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I've written enough risk- and damage-management talking points to be able to follow in my sleep the easy formula for recovering from a public mistake: acknowledge what you or your company has been caught doing, describe who has already forgiven you, ask for the same forgiveness from the public. We've all heard this loop countless times before.
"Describe who has already forgiven you" is essential. It models the graciousness the offender hopes to be given, and it sets listeners up to question the hubris of their judgment. This tactic is essential in political sex scandals. Strategists know you absolutely need the scoundrel's wife at his side: you need him to be able to say "I wholly regret the pain I have caused Elizabeth/Hillary/Silda am I am grateful that she is forgiving me."
A good wife, standing by her man, is the bad man's best shot at redemption. But what about her? How "good" does she feel?
CBS's new one-hour drama "The Good Wife" premiered this week. Julianna Margulies leads as Alicia, the good wife, while Chris Noth plays the bad husband, a swaggering state's attorney who has been indicted for corruption and trading in sordid sexual favors. She stands by him at the press conference but slaps his face behind the curtains, and therein the show starts with the story we rarely see as a family carries on after their lives after the public apology.
The storyline jumps ahead six months, showing Alicia starting a new job at a law firm now that her mommytrack hiatus has abruptly ended. She's sold the house to pay for her husband's legal bills, and her two children are adjusting to a new apartment, demotion to public school and their paternal grandmother's help. Alicia is the breadwinner now in a cut-throat field where her age and career gap are portrayed as barriers: when she says she's been away for thirteen years, a colleague says thirteen years ago, "I was twelve." It's clear that it's not going to be easy for Alicia to re-build her life, her career or her family.
So far, the show works. The first episode offered a good legal story as part of the plotline, but more importantly gave us a comeback story. Alicia's story has exotic political wrapping with rich and powerful players, but it is also a simple story that most people can relate to. How do you recover from public humiliation and private betrayal? How do you guide your children through embarrassment, loss and changes? How do you re-enter the workforce when your confidence has been shaken, you've lost everything or you've been out of the loop for a while? How do you visit your husband in jail when he's been a complete tool and ruined your life and is still smiling charismatically while making empty promises of love and hollow plans to get things back to normal any day now when you know it will never, ever be the same (but not be bitter)? What, exactly, makes a woman "good?"
I'll be giving it a chance this season. Margulies seems at her best in this role, and I would love to see a single mother take on the world--but in a great show, not in Cougar Town.
Blogger Sweatpantsmom loved it, too. "It already fit my criteria before I even saw it - 10pm to 11pm time slot, not science fiction or period drama, and better yet it starred ex-ER actress Margulies AND Sex And The City's Chris Noth - how perfect was this? And then I saw the first episode and I immediately put the kids to work cleaning my kitchen - mommy had found a new show."
Jan at Jan's Daily Dish said "Juliana Margulies is excellent, and her law firm’s in-house investigator, played by Archie Panjabi, yep, Archie is a girl, is quirky, edgy, just perfect for the role. So, it looks like I have a solid Tuesday night lineup for this fall. Dancing With The Stars and The Good Wife. How about that!!!!"
However, Jane Genova cautions, "The show needs a shot of bolder writing. There's none of the depth of "Boston Legal" in the understanding of what goes on inside one human being and among human beings. There were too many cliche interactions. For instance, all the cracks about age when Alicia returned to law firm practice, the Crusty Mother-in-Law type, the cocky associate pitted against her for one position."
I agree with Jane, the first show took plenty of short
