Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 879: Bartolo, Bryce, and Goodbye Good Wife

Episode Date: May 9, 2016

Ben and Sam discuss Bartolo Colon’s first career home run, the Cubs’ continued success and willingness to walk Bryce Harper, and The Good Wife’s series finale.

Embrace the senile genius Watch him reinvent the wheel I don't need your summary acts, summary acts To give in to the narrative age Don't begin, I will set you back, set you back, set you Oh, to begin, I will set you back, set you back, set you Good morning and welcome to episode 879 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspect, is brought to you by

Playindex, a baseball reference, and our Patreon supporters. I'm Sam Miller, along with Ben Lindberg of FiveThirtyEight. Hey Ben, how are you? Alright. Alright. So straight to the baseball. Are we going to do any good wife banter? Well, that was a reference to that. That was a reference to the fact that you were going to want to talk about good wife. Yeah, I feel like I've been slapped by a lawyer in a dimly lit hallway.

But we could talk about it at the end of the episode so that people who are not interested in our Good Wife banter don't have to hear it. We could make this the end of the episode. We could. I know you'd like to. All right. Yeah. Let's talk about some baseball and then we'll get to Good Wife at the end. All right.

Why don't you start? Okay. Well, tell me what your topic is. We'll get to Good Wife at the end. All right. Why don't you start? Okay. Well, tell me what your topic is.

Probably if we don't, we might fill the room with banter, in which case my topic will move to tomorrow. But if we can't banter our way through this, it will be my trout trade proposals. Okay. Well, we should talk a little bit about Bartolo and Bryce, perhaps. I don't know if you have anything to say about Bartolo clone. Do you have any observations other than sheer joy and awe? Well, in fact, I think that there isn't anything interesting about Bartolo Cologne's sort of late career joyousness to analyze. I find everything that Bartolo Cologne does to bring me joy. But more than that, I find joy in the fact

that everybody else finds joy. There's just something so unexpected about it, about Bartolo Colon, this guy. I mean, imagine 10 years ago telling you that Bartolo Colon would be the most popular player in baseball. What was it, five years ago when he was getting experimental treatments and was out of baseball and seemed like he wouldn't be back? And now he is a folk hero? Yeah. No, I know. I mean, there's two things.

One is that make it great. One is just that people are happy. I like it when people are happy. And there doesn't seem to be anything about Bartolo Colon that doesn't make people happy these days. And so I like that. But I also just like that Bartolo Colon is such an unexpected person to be this figure. I mean, for one thing, he was suspended for PEDs not long ago. And yet nobody cares. And I don't know what that, I mean, I don't think people should do PEDs. I don't think it's like a noble thing to do or anything. And I think it's bad for the sport that people do. And so I don't know why I like it that Bartolo Colon is so popular. But I just like, I don't know, I like this completely uncynical view of a baseball player

that everybody has agreed upon with Bartolo Colon. I like that he doesn't, you know, he doesn't do anything quite right. Well, he doesn't do anything quite predictably. He doesn't do, he doesn't look like a ball player. He's also a guy who 10 years ago I didn't like because he won the Cy Young over Johan Santana, even though Santana was like immeasurably better than him. And so Cologne was this, to some degree, symbol of bad baseball analysis. And now here he is 10 years. And he was, you know, he was part of that.

He was the return on the worst trade in history. And all of that is just gone. It's just this... Well, I think I've mentioned this line before, but he is proof of that old saying that all politicians, prostitutes, and buildings become respectable if they live long enough. The Chinatown line.

