The One Where Kurt Saves Diane

💡 Did You Know?

In a June 2020 New Yorker profile of Robert and Michelle King, Emily Nussbaum writes that this episode originally contained one of the show's regularly featured animated segments, with a song by Jonathan Coulton, titled "Banned in China." "Mind-bendingly self-referential, the sequence, created by Gear Head Animation, told the story of how 'The Good Wife' had been banned a decade earlier [in China], then showed scenes of editors preëmptively snipping footage to insure Chinese distribution. It also included a stream of images that were barred in China, including Winnie-the-Pooh, a symbolic stand-in for President Xi Jinping. . . . [The Kings had] turned in the lyrics and the sketches to CBS; Standards had O.K.'d everything. Then, just before the episode was set to air, they got a call: the network was cutting the animated segment. At the time, Michelle was in a hospital in Los Angeles with her mother, who was dying from brain cancer. Separately, the Kings reached the same conclusion: they had to quit. What rankled most wasn't the censorship but the sinister violation of protocol: this ruling came from above. The phone calls that followed, with CBS brass, weren't emotional, Michelle said-in fact, it was a relief that their ethical choice felt so clear. But, as the Kings were preparing to negotiate their exit, their lawyer suggested another strategy. Maybe they could display a placard telling the audience that the segment had been censored. The solution struck a chord. It was clever; it was provocative. The Kings could make an ironic statement about Hollywood self-censorship in an episode about Hollywood self-censorship-a very 'Good Fight' approach. No one would get laid off. Best of all, it was a reasoned compromise-the model of adult functioning that they respected most. Robert edited the segment, which opened as the Coulton segments always did: with an animated shot of a curtain ready to rise. This time, however, the screen froze on a placard that read 'CBS CENSORED THIS CONTENT.' He added a trace of retro static, for some style. But, as the editing progressed, the Kings decided that forcing viewers to stare at the placard in silence for ninety seconds, the same length as the song, was too punishing-and maybe self-aggrandizing, as if they fancied themselves a pair of Andy Kaufmans. They cut the time to seven and a half seconds. The night the episode aired, the Kings were at a family gathering, and Robert's brother asked Michelle if it was a gag. She was aghast-and when the Kings went online they saw how badly they'd miscalculated. Their own code had worked against them: led by their desire not to be self-indulgent, not to be brats or narcissists, they'd created precisely the sort of ambiguous joke/not a joke that was a hallmark of the Trump era."