Midseason Report Card: ‘The Good Wife’ season 5 brings the show back on track

There is nothing worse than seeing a popular show start to teeter off of the rails, and that’s what we saw from “The Good Wife” through most of fall 2012. You had the Kalinda story going every which way, and angering the majority of the diehard viewers in the process. Not only that, but it also felt like the pacing was inconsistent almost everywhere else. We were extremely anxious to try to see the show going again in a positive direction, and we feel like it now has in its fifth season.

While not everything in the past few months has been perfect on the show, and there are still some nagging issues to fix moving forward, “The Good Wife” managed to reestablish itself as one of the premiere network dramas. Now if only it didn’t air at a different time every week thanks to NFL football, then we would really be in a perfect situation overall.

The shining stars – Really, the title here has to just go to the past few episodes for bringing us that tension following Alicia’s exit from the firm. You really get the sense that there are so many moving parts at play here, and just one move from Alicia or Will could doom their clients and their business for months to come. Great performances from Julianna Margulies and Josh Charles helped to anchor this in even further. Also, you of course had your typical array of great guest stars, with Jason O’Mara being at the top of the list this time.

What needs work – How did it take so long for Will to really figure this out with Alicia? We wanted the show to get to “Hitting the Fan” much quicker than it did, given that this is when the story started to take off back to maybe season 2 levels of greatness. Also, we know that Kalinda didn’t have the best season last year … but why so little of her here? The show does go at times with the ebb and flow, but when utilized right, Archie Panjabi is one of the top two or three actors on this show.

Overall – A strong assortment of storylines from Diane to Eli and of course or leading lady. We do still argue that if “The Good Wife” only had to produce 13-16 episodes a season, though, that this would be a top five or ten show on TV. Sometimes, the 22-episode format tends to create some episodes that we really have no recollection of months after the fact. Grade: B+.

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Photo: CBS