Exactly, yeah. And so this is hope for us all. Like, I mean, okay, maybe that's what this is, is that we're all getting older and that's, that's hard to deal with. You know, I'm scared to get old. I, you know, I've talked about my toe, right? I don't think you've talked about your toe. I have definitely. About seven years ago, I was playing, you know, like church league soccer and my foot connected with another guy's foot and he injured my toe. And so, the story that I told about this toe is two things. There's two things that I took from this story. One is I go to the doctor and she like gives an x-ray and

she's like, yep, that toe's really messed up. And I look at her like, great. Okay. So what now? And she's like, nothing. Like, you're just like, what? Like, why would we fix you? Yeah. You're too old to rehab, too old to fix. Exactly. You're not making the Olympics. So we're just going to let this toe be. And two is that that was that toe experience was when I realized that I was not, I was also not healing anymore. Like it used to be that you could cut off an arm, but it would grow back if you were young enough. And then you get to an age where you just quit healing, nothing heals ever again. And so today I was running, I was sort of jogging into my parents

kitchen and jumping up on the porch and they have a little puppy and the puppy's been under our feet for the last few weeks. And so this puppy is like getting right under my feet as I'm turning a corner and I don't want to step on the puppy and I sort of contort myself to avoid the puppy. And I tumble, I take a tumble and my toe is, I swear, rebroken. And I mean, eight years ago, I hurt this toe. And it just might have been seven years ago. And it just doesn't ever heal. And these sorts of things really make me sad and nervous about what the next 30 years are going to be like. And Bartolo

Cologne is just this reminder that there are also good things about getting old. You know, the world becomes more patient with you, for one thing, and you get this sort of particular kind of wisdom to you and calm. And it's a nice place to be as well. My guess is that, in fact, while the constant pain and lost hopes of middle and old age are on the surface and make you feel sad, in fact, I would guess that the older you get, the happier you are, at least relative to anybody else who's of self-actualized age. And so I'm sort of inspired by Partola Colon. Sometimes you talk About a certain site making you

Suspect that baseball is actually easy This was something that you hoped To establish last summer when we Had access to an actual baseball team and You wanted to hit off some live Pitching and you once did Take some BP off Sean Conroy So does the site of Bartolo

Cologne hitting a baseball 97 miles per hour at a projected distance of 365 feet make you question the athleticism of baseball players or the difficulty of the game? Well, it's already, it's another data point. I mean, it doesn't, I don't think it changes anything. I figure if you can put the bat on the ball at all as a pitcher, you've already proven that it's not as hard as it looks. Yeah, it amazes me that pitchers can consistently do that. And I guess if you swing as hard as Colon does, and he is, of course, famous for swinging in an uncoordinated way,

but certainly hard, hard enough to make his helmet fall off, sooner or later, we've talked probably before when we've talked about whether a normal person could hit a ball out in batting practice. If you swing hard enough and you have enough swings, eventually you'll connect by chance alone. So I don't want to minimize his achievement here, but it was bound to happen given uh enough swings yeah statistically he has probably not taken enough swings for this to happen by chance i wonder if bartolo cologne is a like if bartolo cologne had never pitched would you guess that he would have been signed as a position player i don't know that much about his background well he was you know he was uh he obviously had a strong arm strong enough arm sure he came from a baseball hotbed and uh he was uh you know a

young man so probably he would have and uh maybe odds are pretty good that he he's you know he he's certainly the best hitter you and i have ever met, right? Have we met him? No, we haven't. If we were to meet him, we've met some pretty good hitters. We've actually met some. That's true. You're right. I've met Jason Giambi. We've met Mike Trout. Best guess, what would Bartolo Colon have hit in the Pacific Association?

I don't think he would have been good there. No. Well, okay. So let's see. Over the last five years, he's hit 077, 083, 112 in the majors. So that's a 195 OPS in the majors. Is it possible that he would be equally good anywhere? That he just, as long as the pitchers are throwing reasonably like a professional pitcher, he would be equally unsuccessful. Like the extra movement or whatever it is that a major league pitcher has that a Pacific Association pitcher doesn't have. Maybe at his level of swinging, it doesn't matter as much. I don't know. Probably not. It's hard to imagine him hitting well.

