Julianna Margulies returns to TV again tonight on The Good Wife, once again playing a lawyer, after a failed attempt at the same genre last year with Canterbury’s Law. This time around, she plays Alicia Florrick, the wife of a Senator (Chris Noth), who has been shamed in a national scandal that sends him straight to jail. As a result, Alicia needs to go back into the work force to support her family. She decides to go back to her old career as a defense attorney, snagging a junior associate role at the firm of her longtime friend Will (the always awesome Josh Charles). She finds herself at the mercy of Christine Baranski’s snake of a lawyer and competing head to head with Matt Czuchry’s Cary. He’s the kind of guy that’s sarcastically sweet to your face, but secretly plotting your death, so there is built in intrigue in that relationship!
The show itself was perfectly normal: a procedural with a more dramatic bent. Margulies is always fantastic, and she can do so much with her eyes that a lesser actress couldn’t dream of. Her chemistry with Josh Charles is off the charts, and I can’t wait to see them explore that. And Czuchry and Baranski are doing what they do best, in characters we’ve all kind of seen done before. There was nothing about the show that jumped out to me as a reason to call it a great or above average series, but it kept me entertained, and is by and large, CBS’ best offering this fall. It’s worth a few viewings, for sure!
Series Premiere: Tuesday, September 22nd on CBS 10:00/9:00c
