I can't decide yet if The Good Wife is something that I want to keep watching. But despite her (thus-far) thinly-written role, one thing I am profoundly thankful to the show for is the presence of Archie Panjabi (Who, sadly, I couldn't find a good Creative Commons image of. Going to talk about Aishwarya Rai in just a second, I promise.)on American TV screens. For those of you not familiar with her work, check her out in a minor role in The Constant Gardener, or as Parminder Nagra's older sister in Bend It Like Beckham. It's in the latter role that I really fell for her: it's a much quieter role than the lead, but she did a nice job of communicating the difficulties of trying to live a modern life within the confines of tradition. Panjabi is good at communicating heartbreak without histrionics. I hope she gets to do more than unbutton her shirt to beguile a witless security guard and fool Julianna Margulies into taking tequila shots, but no matter what happens, I'm glad American audiences are getting to see her in a decent-sized role in a decently-advertised show.
And I wish Aishwarya Rai, and particularly Indira Varma would get the same opportunities. Rai was a lot of fun in Bride & Prejudice (Which I will defend at great length. Seriously, do you need any more proof than this?) but hasn't been in anything worth watching that's received a significant American release sense. And if Rai was fun in that movie, Varma was fantastic, alternately snotty and wistful. She packed the snottiness away, but kept the steel and the heart for a guest appearance on the two-hour premiere of Bones last season, and was wonderful, and gone too soon. Diversity's a valuable thing on television, and explored and pursued far too rarely. Having someone like Panjabi be an investigator at a Chicago law firm without comment on her ethnicity, or Patrick Gallagher playing an Asian football coach on Glee, is progress towards a time when television and movies will represent the full spectrum of Americans without having to be explicitly about the fact that the spectrum is wide. And in Panjabi, Rai and Varma's cases, the added talent would be huge.