The Oncoming Hope

Duty dictates that The Oncoming Hope writes of Veronica Mars. For before The Oncoming Hope adopted a whole range of Doctor Who related aliases (aliasi?), all the internet handles (and the Oncoming fashions) were based on Veronica Mars (and as fans know, you can never just call her Veronica).

I actually can't believe I get to write about this show again. I discovered both blogging and fandom through it, and even though we obsessives eventually went our separate ways, we still run into each other in the darkest corners of the internet...

...or so it seemed.

For we were the few who watched the show when it aired.

But we do not begrudge those who found it after season 1, on the recommendation of one thriller writer whose name rhymes with Freven Ding.

We do not begrudge the Whedon-ites who found the show after prominent guest appearances by Willow, Cordelia, and Numfar himself.

We don't even begrudge the sorority girls who found the show after the CW cross-promoted it with guest appearances by Kristen Cavalleri (like...who?) and various other members of America's Forgotten Top Models.

But we do begrudge this:

Cause here's the thing about Veronica Mars. It was genuinely niche, a show for the geeks, from a time before geeks controlled the pursestrings.  Marvel hadn't yet assumed its disturbing stronghold on Hollywood and geek culture, Doctor Who was still that weird show on PBS with tinfoil aliens and styrofoam sets, and Star Trek wasn't even a lens flare in JJ Abrams' eye. So being the first to watch it is meaningless; there's never been any kind of mainstream push behind it.

Few watched Veronica Mars when it aired, but we desperately wanted all our friends to watch it. Even TWOP couldn't hide its unabashed glee (and this was when TWOP gave positive reviews to NO ONE (before it was bought out)) at this weird little show that was technically perfect and wonderfully plotted (read the season 1 recaps if you think I'm kidding; "glowing" barely scratches the surface).

So when I think about this Kickstarter, I don't think about it as a means for the WB to test out new production models, I don't think of it as surrendering some private nerddom to the mainstream, I think of it as what it is; a bunch of super fans had the chance to fund something they love. This beloved thing was never going to get any mainstream or institutional support. This is not Firefly, which had twice the ratings of VM when it aired, and already had its shot at a movie.

I think of this as a paean to what the internet used to be. When fandom wasn't manufactured, when it depended on a small group of people desperate to love and to promote the thing they loved. They didn't need to own it, they didn't need to feel like it was their own, they just felt that it was special enough to be shared.

And so it is. Every one of my close friends from high school and college eventually caught up to it, on the strength of my love for it. They love it too, and I never feel like their love is worth any less than mine; I just feel grateful that they gave it a chance.

This Kickstarter, no matter the implications, will connect more people with a show that they're likely to love. And for that, I'm grateful. And for the first time, I opened my wallet.

Welcome back! Apologies for lateness, but I just got back from India after a wedding and a funeral, and attached emotions thereof. But onward and geronimo! As always, don't read if you haven't seen it.

Once you get past the supremely irritating Omg!RelationshipTroubles!, Asylum of the Daleks proves to be the strongest outing of the series since the midseason finale last season (the plastic clones, if you recall).

The writers have finally embraced (or at least recognized) the fact that through repetition, they've neutralized any sense of terror that the Daleks once elicited. Really, once an apron-clad Dalek offers you tea, there's no going back. Now they're the "most terrifying creatures in the universe, except when they're working as housemaids, emoting on Broadway (truly, a Dalek attempting an American accent must be the most terrifying thing a viewer can see), and blathering on about Eggs--Eggs--Eggs."

For the Daleks to continue to be villains that are even interesting, let alone scary, the writers really need to play around with the concept. Whether they're successful or not's a different matter, but at least they're trying.

The very concept of an asylum for the Daleks never really lived up to its potential (or any real definition, for that matter). It provided a suitably creepy framework for the ultimate Human Dalek (Oswyn-lek), but the setting wasn't developed properly (I assume this is a matter of time. This story could easily have been a two-parter). After all this, I have no idea what it actually means to be an insane Dalek. You turn them on, they start shooting. Same old Eggs-terminators.

But who could help but smile at the references to Classic Who adventures with the Daleks? The City of Exxilons is a particular favorite of mine. Basically, it's the Daleks vs. the insanely creepy Exxilons versus a massive puzzle labyrinth. Also, Sarah has a mullet:

Business in the front, party in the back. But I digress.

Asylum of the Daleks also provided us with a surprise appearance by Jenna-Louise Coleman, recently announced to be the new companion. While I emitted a heartfelt MEH at the casting of another teenage white girl character, she totally won me over in this episode. That said, she's dead. Who knows what the real companion will be like?

