CBS’ The Good Wife had nowhere to go but down in its third season on the air. After mounting a near-perfect season during its second year and winning its timeslot handily in total viewers, CBS saw fit to move it to a Sunday night timeslot often disrupted by NFL overruns in the fall and winter. Yet, despite this and the difficulty in coming up with continually fresh and interesting ways of mounting a law procedural for television, The Good Wife continued to triumph with its uncanny blend of superb writing and marvelous acting by a cast of veterans who are now firmly ensconced in their roles.
The Good Wife: The Third Season
Directed by David Platt et al
Studio: CBS/Paramount
Year: 2011-2012
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1 anamorphic
Running Time: 955 minutes
Rating: NR
Audio: Dolby Digital 5.1, 2.0 stereo English
Subtitles: SDH, Portuguese, Spanish
MSRP: $64.99
Release Date: September 4, 2012
Review Date: September 3, 2012
The Season
4.5/5
With a superb production team operating at full tilt, the show’s incredible writing staff has expertly managed to create riveting weekly legal cases which wrap up most often before the end of the episode along with tantalizing personal stories for all of its major characters which follow lengthy season-long story arcs keeping the series’ momentum at a fast clip week in and week out. The setting is the law offices of Lockhart/Gardner in Chicago, a firm which is still wrestling with the economic downturn. At the end of season two, Alicia Florrick (Julianna Margulies) had separated from her husband (Chris Noth) and has pursued a romantic liaison with her boss Will Gardner (Josh Charles). They’re comfortable with each other due to a relationship they had shared at Georgetown when they were in law school together, but Alicia struggles with privacy, wanting to keep the affair secret from her co-workers and her family which gets harder and harder as the season progresses.
The season is a particularly rough one for Will Gardner. In addition to his enjoyable but risky affair with Alicia, he’s also being investigated for legal malfeasance in dealing with and possibly bribing judges which brings him under the scrutiny of the withering judgmental gaze of Wendy Scott Carr (Anika Noni Rose) leading to a grand jury inquiry into his legal affairs and later finding himself in jeopardy of disbarment for misconduct. All of the other series regulars have strong seasons, too, with Matt Czuchry’s Cary Agos’ rise and fall at the state attorney’s office of particular interest and a tantalizing set of personal and professional relationship woes for the firm’s investigator Kalinda Sharma (Archie Panjabi) which sets up a neat cliffhanger for the show’s fourth season. As the show's undoubted rock, Christine Baranski's Diane Lockhart remained central and pivotal to every episode as she weathered storm after storm against her firm.
The series had two minor hiccups this season, both in guest star casting decisions for characters who were more irritating than entertaining and each with three episode story arcs: Lisa Edelstein played Celeste Serrano, another former paramour of Will’s, attempting to beat him in court but win him back into her bed, and Parker Posey played political strategist Eli Gold’s (Alan Cumming) ex-wife trying to get his help in a run for state senate. Both actresses seemed awkward and ill-at-ease (Posey was particularly poor in her three episodes) making these sequences not particularly up the series’ admittedly superlative standards. But the other guests stars, from returning players like Dylan Baker (sinister Colin Sweeney), Michael J. Fox (wily lawyer Louis Canning), Martha Plimpton (calculating lawyer Patti Nyholm), and Carrie Preston (genius scatterbrain Elsbeth Tascioni) to new additions like Anna Camp (new legal intern Caitlin D'arcy), Monica Raymund (new ADA Dana Lodge), and Matthew Perry (deranged candidate for governor Mike Kresteva) all scored in major ways during the season. And, of course, one would be remiss not to mention the entertaining roundelay of guest star judges played by the likes of Denis O’Hare, David Paymer, Peter Riegert, Kurt Fuller, Michael Lerner, Bibi Newirth, and Joanna Gleason, among others.
Here are the twenty-two episodes contained on six discs that make up the contents of this box set:
1 – A New Day
2 – The Death Zone
3 – Get a Room
4 – Feeding the Rat
5 – Marthas and Caitlins
6 –Affairs of State
7 – Executive Order
8 – Death Row Tip
9 – Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
10 – Parenting Made Easy
11 – What Went Wrong
12 – Alienation of Affection
13 – Bitcoin for Dummies
14 – Another Ham Sandwich
15 – Live from Damascus
16 – After the Fall
17 – Long Way Home
18 – Gloves Come Off
19 – Blue Ribbon Panel
20 – Pants on Fire
21 – The Penalty Box
22 – The Dream Team
Video Quality
4/5
The program is presented on CBS in 1080i and at 1.78:1 for its network broadcasts, and these downconverted 480p transfers look just about as good as it’s possible for a series to look in standard definition. Color can be warm and rich, and contrast is always spot on. Flesh tones are usually quite natural. Sharpness is very good but merely a shadow of what we get on high definition broadcasts. There are minor aliasing issues and occasional moiré that crop up occasionally, but nothing that seriously impairs picture quality. Each episode has been divided into 6 chapters.
Audio Quality
3.5/5
The Dolby Digital 5.1 audio track does not milk its busy urban streets and legal offices for a maximum of ambient sounds. True, music does offer a nice surround presence in every episode, and dialogue has been expertly recorded and presented in the center channel. More could be done audio-wise to make the soundtrack as involving and immersive as the cases and personalities the series presents.
Special Features
4/5
All of the bonus material is presented in anamorphic widescreen.
Scattered over the course of the set’s six discs are thirty-two deleted scenes which can be watched after each individual episode they were cut from or from the bonus features menu on each disc.
“The Good Wife: A New Beginning” aired as a CBS special the week before the season premiere catching interested viewers up on the events and major characters of the first two seasons. It runs 21 ¾ minutes.
“Sexual Harassment Video” presents a sexual harassment video the firm’s employees watch on an episode without cutaways to the various characters. It runs 1 ¼ minutes.
“A Bi-Coastal Affair” shows a production meeting on the episode “Blue Ribbon Panel” with the writing staff on the West Coast and the production staff on the East Coast via teleconferencing, meetings which often last up to four hours at a time. It runs 12 ¾ minutes. Featured primarily are producers Robert King and Brooke Kennedy.
“Research & Development” lets viewers eavesdrop in the writers’ room during the preparation of the episode “Blue Ribbon Panel” and watch as other storylines for later episodes are also pitched. It runs 14 ¼ minutes.
“Alicia Florrick at a Crossroads” offers all of the regular cast members along with producers Robert and Michelle King the opportunity to discuss the season as a whole. They mention their favorites scenes of the year and also their hopes for season four of the show. Deemed “the year of consequences” on the show, this featurette runs 29 ¾ minutes.
In Conclusion
4.5/5 (not an average)
Still the best series on network television, The Good Wife added to its incredible luster with its third terrific season. Uncommonly well written and performed, the show is a riveting dramatic jewel week after week and by far the shiniest gem in the CBS crown of hit dramatic shows. Highly recommended!
Matt Hough
Charlotte, NC
