The Show:The Good Fight, Season 1, Episode 1
The Moment: The “right” side
After a merger, Diane Lockhart (Christine Baranski) is a named partner in “the largest civil litigator in the Midwest.” Her goddaughter Maia (Rose Leslie), a new hire at her firm, takes notes on a police brutality case. Diane, though famously liberal, represents the cops.
“Are we on the right side on this one?” Maia asks Diane.
Read more:The Good Wife spinoff The Good Fight takes on Donald Trump
“We are on a necessary side,” Diane replies. “You don’t go on instinct. You wait, listen, watch. Eventually everyone reveals themselves. People I thought with all my heart were guilty turned out to be innocent and people I thought were saints, weren’t.”
The Good Fight is, of course, a spinoff of The Good Wife, and the creators of both, Robert and Michelle King, have never shied away from choosing a side. (Hence that word “good.”) This series begins about a year after Diane slapped Alicia, and its opening scene is Diane watching Donald Trump’s inauguration with her mouth open in disbelief. So, immediately, we know where she stands.
But Trump’s taking office turns out to be a great metaphor for this series, which likely was conceived when Hillary Clinton seemed destined for the U.S. presidency. Now, Diane represents everyone who believed she was on the “right” side (not just politically, but also in her personal and work life) and found, to her dismay, that “right” has been redefined.
By the end, she’s stripped bare and starting over, at a firm owned by African Americans, which will further test her belief that her fights, and she herself, are “good.”
The Good Fight airs on W Network. Johanna Schneller is a media connoisseur who zeroes in on pop culture moments. She usually appears Monday through Thursday.
The Good Fight airs on W Network. Johanna Schneller is a media connoisseur who zeroes in on pop culture moments. She usually appears Monday through Thursday.
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