Obviously, he couldn't run. him hitting well. Obviously, he couldn't run. Even in the home run, he did his usual carrying his bat down the first baseline, which is wonderful. Maybe he'd be able to hit 150 there. And what are the chances that the managers and coaches of Major League Baseball will coordinate a Silver Slugger award for him this year? I'd like to see that. It really, it honestly kind of makes me rethink my whole pro DH stance because I am generally pro DH, but then the very terribleness of pitcher hitting that makes me a pro DH person in the first place, then makes the actually competent pitchers stand out so much that I enjoy that. So you get your occasional Madison

Bumgarner and it almost makes the struggles of every other pitcher worthwhile. And then in addition to the rare competent pitcher, which seems almost miraculous, you have the very incompetent pitcher who does something competent one time. And that in a way is even better. So I don't know. I mean, are the weak outs and the automatic outs and the turning over the lineup over and over and over again, does that outweigh the joy of Bartol Cologne hitting a home run and Madison Bumgarner hitting many home runs? I'm not sure. pro dh so i my position on the dh is if if they if the pitchers actually couldn't get a hit if they went over i mean if they if if routinely pitchers were coming up to the majors and retiring over 300 then yes that would be a problem but they hit fine they're not good but only relative to the very best baseball players in the world they're perfectly good hitters these are they're every time a hitter pitcher comes up to hit, he is a threat to get a hit. And the idea that they're that

they're an automatic out is just a fallacy. They get hits. I mean, who's to say that one in 10 isn't enough, you know, just because Ted Williams got more, of course, Ted Williams got more, he was the best. But these guys are threats to get hits every single time. And they're actually pretty good at it. So I need a better reason than it's boring to watch pitchers hit. Pitchers hitting, the fact that they're less likely to get a hit almost makes it, to some degree, sometimes more suspenseful. Like, you know, pitcher falls behind 2-0 to another pitcher. I'm watching.

So what is your reason? You have one. you said you're pro dh pro the opposite oh okay i uh makes more sense i just uh sent you my favorite i wrote i've written i've written some pieces about bartolo cologne hitting in my day and i've just sent you my favorite please post it on the facebook do you have a guess of what do you remember which one this is remember yes the bartolo colon running to first base yeah we had a ron darling had a hypothesis that bartolo colon had never touched first base and uh like even just even just running out of ground ball and i uh i tested it i think by the way the the reason that i can be happy that everybody is happy about bartolo cologne is is summed up more than anything else in his interaction with tyler moore in this article so read it just for for the tyler moore

section and uh and i think that's why we like bartolo should we talk about bryce harper sure walk me through this because i know that he walked a lot and that's about all I know. Yeah, he got on base almost all the time this weekend, but there was only one hit involved. So on Sunday, he got on base all seven times, six times via walk And one time via hit by pitch I think Bill Bayer At Hardball Talk did some play indexing And he couldn't find Any results for batters who

Reached base without reaching on an error At least seven times without Having an official at bat in a game So he might be the first person Ever to do that So he was intentionally walked A bunch of to do that So he was Intentionally walked a bunch of those times And what he's gone 12 Yeah Rob Maines also did some play indexing

And he found that nobody Had ever had two consecutive Games with at least three Played appearances and no actual at bats And so it seems very Unlikely that anybody has matched Bryce Harper's streak of 12 Played appearances without an at-bat.

Yes. And so the Cubs, despite putting Bryce Harper on base over and over and over again, swept since we did a podcast on how great the Cubs have been last week. They have not lost. And in fact, they swept a really good team, the Washington Nationals. So after the game, Tanner Roark said that he was very, very surprised that the Cubs walked Harper so many times. He said, I think it's scared baseball, which I don't have a problem with. It is kind of scared baseball and it's totally reasonable to be scared of Bryce Harper.

No, Tanner Roark has never, ever pitched around a guy. Right. You could call it respect baseball or you could call it something else if scared is too demeaning, but it is appropriate to be scared of the best hitter in the league. So the question, I suppose, is whether this makes sense, whether it makes sense to put Bryce Harper on every time. Of course, Ryan Zimmerman left 14 runners on base on Sunday, batting behind Bryce Harper, which was a major league record. So Zimmerman, of course, has not hit. He has a sub 300 on base and a not very above 300 slugging. And so this is sort of the age old lineup protection thing in action.

