Dear Rep. Weiner: Don't Reenact Opening Scene from 'The Good Wife'

Now that news has broken that lewdly sexting wildman, New York Congressman Anthony Weiner is set this afternoon to announce that he’s resigning his seat (as he should’ve done well before this), I have one request: Please don’t have your pregnant wife, who’s been married to you for less than a year, stand beside you and endure more humiliation because of the stupid things that you’ve done.



It’s extraordinarily painful to watch these women -- Silda Spitzer, Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Edwards immediately come to mind -- stand beside their skunk husbands who couldn’t keep it in their pants and not only shamed themselves, but their spouses and children. (The fallout from your politician husband and/or father's indiscretions is the entire premise of the fabulous drama The Good Wife.) These guys don’t deserve to have the innocence and agony etched in the faces and eyes of their wives take the edge off of their disingenuous apologies for their scandalous behavior.

If it’s the only noble thing you do this week, don’t use your wife as a sympathetic prop.

'The Good Wife' Now Tilting More Toward Familial Fall-Out From Political Scandal

*Warning, spoilers ahead from recent episode of The Good Wife.*

The recent episode of The Good Wife was a game changer, bringing the sex scandal that sent Alicia Florrick's (Julianna Margulies) politician husband Peter (Chris Noth) to jail squarely back into the Florrick home.

For several weeks, Good Wife episodes have tilted too heavily for my taste toward becoming a legal procedural with only a little sprinkling of the drama that makes this show different from all the rest of the legal procedurals: A woman rebuilding her life with her children after her husband publically humiliated her with dalliances with hookers. I wanted to see the dramatization of how women (Silda Spitzer, Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Edwards) remain in their marriages in the wake of such devastating events.

This week my waiting paid off. The Good Wife prominently featured a hearing to determine whether Peter Florrick could remain at home under home confinement while awaiting trial. Alicia Florrick had to testify during the bail hearing about whether her lying, cheating husband would be welcomed back into their home. Under questioning by the prosecution, Alicia was asked, "So you and your husband would share a room? . . . [Y]ou're saying under oath that you intend to share a bed with a man?"

Alicia then responded that she wouldn't be cowed by the prosecutor's intrusive questions or humiliated and would answer only germane inquiries. In the end, Peter was denied bail and not allowed to go home to the new, smaller apartment his wife had rented in the days following his imprisonment, after selling their home in the 'burbs.



Previews for next week's episode -- in which one of the women with whom Peter had an affair gives TV interviews and depicts Alicia as "frigid" -- seem to indidicate that there's life in this betrayed political spouse/legal procedural yet.