And speaking of dead, why didn't the Doctor try to save Oswyn-lek? Again and again, she proves that she can exert her will over the Dalekness that attempts to control her, even at the end. These aren't the angst-filled self-recriminations of the lone ranger in Dalek, Oswyn-lek is completely, genuinely human, with all the hopes, dreams, laughter and failure of any other non-Dalek being.

I love these little moments that reveal that even the Doctor, with all his worldliness (universliness?) has moments of prejudice that he simply can't put aside. It's these little nuggets that make him seem more human, and the more complicated hero that Moffat has sort of hinted at throughout his era, but has told us about rather than shown.

Tell me, what did you think about the episode? Play along in the comments!

When Laura Palmer dies, David Lynch would have us believe that even the Gods have nothing more important to do than mourn her presence. Every living body in this town, faced with the evacuation of life from Laura's strangely serene face, falls to pieces. So far, so Killing.

Agent Dale Cooper breezes in, a cherry-pie scented breath of fresh air, just when the weeping becomes too much to bear. Sherilyn Fenn's Audrey Horne has the good sense to laugh in the face of the rapturous weeping in the high school classroom. The audience breathes a massive sigh of relief, as we realize that Lynch/Frost intends more for our digestive-hour than the maudlin.

As we settle into the (admittedly strange) rhythms of the show, I genuinely can’t figure out whether David Lynch loves or hates teenage romance. All the characters are whimsically and lovingly drawn apart from Donna and James, who drip water bodies of sentiment wherever they go.

Even Bobby Briggs, douche-jock extraordinaire, seems to have more depth to him than our drippy lovebirds. He moves easily from scene to scene, and we're never quite sure if he's operating from the high-emotional state of an adolescent teenager or from something more clinical, more mercenary. Lynch knows this; even at Bobby's most tender moments, you can always hear the frictional creaks of his faux-leather jacket.

His relationship with Shelley remains compelling even when their existential threats become more and more ridiculous, as Leo can never quite sell the idea that he's some kind of unrepentant misogynistic abuser. The more Eric DaRe tries, the more I want to laugh at his pug-nosed face and its terrible attempts at acting.

But with Twin Peaks, Lynch/Frost have achieved the impossible -- a show where bad acting actually heightens its sense of atmosphere. The gurning, the posing, even the sheer emoting, never quite seem out of place. Sure, there's a murder mystery, but who the hell cares? We want to see Dale Cooper, eccentricating himself up all over the place. We want to see Audrey Horne, Veronica Mars-ing her way through leches and peons alike.

In a show full of one-armed men and dreamed up gophers, one mystery really drives the story forward. Is Audrey Horne quite real? She's everywhere and nowhere, all at once. She's all-seeing, all-knowing, impossibly beautiful, and yet she seems connected to nothing and no one apart from Agent Cooper.

I could never call him Dale. Could you?

2012, it seems, has a vendetta out for the actresses who played the most beloved Doctor Who companions of yesteryear. In the space of one year, fans have waved goodbye to Elizabeth Sladen, Caroline John, and now, heartbreakingly, Mary Tamm.

Oh, Romana. The only time the Doctor took one of his own kind on board, and she not only equalled him, but eventually defeated him in the saving-the-universe stakes. Mary Tamm brought us the first regeneration of Romana, fully regal and bitingly sarcastic, a Timelady arriving on the TARDIS by way of Downton Abbey.

Her first scene on the show remains one of the most perfect in the show's history, displaying the wit, the vibrance and excitement of finally having a companion who doesn't worship the Doctor, but actually kind of thinks he's a loser at first. At the end of the day, has anyone else called him on the fact that he's basically a dropout vagabond thief?

Mary Tamm left the show because the character changed; she became more of a typical "excellent question, doctor" companion by the time she left. But strangely enough, Lalla Ward chose to reference Tamm's performance in Romana II, and the writers returned Romana to what she was always meant to be; better than the Doctor. We owe Mary Tamm for providing a template that no companion has matched since. And it's worth noting that the Romana years (both Romanas) garnered the highest ratings in the show's history.

(skip to 5:18 for Romana's first appearance, where even K9 can't resist a lengthy ogle. Is there such a thing as the tyranny of the robot gaze?)

Two episodes of Political Animals have left me with less of an opinion on the show itself, which is a sort of feel-good trashy romp with a facade of political relevance, but with more appreciation for the narrative construction of The Good Wife.

Superficial comparisons abound. While Political Animals explicitly bases its lead on Hillary Clinton, The Good Wife uses the story of the jilted political wife to deliver a deep dive into how politics, relationships, professionalism tie in with the consistently difficult task of being a woman.

