‘Elsbeth’: Everyone Old is New-ish Again
'The Good Wife' spinoff plays around in familiar waters.
NEW STANDARD DISCLAIMER: This newsletter aggressively spoils things.
My main memory of The Good Wife dates back to October of 20121. The Duchess had a chaotic enthusiasm for the show, lapping up every melodramatic moment, and as always I got carried along like flotsam caught in the current2. To say I barely remember anything about the show is an understatement—I believe I allowed my soul to leave my body and travel the astral plane whenever we sat down to watch an episode3.
But I recall the October 2012 episode mainly because Hurricane Sandy had arrived in my little corner of the world. The Duchess and I did not take it seriously. We went for a walk to ooh and aah over the waves on the Hudson River. We opened a bottle of wine and ate a hearty dinner and watched The Good Wife. And then the rains came and our house flooded and we lost half our stuff (including our walls and our floors, for dog’s sake), so it was, you know, memorable4.
I do, however, remember the character of Elsbeth Tascioni, an adorably quirky (but, naturally, brilliant) lawyer portrayed by the great Carrie Preston. Elsbeth was comic relief in The Good Wife, a goof who had peculiar fashion sense and an awkward affect. In other words, pretty standard fare when a mainstream network TV show wants a “quirky” character. But Preston’s charm is considerable, so she made an impression5.
Inexplicably, The Good Wife has spawned an entire damn universe, and Preston has now been playing this character for fourteen years! Good for you, Carrie Preston. Get those residuals6. Even more inexplicably, the character has now been given her own spinoff, Elsbeth. Naturally, The Duchess insisted we watch it despite the obvious risk of generating another eldritch horror in hurricane form7. And what’s fascinating about it is the fact that it is Columbo wearing a funny hat8.
Oldheads Unite!
If you’re old, you remember Columbo, which ran in various incarnations between 1968 and 2003. Portrayed by Peter Falk, Columbo is rumpled and blue-collar, moping about in a trenchcoat and a mop of unruly hair. Each episode shows the crime being committed and makes clear who the bad guy is, and the fun is watching everyone underestimate Columbo because he comes off as a slightly addled man-child9. And then he slowly dismantles their defenses and solves the crime. Columbo had a signature move: He would seem to be stymied by a witness or the killer and turn to leave, only to pause and turn back, saying “Just one more thing ...” before dropping the hammer on them.
It’s a great character; you don’t get roughly 5,000 episodes and TV movies if you’re not fun to watch. And Elsbeth might as well change her last name to Columbo, because she’s just doing Peter Falk. I mean, exactly. Elsbeth amuses the killers she encounters. They assume she is a slightly brain-damaged, sweet summer child in her colorful clothes, carrying more bags than is mentally healthy, and they can’t imagine a universe where she nails them. And then she nails them! In large part because they underestimate her. And while she hasn’t yet workshopped a solid catchphrase10, she totally does the Columbo move, pretending to walk away only to turn back and zing those dastardly killers.
There’s nothing wrong with stealing from a classic show, but it’s kind of amazing how close Elsbeth is to Columbo. I honestly wouldn’t be totally surprised if they were just re-shooting old Columbo scripts11.
The Doom of Men is That They Forget
Pop culture sometimes has a shockingly short memory. When I’m out with younger folks and I drop some super cool Simpsons quotes, no one laughs. No one! It’s disrespectful12, but also indicative of how quickly things recede. I have no idea how many people are watching Elsbeth, but a lot of them probably don’t realize that they are, in fact, watching a Columbo homage.
Does it matter? Of course not. It’s a network TV procedural most notable for the fact that Elsbeth is in New York City as part of a consent decree resulting from some NYPD shenanigans. This mild acknowledgment that policing in this country is kind of screwed up is actually the most interesting thing about the show, though it does go into some serious acrobatics to ensure that the police characters depicted are, you know, totally good cops who always put aside their personal biases in order to get the bad guys and do the right thing. Because that’s how you get consent decrees, innit13?
So far, no hurricanes have come to punish us for watching Elsbeth. But it took a while for The Good Wife to destroy us, so there’s still plenty of time, assuming anyone else is watching this show.
NEXT WEEK: The Good Place weaponized tropes against us.
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As chance would have it, this is now the earliest memory I can still produce in my brain. The first several decades of my life exist only in photographs, police blotters, and other people’s memories now.
Jeff merely pawn in game of life.
Which explains all the things I agreed to back in those days, like adopting five cats, traveling to France, and trying German whiskey.
I don’t actually recall the episode itself, but it was The Good Wife, so the summary was something like “Alicia Florrick goes toe to toe with an oddball judge, drinks the largest glass of merlot you’ve ever seen, and wonders if she should leave her husband the Governor.” Because that was every episode. Every single one.
Although the character is also a great example of Characterization Scope Creep, because if you watch her first appearance here, you’ll see that while the general outline of the character is there, she was initially presented as much less quirky, and had a much more sedate fashion sense.
<Looks at his last royalty check and bursts into tears>
The unofficial Somers House Words are now “There’s Always Another Hurricane Coming.”
Often literally.
My ears are suddenly burning for some reason that has nothing to do with the probability that people describe me as an “addled man-child,” possibly before spitting on the ground.
Personally, I think “And that’s the way the news goes” works for every occasion.
I am, it goes without saying, far too lazy to actually confirm this.
Not as disrespectful as when they all refer to me as “The Old Man” and pretend I’m not even there.
NARRATOR: No, it’s not, actually.
I love this show. So much so that it is sure to be cancelled next week. Of course, I loved Columbo too. Loved the “smarts beat out old money” aspect. Elsbeth turns that on its head a bit in NYC in that she once every episode reminds them that she is a top-flight Chicago defense lawyer and people pay good money for that—go figure. And, aside from an endless stream of brightly colored winter coats worn with hats that don’t match, she doesn’t have time to spend money.
And, I trot out of my house every am with an overstuffed purse, my swim bag, my empty grocery bags, and the extra swim bag I need for the giant towel I use to roll up and dry my exceedingly unflattering wetsuit because I swim outdoors in Northern California where it is cold and windy at the coast year round. Not complaining! I like cold and windy. But my wetsuit needs its own swim bag.
All said, Elsbeth is my gal. Tho I think we’re missing some of the super-fashionable lawyers in skintight clothes and thousand-dollar designer leather accessories who, in contrast, made Elsbeth extra funny in THE GOOD FIGHT and GOOD WIFE.
#2. Mongo like candy.