This week’s episode of The Good Wife begins with a teen girl tweeting about being raped, so, we know it’s going to be another cheery hour of television!
What the tweet says exactly is this: “I don’t care if they put me in jail. Todd Bratcher RAPED ME.”
The reason they could put her in jail–and they end up doing just that–is that she’s taken an oath to not talk about the case in public during her civil trial. And the reason she’s in a civil trial is that there’s already been a criminal case in which Todd Bratcher took a plea deal, essentially getting off scott free, and this girl is still pissed. So she’s suing him, with the full suing amount going to rape victim advocates if she wins. She was particularly pissed when she made that tweet, as she had just found out Todd Bratcher was just admitted to Princeton. Score one more for Ivy League white boy rapists! As Will begs her to plead the fifth in regards to the tweet, she says, noper. He raped me. I tweeted it. Give ’em hell, girl.
Judge says, girl broke the rules, if she apologizes and promises not to tweet again, they’ll release her. Will and Alicia relay the news and say there’s nothing else they can really do. Girl paces, looks distraught. If I apologize and we lose this case, she says, what will be on record is not that Todd Bratcher is a rapist, but that I apologized for SAYING Todd Bratcher is a rapist. Right you are, kiddo. “I’m scared to be in here. But I couldn’t live with myself, apologizing for saying something that is true.”
The real-life-news quality of this case and this episode continues to play out at the Florrick household, where we later see Zac receiving an anonymous text message. And within that text message is a video of a bunch of boys mock raping a blow up doll. Alicia walks in while this is happening and god life is horrifying.
When Will and Alicia present the video to the judge, the boy’s lawyer explains that it was illegally hacked from his client’s phone and so can’t be used as evidence. While Will and Alicia obviously have no idea who hacked it, they can’t refute this, and the judge says he has to agree that it is indeed impermissible. Witness the true story of this episode unfolding – although really, there is rarely only one true story in an episode of The Good Wife, which is what makes it such a good show. So perhaps we can say that one of the stories of this episode is the limitless ways the law can work against young women.
Will realizes this too, and his rage during this episode really adds another check to the I Think I Like Will? column of my ever changing Will Feelings spreadsheet. When a truly incriminating photo is mysteriously sent to Grace, he believes they can still subpoena the server the photo originally existed on, before it was erased. Technology in these cases can be horrifying, in a way, but it must be used to our benefit when possible.
In other news so far in this episode, Alicia catches Cary having a lunch date with the rest of the fourth years, while they all also simultaneously cash in on vacation days, all raising the alarm of a possible secession from Lockhart Gardner. Cary finally admits the truth of this to Alicia after she hounds him, pressing her once again that the two of them could be The New Will and Diane. Alicia says again that she’ll think about it. And she enacts her loyalty as best she can, while still officially being an outsider to the fourth years now, by not revealing any of Cary’s idealistic plans to the rest of the partners. Even though nasty M&M’s guy is cuh-razy pissed.
Robyn’s storyline also takes a few interesting little twists and turns this episode. We first see her in typical Robyn mode, being adorable and awkward about her non-fancy attire with Alicia: “Sorry about my clothes, I just came from – sorry, I didn’t come from anywhere. I just like this.” To which Alicia obviously responds with her straight-faced, “Um, OK.” Robyn, you are so lovely, and I love how your honesty baffles absolutely everyone around you.
Kalinda also starts to be suspicious of Robyn’s past, claiming that whole “I once shot my brother” story Robyn’s previously told isn’t true. Robyn eventually caves to this, saying essentially, “I’m from Sherwood, Oregon. Nothing ever happens in Sherwood.” Living in Oregon, I can say that this is probably true. I feel fairly certain that Robyn’s history actually is quite boring, which is why she’s fudged some lies to make it sound more exciting, and nothing more. But this episode snuck in the first hint of Robyn perhaps being more than she seems.