So while the story has to go through some of the same beats (the iconic image of the wife standing by the husband on the podium as he admits his faults, the horror of discovery, the complexity behind the decision to stay or leave), it's telling which beats each story omits.

The Good Wife doesn't spend a lot of time on the tears; when we meet Alicia Florrick, she's competent, she's independent, and she's completely certain of what she needs in her professional life. The Good Wife focuses on how she moves forward, not what brought her to this point. We're shown exactly why Alicia doesn't leave Peter as yet, and we realize that in the end, dealing with Peter's the lowest priority in Alicia's life, given that her whole world has come down around her. In fact, it isn't until season three that we get the scene where Alicia first learns about Peter's indiscretions.

Political Animals, on the other hand, seems totally mired in the relationship between Bud and Elaine. One major problem with the show so far is how Bud seems to have such a hold on Elaine's life, even though there's no evident reason why she would ever have loved him, why she would have stayed with him, and why she relies on him now. We're shown, again and again, that she doesn't really need him in her personal life, so allowing him back in doesn't seem true to the character.

I'll allow that few shows get off to such a strong start as The Good Wife. It almost seems churlish to compare the two: TGW is a novelistic tale that teases out very serious themes, while Political Animals aims to be trashy entertainment (and succeeds admirably). Nor should they be more similar; Alicia and Elaine, despite the surface similarities, are very different women. If anything, Elaine's more of an example of when the world crashes down on a Diane Lockhart.

All that said, Political Animals does manage to mimic my personal favorite aspect of TGW: the Alicia/Kalinda. As with that favored pair, PA features a wonderfully prickly but respectful relationship between Elaine and Carla Gugino's fabulous reporter. It seems that in this show, too, the tensions between their deeper solidarity will drive the show forward. And I can't wait to see where it goes.

What do Girls, We Need to Talk About Kevin, Young Adult, and Confederacy of Dunces all have in common? These works, broadly considered to be the most polarizing (and challenging) of our time, all feature protagonists that most of us would happily lock inside a vehicle set on cruise control over the side of a very tall cliff. I, however, would at least wait until the story's over.

The unlikable protagonist sets up a delicious tension in any work of art; we don't like them, so we automatically dismiss everything they hold to be true, until slowly, almost imperceptibly, we start to recognize a little bit of ourselves in them. Once that happens, we can't help but hate ourselves, just a little: "If I see this much of myself in that character, how much more might be there that I'm not seeing?"

You see this most readily in critiques of Lena Dunham's fabulously horrible Hannah Horvath, in Girls. "I would never behave this selfishly, therefore I find it impossible to believe that Hannah could act in such a myopic manner," reads so many comment threads.

However, even by making that comment, you show that something about Hannah's character mirrors your own, unsettling you in a way that makes you rush to dismiss that connection by stating that her character is "impossible in reality."

The common trait of the unlikable protagonist is a gargantuan level of self-involvement. Who wants to admit such a quality to themselves? More to the point, who can even recognize that quality in themselves?

In Young Adult, Charlize Theron plays a character who's morally vacant and miles beyond redemption, though she's wonderfully inventive in ways to destroy her life and the lives of those around her. We applaud her creativity and complete lack of self-awareness, even as we pray for her come-uppance.

But something strange happens; we learn that her humanity is not destroyed, merely suppressed. It's been beaten down so far that it only surfaces for a second before receding back into her, where it will likely remain. And so we arrive at the painful truth: she's completely self-aware, but circumstances have taught her that this is how to live in the world.

The truth about the unlikable protagonist is that he or she holds a mirror to our unknown selves, and makes us take a closer look at our morality and our idea of humanity. Eva Katchatourian, in Lionel Shriver's We Need to Talk About Kevin, suffers horrible consequences because of her monstrous son's actions.

She didn't commit the crime, but she receives ample punishment. But we don't like her, so we feel she deserves it. What does that say about us, that we accept that the act of selfishness is as deserving of punishment as the brutal murder of scores of schoolchildren?

This is why I love the unlikable protagonist, and why that same character can be so off-putting to others. They take us to the dark places within our souls, forcing us to confront them instead of shrugging them off or cloaking them under a thin veneer of "morality" or "redemption." It takes all types to make the world go around, and I believe these stories arm us with a smidgen of empathy. And usually they provide us with a hell of a lot of laughs.

Who's your favorite unlikable character? Or do you find this type of fiction unreadable/unwatchable?

In which Batmanda watches the whole world around her fall to pieces, yet again. For the third time in a decade, our precious Emily Thorne watches as everything she holds to be true proves itself false - the truth that her father's a horrible criminal, the truth that his death was simple, the truth that she's capable of avenging him. The truth that there's any kind of happiness at the end of this long and fantastical rainbow of revenge.

