What Makes a Good TV Wife?

What makes a good TV wife? In 1957, June Cleaver debuted on Leave It to Beaver, and she left all the action to the boys. She was the stay-at-home mom who cooked, cleaned, ironed, and clung to her own apron strings. Laura Petrie on The Dick Van Dyke Show had a joyous laugh, but she seemed to always be waiting for her husband to come home. The same went for Donna Reed on 1958's The Donna Reed Show. Then something changed: maybe it was the women's movement or the boom in divorce rates, but women started to anchor their own shows (The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Laverne & Shirley, The Golden Girls, etc). The '90s ushered in the HBO dramas, with hard-edged, interesting provocative wives—including Carmela on The Sopranos. And now CBS is about to introduce perhaps the most controversial "good wife" of them all, the kind of wife that makes some women go, "Huh?!?"

In The Good Wife, Julianna Margulies plays Alicia Florrick, who stays with her husband Peter (Chris Noth, aka Mr. Big from Sex and the City) even after he admits in public to having an affair with a younger woman (the show was pitched shortly after the Eliot Spitzer scandal). I have to admit that I gagged a little when I heard about the premise. Look, I'm only 29, born after the women's liberation movement, with no history of purposely burning a bra (I burn things on accident all the time, though). But c'mon, ladies! It’s 2009. Why would I ever want to watch a show about a woman who supports her sleazy husband, especially since the soundtrack to the trailer is Tammy Wynette's 1968 song "Stand By Your Man"? Would the show feel just as outdated? I watched the pilot to find out what gives.

The Good Wife starts off with a bitch-slap, literally, and it's delivered by Alicia to her husband after his public apology for the cameras. (Maybe she's not so weak after all.) While he's hauled off to jail, for possibly misusing public funds, she goes back to work as a lawyer. She has to prove herself with a somewhat difficult pro bono case: defending a woman wrongfully accused of killing her ex-husband. After watching the first episode, I still had personal qualms with her decision not to ask for a divorce, but I also realized something: I like the show. The Mrs. Florricks of the world may not be the kind of women I agree with, but they exist and they are more complex than the men who cheat on them. And they also make for good viewing.

The best TV wives usually can't keep themselves away from drama. This doesn't necessarily make them frail—take my favorite TV wife, Lucille Ball in I Love Lucy. Much of the show’s premise revolved around the wacky lengths Lucy went to to get into show business, often to the detriment of her orchestra leader husband. In the age of family-oriented television, Lucy wasn’t afraid to say, "Hey, being a housewife is nice, but I have bigger dreams." Like her, Carol Brady of The Brady Bunch was, in her own polite way, a split from the conventional. She was a divorcee who cobbled together a second family. Sitcoms like these allowed for the supporting wife to be sweet and occasionally charming while addressing some glaring social issue with a laugh. But as dramas have become more important, TV wives have gotten better roles as serious (and flawed) leading ladies.

On some level, that means we’ve traded in the wholesome, independence-seeking chick for a seedier variety. There’s Carmela Soprano of The Sopranos. (Bless her quasi-faithful heart.) Miranda from Sex and the City. (She wore the pants. Actually, she was a lawyer and he was broke so, to be fair, she probably bought the pants.) Or the entire cast of Desperate Housewives. (Raise your hand if you don’t see yourself in at least one of them, along with all the sexcapades.)

You can’t deny that all these women can be a little repulsive from time to time. They cheat, they lie, they emasculate and sometimes they even stay married when everybody is telling them to run for the hills. But we watch because, just as Lucy or Carol reminded us of what women strive for and deserve, these ladies often remind us of the struggles women face, or what we'll settle for. They represent a certain human frailty and are to female viewers what Mad Men or Entourage is to men. No, they don’t accurately reflect every woman out there, but, like it or not, these TV wives embody complex issues some women have to face. Just ask Silda Spitzer.