'The Good Wife': Kalinda plays for both teams

"The Good Wife" is not a good show for those of you who like to just have the TV on for mindless background noise.  You know who you are: You like to open mail and catch up on e-mails while watching reruns of “America’s Next Top Model: Cycle 4” for the umpteenth time. No, "The Good Wife" is a rapid-fire show that both demands and rewards undivided attention from its viewers.  I should know: Since I’m usually watching with my laptop open, typing notes as I watch, I almost never make it through an episode without having to rewind to catch a line or a sidelong glance I missed.  And this week -- with all that medical jargon, Kalinda’s double-agent duties and Cary’s romantic interrogations -- let me tell you, it was all about the rewind.

First, there was Alicia’s client, a doctor accused of over-prescribing painkillers to a local high school football star who died of an overdose.  After a number of twists and turns, it turned out that the kid had been stealing his mom’s pills, which were a much higher dosage than those prescribed by his doctor.  But did anyone else wonder why this huge dosage wouldn’t hurt her as well?  The kid was a strapping football player, not a jockey; his mother couldn’t have been much bigger than he was.  I’ll chalk that one up to the vagaries of pharmacology and throw in a little suspension of disbelief while I’m at it.

No matter, because the football player plot line was really just there to give Alicia a case of maternal anxiety. Watching a mother grieve the loss of her teenage son, Alicia’s thoughts naturally turned to her own kids.  With work demands continually increasing, she’s away from the house more and more and worried about their well-being — especially Zach, who’s caught the eye of an older high school trollop, Becca (played by an actress with the too-good-to-be-true name of Dreama Walker).

I know kids these days are all sexed up and whatnot (thanks, Monica), but Becca still strikes me as being a pretty precocious (a.k.a. “kinky”) 16-year-old.  In the middle of her groping session with Zach, she quotes from a sex tape featuring Zach’s dad.  Now that’s pervy.  Alicia hires a nanny who initially seems like a perfect fit — she even looks like Alicia — but turns out to be an overzealous Freudian and gets the boot.  Was I the only one who also thought she might be a spy sent by Glenn Childs?


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