Each time, there's one person to help her find her way forward. A fairy godtrepreneur, if you will. And so she lurches from cause to cause, this time ready to admit the truth and settle with the one she loves, but forced onward nonetheless. Nolan professes to save her from herself, but ultimately, he gives her what she needs to keep her hatred burning, to maintain her tendency toward chaos.

Without desire, there can only be chaos. This is why you can rarely find sense in the motivations of the Daleks, who don't want anything but to destroy the universe. Without Jack as her grounding principle, Batmanda would be nothing more than a Dalek, seeking destruction without end. Jack may not represent more than her ultimate desire, but without that positive want, Emily would have found chaos much sooner.

With Nolan and Jack, she forms a perfect trinity. The two men balance out her light and her dark; one could never suffice. Nolan gives her everything she needs to keep going, and Jack's existence restrains her worst impulses. Her father used to play both roles, and it makes sense that the chasm he's left in her life is so wide that it takes more than one to fill it.

This episode put a great capper on a fantastic season. While I loved the show from the start, I wasn't sure it had legs. Well done, writers. And if next season goes pear-shaped, we'll always have this year of perfection.

OTHER STUFF

-I am continually haunted by Victoria's engagement present of psychopathic loathing. The chutzpah's so off the charts that even Emily can't help but smile. This is why our Evil Queen can't be dead. No one else can ever replace her. Certainly not Charlotte. Who I hope stays dead.

-I've really enjoyed what the writers have done with Daniel this season. He tries and tries to be a good person, but at the end of the day, no one allows him to. I thought the only way to end his story was with death, but making him a villain works too.

-Finally, whoever gets to write the dialogue for Conrad and Victoria has the BEST FUCKING JOB EVER.

And just because it exists:

Finally, go check out Hello, Tailor's review of the costumes: http://hellotailor.blogspot.com/2012/05/revenge-season-finale-reckoning.html

Two weeks late (and not a penny short), we return to recap our favorite show (to say that I'm in withdrawal is more than an understatement, especially after this doozy of an episode).

But it's ok, because I get to remind you of the most epic Alicia/Kalinda HoYay non-subtext in the history of the show.

"Flexible," Kalinda says, as Alicia restrains herself from jumping out of her chair with joy (I will take this opportunity to gloat at Hello, Tailor, who once accused me (mid season 2) of tinhatting in my firm belief that the secret story of this show is the relationship between Alicia and Kalinda). Parentheticals ahoy!

That's the last moment of happiness for our dearest Sexy Boots of Justice, as Alicia accidentally rips down the walls of her life with a single phone call. It's interesting that when Kalinda did the same to her last season, Alicia basically became this supermagnetic force, pushing away everything in opposition to her with almost lightning speed. Kalinda, on the other hand, attempts to reset to status quo by removing herself from the equation.

I've commented before that this show operates with an acute awareness of the laws of physics: energy cannot be created or destroyed; ions can't be shifted without having to rearrange everything surrounding it. By these laws, Kalinda can't just leave, not without creating a great imbalance in the show. Similarly, Cary couldn't come back until Will was pushed out.

But by the end of the episode, this fine dance of molecules doesn't matter anyway, as the entire Lockhart Gardner universe is faced with entropy. In the fine words of new-favorite-character Howard, "never, ever trust a man with a limp."

And in entropy, our only weapon is our freedom of choice. To quote a dearly beloved vampire, "when nothing we do matters, all that matters is what we do." So when the chips are down, and Kalinda's at the end of her rope, she becomes decisive. And thusly we're left with my latest, greatest emo band name: Shotguns for Alicia.

(credit for this marvelous gif goes to ramarika.tumblr.com)

OTHER

-A very embarrassed part of me really hopes that Alicia/Peter work it out. Or work something out. Or just hook up for an night of angry passion based on their shared conquest of Jackie.

-Also, this episode has one of the most perfect comic awkwardness scenes in history:

Revenge isn't a show I regularly recap, because quite frankly, I wouldn't even know where to start (I will kindly refer you to Hello, tailor, who has written an unmissable post on the fabulous sartorial stylings of one eccentric billionaire, Nolan Ross: http://hellotailor.blogspot.com/2011/10/new-style-crush-nolan-ross-in.html).

But don't mistake my wordlessness for a lack of interest. Here are 5 reasons we should all be grateful for the return of Emily Thorne and her various doppelgangers.

