Why The Good Wife is just So-So

Who doesn't like Juliana Margulies?, and on the basis of that plus some word of mouth we decided to watch the top of "The Good Wife." Margulies doesn't disappoint, which I guess is mild praise - but she's as far as I can tell the only reason to keep watching this series; we watched the pilot and first 3 episodes of season 1 (though I hear season 2 may be better). The series starts off pretty well, Margulies's husband, the Chicago (Cook County?) DA, is indicted and imprisoned on corruption charges - apparently used bribery money to pay for various mistresses and escapades - some echoes here of Gov. Spitzer? - and Margulies tries to get on with her life, as a now single mom and newly hired junior at a big Chicago law firm. OK, plenty of possibilities for plot development - does her husband, with all his law connections, help her in some of her criminal trials? Or are people who hate her husband going to sabotage her career in various ways? The problem is that The Good Wife does little with these premises - they serve only as a scenic backdrop for what in each episode is an increasingly ridiculous and improbably case that Margulies and her firm handle - so ultimately TGW is just a slightly dressier version of a legal drama in the mode of the old Perry Mason: lawyer takes on tough case and through careful sleuthing gets wrongfully accused client off the hook, or variant on that theme. 4th episode, slightly different, involves civil case in which someone (spoiler) who turns out to be M's client, bribes a juror. If you think for 5 seconds about the likelihood of this - or of any of the other cases I saw in the first 4 episodes - the series turns into dust. I probably won't watch any further, but if later episodes really use M's relation with her husband to explore the law and politics and the city the show has some upside potential. Imagine what Scott Turow might have done with this material (and weep). Unfortunately, from what I saw, Good Wife is just So-so