Entertainment

‘Wife’ of the party

THE day after the news about Eliot Spitzer and his hooker honey broke, I appeared on “The Early Show.”

The topic was “Why Do Women Stay With Cheating Politicians?”

Another guest, a prominent feminist writer, was going on about how women should be liberated enough to stand by their men when confronted with “multiple sex partnering” or whatever the hell she called it.

I told her I understood and I’d stand by my man, too — of course, I’d be standing by him with a gun at his temple.

I, for one, never understood the Dinas, Hillarys, Elizabeths, Jennys, or Suzannes (wife of the infamous men’s room foot tapper) who not just stood by their men, but stood with them on their podiums of shame as their cheating spouses confessed their insane sexual misconduct. I mean, if ever a wife deserved to call in sick!

Now, CBS has come up with a series that may, in fact, explain why political wives don’t leave those creepy power hungry slobs. “The Good Wife” has taken that by-now-common real life situation and made it into not just a domestic drama, but a by-the-book, legal procedural as well.

It stars the gorgeous Julianna Margulies as Alicia Florrick, the wronged wife of the Illinois State’s Attorney, who in the opening scene is shown at the infamous podium, wife at this side, denying all wrong-doing, blah, blah, blah.

In the next scene, we find Alicia at a law firm on her first day back to work in many years, Her husband is in the can.

Although she’s been a stay-at-home wife and mother while her husband’s star rose, now she is the breadwinner.

She finds herself appointed the pro-bono attorney in a high-profile murder case.

On the same day that she starts, pain-in-the-butt, recent law school grad Cary (Matt Czuchry) lets it slip that only one of them will have the job after their, er, trial period.

There’s also an investigator, Kalinda (Archie Panjabi), who doesn’t like Alicia, because she once worked for her husband and was fired.

“Rocky”-style, she blows her first day in court. But, after visiting her husband in jail, she finds out the cops in the case may have been “pitting” evidence (holding it back). Is that legal? Is she crossing the line by getting inside info from the former State’s Attorney?

Nothing is easy about Alicia’s new situation. Keeping the home fires burning, watching her two pre-teens and making dinner is her mother-in-law, Grace (Makenzie Vega).

Good premise, good start.

Oh, so why didn’t Alicia divorce her cheating man? Because she says, “I was unprepared.”

She seems better prepared now.