1. Jawdroppers - I rely on Revenge to bring me the gasps that The Good Wife inspired in its second season. Anything goes, and that isn't just a marketing ploy. I still worry whether its relentless pace is sustainable, but to be honest, I've been worrying about that since episode three, and 15 episodes later, the writers haven't disappointed.

2a. Music Part 1 - The ridiculously over the top classical music (usually cello) that accompanies 90% of the DRRRRRRAMA. I feel like like this old promo says it all:

2b. Music Part 2 - The wonderful female covers of traditionally masculine songs that accompany the remaining 10% of the DRRRRRRAMA (let's face it, it's Revenge. There's nothing but drama). Yes, folks, that's a Metallica song below.

3. Nolan Ross - What on earth would we do without his bizarre non sequiturs? In a show that often plays like an even darker version of Veronica Mars, he's the one true friend, the one who gets himself mixed up in the darkness, knows it, and still comes back for more. And always with a sly wit.

4. Madeleine Stowe and Emily van Camp - What would this female-driven show be without its leading ladies? Revenge takes a lot of stick for its overt genre trappings, but at the end of the day, these are two of the most complicated, well-developed female characters that have ever graced the tv screen. Neither of them fit neatly into the heroine/villain tropes, and we wouldn't have them any other way.

5. Eye candy - No one on this show's gonna break any camera lenses, but there's an uncommonly attractive cast of characters. Emily van Camp's a heartbreaker, of course, but I personally cannot choose between her two loves (narratively speaking, though, Daniel has to die. Let's see if this bears out). I'll let my 14 year old self stare at Nick Wechsler until she works it out. Play along in the comments. Preferable with pictures.

:

I've meant to do comic recaps of the show like I did last season, but as I've pointed out elsewhere, it's hard to create comic recaps of a comedy. And even if Mad Men isn't striving to be a comedy, persay, it now lives in a vaudevillian space, with real human emotion transformed into grotesques and American history as paranoid horror.

The show hasn't lost its energy, but that energy has been rocketed in a million different directions, creating a season that might charitably be described as a mess. An entertaining mess, to be sure, but a mess nonetheless.

With a few exceptions, the characters have lost their humanity and have become enslaved to Matt Weiner's machinations, plucking at the bolts of their lives with as little agency as Ken Cosgrove's sad little robot.

It makes a certain amount of sense that Don's become static, and there's an inherent tragedy in what's happened to Roger, but Pete's so fickle that he hardly seems like a real person anymore.

Pete's desperation for Don's approval has become more than a little tired. It's difficult to sympathize with his struggle to establish his manhood, because his idea of what manhood ought to look like is so nonsensical in the first place. Trudy certainly hasn't emasculated him, and he has a powerful position at the firm.

He's the John Updike character in a show that always had more of a Richard Yates or John Cheever flavor, searching for petty pleasures rather than clawing at the world to find a path to humanity.

That said, how could I object to anything that leads to this?

All punching aside, the strongest stories in this new Mad Men involve those characters who are still forging ahead to create their own destinies, fighting the tides: Megan, Joan and Lane.

And where our old guard remains interesting is how they respond to the new fire within these three characters. Take, Don for example.

He has officially become your curmudgeonly Grandpa, more content to sip scotch while sitting in his boxer shorts and watching a ball game than horror of horrors, socializing.

Don's  life has become epitomized by the incurious "why":

• "Why do we have to go out on a Saturday night?"
• "Why can't I just stay in with you?"
• "Why have you dressed me in the sartorial equivalent of a hurdy-gurdy?":

He allows himself to be railroaded to a certain extent, because it's what he wants at this stage in time. Like most men who've encountered their share of angst and self-destruction, what he longs for in the end is a measure of peace. That's why his own personal nightmare involves the most dramatic destruction of that peace possible, where his entire ability to make decisions for himself is challenge by animal fears.

For the terrors that the world brings cannot ever match the terror he feels in his heart, the fear that he can never settle down and stop destroying his own life. Dick Whitman's more terrifying to him than Charles Whitman could ever be.

So while I'm tiring of the repeated sensationalism of this season and the necessity to insert not just one but usually two contemporary set-pieces into the cozy SCDP world, I feel like those events are meant to reflect what's going on inside of Don. But the lens has grown too large.

Play along in the comments, and I'll be back next week!

We open with a delightfully tentative tete-a-tete between the OTP of this show: Alicia and Kalinda. Things may not be "tequila shots and heart-to-hearts" just yet, but the episode confirms that they're back together, and when things get better, they'll be better that ever. Both have a firmer understanding of what they mean to each other this time.

