Christine Baranski Leads the Best #Resistance Show on Television

The February 2017 series premiere of , the spin-off of CBS’s Emmy-winning legal drama , was meant to usher in a season of triumph for both its characters and the country. Set to arrive on the heels of what left-leaning pundits assumed would be a historic 2016 presidential election, would follow the resolutely liberal Diane Lockhart (Christine Baranski), one of the name partners at the law firm where ’s Alicia Florrick (Julianna Margulies) had first found her footing after her husband’s political scandal. As the new show’s protagonist, Diane would be self-assured, glamorous, and confident in the weight of her accomplishments. She would stand in front of her male co-workers in her iconic statement jewelry and her retirement was deliciously inevitable: Why continue to practice law now that there were no more glass ceilings? There was, of course, one minor hiccup: Three months before premiered, Hillary Rodham Clinton did not win the 2016 presidential election. As polling results began to roll in, the show’s cast and crew realized that their show about Diane Lockhart’s post-Hillary world would need to account for a seismic culture shift. “It was uncanny—that the beginning of became more about this sea change that we psychically and spiritually and politically experienced as a country,” Baranski said as we sat in the courtroom on the show’s set in