The Good Fight Television Series: A Review by Warren Bull

 

Image from Stillnessinmotion on Unsplash

The Good Fight television series:  A Review by Warren Bull

I had heard of Binge-worthy television shows, but I had never been so caught up by a series that I watched several episodes in a row until I saw “The Good Fight.” I watched a “Scorpion” television series subplot through four episodes on two successive days. I watched the first three episodes of “Picard” in one sitting because I missed the series when it came out and I have watched other shows through the entire run that I had not seen on their first run. But with “The Good Fight,” I started in the early afternoon and continued with only necessary breaks until late at night.

My interest was piqued by an article in the June 20, 2020 issue of the New Yorker about Robert and Michelle King. I wrote before about their television series “Evil,” that, unlikely as it sounds, is a unique and clever presentation combining elements of horror, fantasy, and theology in a thoughtful and unexpected way.  The couple also made “The Good Wife,” which was successful for seven year or so on CBS, but which did not catch my interest as much as the other two.

According to the article in the New Yorker about Robert and Michelle King, they dated for four years. They scheduled an informational meeting with a priest to see if he would consider the possibility of allowing Robert, a devote Catholic the middle of seven children, and Michelle, a secular Jew, and the only child of Holocaust survivors, to marry in the church. When the priest pulled out a calendar, they were too shy to object. Maybe it is the range of backgrounds and experiences that fosters the melding of dissimilar concepts in a creative way.

What hooked me immediately with “The Good Fight” was the opening that showed a liberal lawyer waking up to the unimaginable shock that Donald Trump had been elected President. I remember being shocked by the event too. I identified with the way expectations had been upended, institutions had been uprooted from their traditions, and people formerly on the fringes of society felt empowered to express opinions openly.  The show addressed new topics (to me) including Ponzi Schemes, online bullying, and the creation of realistic false videos by using images and voices by sophisticated computer generation tools. It depicted attorneys defending reprehensible actions and jockeying for positions within a law firm. I was very much interested in the way interactions between races were shown when as part of the plot a white lawyer joined an all-Black law firm. 

For me, this was great television and I give it my highest recommendation.