So when Lana Delaney attempts to assert some sort of alpha relationship with Kalinda, witness Alicia's claws:

(credit to itberice.tumblr.com)

Please feel free to offer captions for that gif. But why invent shipper-y things when we have canon: "You got a little hot in there." But I digress...

Every time Alicia interrogates Kalinda, we know she's not just checking into K's finances. She's testing whether this relationship can work in any way that doesn't equate total entropy. Diane is placed at the center of this right at the start, just as she's placed at the center of Alicia's other big fight this episode: against the white patriarchy.

"I'm the woman." "I'm the black!"

It's so easy to be lost in admiration for our beloved Diane Lockhart that one can be forgiven for failing to notice how much she's changed. Alicia's not much younger than her, but she's still got some level of optimism about the law.

It has to be said, however, how quickly Alicia's bent her moral code. It's taken 30 years for Diane to become hardened, and Alicia's nearly there after just 3. It's fair to say that Diane's life has never been thrown as helter-skelter as Alicia's, but no one would say she isn't smart (except for the bizarre vaudeville threesome of Julius/David/Eli, obviously).

As a result, it's great to see Alicia (very nearly almost) stand up for something. But you can see the wheels turning in her head; she's almost ready to throw Peter to the wolves. Figuring out what's holding her back is more interesting than figuring out why she didn't lay down justice on Matthew Perry's head.

I figure that whatever stubborn thread prevents her from screwing Peter is also making her myopically insane about that old house. Even the flashbacks demonstrate that the happy moments buckle under the weight of the trauma...the good things live in memory, while the bad live on in every movement, every day. She may have forgiven Peter, but she can't change the past.

I'd like to think her obsession with the house is some last-ditch attempt to figure out who she was. We know (and Kalinda knows) that her new self is better. That said, I'm happy to see a good Jackie smack-down or three before Alicia realizes that.

Other:

-An officer named Zimmerman unlawfully kills a man for no reason other than the fact that he's black. The Good Wife oracle strikes again, this time far too close for comfort.

-Seriously guys, a lot of other stuff happened, and it was mostly amazing. I can only reiterate that I don't do recaps.

This episode featured the most important thing to happen in this year of The Good Wife: the restoration of my beloved Alicia/Kalinda. But not without a red herring, of course. Kalinda poured her heart into that bottle of beer, and Alicia smashed it onto the floor, along with my heart and soul.

Alicia's searching for a home, but at last, she finds Kalinda instead. (Which may or may not have resulted in my jumping feverishly upon the couch like a small child).

THE BALLAD OF ALICIA AND DIANE

I can but hope this puts an end to a storyline I'd describe loosely as "Alicia's head is spinning out of control", and she's allowed to return to some level of confidence.

It's become apparent that many of the headwinds in Alicia's life have been caused by a lack of choice; she couldn't choose the direction of her marriage, she couldn't choose her friendships in a way that suited her, she couldn't choose to continue a torrid affair that brought her some amount of pleasure.

Having financial freedom will, at a base level, allow her some level of choice. The freedom to choose where you live is freedom indeed. And that freedom, that restoration of a certain amount of control, allows Alicia to make another choice (the best choice): letting Kalinda back into her life.

Contrast with Diane, who's nothing but the amalgamation of choices well-made. Importantly, they're not the right choices for some false ideal of womanhood, but the right choices for her. When she pulls out her little black iPhone for a booty call, we cheer, for she deserves real lovin' from real men.

Even so, it's becoming so tense, watching these two very different women stand in the same room as each other, recognizing each other as both equals and opposites. When Diane tells Alicia off, you have to know that on some level she's proud of Alicia, that Alicia's finally gotten tough and taken control of her life.

And because Diane's not a hater, she recognizes Alicia as her equal, and gives her the damned raise. Well done, Alicia. Harvard Business Review would be proud (and so, I assume, is Canning).

OTHER THINGS

-As always, brief interactions between Cary and Alicia set the heart aflutter. A weirder, truer friendship has never been seen on television.

-Oh, Canning, and his fictional chauffeurs.

-I for one hope that Diane doesn't make a choice between Kurt and Jack. She deserves all the ruggedly hot men she can get her hands on.

-Tammy...still sucks. Though she seems to be the catalyst that brought Alicia back to Kalinda, so I can't hate her too much. Add to the fact that she uttered the following sentence aloud: "Will never not responds." So much grammatical hate. Also she says "It wasn't over between Will and I." So much more hate. Alicia, throw a book at that woman. Preferably a guide to grammatical English.

-Whoever staged the direction of this scene is my absolute hero:

The Last Supper symbolism isn't lost on me. Does this mean that David Lee is Mary Magdalene?