And the debate about lineup protection, it's always been the research has shown that it can actually affect your production. It just might not make you worse. Being pitch around, as Bryce Harper was this weekend, just makes Bryce Harper kind of valuable. He's on base every time. And so it might change the look of his stats, but it doesn't Make him a less productive player necessarily Although it could be Worse for the Nationals possibly If the guy hitting behind him Never gets a hit anyway

Question is I guess whether Harper has reached The point that it makes Sense to do this sort of thing Joe Maddon is not a crazy Person generally seems to have a reason For doing the things that he does Cubs pretty smart pretty good at baseball And they have decided not to pitch to Bryce Harper. And I think Bill also in that hardball talk post dredged up the old Barry Bonds, should you walk Barry Bonds calculator that Tom Tango created way back when. And this is sort of relevant to something in our book, because we sort of faced this decision last season with a hitter named Matt Chavez in the Pacific Association.

But what is your initial reaction to walking Bryce Harper every single time? Well, obviously, I don't begrudge Tanner Roark playing the game where you try to shame a team into doing something that's against its best interests. Yes. We had that happen as well. Yeah. As Ben alluded to. I guess we can just say it, right?

Yeah. It's been out a whole six days. Yeah. No, so we had a first. I'm going to back up a little. I'm actually kind of happy that the Cubs are doing this just because somebody tweeted that we weren't true saber because our team, oh, beyond the box court tweeted that we weren't true saber because our team led the Pacific Association in intentional walks. And it was this situation. There was this guy, Matt Chavez, who was, you know, 2004 Barry Bonds relative to a league in which, you know, nobody else was better than like, you know, average Derek Lee. Like he was just that far beyond everybody else. So eventually,

and nobody walked him and eventually we started walking him and the, uh, an opposing manager, uh, realizing that he had no defense against our intentional walks, brilliantly started working our veteran shortstop to try to convince him that it was shameful what we were doing, that everybody's out here to try to get noticed. Yeah, and our manager. Well, and our manager, but he had a better relationship with the shortstop. So he was trying to convince him that we owed it to the player to let him hit, that we owed it to the spirit of IndieBall to let him get some pitches we owed it to the spirit of indie ball to let him to let him get some pitches and at the very least we could pitch around him but we it's shameful to

intentionally walk him and um i there were times where i was like where he would be the manager there was a i don't know if you were at this game there was a game where the manager uh the opposing manager was coaching third base and was talking to our shortstop about something. And I actually went around the field and started yelling at him at our shortstop not to listen to him. He's only telling you lies. That he doesn't have your best interests at heart, I remember saying, which is weird. This weird baseball smack talk. He doesn't have your best interest at heart. Anyway, so Joe Maddon doing this feels like it somewhat validates us.

And Tanner Roark doing his part, that's fine. Joe Maddon doing his part seems fine, although it seems a little extreme. I haven't looked at the Tango chart, but I have a hard time believing that Jake Arrieta should be intentionally walking Bryce Harper or even just pitching around and walking him so regularly. Bill concluded based on the chart. Of course, the chart was a while ago and the run environment was different. I don't know whether that changes anything, but based on the recommendations of when to walk Bonds, it didn't seem like this was justified most of the time. And as to whether it's good or bad for the game or whether it's something that needs to be fixed, this was something that was talked about a lot when Barry Bonds was batting, and I don't think it does need to be fixed.

I think that the walk is a strong enough penalty that it's actually pretty hard to walk somebody and have it be good for yourself. And even with bonds, I, I, when, you know, when I've looked deep into Barry Bonds, intentional walks, I very rarely find walks that I think, yep, that was a, that was a good idea. I mean, you know, there's, you have the occasional, you know, runner on third and whatever the, the situation really is strongly in favor of the walk and and that's going to maybe be the case no matter who's up to bat but the way that bonds or the way that harper gets walked where it's you know it becomes something close to automatic it's just you know you're you're you're basically taking the hit you're making a choice it's a rational

choice it's not like to me it's not like like the intentional fouling problem in the NBA where the math is just too easy. So I don't really have a problem with it. I mean, it's not good baseball, and it's very rarely an issue for the sport. But I don't think that the penalty is disproportionately low for the strategy. Uh-huh, yeah. And we went through something with Chavez where our pitchers didn't want to do that. Our pitchers didn't really want to walk him because they all thought they could get him out, and he had worn us out. They didn't want to pitch around him. I think they were happy to intentionally walk him.

