It started with a scream. Literally. When Diane Lockhart watched the 2017 inauguration and let out a primal howl, she wasn't just a character on a TV show anymore. She was a proxy for a very specific, very stressed-out segment of the American population. Honestly, The Good Fight shouldn't have worked as well as it did. It was a spin-off of The Good Wife, a polished network procedural that lived on CBS. But when Robert and Michelle King moved the action to CBS All Access (now Paramount+), they took the gloves off. They didn't just write a legal drama; they wrote a real-time diary of a country losing its mind.
If you haven't seen it, the premise is deceptively simple. Christine Baranski reprises her role as Diane, who loses her entire life savings in a Ponzi scheme. She's forced out of her prestige firm and ends up at Reddick, Boseman & Kolstad, a historic Black-owned firm in Chicago. That’s the "hook," but the show is really about how truth becomes a moving target in the digital age. It's fast. It's weird. Sometimes there are animated musical shorts explaining Section 230 or the concept of "dark money." It’s a lot.
The Good Fight and the Art of the Pivot
Most legal shows are about the law. This one? It’s about the failure of the law. One of the most fascinating things about The Good Fight is how it reacted to the real world. Most shows take eighteen months to get from a writer's brain to your screen. The Kings found a way to shorten that cycle, often rewriting scripts to include news cycles that had happened only weeks prior. It gave the show an almost caffeinated energy.
Take the Season 3 storyline about the "Resistance." It wasn't some heroic, Aaron Sorkin-style portrayal of noble activists. It was messy. It looked at how people who think they are the "good guys" start justifying "bad" tactics—like hacking or shadow campaigns—to achieve their ends. The show asked a terrifying question: if the other side breaks the rules, do you have to break them too just to stay in the game? Diane Lockhart, the ultimate institutionalist, spent six seasons trying to figure that out while her world literally dissolved into surrealism.
Why the Cast Made the Chaos Work
You can’t talk about this show without talking about the ensemble. Christine Baranski is a legend for a reason. Her Diane Lockhart is all silk scarves and lethal intelligence, but the show allowed her to be vulnerable, high on micro-dosed psilocybin, and occasionally completely wrong. Then you have Audra McDonald as Liz Reddick. The dynamic between Diane and Liz—two powerhouses navigating race, gender, and power—is the real heartbeat of the series.
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Then there’s Delroy Lindo. As Adrian Boseman, he brought a gravitas that grounded the show's more eccentric swings. When he left after Season 4, the show shifted, but it didn't break. That’s because the bench was deep. Cush Jumbo’s Lucca Quinn provided the millennial perspective, often acting as the audience surrogate when the older partners went off the rails. And we have to mention Mandy Patinkin’s Hal Wackner. In Season 5, he starts a "fake" court in the back of a copy shop. It sounds ridiculous. It is ridiculous. But in the context of a show exploring how people lose faith in the actual judicial system, it was a stroke of genius.
The Surprising Legacy of the Animated Shorts
Remember those cartoons? "The Good Fight" used Jonathan Coulton’s songs to explain complex political and legal concepts. It felt like Schoolhouse Rock but for people who stay up late reading Twitter threads. One week it was about the "troll farms" in Russia; the next, it was about how the Chinese government censors American media. These weren't just filler. They were a necessary bridge because the show's plots were becoming as dense and convoluted as the actual news.
People often forget how controversial these were. There was a famous incident where a segment about Chinese censorship was actually censored by the network itself. A black screen appeared with the words "CBS HAS CENSORED THIS CONTENT" for eight seconds. It wasn't a joke. It was a real-life moment of the show's themes bleeding into its own production. That’s the kind of meta-narrative you just don’t get on Law & Order.
Looking Back: Was It Too Political?
A common critique of The Good Fight is that it was a "Trump-era" relic. Critics argued that by tying itself so closely to the daily headlines of 2017–2021, it would become dated. But rewatching it now, especially the later seasons involving "The 6-1" (a fictionalized version of January 6th) and the rise of private police forces, the show feels more like a prophecy than a time capsule.
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It captured the feeling of the era. The gaslighting. The sense that facts no longer mattered. The show leaned into the absurdity. It featured characters like Roland Blum (played with scenery-chewing brilliance by Michael Sheen), a lawyer clearly modeled after Roy Cohn and Roger Stone. He wasn't there to win legal arguments; he was there to cause enough chaos that the truth didn't matter anymore. By portraying the law as a circus, the show was actually being more honest than most "serious" dramas.
Breaking the Procedural Mold
While most legal dramas follow the "case of the week" format, this series used the law as a lens to examine culture.
- They looked at how algorithms decide who gets fired.
- They examined the ethics of "buy-back" programs for student loans.
- They dove into the weird world of meme-stocks and digital currency before most people understood what a "Short Squeeze" was.
Navigating the Series Today
If you’re diving into The Good Fight for the first time, or looking to revisit it, don't expect a carbon copy of The Good Wife. It’s a much more experimental beast. The first season feels like a traditional legal drama, but by Season 3, it’s basically a political thriller with musical numbers. By the final season, there are literal riots in the streets outside the office windows while the lawyers argue about estate law. It's jarring. It’s supposed to be.
The show concluded in late 2022, and its ending was surprisingly quiet compared to the fireworks that preceded it. It didn't offer easy answers. It didn't promise that everything would be okay. Instead, it suggested that the "good fight" isn't something you win; it's just something you keep doing because the alternative is giving up.
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Practical Steps for Fans and New Viewers
If you want to appreciate the depth of what the Kings built here, you need to look past the surface-level politics.
- Watch the background details: The "tickers" on the TVs in the background of scenes often contain jokes or plot points that the characters don't mention.
- Track the fashion: Dan Lawson’s costume design for Diane Lockhart is world-class. Her brooches alone have their own fan following and often symbolize her mental state or the episode's theme.
- Don't skip the "previously on": The show often uses these to set the tone, sometimes using different narrators or styles.
- Check out the "Evil" crossover: The creators have a sister show called Evil. While not a direct crossover, the "feel" and the actors often overlap, creating a "King-verse" of surrealist television.
The real value of The Good Fight wasn't in its ability to predict the news, but in its refusal to look away from it. It reminded us that even when the world feels like it's tilting off its axis, there's still a certain dignity in showing up to work, putting on a really expensive suit, and trying to make a coherent argument. It was a show about staying sane in an insane world, and honestly, we probably need that message now more than ever.
Go back and start from the pilot. Notice how the lighting gets darker and the plots get weirder as the years go on. It’s a slow-motion descent into the rabbit hole, and it is easily one of the most ambitious projects ever put on a streaming service.
Final Insight for Your Watchlist:
To truly understand the show's evolution, pay close attention to the opening credits. In the first season, high-end office items—desks, chairs, wine glasses—explode in slow motion to classical music. It's beautiful and destructive. By the final season, the scale of what's being destroyed has shifted. It's a perfect metaphor for the show's entire run: the destruction of the status quo and the attempt to find beauty in the debris.