Apologies for my absence, folks! Owing to some exciting life developments (The Oncoming Hope Forges An Atlantic Crossing!), I've neglected my Wife-ly duties (and missed the chance to comment on two corkers of an episodes). I hope to make it up to you with not Good Wife post this week, but two, or possibly even three!

For now, let's look at the lay of the land following the conclusion of this episode.

The problem is, dropping Will's indictment doesn't defray the other bomb that could have gone off, and may have put a couple more in motion. Dana still possesses Alicia's forged document, and recorded testimony ties Peter to these accusations of judicial misconduct.

So while it appears that Wendy's crawling out with her tail between her legs, it also seems a little like she's still set events in motion to achieve her central goal: the destruction of the Florrick family (not to mention Will, but reporting him to the bar seems more like an act of pettiness than anything else).

The other problem is, Our Heroes won the case by entirely discrediting our resident Dead Eyed Psycho. They didn't manage to prove Will's innocence, so an investigation by the bar might yet ruin him.

FLORRICK VS. FLORRICK

Whenever Alicia and Peter stand in the same room, there's a massive inflow of oxygen, ready to stoke the fires of everything that lies simmering under the surface. So much hatred, and also so much love, a love that pollutes and infects and prevents them from ever having a meaningful conversation about anything.

So when they finally face-off, when Peter shows his hand (even though Alicia doesn't), we experience the emotional equivalent of standing in the epicenter of a bomb blast. Their conversation may have revealed more about where the two of them stand emotionally than anything else in the show, ever. They both feel deeply wounded by each other, and they both keep pouring salt into those wounds, and take no pleasure in doing so, but just can't help themselves.

Every new denial of her relationship with Will hits Peter like a bullet. So if we can assume that Peter now knows the truth, how will their relationship change? I can't even pretend to anticipate, but I hope that the writers send someone to kidnap Chris Noth from Broadway and force him into a bigger role on the show.

OTHER STUFF

(also known as the section where I get to drop any pretense of analytical detachment)

Kalinda: "My lips are sealed, but my eyes say I have a baseball bat with your name on it." Seriously guys, but I hope Dana gets her comeuppance in a big way. Then again, lack of foresight may be torment enough for someone in the legal profession.

Quote of the episode goes to Eli:

"You know the only problem with Sun Tzu: he never fought the Jews...we don't mess around with mind games, we useknives."

And guys? How hot is Alicia here:

(gifs courtesy of kabletown.tumblr.com)

What did you guys think of the ep? Play along in the comments, yo.

The New York Times livestreamed an absolutely fantastic roundtable conversation between the writers and stars of The Good Wife. The conversation touched not only on the show, but on the role of women in the media, on liberal tendencies to blind themselves to certain realities across the aisle, on censorship on network television, and most importantly, Josh Charles' erotic lunging.

I'm unable to embed the video, but you can (and should) watch it here: http://new.livestream.com/channels/387/videos/76513

What really surprised me was how little attention was paid to the romances and intricate plotting of the show, and how much was paid to the construction of particular characters. Unexpectedly, much of the conversation centered on Diane Lockhart, who has become one of the most revolutionary characters on television, but almost wasn't.

According to the rules of Desperate Housewives, Grey's Anatomy, and whatever excuses for television they air on Fox, a woman over 40 is characterized by loud desperation. They leap to men like moths to a flame, despite the fact that the biological tick-tock has long ago stopped (for the most part).

And yet, Diane gets a sexy dalliance of her own. It's not even remarkable that she's an outspoken feminist Democrat, and he's a gun-toting tea party member. It's remarkable how normal their relationship is. It's sexy, it's exciting, and it's constrained, the way all relationships suffer from circumstance (Alicia would agree, I'm sure).

This is because time hasn't fundamentally transformed Diane Lockhart. Most women aren't transformed purely by time, there are usually other factors in the mix (again, ask Alicia). Diane is happy with her lot in life, and when she lashes out, it's against existential threats, not against the ravages of time or against "men".

Speaking of existential threats...

As Robert King points out, Diane was originally conceived as "the mentor who tries to sabotage the mentee," an idea that comes off as arch and a bit troubling in the the pilot. Luckily, the first episode is the last we see of that.

By the time real tension flares up between Diane and Alicia, Alicia and Will's liaisons are actually threatening Diane's entire livelihood, not some fictional idea of what it means to be a woman in a man's world.

One of the things I'm most looking forward to in the second half of the season is the development of the idea that Diane is an alternate universe version of Alicia. Until now, Diane has been a peripheral character in Alicia's world, and it makes sense that Alicia had to reach a certain point in her own journey for Diane to really enter her life in a more meaningful way than mentor-mentee or boss-subordinate.