Maybe, yeah. They were very bad at pitching around him. Yes, right. And they seemed to think they could challenge him or they could find the right pitch or they could find the right location. And we sort of were guilty of that, too. We were dissecting stats and looking at our numbers on him and trying to find his weakness. And, you know, he didn't do that well against this pitch type in this location. And so we were all trying to find reasons to pitch to him. And we

probably shouldn't have pitched to him because in that league, he was just so much better than everyone else. And he had done so much damage against us. In the majors, I don't know if it makes as much sense, really. I'll be curious to see if it catches on. I mean, if the Cubs do it, if Joe Maddon does it, the most respected manager on the best team in baseball starts pitching to someone a certain way. That might at least make other teams take notice. But I don't know if there would be a way to justify it statistically, unless you think that Zimmerman is just so compromised at this point that he's not the guy that the projections would say that he is. Do you think that's the case? Certainly could be.

He's had his issues. I don't know anything about him that anyone else doesn't know. While we're on the topic of the Cubs, your boss tweeted Sunday that the official 538 projections now have the Cubs winning 107 games this year, which you can laugh at because you hate the hubris of data journalism, and you find that to be an absurd claim that needs to be walked fully back. Or you can laugh because the Cubs are just amazing, and all you can do is laugh. That was why I was laughing. Yeah, me too.

So you have nothing to do with those projections. You put none of your own labor into that system of projecting. But 107, how's it sound? It's not crazy because they were a, you know, coming into the season, it wasn't crazy to see them as a 97, 98 win team, something like that. And they have started off at the pace of a, what, 130 win team teams something like that and they have started off at the pace of a what 130 win team or something like that for you know well over a month so even if they just continue to play like uh i mean what if they play what was the say a pre-season expected winning percentage for them

let's say you know they were projected to win 97 games or something. So that's a 599 winning percentage. So how many games do they have left? 132. 132. So if they play at that original pace, they will win 79 more games and they have what, 24 wins right now? Yeah. So that right now? Yeah. So that's 103. Yeah.

I think they have to be a 101-win team from here on out to make it work. If we thought they were a 97-98 win team, and we've seen them play like a 130-win team for a month plus, it's not unreasonable to adjust your expectations up slightly and that's really all you have to do to get them to 107 although if you thought they were a 97 win team that was with kyle schwarber and you probably would think they were a 94 95 win team without him maybe yeah uh but you know seems fine to me i mean i'd i'd easily put 100 on them. And if sure. And so if they're 100 win team, then that gets them to 106. Yeah, at this pace. I mean, you know, just just with what they've

already done. So yeah, 107 win team might be a reasonable projection. I can continue to work for 538 and hold my head high. If let's say the Cubs win 117 games this year and like 117 like a literal 117 and uh so they're the greatest team in history regular season team in history or at least in the 162 game era and then they go into the postseason and whatever they lose a short series because it happens would you expect the offseason to be free agents just flooding in at reduced prices just to be there when Chicago wins? I mean, would this be, would we see a real kind of almost player collusion situation where everybody wants to be on the team that is going to end that drought and is just so obviously going to do it? end that drought and is just so obviously going to do it. Well, given that we already sort of saw it last offseason, or at least it seemed that way with Hayward and Zobrist and others, it seemed as if the Cubs had an easier time recruiting because of their success and their core and

Theo and I don't know what else. So coming off the best season ever, I would imagine that would be a beacon to anyone who wants to win I saw an ad for RBI Baseball A video game And it talked about how they have upgraded With all Well I don't know exactly the words

But the keywords are New fielding moves Do you have a problem With fielding moves Being used to describe baseball actions? I've always really liked football move as a saying. So I'm actually kind of happy if we're porting that to baseball. Baseball move.

