We say goodbye to The Good Fight – but this isn’t the end

Even as Season 6 marks the end of an era, fans of this crazy legal dramedy will be pleased to know CBS has given a pilot order for a spinoff of The Good Fight and The Good Wife, titled Elsbeth, following Elsbeth Tascioni, played by Carrie Preston.

As a recurring character in the previous series, Elsbeth won us over with her apparent ditziness, which is a carefully calculated ploy to throw others off the scent of her courtroom and negotiating brilliance. In Season 6 of The Good Fight, she encounters a new character (and introducing such a fabulous new character at the 11th hour can only bode well for other spinoffs *crosses fingers*), Ri’Chard Lane, played by Andre Braugher (Brooklyn Nine-Nine) — a brilliant actor who can do serious but also doesn’t take himself too seriously. By the way, that’s Ri’Chard pronounced like “Rishaad”. He makes the mistake of underestimating Elsbeth.

Lane sweeps into Reddick & Associates as a new name partner installed by STR Laurie, the bosses upstairs. His entrance is as dramatic as his vast collection of spectacles with bright and flamboyant frames. He’s there to shake things up but Diane Lockhart (Christine Baranski) and Liz Reddick (Audra McDonald) are not going to make it easy for him. For a man used to blustering his way to desired results, this leaves him a bit bewildered at times. He also has a history with Liz’s late father, Carl (Louis Gossett Jr), whom you will recall was tainted by accusations of rape.

Jumping ahead to the series finale, it certainly looks like the door has been left open more than a crack for another spinoff with Diane and Marissa Gold (Sarah Steele) but show creators Michelle and Robert King denied this, saying it was just a way to finish things off in a tidy manner, with a carrot they have been dangling for a long time, to be fair.

In an interview with LA Times, Baranski said the series has a happy ending: “It’s ‘happy’ in that she’s [Diane] going to keep doing what she’s always done, which is to stay in character, pick herself up, accept that the world is dark and unjust. It’s called ‘The Good Fight’ and that’s what she’s done for 13 years. Diane was always trying to keep her balance in a crazy world, trying to keep sane, trying to make the right decisions — often not making the right decisions, but then reflecting on them and moving on. Is it happy? It’s happy for me in that it’s forward-moving, it’s active. And we can’t give up on our country and on women’s rights.”

Season 6 is mostly about Diane (with strong story arcs for the firm’s investigator, Jay, played by Nyambi Nyambi, and Marissa with a delightful return of Alan Cumming, her father). She’s experiencing deja vu and so are we, what with the birds flying into the windows in bloody splats. Diane is profoundly affected by current affairs and tries to make a clean break from slavishly following the news – which as we all know, can be very traumatic at times, as we struggle with the conflict of being informed and knowing what is going on in the world, and not wanting to be utterly overwhelmed by all its horrors and just get by with our heads in the sand.

Quite improbably, there are violent riots going on down in the streets below the law offices, which continue as a background for the entire series, and more likely serve as an ongoing motif, or a metaphor. The show had been relatively vague about the nature of the protests, reports Vulture, but it finally identifies them as an example of “accelerationism,” an effort to ignite racial tensions to trigger a race war and accelerate the breaking up of the government. The Good Fight, for all its wackiness, has been consistently on top of political tensions in the US, and unapologetically outspoken about its leftwing stance.

Via a VR game (so legit), Diane is given the details of a Dr Lyle Bettencourt, described as “a brilliant, sophisticated and sensitive physician who helps Diane through a crazy time”, according to The Hollywood Reporter. In his rooms, he administers a monitored therapeutic psychedelic drug followed by talk therapy. Nothing new for Diane, who previously microdosed mushrooms. Following the first treatment, “Diane’s view of the world takes on a golden hue as she exits his office softly singing a few bars to Something’s Coming from the musical West Side Story. She carries her feather-light mood down the street with her, past lines of police in riot gear and the incessant din of protests outside of her that never seems to let up,” says Salon. 

The doctor is played by John Slattery (Mad Men, for which he was nominated for an Emmy four times) and I’ll tell you this for free: I totally get Diane’s attraction to him. As much as the treatment gives her a warm fuzzy glow, it’s the doctor who completes the package. So much so, it even threatens Diane’s marriage to the equally sexy Kurt McVeigh (Gary Cole). It’s most unfair to have to choose between them.  

“In the wake of getting dumped by Diane in last week’s penultimate episode, Kurt made a last-ditch attempt to win his wife back that began with him tendering his resignation at the NRA and concluded with him in an epic cardio duel with his chief romantic rival, Lyle,” says TV Line (link contains spoilers). 

Of the finale, AV Club says, ”It’s very much The Good Fight stripped down to its basic, surrealist trademarks, as the show wraps up with an examination of our present, more pessimistic cultural climate.” Spoilers here too. It will be strange to live in a world without The Good Fight, but you never know…