Kalinda might also be somewhat miffed because Alicia specifically went to Robyn, and not Kalinda, to ask her to investigate more about Cary and the fourth years’ plans. Which is a huge, bad, terrible Kalicia no-no. Kalinda finds out about this when Cary immediately pounces on her about it, believing she’s the one who’s been sniffing him out, to which she has to reply in honest confusion that she doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Yet it’s clear Cary doesn’t completely believe her. And really, who the hell knows what’s going on with Cary and Kalinda these days? From the hurt in her eyes, and his, it’s clear something is, but whatever it is, we certainly haven’t had anymore details fleshed out for us.
While Kalinda stakes her Alicia claim and firmly tells Robyn to not take any private requests from Alicia again without telling her about it, she does stand up for her in Robyn’s first review, telling the firm that she should stay. Meaning, we’ll hopefully get to learn even more about her and her boring past and possibly unprofessional clothing choices in the future.
Jason Biggs is also back on the scene, meeting with Alicia about a class action lawsuit he wants to pull against the lawyers who prosecuted Aaron Swartz, the computer activist who killed himself earlier this year. But his real role is helping in the rape case, maybe or maybe not through the activist group Anonymous, who begin showing up in the courtroom. Alicia’s pissed about it, as she and Biggs have been having an Idealism v. Reality argument all episode. While Alicia’s on Reality’s side, Anonymous clearly sticks up for the Idealism side, and even though it’s a side that’s clearly helping her and Lockhart Gardner’s case, Alicia doesn’t believe it’s the right way. Biggs for his part maintains he has nothing to do with it, and that one can never know exactly who or what Anonymous is.
There’s also a strange scene between Alicia and Grace wherein Grace is praying and Alicia sort of asks her to pray for her because things are a mess. She says, “I have to stop thinking about myself.” To which Grace says that thinking about yourself can be a good thing. (RIGHT, Grace?) Alicia responds, “Yes. And sometimes, it’s not.” Alicia acts as if this whole asking her daughter to pray for her thing is due to work being stressful, when really it’s due to the fact that even being around Will apparently makes her shiver and hold herself in repressed longing. And I know this entire series is built around you being the good wife, Alicia, but sweet pickles, if you don’t start just doing what you want soon.
Diane also gets a closer and closer glimpse of her ride to the Supreme Court, going to the point of sitting where her future office could be. Until someone comes in and tells her, “We’ve been watching you. We love you. You deserve to be here.” Diane says, “Yay!” Dude says, “The only thing you have to do is separate yourself from Will because we hate him.” Well. Ouch.
Back in the rape case, some nutty physician testifies who says that the abrasions around the girl’s back, thighs, and buttocks could have simply been due to “VIGOROUS GYMNASTICS” since she is also a gymnast. HAHAHA! HA! Jason Biggs then shows up with some papers that the doctor wrote when he was in college arguing women could not get pregnant when raped. HA! Buh bye doctor.
In the end, when the Anonymous hullabaloo gets to be too much for the judge, he calls a mistrial. Which means that the girl will have to remain in jail until they can call another trial, which could be months, which seems grossly unfair, once again victimizing the victim. In the end, of course, Kalinda ends up saving the day, weasle-ing Todd’s original police interview out of some police guy. In this interview, Todd had pretty much confessed everything, but it was later thrown out because he was still considered a minor at the time, by a hair. See how many things can work against a teen girl? Being that it’s already been called a mistrial, though, Kalinda doesn’t take it to the courts, but we see her transferring the video to an online leak site. After viewing it, Will pleads with the judge that he still has power over the girl’s life until the next trial is called, and he knows what’s right and wrong. The girl walks free.
So Miss Kalinda, has it been YOU working through Anonymous all along? I like to think so. Because this raises your levels of badass to limits I couldn’t even imagine.
Inspired by the episode, I spent some time perusing Anonymous’s Twitter account last night, which I usually can’t keep up with due to its prolific number of tweets. While there was obviously no mention of their appearance on the The Good Wife, as I highly doubt they care, it was interesting to see that almost their entire feed was devoted to fighting for Rehtaeh Parsons, a teen who recently killed herself after being raped and then viciously bullied. There were no prosecutions, but after Anonymous’s “hacktivism,” the case has been reopened. Anonymous and idealism can’t always win, but sometimes, they do.
