‘The Good Fight’ final season reviews: ‘Must-watch,’ ‘most ambitious’ episodes ever
In the sixth season premiere of “The Good Fight,” Christine Baranski’s Diane Lockhart tearfully shares with her new therapist that she wants “off the wheel” of political and legal insanity, and in true ‘Good Fight’ fashion, her tears are induced by teargas from the raging angst in the streets. Unfortunately, fans of the Paramount+ series will be teary-eyed, too, as Diane getting off the wheel means that after 60 episodes, the Robert King and Michelle King legal and political drama will sign off, ending a 13-year run that began with “The Good Wife.”
In these final episodes, Baranski’s Diane will struggle to process the fact that so much progress made over the past 50 years has receded, from reproductive and civil rights to the return of Cold War aggressions and threat of nuclear war. Audra McDonald’s Liz will confront a much different battle, sparring with the law firm’s new named partner Ri’Chard Lane (Andre Braugher). The entire ensemble, meanwhile, will grapple with escalating civil unrest. The last batch of episodes began airing on Sept. 8 and will run through Nov. 10.
WATCH ‘The Good Fight’ creators Robert King and Michelle King on the aftermath of the Trump administration
Unsurprisingly, the final season of this critically-acclaimed series has received strong notices for its last hurrah. As of this writing, it holds a 75 score on Metacritic, indicating “generally favorable reviews,” and a freshness rating of 86% on Rotten Tomatoes. Although unappreciated at the Emmy Awards, the show has always performed well with critics groups, earning 14 Critics Choice Award nominations and five Television Critics Association Award bids for its first five years.
Critics have called the sixth season of “The Good Fight” “hysterical” and “cheerfully unsettling,” “a love letter” to fans, and its “most ambitious” season arc of the whole series. Given that the series “has captured the madness of the past several years better than anything else on TV,” its last episodes are “stripped down to its basic, surrealist trademarks.” The ensemble boasts excellent performances from its series regulars, including the “minor miracle” Baranski, McDonald in “her meatiest season to date,” the “wonderfully subdued” Nyambi Nyambi, the “stealth MVP” Sarah Steele, and the “season’s standout performer” Charmaine Bingwa. The series has also added the “giddy” Braugher who “electrifies the season,” plus John Slattery.
See excerpts from some of the critics’ reviews below, and join in the discussion of “The Good Fight” and more with your fellow TV fans and industry insiders in our forums.
Inkoo Kang (Washington Post): “The sixth and final season of ‘The Good Fight’… hauntingly captures the resigned malaise of living in a reality that feels irreparably untethered. The first five episodes (of a total of 10) are bustling but unmistakably downbeat; it’s shaping up to be the most sorrowful season of the series… in its farewell year, ‘The Good Fight,’ the best of the #Resistance shows, mournfully reckons with just how much Trumpism has unmoored the country, dragging it, perhaps, toward a 21st-century version of civil war.”
Matthew Jacobs (TVGuide): “Even without knowing how ‘The Good Fight’s’ final episodes resolve, this much is clear: Among its devotees, the series leaves a gaping loss. Others will keep trying to make sense of the country’s Trumpian aftershocks, but none can say they had the Kings’ clear-eyed concurrence. This was the pinnacle of topical post-2016 art. Its brilliance has revealed so much.”
Darren Franich (EW): “Safe to say, I think, that ‘Good Fight’ is officially the weirdest normal show ever. Co-creators Robert and Michelle King never lost this spinoff’s fundamental network-procedural DNA… But that feeling of old order lets ‘The Good Fight’ dramatize genuine chaos better than almost any TV show of our chaotic era… In the five new episodes released to critics, three moments genuinely stunned me: Serious, mouth-on-the-ground, where-did-that-come-from shock. There’s also a quiet sequence that will haunt my nightmares… It’s never been more of a genuine thriller.”
Quinci LeGardye (AV Club): “Within the weekly cases and the familiar faces and dynamics, ‘The Good Fight’ seems to be ending in a way that honors six seasons of excellent TV and also acknowledges that constantly fighting the good fight can be exhausting. As always, it encapsulates the national mood, which currently includes a good amount of burnout and dejection. It’s comfortable with being bleak, though, because joy still shines through, letting us laugh at the absurdity from time to time. And that awareness of the beauty within the bulls— is why this final season, like the ones that came before it, is a must-watch.”
Dylan Roth (Observer): “Most of what has made the show great is still present: its surrealist bent, its utter cynicism about law and government, its just-over-the-top parodies of new technologies and their legal and social implications. ‘The Good Fight’ is one of the harshest criticisms of wealthy American liberalism to come out of wealthy American liberalism, an essential document of an era during which so many Diane Lockharts learned that the America that they’ve believed in their entire lives is essentially a waking dream enjoyed only by the privileged and naive. It’s a refreshing and fascinating look at the death of an ideology.”