The Good Wife: Season 3 Premiere

If I was rooting for anyone at last weeks Prime Time Emmy Awards, I was rooting for Julianna Margulies. For the last two years, she’s been the stoic figurehead of one of the best dramas on television, and finally last week she was given the statuette to prove it. With any luck this accolade will further bolster the shows viewership for the third season, which kicked off on Sunday night.

You’d expect that with their lethal combination of both critical and commercial success husband and wife team Robert and Michelle King would employ a certain ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ philosophy but, you’d be wrong. Marguiles herself described her returning protagonist as Alicia 2.0, hinting at the dramatic changes we can expect in season three. Now, with one episode down, it’s clear just how transformative Alicia’s summer has been. The fallout from last season’s climactic revelation means that there’s been a dramatic power shift amongst Chicago’s elite. When Alicia learned that her husband Peter (Chris Noth) and Kalinda (Archie Panjabi) had been keeping secret a past tryst, the previous 1.0 model seemed all but defunct and that is pretty much where Season 3 kicks off.

Alicia, now a third year associate and the lynch pin in the alliance between Lockhart/Gardner and Eli Gold and Associates, has a new haircut and a new set of titles, and we know why. In the final scene of Season 2 Alicia and Will (Josh Charles) slinked of into a pent house hotel room for what I can only assume was a night of reminiscing and careful discussion about the pros and cons of dating your boss. Well, that might have been the modus operandi of the previous model but 2.0, who struts from the elevator to the sound of Chris Isaak’s ‘Baby Did A Bad Bad Thing’ is no longer taking it lying down.

As you might expect, this doesn’t bode well for Kalinda, who though still on retainer at Lockhart/Gardner is keeping an uncharacteristically low profile around the office. That is of course until the hostility between the former allies threatens to damage an important and lucrative case.

Continuing with the case of the week format that worked so well in the first two seasons, Alicia is tasked with defending a young Palestinian student accused primarily of a hate crime. What seems like an open and shut case to begin with takes a dramatic turn when the lack of communication between Alicia and Kalinda results in the student’s alibi implicating him in a murder. Carey (Matt Czuchry), now in bed with Peter at the D.A’s office, figuratively speaking, swoops in to win won over on his old Season 1 rival, and it’s a hammer blow to Alicia. Back at the office, the always awesome Diane (Christine Baranski) gives Alicia and Kalinda and stern talking to and for the time being the pair put their personal feelings to one side for the good of the case.

As the usual back and forth plays out, it’s clear there’s an added dimension this time around. Peter’s reinstatement as district attorney and his intimate knowledge of Alicia is undoubtedly going to be a recurring factor in the cases this year. In this episode alone, it provides Carey with the weaponry to outwit Alicia twice; something he’s been unable to do for most of the first two seasons. Though it would seem that the court room high jinks would be the nail in the coffin of any dysfunctional relationship, a subtle but telling ending hints that Alicia 1.0 may still be running somewhere in the back ground.

If you thought by now Peter Florrick might have learned from his mistakes you’d probably be wrong. He’s hired himself a new, short skirted “Cheap” blonde to hang around the office. Of course, as with most things in The Good Wife, it’s never that simple as the blonde in question is Sophia Russo (Kelli Giddish), a married law enforcement agent who cropped up in the tail end of last season. Those of you with keen memories will remember that she spent some of her screen time in bed with Kalinda and despite an acrimonious parting; she seems to have no qualms about stalking the investigator around Chicago’s more unsavoury locales.

Despite the shifts in the ongoing stories, it appears the writers of The Good Wife have stuck to the proven formula. If the episode is slightly unremarkable it’s only due to the increasingly high standard that has been set over the past two years. All the expected factors are in place here, with slick courtroom action used to stage another timely debate. This week, if you can believe it, the Israel-Palestine conflict becomes embroiled with debates about the effects of violent computer games, and at no point does it seem trite or forced. All in all, a strong start that bodes well for another excellent season.