressures of being a working mother, Alicia also has to deal with an overbearing mother-in-law in Mary Beth Peil’s Jackie Florrick – who believes she has the right to know every aspect of Alicia’s family life and that Alicia belongs as a stay at home mother.

She tries to keep herself and her children out of the spotlight – which puts her at odds with Peter’s campaign manager Eli Gold (the extremely good Alan Cumming).

Eli’s only ambition is to get Peter back in office, and he often doesn’t think twice about putting Alicia in the media crosshairs if it will help the campaign. As the season rolls along, Eli begins to not be as ruthless (he even have regrets for some of the darker aspects of the campaign) and thinks twice before putting Alicia in danger with the media.

The ensemble show also opens up a bit more so that some of the supporting characters get more screen time. In addition to Alicia’s relationships, the second season shows more of Kalinda’s past and the trouble she has making a commitment to a relationship.

The investigator even gets put in the hot seat as she becomes the focus of a criminal investigation due to her “friendships” with law enforcement and her ability to bend the law in her investigations.

The always entertaining Christine Baranski’s Diane Lockhart schemes a plan for leaving the firm, and then decides to backstab a partner who has outlived his usefulness. She also has a spark of romance when she crosses paths with ballistics expert Kurt McVeigh (Gary Cole).

The season benefits greatly from Matt Czuchry performance as Cary Agos. In season one, he was Alicia’s competition in the firm, but has since taken a job with the prosecutor’s office and has an axe to grind with his former colleague and firm.

Czuchry plays the character as cold and ruthless, but he has some aspects of nobility to him with the way he goes after criminals. His performance could easily spin-off to a new series focusing on his job as a prosecutor.

Along with the personal drama of the characters, the season follows the law issue of the week each episode which finds the main characters working through their own issues while handling lawsuits and criminal cases.

Season two features a great reoccurring performance from Michael J. Fox as a somewhat sleazy lawyer who doesn’t mind using his own health issues to help win a case.

The incredible Martha Plimpton returns toward the end of the season for a great performance as Patti Nyholm and I wish the show’s producers could get the talented actress on the show full-time (although I love her in Raising Hope as well).

The second season of The Good Wife expands the supporting cast to make the series feel more like an ensemble drama, and the writers put all the characters through some form of hardship showing that no character is safe. They build on what worked in season one and crank it up. 

The season ends with a light cliffhanger that leaves the characters on uneasy footing for season three, but leaves the audience wanting to see where the series goes next.

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