The Good Fight (2017-22)

The Kings' spinoff of The Good Wife (a stellar legal drama in its own righht) was the perfect way for CBS to enter the streaming wars. The Kings took a successful show, a formula that worked, and were permitted to experiment with profanity, more taboo teams not allowed on network television, and even animated musical segments. They challenged the censors, and memorably let their audience know CBS censored their satirical song on China in a meta episode about censorship. The Good Fight was the boon we needed in the Trump era. When the world turned tipsy turvy, The Good Fight satirized us by cranking up the absurdity further. It gave us a way to process the craziness around us. They rolled with the punches when the pandemic came around, always the most topical show on television. They brought back their cast of kooky judges and Chicagoland lawyers from The Good Wife, and even elevated Audra McDonald to a leading role. At the black law firm of Reddick & Boseman, we were introduced to many excellent black actors. And they played high powered lawyers! That was unheard of before and I hope those roles continue to be written. Clever and timely, poignant and funny-- though I'm not generally a proponent for TV spinoffs, I always looked forward to The Good Fight.

Straight Line Crazy (The Shed) (2022)

It's my first time to The Shed. Aglaia had the foresight to get Culture Pass tickets for a Wednesday matinee. Tickets sold out fast, even when they released a new block, and they were going for hundreds of dollars. It's a decent sized theater on the sixth floor. The stage juts out into the audience, three-quarters in the round. It's interesting (in that you're really close to the action) but it's sort of unnecessary. It requires them to block the scenes in an awkward way. They move around in circles constantly as they converse so that they're sometimes facing you and sometimes facing away. At the back of the stage, there are some extras that don't really have lines.

There are also some weird narrative choices. Act I centers on Robert Moses's early career building the Northern and Southern State Parkways on Long Island, challenging the unsympathetic landed gentry. Act II focuses on his failed attempt to build a highway through Washington Square Park toward the end of his career. We have Jane Jacobs to thank for his defeat, and she shows up in the play as a rather major character, despite them never having met. In Act I, she interjects with totally unnecessary narration. I actually think all the narration is kind of cheesy. The play would have benefited from ending Act I and Act II at the end of the scene, at the height of the drama, instead of closing with narration. Honestly, we could do without Jane Jacobs altogether. The scenes in Washington Square Park are awkward. The peanut gallery reacts to the protests and public hearings by looking straight at the audience and exclaiming pointlessly. And the play loses momentum whenever Ralph Fiennes isn't on stage. Fiennes is phenomenal as always. His repartee is quick and his posture impeccable. His accent was a little difficult to understand at first but I got used it.

What I do like is that Act I build Moses up. And Act II takes him down. He accomplished a lot in his long career. The play just focuses in on these two key moments and gives the audience both sides of the coin. We are allowed to make our own judgments. What's kind of ironic is that the times have shifted. It has been nearly a hundred years since the events of Act I. Moses believed that cars were the future, and he was right, partially because he built New York that way, and the rest of the country followed suit. But we've now come all the way around to where Manhattan is about to institute congestion pricing. Cars are the enemy now. Unfortunately, thanks to Moses, we're already all-in on cars.