Alicia almost had to put her private life to bed before she could enter the electron-proton dance with Diane. They're opposite sides of the same woman, and it's fascinating to watch these opposites fight against each other for primacy. I can't wait to see what happens, but if I continue this silly metaphor, I bet it'll be nuclear.

I think one of the best decisions the Kings made was to shift Diane from being an antagonist to Alicia to being a more general force of her own within the firm. She's never just protecting herself, she's protecting all those who work with her, even Will and Eli, who pretend they don't need a moral center.

She isn't bitter, she isn't regretful, this is her life, and she loves it. It's a character that stands apart from any other on television, where middle aged women are continually played as personifications of loss and/or longing (loss/longing of looks, loss/longing of years, loss/longing of choice, and so on).

Which is why the McVeigh storyline works so well: she experiences emotion as a normal human being, not as some cliché subset of gender and age.

She's an inspiration to all of us because, unlike so many other female characters on television, she's real. She gives us a roadmap for how to live our lives, how to balance our ideals with pragmatism. She doesn't live in a cloud, nor is she consumed by her own neuroses.

Diane Lockhart love letter...out.

(primary image credited to liveitout.tumblr.com)

For all the shocking twists and turns of Homeland's season finale, the most surprising realization came after it was over. Underneath the moral and political complications of terrorism policy, beneath the sensitive portrayals of the mentally damaged, lies a simple retelling of the story of Cassandra.

You remember Cassandra. She was given the gift of prophecy, but then she pissed off Apollo, who put a curse on her that no one would believe her predictions.

Carrie's mental illness becomes the modern simulacrum of Apollo's curse. Makes perfect sense, doesn't it? She's gifted with a brain that functions in marvelous ways, but her malfunctions deprive her of all credibility.

In this scenario, Brody clearly becomes Odysseus, who is often described as "Odysseus the cunning" or "cruel Odysseus," depending on whose side you're on. He returns to his long-suffering wife after journeying through torment, war, and unimaginable delight, all the while expecting nothing to have changed at home.

Like Odysseus, he's clearly both a hero and a villain, and neither aspect negates the other. (Is it an accident that Carrie's "wise man" is named Virgil? For The Aeneid's Odysseus is a villain, only Homer's is heroic. In the end, only Virgil trusts Carrie's instincts.) Only Carrie is able to process these two selves, and her knowledge is rewarded with ostracization, derision and finally self-mutilation.

For Carrie's prophecy has now been ignored, and lost even to herself. The Trojan Horse has now been planted at the highest echelons of the government.

In conclusion, I give you my favorite retelling of Cassandra, by ABBA:

Some of my favorite books explore what happens when you take a group of people who have co-existed for years and interrupt their already mixed-up relationships with a total wild card. Wendy Scott-Carr, our resident Dead-Eyed Smiling Psycho (DESP), is that wild card.

On the surface, "What Went Wrong" sets up the new normal in The Good Wife, closing the door on one relationship and opening up a whole mess of them (and not a few cans of worms). How's that for a mixed metaphor? Anyway...

Really, the so-called "normal" is the establishment of battle alliances (the mob should be so lucky as to have Diane Lockhart as their wartime consiglieri). The final beats of the episode reveal DESP's long-game: the downfall of Peter Florrick, who's making it easier for her by returning to his favorite pastime: quietly and calmly threatening people.

Meanwhile, Alicia does some less calm threatening of her own on behalf of Team Kalinda (woohoo!), while Diane draws Alicia into her inner circle (also sounding vaguely threatening).

DESP attempts to draw Will into her team by forcing out all his basketball buddies (say it with me...POOR WIBBLE WILL!!!) and then threatening him. When that doesn't work, she attempts to seduce him with the promise of Peter's downfall.

Will, proving once and for all to be the better man, says no. For now.

May I take a moment to congratulate Anika Noni-Rose on a truly fantastic performance? She's the first villain in this show that feels worthy of the opposition. Neither Bond, Blake, nor Glenn Childs felt quite so...dangerous. She has an agenda, and she'll do whatever it takes to achieve it.

That single-mindedness is completely new to this show, where everyone is dancing between a hundred different motives, trying to figure out which is most serviceable right now. Not her. She's all long-game. Don't be surprised if the entire city of Chicago goes up in flames by the end of this season.

OTHER

-In an episode that had Alicia getting wasted with Owen, you may ask, what drinking team could possibly be better? You got it -- Alicia and Diane.

-I'm counting down the moments until Kalinda punches Dana in the face.

-Owen is the best (via Karamelka):

Even better thing? Alicia and Kalinda, finally thawing.