Baseball move would be like grabbing your jock or something probably, but I still like the term. Okay. All right. Good. Then I won't be mad at that. And I think finally finally unless you have more banter after this nope rich hill pitched of course okay i think this is the first time that rich hill has pitched that i am not going to move my number at all i don't know if that's

because we he's settling down a 339 pitcher this time 339 yeah he went five and two thirds allowed one run struck out five walked, walked 3. I didn't really like this outing that much. He started out really good, and then he kind of lost in the middle innings, but only allowed one run, two hits, got 13 swinging strikes, and it was, look, it probably is slightly better than a 3-39 pitcher, but not enough for me to move. So, first, I think this is the first time that he hasn't. Yeah, it's the first time he has surprised us by not surprising us. Alright, that's

my whole list of banters. Alright. I think that it's time for the good wife. Okay, alright. Hashtag good wife farewell segment. And if you want to hear us talk about Trout, we'll probably talk about that tomorrow. Yeah, we definitely will. Okay. Alright, so good wife farewell segment and if you want to hear us talk about trout we'll probably talk about that tomorrow yeah we definitely will okay all right so good wife series finale

spoilers yes spoilers all right so i don't know where where you want to start uh i guess we might as well start with this you know just we might as well start at the end. Okay. Unhappy ending. Yeah. Very complex, unresolved ending. And just knowing that, I mean, that really is the whole series. Is it going to end happy or is it not going to end happy? And it ended unhappy. And this was not an unhappy show. This was largely a show about Alicia succeeding and things eventually working out and her winning a lot of cases. And probably the worst day of the series was the first day until the last day.

And so are you surprised that it ended? The last day, of course, mirrored the first day very closely as they seemed to really like the things coming full circle structure of the show. So there was a Peter Press conference and there was a slap. Look, you don't have to give plot details. If people haven't seen it, they're not listening. Right. So I think the show always kind of wanted to differentiate itself from the standard network show. And it usually did in very positive ways.

And so I wonder if the desire to avoid the pat, happy ending contributed to this, just wanting to stand out from your typical network show where everything gets resolved and everyone's happy. Or there's tragedy. It wasn't really, you know, no one died. There wasn't any huge shocker it was just sort of a sad ending it was sad and there was not much resolution it was the rare show where the first thing i did after watching the series finale was watch a six minute video on cbs.com called the show's creators explain the final episode oh because i wanted

to see how they would explain the final episode because i wasn't sure how to explain it myself so well it wasn't just that i mean it's not just that a bad thing happened to her though like we saw her her i mean her own actions causes she yes look the the thing about this show is that okay it's called the good wife and for seasons, you've sort of taken that. I at least have taken that title to be kind of, you know, arch and ironic. Like she's the good wife because that's how the public viewed her because she was standing up there at the press conference in the first episode. But then, of course, she hasn't really been married to Peter for a very long time. The whole show is about her finding

her own story to tell. And yet, as it came to the end, she was giving her husband too much. She was too devoted to her husband. And that's what cost her business relationships. That's what cost her personal relationship with Jason. And in fact, she ended up being that very thing that you completely forgot about. Like you just lost sight of the fact that she's supposed to even be the good wife because she hadn't been for so long. And then in the end, she came back into that role. And in doing so, she hurt people close to her and ruined all of these things that for seven seasons she had been building up toward and uh and ended up with nothing yes and ended up with nothing except for

this like kind of gross resolution that she was going to be stronger than all the people she had hurt at least that's how i read the facial expression, the, you know, composing herself facial expression. Right. At the end. I assume we're supposed to make the connection that she has become more like Peter or she has adopted his traits or the pursuit of power and the high paying job and the political office that might be in her future and all of that has tainted her in some way over the course of the series arc and she's a less likable character i suppose than she was at the start

