Christian Borle

The Good Wife continues its strong fifth season this week with “A Precious Commodity”. While the court case of the week doesn’t go to the show’s most entertainingly reliable well, bizarre quirks of the law, it does embrace another- moral murkiness. Alicia is wholly in the clear, doing her best to represent the wishes of her client, no matter her personal thoughts on the issue, but the case itself is deliciously tricky. Abortion is an incredibly complex issue, both intellectually and morally, and its quandaries are frequently reduced or dismissed simplistically by arguments from both sides.

In the television world there is a very important concept that every show must consider if it wants to be taken seriously: verisimilitude. Simply put, verisimilitude is the appearance of being real. The audience very well knows that the characters that appear on the screen night after night are make believe and the stories are made up, but it’s essential that the creators of that television show make the audience believe.

It’s sad to see one of the best episodes of Smash get wasted on Saturday night television. For the first time this season the audience catches a much needed break from competing shows Bombshell and Hit List as it digs deeper into how everyone’s love life is working, or not working. This episode also sparks the question: Why doesn’t Liza Minnelli star in everything on television?