Narrated by Matt Damon, Inside Job presents a financial axis of evil, involving Washington, Wall Street, and the world’s top academic institutions.  In it, we see a world of insane greed, depravity, and more, more, more.  Money isn’t really a means to end for these people, but a pathology.  The director doesn’t insert himself or his opinions into the documentary heavy-handedly.  Like what a good documentarian ought to do, he allows the interviews and facts to speak for themselves.  The film does well in describing complicated topics such as derivatives and securitization (perhaps made complicated so that the normal person didn’t know he was being taken for a ride until it was too late) and how deregulation allowed lenders, investment banks, insurance company AIG, and crediting agencies to create more and more money on an unstable base.  Mortgages (many sub-prime, fueled by the system and predatory lendors itself) were packaged with other types of loans (e.g student loans, car loans) into instruments known as securities called CDOs (collateralized debt obligations) which were then sold to investors and speculators.  Investment banks then bet against CDOs they didn’t own – AIG promised to pay if there were losses.  Investment banks like Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers, and Goldman Sachs intentionally made money on investor losses!  

The rampant conflicts of interest between investment banks, government, and academia (Harvard, Columbia, London Business School, etc) and lack of policies for the need to disclose are also discussed.  The very discipline of economics is attacked as being complicit in the 2008 financial crisis.  Deregulation in the 1980 and onward paved the pathway for this inevitably, with almost zero checks & balances or accountability in the system.  Current reforms are presented as being weak at best.  And as always, the poorest segements of society end up suffering the most on account of the actions of a few.   Collective inaction brought the whole system down.  Individual companies’ desire for profits ended up destroying others and their own companies.  Top brass at these places walked away from the wreckage unharmed, with their bonuses and pensions intact. 

If it happened once, what’s to stop it from happening again?  It didn’t stop Gekko.

Given this moody atmopshere, when something does actually happen, the viewer appreciates it so much more.  A small kiss shared between Cary and Kalinda, while expected, is savored.  Especially since the characters themselves do no make a deal of it afterward.  The lines between personal and professional goals and motivations are often blurred.  The series works on the strucutralist theory of binary opposition, embraced by Hegel, Levi-Strauss, and others.  Binary opposition, simply defined, are a pair of concepts or terms opposite in meaning set up against each other. 

This self-control and constant undercurrent of hesitation came to a peak in last week’s episode Foreign Affairs (4/12/2011).  All of the things which are not told are brought to light in some fashion or another.  Kalinda tells Will that he should tell Alicia that she’s an amazing woman because “People like to be told.”  Investigator Andrew Wiley tells Alicia that his investigation uncovered a “Leela” (Kalinda) whom with which her husband Peter was rumored to have an affair.  Cary has yet to reinvoke his romantic interest in Kalinda from the kiss a few episodes ago.  Kalinda does not tell Alicia that she slept with Peter, and does not yet know that she knows.  Natalie Flores reveals her feelings for Eli Gold by touching him momentarily on the arm and saying simply “If this were another time.”

In The Good Wife, as in real life, witholding information can be just as deadly as revealing it.  Information which may have been harmless if only exposed and handled earlier in the timeline, become dangerous monsters.  Needless to say, there is plenty of dramatic irony.  But the real treat is that we as viewers journey along with the characters as they figure out their motivations, desires, and goals.  We are with them as they make decisions, backtrack, and change their minds.  We are with them as they suppress personal emotion for what they perceive to be the greater good, or allow personal ambition and secrecy to damage friendships.  The show is extremely adept at introducing as well as handling baggage between characters.  The layers are a complex, seeming abyss.

Ironically for a series structured aroung a beginning with a sexual scandal, The Good Wife shows almost Victorian restraint vis-a-vis the subject.  Here we have the constant jostling of the supergo, ego, and id.  What sets it apart from reality tv as well as its competitors such as Gray’s Anatomy, is the power of the superego, and how that can be personally and professionally just as self-destructive.

These past few weeks have sure turned up the heat with Alicia re-exploring (introspectively) her love for her boss and Georgetown Law classmate Will Gardner, the reinvigoration of implied romance between Cary Agos and bisexual Kalinda Sharma (Archie Panjabi), Peter closing in on winning the race for State Attorney (his job before going to jail), and the surprising but short-lived softening of sharkish Eli Gold (Alan Cumming) as he manages his attraction to political collateral Natalie Flores (America Ferrera).

The sub-plotting is masterful. When the series focuses on the campaign, I can’t wait to get back to the legal case of the episode, when it focuses on the legal case, I can’t wait to know more about the FBI investigating Kalinda.  Speaking of law, the show has also explored some first amendment cases in interesting ways.  The series makes no apologies for the shadier moral quandaries of motives and tactics, leaving us on somewhat existential ground. Except for Alicia saying “It’s wrong” and then you’re like come on, why don’t you do something about it then??

In one of the episodes, Alicia’s gay brother encourages sister to break the rules and to indulge her naughty side for once.  “It’s Alicia time!” he says in his advice to her on how to seduce her boss Will.  Indeed, I think the viewers are left wanting, waiting for Alicia to make her move in her career, love life, and family.

For a legal show, The Good Wife is a doozie of a thriller.  The series paints Chicago with noir-ish edges that could have been lifted right out of BladeRunner, employs sexual tensions from the frames of Gladiator, and dark, perverse suspense from Alien.  This is classic Ridley Scott all over.