I was a big fan of _The Good Wife_ and I loved the first two seasons of _The Good Fight_, but holy hell did it go to shit in the third season.

Let me preface by saying I'm a progressive and a staunch feminist. That being said, I still found season 3 unbearable. It's pandering, plain and simple: while _The Good Wife_ regularly plundered the headlines and wore its politics on its sleeve, it still tried to tell a compelling story and presented its ideas in a nuanced manner. The character of Kurt, for instance, was created specifically to represent a more conservative point of view and present a foil for Diane's progressive views. In so doing, it gave us fantastic character drama.

Well, all that is gone in season 3. Now we get [spoiler]flashes of Eric and Don Junior as Diane throws axes to relieve her utter hatred of the Trump Administration. We get Diane arguing with a Trump-shaped bruise on her husband's shoulder, lamenting "Where did the men go wrong."[/spoiler] We get Schoolhouse Rock-like interjections featuring shitty music that wink so hard at the audience that the writers must have sprained their eyelids writing them.

Again, my problem isn't with the show's political views. It's with the inane manner in which they've abandoned all objectivity and nuance to give us a bizarre, one-sided revenge fantasy where Diane rages on and on about Trump's existence. It's entertainment for the liberal echo chamber, not a clever discourse on modern politics.

And meanwhile, the characters have devolved into caricatures. If you liked how _The Good Wife_ featured quasi-realistic courtroom drama, tough luck, the courtroom action no longer makes any damn sense.

And so I'm out. Although the first two seasons made it feel like _The Good Wife_ could go on forever, I guess this is the moment I have to say goodbye. You folks had a good run, but somewhere along the way you bought your own cleverness and forgot to tell a gripping drama.

After we finished watching The Good Wife, we knew we would continue on to watch this spinoff show. I checked some reviews on a different site and saw a bunch of one-star reviews, which I have come to know is usually due to liberal politics, a positive presentation of gay or lesbian characters, or too many people of color in leading roles. In this case it might have been a combination of all three elements.

I am really enjoying the show. It is funny and dramatic in turns, and very edgy in its plots and presentation. Sometimes it goes perhaps pushes the envelope a bit too far. One example is a corrupt character introduced in the fourth season. I tired of him quickly. It felt to me the actor was “doing” Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman. But these excesses are all in the pursuit of a story told well.

Sometimes it seems like they are cranking out conspiracy theories, but why not? Why should the far right have all the fun making up news? So if a liberal leaning show makes your ears bleed you will want to give this a rest or have gauze on hand to stem the flow. For everyone else, make some popcorn and pull up a seat and perhaps prepare to binge watch.