The Good Fight

It’s still a procedural, but it’s a damn fine one--one worth paying for CBS All Access, even though it deserves so much more.

The storytelling in The Good Fight lacks some of the scope and jaunty walk-and-talk drive of The Good Wife, a consequence, perhaps, of a smaller budget. But everything else--writing, acting, vision--is smart and strong, and each episode moves briskly and offers ample entertainment.

It’s not a game-changer on the level it needs to be, for me to feel comfortable saying that it’s worth the sacrifice of sandwiches for anyone who didn’t love “The Good Wife.” That said, anyone who did love “The Good Wife” won’t regret figuring out how to make this new show a part of their lives. After all, a good show is a good show. And The Good Fight shows no signs of being anything else.

The Good Fight preserves its predecessors’ tone, intelligence, quirkiness and Nancy Drew sense of adventure, while leaving behind some old, beaten baggage.

It is clear that The Good Fight is a very, very good show that’s worthy of commitment. If CBS wants its broadcast audience to also become habitual users of All Access, this smart spinoff makes for a pretty enticing gateway drug.

Solid opener, compelling premise, good cast and one major hole.

The best news about The Good Fight is that it takes a character a lot of us have loved for years and challenges her to be better, and less complacent, than she's ever been--with no guarantee that she'll succeed.

Written and executive produced by “Good Wife” creators Michelle King and Robert King, The Good Fight marks a pretty seamless transition from “The Good Wife” that feels similar enough for viewer comfort, but also different enough to avoid being a total rehash.

For Baranski, who arrived to her second-banana job on The Good Wife through a career in comedy (notably as Cybill Shepard's drunken socialite sidekick in Cybill), this is the role of a lifetime, and she responds with the performance of a lifetime.

The series is agreeable enough, in that it captures some of the spirit of the earlier show, but it’s hard not to hope Julianna Margulies will walk through the door to bring the moral conflicts that made “The Good Wife” so good.

The Good Fight is off to a bright and brainy beginning, even if it seems a bit rote. We also can appreciate a show focusing on three female leads.

Through two episodes, The Good Fight feels appropriately like an extension on the brand and unless you discover that what you really liked about The Good Wife was the soap opera of Alicia Florrick's life, you'll find this a welcome return.

The Good Fight, a spinoff from CBS’s acclaimed The Good Wife, turns out to be a really good show.

But for [Diane] and for this improbable but promising spinoff--it ends up being an invigorating new start.

The Good Fight is as sexy and profane as it wishes to be while retaining the crackling wit and smart sophistication of the original series. [27 Feb - 5 Mar 2017, p.17]

The premiere spends a fair amount of time laying pipe, so Episode 2 provides a more accurate picture of what the series will look like moving forward. And it looks really good.

The dialogue crackles and the first featured case (in Episode 2) is buoyed by a guest appearance from Christine Lahti (Chicago Hope) as a very self-assured prosecutor.

Creatively, it’s a satisfying return to the world, freed of the Florrick baggage that made the final Good Wife days less exciting, even if her absence seems to limit the new show’s overall ceiling.

Once again, personal stories weave around and reflect upon weekly cases; and once again, the Kings use those cases to skillfully tackle social issues, with an added emphasis here on ageism, racism and privilege. And as always, they tell their cleverly structured stories with wit, lace them with ambiguity, and sprinkle them with twists that are all the more enjoyable for being believable.

The Good Fight has to incorporate a host of supporting characters and cases of the week into the backstories of its multiple leads, and the results are occasionally a bit bumpy and scattered. All in all, however, it’s a promising endeavor, even if the lead characters are so understandably stressed that it’s a pleasure to check in on amusing scene-stealers like Eli Gold’s enterprising daughter, Marissa (Sarah Steele), and Denis O’Hare’s delightfully eccentric judge.

[The Kings'] writing remains sharp and witty. Their knack for telling stories through crisp visuals gives The Good Fight a high-gloss sheen. And their antennae are still tuned to hidden vibrations in the country’s subconscious, picking up on the tremors that are about to become earthquakes.

With remarkable turnaround, the Kings and their collaborators have delivered a spinoff drama, The Good Fight, which, in its first two episodes, proves to be a more-than-worthy successor, with the potential to surpass the original. That’s the good news.

The drama itself is personal, not political. The relationships are carried by a balanced script, not an agenda or set of marching orders.