The only opening credits I have never skipped past – and will never skip past – belong to The Good Fight. Opening credits are a dying breed in this day and age. Netflix wants you to skip them; TV networks have long since run out of time for them. But with the freedom of its perch on CBS All-Access, The Good Fight is able to stretch its legs a bit, with 90 seconds of blissful, lunatic anarchy. If you haven’t watched them before, it’s tough to explain why they’re so hypnotic. A succession of items specific to modern legal/office/professional culture — law books, a vase, a laptop, a Newton’s cradle — set against a slick and stark black background, with ever more frantic classical music playing, and as the music crescendos, each totem of a culture that once signified institutional competence, trust in our American systems of justice, and our own ability to cope with stress (not for nothing that a TV set and two containers of booze are among the lineup) get flamboyantly and hilariously exploded. All while the names of Christine Baranski, Delroy Lindo, Audra McDonald, and the litany of fantastic guest stars we’ve come to expect from the Good Wife universe (nothing beats an “and Bernadette Peters” credit) flash by. It’s over-the-top, it’s hypnotically watchable, and best of all, it’s an ostentatious depiction of exactly the kind of show we’re getting. A show that means to self-indulgently blow up everything we ever expected out of the Good Wife universe. It’s glorious.

Those credits are also perfectly emblematic of why The Good Fight is the most fun you’re going to have with a TV show in 2018. The legal drama, spun off after the seven-season run of The Good Wife, spent much of its first season orbiting around a Bernie Madoff-esque storyline, featuring a Ponzi’s schemer’s daughter (Rose Leslie) as a new partner in a daunting law firm, mentored by a freshly bankrupted Diane Lockhart. For a few reasons, that plot couldn’t keep from sputting, and within the first few episodes of season 2. In its place, there’s a renewed focus on Diane, a rivalry with new name partner Liz Reddick (McDonald), and a doubling down on one of Season 1’s most effective undercurrents. In its sophomore season, The Good Fight has figuratively and quite literally said “fuck it” and is taking on a world gone mad by going quite mad itself.

Upon premiering on CBS’s a-la-carte streaming platform last spring, the narrative surrounding The Good Fight was mostly about whether anybody was watching. Spinning off Diane Lockhart onto her own show, with a few of the old gang following her to a new firm, seemed like a great idea, and Robert and Michelle King certainly seemed like they had some great ideas about how to tweak their universe, but … it was on CBS All-Access. Did anybody even pay for that service? If a TV show is thriving (or at least getting off to a rocky but better-than-average start) on a digital platform nobody subscribes to, does it even make a sound? In season 2, that uncertainty over whether anyone is even paying attention has gifted the show with an invigorating sense of freedom. The Good Fight has become the TV equivalent of dancing like nobody’s watching. Diane is “micro-dosing” on mushrooms in the season premiere; we’re doubling down on Andrea Martin as Colin’s rich, drunk, meddling mom; we’re setting Baranski and McDonald on a collision course for conflict, one that includes high-drama moments such as writing dramatic reveals in dust on a desktop and Diane striding into Liz’s office in stocking feet to deliver a cheerful “Fuck you!” The Good Fight is playing with house money, and they know it. So they can meander down avenues towards Schoolhouse Rock-style animations and ambitious episode structures and catty inside-jokes about Alicia (whose name no one dares to speak) with impunity.

Furthermore, accidentally or not, The Good Fight has become the best — and perhaps only — narrative TV show to deal with the Trump Era successfully. This was certainly not always the plan. Clearly, creators Robert and Michelle King wanted to try something different after seven seasons of The Good Wife, and bringing Diane into an all-black law firm during the thick of Black Lives Matter was a way to plug The Good Fight into the center of current events the way that The Good Wife pivoted off of the Elliot Spitzer scandal (such simpler times!). Famously, the pilot episode, which began with Diane reacting to Hillary Clinton’s inauguration (one imagines as inspiration for Diane’s own second act), had to be re-shot to incorporate the new Trump reality. Suddenly, the world was a much darker place — for Diane and for a lot of the audience — and rather than retreat into what the show was always good at (compelling legal drama populated with quirky, likeable characters), the Kings decided instead to double down. The Good Fight has taken on the Trump era in ways big and small, but most importantly, they’re doing it directly. They didn’t create a surrogate character, whatever the Chumhum equivalent of Donald Trump would be. Reddick Boseman Lockhart is a law firm that exists in the real world, and the only way to explain how the world feels absolutely deranged and crazy right now is to call out the man at the center ring of the circus.

Which is what made this week’s episode — titled “Day 450,” as the episode titles this season are literally counting the days until his administration is over — especially compelling and the perfect distillation of what has been making this season so perfect. The firm is visited by a familiar character, Democratic strategist Ruth Eastman (Margo Martindale), who is auditioning firms for the DNC’s upcoming plan to impeach Donald Trump. The bulk of the episode involves a lot of closed-door debate over what would be the best single tactic to attack Trump, seeing as there are almost too many avenues to go down. Emoluments? Obstruction of justice? Collusion and treason? But it’s not just the fact that we’re seeing conversations ripped from our podcasts played out in front of us by these world-class actors that makes this special. It’s how the episode ends up attacking at the center of what this current political era is doing to us. Liz finally breaks a long silence and lays out her plan, a combination of long discussed rumors and unproven conjecture about Trump, from racial slurs on The Apprentice to rape allegations to the pee tape (you guys, Audra McDonald took a break from polishing all her Tony awards to talk about the pee tape for our benefit, and it only cost $5.99 a month!), reasoning that here in the Trump era, truth doesn’t play, and the only plan of action is attack. Later, Diane answers monologue with monologue, finally voicing a sentiment that feels so true that it’s unavoidably funny:

“I’m tired of when they go low, we go high.’ Fuck that. When they go low, we go lower. If there’s one thing we’ve seen this year, it’s that lies persuade. Truth only takes you that far, and then you need lies. I’m done with being the adult in the room. I am done with being the compliant and sensible one, standing stoically by while the other side picks my pockets. While the other side gerrymanders Democrats out of existence. A 3 million-person majority, and we lost the presidency. A Congress that keeps a Supreme Court justice from being seated because he was chosen by a Democratic president.”

After being challenged by a colleague to take to the streets, if she feels this way, Diane lays it out: she’s got a Smith & Wesson in her desk, and she’s “this close to taking to the streets.”

While shows like Will & Grace and Roseanne are out there scoring punchlines off of pussy hats and MAGA cakes, The Good Fight is serving up every week a world gone crazy, because that’s what it actually feels like. The one right-leaning partner at Reddick Boseman accuses the lot of them of having “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” and maybe that’s truly what’s afflicting The Good Fight at its root. It’s reflecting back a nation gone absolutely mad. In doing so, we’re getting stories about social media and police brutality and reality television and drugs and violence and a complicit media and infighting among the left and enemies who should be allies and a string of copycat lawyer-killings that, while not rooted in anything specifically real, nonetheless helps the universe of the show feel as fraught as the average day on Twitter.. The Good Fight no longer has to strain to keep its off-kilter worldview rooted in America today. They’re knee-deep in it, and at the moment, they’re the only show that truly makes me feel like we’re standing on the same squishy ground.

Stream The Good Fight on CBS All Access