What Will It Take For You Idiots to Watch ‘The Good Fight?’

Everything we can’t stop loving, hating, and thinking about this week in pop culture. [Manage newsletters]( [View in browser]( [Image] with Kevin Fallon Everything we can’t stop loving, hating, and thinking about this week in pop culture. This Week: - “Why aren’t you watching The Good Fight?” —my dying words. - MTV turning 40 and feelings. - Christopher Meloni’s ass and FEELINGS. - Your St. Dolly Parton update. - The Taylor Swift-Simone Biles mashup we didn’t know we needed. The Good Fight Is on an Incredible Run Right Now It was heartening throughout the pandemic to hear from friends and family how many people were [bingeing The Good Wife](. And I understood why anyone who sampled it became obsessed. The politician’s wife [dealing with his scandal]( was a juicy hook. Kalinda was TV’s best character, until [she was the worst](. Alicia and Will’s sexual chemistry had me practically living in a cold shower. I can’t remember the last time I was as [shocked by an episode of television]( as I was by season five's “Dramatics, Your Honor,” an hour of television trauma my therapist and I are still working through. Then there was the show’s superhero in a smart statement blazer, the regal Diane Lockhart, [played by Christine Baranski](—and the series-ending slap I felt on my own damn face. Whenever given the opportunity to delight in someone’s excited conversations about The Good Wife, a series that probably ranks in my top 10 favorites, I end with the logical question: So did you start watching The Good Fight next? Inevitably and bafflingly, the answer is almost always no. Make it make sense. A sequel series to the show you just binged and loved exists, and critics have been screaming praise about it for the last five years at such a volume that there is an epidemic of TV journalists whose vocal cords have projectiled from their throats. Why in the world isn’t everybody watching? I mention this now because The Good Fight, a series that should have won Best Drama at the Emmys twice by now, is having what may be its best season ever. The seventh episode of the fifth season premiered this week on Paramount+, continuing what counts among the most thrilling stretch of episodes in a TV series this year. No series engages with the real world with such ballsiness. We’re not talking those tacky, ripped-from-the-headlines storylines on Law & Order: SVU that everyone insists are campy and fun when really they’re mostly exploitative, cheesy, and borderline unwatchable. Past seasons of The Good Fight have tackled everything from Trump’s surprise 2016 victory to the pee tape, and highbrow-lowbrow news headlines spanning the Bachelor in Paradise alleged sexual assault, the notorious Shitty Men list, the insufferability of Milo Yiannapoulos, and the location of Jeffrey Epstein’s, um...penis. It’s not just that the series finds surprising, intelligent angles into discourses that may already seem saturated. It’s that somehow, and in a way that I’ve never seen on another TV show, it manages to stage each episode with something of an emotional mirror. It manages to reflect the spectrum of feelings you have as someone who has lived through these news stories but might not have had the space to process them. It sounds hokey, but it’s so vivid and smartly done. That’s been especially true of this season. It launched with an episode that sprinted through the trauma of the year since the series last aired: the pandemic, Black Lives Matter, the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Trump’s election threats. After enduring an upsetting number of other series that all faltered with their ambitions to cover the same topics, the idea of another TV drama doing a surface-level, patronizing string of episodes about COVID was about as attractive as going into a bar packed with unmasked patrons while a scary, vaccine-resistant variant of the virus saunters through the country. (Oh wait…) Of course The Good Fight tackled the pandemic in a way that was both powerful and inventive, yes. But it also employed that emotional mirror to striking effect. You know that feeling of the last few years, where the fear and dread mutate into the anxiety-inducing suspicion that either everyone else has lost their minds or you have? It’s like there was once some sort of safety line that tethered you to reality, but someone cut it when you weren’t looking and now you’re spinning off into space, watching sanity, grace, and dignity disappear into the distance as you ping-pong against other people who are going through the same unsettling experience. Somehow, the series has captured that. It’s also extremely fun. Recent episodes feature a storyline in which Mandy Patinkin runs a kangaroo court called Courtroom 9 ¾ out of the back of a copy store that becomes popular because he rejects the laws and statutes that protect the powerful and often make real justice impossible. In a world where a state governor will [show a slideshow]( of himself touching dozens of men’s faces as a defense against sexual harassment, Courtroom 9 ¾ leans into the madness but with a message: Every plaintiff and defendant must look each other in the eye and say “I respect and love you” after a ruling. Respect? Love? In this climate? There was an episode that portrayed what life was like inside a hospital in spring 2020 for a COVID patient that burrowed into me in a way I might not ever shake. Several episodes litigating people’s involvement—or not—in the January 6th