of the series although she is more powerful and more competent in certain ways so i sort of i guess i admire the ending i always sort of admire it when a series resists the neat ending. I wouldn't have minded a neat ending. I wouldn't have minded her walking off into the sunset with Jason. But I sort of respect the choice, I guess I could say, as I've respected many of the show's choices over the course of its hundreds of episodes. I mean, the last season was sort of a mess. There wasn't really a clear conflict. It was all sort of an internal, will Alicia make the same mistake she made with Will again? That was kind of, will she stay with Peter? Will Peter go to prison again? Which I don't, no one really cares, I don't think, about Peter going to prison, and the case was very difficult to follow, and it kind of came out of nowhere, and most of its

details were pretty opaque, so I wasn't all that invested in the outcome of that court case, but after seven seasons, when you've already played the card where the beloved character dies and you've already had another beloved character leave the show and you've played musical chairs with your law firms several times it kind of gets to the point where you're stringing it along and i was happy for it to be strung along because i enjoyed it week to week even when it did seem a little aimless and purposeless but i respect the choice do you have any idea whether peter was guilty and do you do you think the fact that i'm when it did seem a little aimless and purposeless, but I respect the choice. Do you have any idea whether Peter was guilty? And do you think the fact that I'm guessing the answer is no,

do you think that was intentional and slash a strength or a flaw of that storyline? I mean, I assume just because it's Peter, I lean toward he was guilty just because he has a history of doing things and having a compromised moral compass. So I assume we're supposed to think he was guilty, but it also doesn't seem to matter. Maybe it's just the message is that when you are in this position of power, you're in political office, you get mired in these things. And whether you're actually trying to do them or not, you just, it gets into this murky territory where everyone looks bad. Maybe that is supposed to be the takeaway, but no, I don't, I don't think I have any clear idea of whether he was guilty or not. All right. So my, um, the most, my most ambiguous feelings about the finale and really the final

season. And so maybe you can talk me through it is that you remember when jason was sort of new and there were those people like a bunch of people were telling alicia that he was a like like a legitimate sociopath yeah just a bad dude canon yeah and like yeah i think they actually said no he's literally a sociopath. Like, don't go anywhere near him. And that was, to me, this, like, horribly unfired Chekhov's gun the entire time. Like, I just kept waiting for that to circle around and be the storyline. And, you know, the problem with network TV is that they're not generally writing. I mean, there's a lot of moving factors.

And casting is a total pain. You don't know who's going to be available for how long. And so you really sometimes see what you think is a bad storyline or bad writing is really just the practicalities of running a network television show for 24 episodes a season. And so it's possible that I guess I always just sort of assumed that they were doing so little with that. I would give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they intended Jason to be a much smaller character. Maybe he was going to be a bad guy, but then he tested well and they got good feedback and the message boards liked him.

And so they ended up kind of doing an audible on him but i was still kind of to the end holding out hope that that gun was going to fire and so when we are to believe that you know he's gone right that alicia will never be close to him again right it's obviously it's ambiguous i'm sure but not it's not i don't that not that ambiguous right the kings in their six minute video on cbs.com i i think they implied that they thought she would go after him and that that might work out but oh the show itself did not give me that impression i mean okay so as if he was gone so do hmm huh well so do you think i'm not even if he is gone is it because alicia ruined it or am i can i take some solace in him abandoning her was that the payoff to that

ex-colleague telling alicia that he's a horrible person well, I don't know if he showed himself to be horrible, but he showed himself to be a little bit of a lightweight or insubstantial in an interpersonal sense. I mean, it was 12 episodes of him being the world's greatest guy. Yeah. Like super competent, super romantic, super calm, super patient, super forgiving, super everything awesome. Like, where's the sociopath? Yeah, we really didn't see it.

