Catching Up on "The Good Wife"

October 28, 2013 1:39 PM

Everyone is raving about The Good Wife this season. I hate to miss out, but unfortunately I don't have time to view the previous 90-something episodes. So if I want to join in, what's my best minimal-effort strategy?
posted by Quisp Lover to Media & Arts (7 answers total)

A lot of people have been saying that the just-aired-last-night episode is as good a place to jump in cold as any, and I can't entirely disagree.

If you have a little bit more time, you could start with the beginning of this season and ask friends (or us MeFites) about anything that doesn't make sense.

If you have a medium-amount of time, you could start with the beginning of Season 4 and catch up -- that would give you enough context to have a better appreciation for the current stakes in the show (as a lot of things are Big Time Changing right now) without being too huge of a commitment.

What will probably happen is you'll watch some or all of the current season, get invested, and then go back and watch the backlog when you have a little bit more free time. And hey, that's as valid a way to get in to a show as any!

The Good Wife makes an effort to be rewarding to long-time watchers AND comprehensible for newbies and dabblers, so whatever you decide to do, I'm sure you'll be fine.
posted by Narrative Priorities at 2:01 PM on October 28, 2013

Season 1 is weaker than the others, but the problem is that they really do well at character development over long arcs and not over specific episodes -- last night's episode was tense and exciting, but in large part because of the depth of these characters we've seen for 100 hours already.

That said, if you have enough time to start with episode 14 of last season (which was where this arc started, it's called "Red team/blue team") and go through from there, that's probably fine.
posted by jeather at 2:03 PM on October 28, 2013 [2 favorites]

I've just started watching this season myself—I haven't seen a single episode prior to this season. I haven't had a problem at all just jumping in. I found last night's episode "tense and exciting" even though I only saw four episodes before it.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 2:32 PM on October 28, 2013 [1 favorite]

I would watch the premiere and finale episodes from every season, since they tend to do a fair bit of developing the storyline for the series as a whole in those episodes.

You can also read the episode summaries on Wikipedia, and decide which ones you think you might want to watch from there. A lot of them only describe the case of the week, but where they specifically mention developments in the background storylines you might want to make a point of watching those particular episodes. No episode is devoid of arc-related scenes, but the big important ones will tend to be mentioned in the summaries.
posted by jacquilynne at 2:37 PM on October 28, 2013 [1 favorite]

I haven't watched much since about season one, but have seen the last 3 weeks and got caught up easily.

I can't think now why I stoped watching, because, you know, wow.
posted by SLC Mom at 6:01 PM on October 28, 2013 [1 favorite]

I didn't start watching until Season 4 and I just read summaries of what happened in the first three seasons. I think if you really want to appreciate what happened in last night's episode, you probably want to be up on at least the fourth season and all the episodes of the current (fifth) season.

The Good Wife makes an effort to be rewarding to long-time watchers AND comprehensible for newbies and dabblers, so whatever you decide to do, I'm sure you'll be fine.

Yep, I think it's really exceptional in that way. Early on I wasn't thrilled about the premise of The Good Wife but I'm glad I eventually gave it another try. Last night I was all, "Girrrrl..."
posted by fuse theorem at 8:25 PM on October 28, 2013 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Ok, I can do seasons Four and Five. Thanks, all!
posted by Quisp Lover at 2:36 PM on October 30, 2013