insurrection were fascinating. The show made headlines last week when a vision of RBG, [played by all-time legend Elaine May](, arrived to provide counsel to Diane. It wasn’t a gimmick or crass, as it might sound. It was glorious and moving. This week’s new episode opened with a slideshow of photos of the likes of Kevin Spacey, Louis C.K., Scott Rudin, and R. Kelly set to “Ave Maria,” almost like the world’s most repugnant “in memoriam” reel honoring harmful jackasses. Then the characters started discussing the details of Armie Hammer’s alleged cannibalism in relation to cancel culture and I almost screamed. It’s wild that a show exists that would dare touch that. No show has the swagger of The Good Fight, whether it’s recently daring to turn the audience against Diane, the protagonist, or sometimes waiting 20 minutes into the episode to launch the opening credits (truly a baller move). Now there’s just one thing it needs to do to really impress: Get you to freaking watch it. What Has Become of MTV? Saying “I’m so old I remember when MTV played music videos” ages a person more than the sentence itself. It’s lame. It’s cliché. It’s also so true. The network turned 40 this week and, like all 40 year olds, [faces its irrelevance](. The remembrances that poured in chronicling its impact on music and culture, its rebellious and provocative edge, and the voice it gave to a silenced younger generation only made more glaring how out of step MTV is with today’s culture. [Alternate text] Sure, in the age when pop artists tease their new music videos for weeks on their Instagrams, a touted MTV premiere loses its splashiness. When no one gathers to watch anything live anymore, tweens don’t sprint home from the school bus to make it to the TV in time to watch TRL, depriving them of a singular generational experience and also the formative mortification of being walked in on by a sibling while performing a choreographed dance to Britney Spears’ “Sometimes.” And with celebrities’ words and actions more heavily controlled in the age of “cancel culture,” the prospect of stars behaving badly on live MTV programming is nonexistent. (What we’d give to see Lorde [hurl a shoe]( at Olivia Rodrigo.) To the network’s credit, even attempts to revive the tenets of nostalgia—a borderline [unwatchable TRL revival](, increasingly boring [Video Music Awards](, and an impossible-to-find [Real World: New York reunion]( on streaming—have shit the bed. The MTV of yesterday can’t exist today, and that’s fine. But like all things about getting old, it’s depressing. And nothing more depressing than [this schedule of programming]( on the day it turned 40: a full 24 hours of nothing but the series Ridiculousness. As Always, Drooling Over Christopher Meloni It is always a good day when Christopher Meloni is trending on social media. No pop-culture storyline has been more gratifying than Meloni fully engaging with our collective fascination with his magnificent double-wide dumpster, an ass that God shed a single tear after creating and said, “My children, appreciate this gift, my greatest work.” This week, the 60-year-old actor—just need to fully record-scratch here over learning his age—appeared on [the cover of Men’s Health]( to bask in his sculpted body and its unprecedented cultural impact. (When we look back at what’s influenced us most as a modern society, I’d say we’ll probably mention Oprah, the MAGA movement, and Christopher Meloni’s beefy thighs.) The photos belong in the Louvre. The one of him doing the splits while gazing into the camera lens, specifically. I also just need to bring attention to this quote, which will occupy at least 60 percent of my brainspace until the day I die: “I catch flies with my ass cheeks, like a Venus flytrap.” Dolly Parton May Be Perfect [Alternate text] For this week’s update of all the ways in which Dolly Parton is a flawless human being, we learned that, in the 1990s, she [used the royalties she earned]( from Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” cover to build an office park specifically for the Black community in a Nashville neighborhood. Just canonize her already. Sobbing Over Simone Biles [Alternate text] Taylor Swift narrated a video in tribute to Simone Biles’ tenacity and legacy after coming back to medal in the final gymnastics event as clips of the athlete’s tough week and Swift’s song, “This Is Me Trying,” played. Of course, I cried. [Watch it here]( if you would like to as well. [Alternate text] - The Suicide Squad: People who care deeply about things like this movie have told me it’s good! (Fri. in theaters and on HBO Max) - Reservation Dogs: A historic all-indigenous cast and writers but, more than that, a perfect summer-vibes show. (Tues. on FX on Hulu) - Brooklyn Nine-Nine: If you aren’t hip to this show’s irresistible charm, hurry up. It’s the final season! (Thu. on NBC) [Alternate text] - Mr. Corman: I asked a friend who is a critic if I should check this out and was told, “For the love of God, no.” (Fri. on Apple TV+) - Family Game Fight!: This replaces the diarrhea-postponed Ultimate Slip ‘N Slide on the schedule. I just really needed to write that sentence. (Sun. on NBC) Advertisement [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [Instagram]( © Copyright 2021 The Daily Beast Company LLC 555 W. 18th Street, New York NY 10011 [Privacy Policy]( If you are on a mobile device or cannot view the images in this message, [click here]( to view this email in your browser. 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