Never once. What were you hoping that the payoff would be? That he would reveal himself to be a sociopath and Alicia would have the strength to walk away? Or what? What would the outcome be? I honestly can't even remember. I had like a – I thought I knew where it was going, and I forget, though. Well, those seven seasons really increased my respect

for the office of investigator at a law firm. I don't know whether real investigators are as competent as Kalinda and Jason and even Robin had her moments. But if they are anywhere near as good as the TV versions, then I salute people who do that as their job. All right. And my last thing, my big problem with the finale, not a big problem, but the thing that I will remember five years from now is so when she's having all these imaginary conversations with will which i like i always like that as a plot device i liked it today too it was good but then she hugs him and i just don't think you can imagine

a hug i think that's what makes a hug a hug is that it is real it can only be real i i would challenge i think you can imagine almost any any interaction with any person but i challenge anybody to convincingly imagine a hug and i don't think you can do it i think when you imagine a hug it only makes you feel emptier you cannot do it kiss because there was an imagined kiss too yeah maybe not a maybe not a kiss but as uh many a uh as many a 10 yearyear-old who's worried about, or 14-year-old or whatever, who's worried about his or her undefined kissing technique has known, you could always kiss your thumb and forefinger if you really want to.

But you cannot hug. And a hug is so satisfying because it's real. And I don't like that she imagined a hug and it seemed to mean something. I was ambivalent about Will's return. It was nice to see him in a nostalgic sense, but I didn't need him to be back. It felt a little obligatory. It's the last episode, so we have to bring back a beloved character. Didn't bring back Kalinda.

No, well, she is perhaps not beloved by everyone who's why okay why wouldn't but how do you how do you resolve things without will well they didn't resolve anything with him hmm well will will became will was her spiritual guide to find it to deciding what she wanted true true although she didn't get what she wanted No because she had lost herself I don't know I'm glad there was one last Delightful judge scene That's probably

Are you talking about the one with Boyce Yes Questa, Judge Questa And the guest who was testifying That's probably been always one of my favorite things About The Good Wife Just sort of not letting the reverence for that office getting in the way of presenting those people as humans. Often very funny portrayals. Will you be watching Braindead? Sure. You will? Yeah. I mean, I will. I don't have any particular

expectations for it, but... No. I don't know. It doesn't seem like the greatest premise for a show. I don't know what the premise is. What is the premise? The premise is that it follows a young staffer on the hill who I think gets to Congress and finds out that aliens are taking over the government, but it's a dark comedy. Wait, is it really aliens are? Yes, actual aliens. You're out now. But I'll give it a shot. I like to see the Kings try an actual comedy because The Good Wife was often one of the best comedies on TV, even though you wouldn't really have classified it as such. All right. All right. So seven seasons in the can.

Thank you, Good Wife, and goodbye. We need another podcast show to refer to now and then. You're very welcome to join me on the elementary train still going now yeah love it what season is it these days maybe fifth fourth i don't know wow still just as good as ever you know good wife made it tricky because i i like to have exactly one network show in my life yeah and. I have The Last Ship now in my life. Yeah. That's my network show.

So Good Wife came along and was a network show that made me feel guilty for watching Elementary. Even though I was already watching Elementary. Now I just feel like it's a huge waste of my time to watch Elementary. Because Elementary sometimes looks like the parody show that good wife would have on the tv no it doesn't no no no no no your show you're that i think yeah definitely no i'm thinking of the one that you liked that i hated i think it was on amc that you you wrote for grantland about how many dead people there were in it oh longmire that's what i think now on netflix yeah as the show that that's a bad show it's uh consistently pleasant

it's my rave review all right so hope you enjoyed the bonus tv segment all right so now i will play us off with the standard ending to the episode as if anyone is still listening. You can support the podcast on Patreon at patreon.com slash effectively wild. Today's five thank yous to people who have done that go to Matt Tufnell, Gregory Zagorski, William Martin, Joel Watts, and Ken Kopin. You may have heard that Sam and I have a book out. It's called The Only Rule Is It Has To Work. We have three book events coming up this week. One on Wednesday in Washington, D.C., one in New York City on Thursday, and another one on Thursday in San Francisco, California. Sam and I will be splitting up to cover all of these events. You can find all the details for those on the book's website at theonlyruleisithastowork.com.

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