Photo: CBS After The Good Wife ’s final episode airs, the show will be remembered as an incredibly strong network TV series, and rightly so. But it’s also had its fair share of (inevitable) missteps over the past seven seasons. In advance of Sunday night’s series finale, here’s a journey back through the best and the worst The Good Wife has offered us, through the lens of ten of its best and worst episodes. Obligatory caveat that “best” and “worst” are completely arbitrary, and acknowledgment that season six is heavily represented on the “worst” list. In my defense, season six was very bad . BEST: It tested the bonds between characters. This episode will likely find a spot on every best-of list across the internet, and rightly so. It’s evidence of one of the things The Good Wife did best: building strong relationships between characters, and then putting those characters into situations where those bonds were tested. In exploring Alicia’s choice to create her own firm with Cary, the show is able to explore the scope of Alicia’s relationship to Will, the consequences of friends becoming enemies, and the limits and ethics of ambition. It accomplished a storytelling feat — in the span of 42 minutes — that some full-length feature films can’t muster. What other show can have one character violently swoop another character’s belongings off of a desk without it seeming melodramatic? WORST: When it tried too hard to be funny. There have been moments of true humor throughout The Good Wife ’s run (the strongest of those moments came from dry asides or from literally anything Alan Cumming ever did). But often, when it was clear the show was really trying to be funny, it fell flat. The Good Wife milked and milked and milked the humor behind attorney Elsbeth Tascioni’s quirky personality, but I wasn’t laughing when we got to literally see inside her head and found clowns and penguins and cruise ships. It’s damned both ways: Either it was … [Read more...] about The Best and Worst of