An Ode To The Power Of The Opening Credits Of The Good Fight
Life can be a grotesque old slog through hours of tetchy boredom, leavened only by the regular burning sear of a moment of social embarrassment — remember yesterday when you made an earnest joke about the volumetrics of a “flat” “white” to the guy behind you in Costa as you both reached for the same cup, whose pitying half-smile ran through your brain like a hot poker, you dense-weave sack of shit? — and the odd erotic daydream in the shower if you can be arsed of a morning. You need something to pick you up, to energise you. To grab you roughly by the shoulders and scream menthol-fresh blue murder into your face. To make your face crack into the sort of tear-streaked rictus grin usually reserved for people getting proposed to when they’re a little too drunk to deal with it, or dumb stupid toddlers looking at an ordinary banana.
God love you, you need the opening credits of season two of The Good Fight.
The Good Fight is a very good spin-off TV show of a previous very good original TV show, both of which were mostly about the machinations of the upper tranche of lawyers and playmakers in Chicago’s civic society but ever so slightly about the awesomeness of geometric structural jewellery, and it’s compelling, and slick, and witty, and razor-edged; fiercely up-to-the-minute, unapologetic in its political vim, with a constant perfect eyebrow raised at the cliches of procedural drama, and despite its skeleton being “rich lawyers with great clothes talk in shiny rooms”, one of the freshest breezes wafting out of TV right now, but none of that is as important as its goddamn opening credits.
Here’s the thing of it: it’s such an innocuous start. Look, it says, look at this pretty vase of flowers. Listen to this lovely harp and violin. You’re a winsome maid, you’re in a fayre, you’ve just given a rosy red apple to a smiling, grubby child. Dance upon thy lissome limbs, thy naif of wonder, say the credits! Dance around these handbags, these gavels, these crystal decanters, these symbols of polite professional society! OK great, now just hang on real quick while I gradually lose my shit and start smashing everything up!
The crank-up is invigorating. Say it’s Sunday afternoon and you’ve got to do the big shop but you know it’ll be a vile sea of smug couples snuggling by the couscous and the weekly Battle of the Four Year Olds’ Snotty Tantrums. There is no better way to psyche yourself up to face this maelstrom than bashing on The Good Fight’s opening credits on YouTube. First the cymbals, then the trumpets, then a choir of furious townsfolk waving torches — the layers of anger build and build, phones and laptops are aflame with righteous indignation, the townsfolk reach a blazing crescendo. And before you know it, images of a tits-out Putin, a bloviating Trump and the NaziTikiTwats — lightning rods for the hollow screams of rage that are the static hum of modern life — are exploding into a zillion fragments of fire and fury, the soundtrack is just a pack of Vikings screaming at Boudicca who’s screaming right back at twice the volume, and you’ve got enough adrenaline coursing through your body that you’re already halfway round Tesco’s and you find yourself standing in the crisps aisle, hair blowing in an imaginary breeze, one foot-up on a pile of Pringles tubes like they’re the skulls of your fallen enemies.
So forget mindfulness. Uncentre yourself. Shove the self-help up the unsunny shelf. If you need a rocket ship through the soul, with the power of a triple espresso enema dispensed by a sawed-off shotgun, you just need to watch this one minute and 33 seconds of unavowed pre-programming genius. Watch and breathe and roar and FIGHT.
THE GOOD FIGHT WILL NEVER BE WON — BUT WE WILL CARRY ON AND FIGHT IT TILL THE ICY KISS OF DEATH.
Or when More4 stop showing it due to low ratings, whichever falls upon us first.
Next week: how the Netflix start-up “puh-pow” is an effective and natural cure for egg-based constipation.
