Good Wife, Old Story

Would somebody please explain to me the appeal of The Good Wife?

I just started watching it, and admittedly have seen only a few reruns. People kept telling me it’s good, despite the cliché initial promos when it appeared in 2009. So I thought, okay, I’ll watch it. Now I’m not sure why.

Of course, I get the obvious. The show is a fictionalized take on the recurring news stories in which a male politician is discovered in an extramarital affair. Dutifully shoring up her husband’s public image, the “good wife” in such stories stands stoically beside him, doing her best to feign a Nancy Reagan-style loving gaze in a scene that is clearly PR-orchestrated damage control. The show is an attempt to look behind that two-dimensional construction at the real life of such a woman. In this case, she’s an attorney named Alicia who has been forced (can’t have her do it by choice) to return to work. She spends her days fighting crime and her nights worrying about her teenage kids—Superwoman with a double meaning.

It’s good, of course, to see a show in which the main character is a hard-working, capable woman who does her job well. Alicia is smart, sensible, sincere. It’s also good to see a show that builds, to some extent, on people’s awareness of media manipulation. So far, so good.

But as someone interested in media portrayals of women’s working lives, I don’t see anything so new here. Instead of any kind of in-depth exploration of character, we get another version of two-dimensional stick figures—in this case, more so than usual. Alicia and Peter are media stereotypes of media stereotypes. There’s no hint of love, or even sexual chemistry, between them. (Was there ever?) We are directed to root for Alicia as if we’re watching a prize-fight instead of a romance. But why?

The answer is by no means a new one. As in almost all media portrayals of women’s employment on some level, the theme here is home vs. work and the spectacle of female suffering. It’s “Stand By Your Man” with a twist—updated with a business suit and a question mark. (“Stand By Your Man?”) No matter what case Alicia’s law firm is pursuing, audience attention is directed to her role as Wronged Wife and the question of whether she’ll Take the Bastard Back. We accept her power as an attorney only because she has been sacrificed on the altar of female victimhood, which reinforces the femininity that might be in question if she were simply a capable female attorney.

Even the symbolism is heavy-handed. In one episode, she spends the day doing legal work on the king-sized bed she no longer shares with her husband. Of course, we’re all for her helping the innocent prisoner escape execution, scheduled for that night, but it’s clear she’s gotten a bum deal—forced to replace sex with legal papers. The real story is what she’s not doing on that bed.

Ho-hum.

Media have traditionally reworked representations of women’s wage-earning jobs and careers into dramas about domestic life, reinforcing old clichés. This show is no different. How nice it would be, once in a while, to have a show about a successful woman in which her femininity wasn’t reinforced through suffering.

At least, could she do the legal work at the kitchen table?