for your own good
May. 8th, 2011 12:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
boxofdelightsI've been intensely fannish about The Good Wife lately, wolfing down the backlog, waiting for the next episode like a dog waits for dinner, and reading all the commentary I can find. I've been running into the notion that Alicia couldn't tolerate being deceived over the Peter/Kalinda affair because Alicia doesn't lie.
Alicia does lie. She lies less than any other main character, maybe less than any recurring character except Pastor Isaiah, but she does routinely lie: to her children. She lies to them in that very episode. Zach asks why his parents are separating, and Alicia says, "Because we decided it was time." No, actually, Alicia decided. Unilaterally. Peter did not even get the chance to discuss the decision after the fact.
And a minute after telling her kids this lie, which will not fool them for long even if Peter backs her up on it, Alicia tells them, "We don't lie here. We don't lie to each other." This is exactly the double bind that creates liars like Peter. On the verbal level you learn that you must not lie to the people you love. On a deeper level, you learn that you must lie to the people you love, and you must do anything (including lying) to prevent them from finding out that you lied. And both those messages come from your parent, your moral teacher, the person without whose care you would have died.
I'm sure that Alicia can rationalize why she had to say that then, to protect Zach and Grace, because she loves them, because the truth would only hurt them and what difference could it possibly make? And I am sure that Peter's rationalizations for his lies to Alicia sound remarkably similar. And I am intensely interested in whether the show is going to bring that similarity to light.
Alicia does lie. She lies less than any other main character, maybe less than any recurring character except Pastor Isaiah, but she does routinely lie: to her children. She lies to them in that very episode. Zach asks why his parents are separating, and Alicia says, "Because we decided it was time." No, actually, Alicia decided. Unilaterally. Peter did not even get the chance to discuss the decision after the fact.
And a minute after telling her kids this lie, which will not fool them for long even if Peter backs her up on it, Alicia tells them, "We don't lie here. We don't lie to each other." This is exactly the double bind that creates liars like Peter. On the verbal level you learn that you must not lie to the people you love. On a deeper level, you learn that you must lie to the people you love, and you must do anything (including lying) to prevent them from finding out that you lied. And both those messages come from your parent, your moral teacher, the person without whose care you would have died.
I'm sure that Alicia can rationalize why she had to say that then, to protect Zach and Grace, because she loves them, because the truth would only hurt them and what difference could it possibly make? And I am sure that Peter's rationalizations for his lies to Alicia sound remarkably similar. And I am intensely interested in whether the show is going to bring that similarity to light.