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“The Good Wife” (5.2) recap: Spying Away in Margaritaville

I’m sorry to announce that the second episode of the fifth season of The Good Wife was yet another Chumhum one. Sigh. Look, I know Chumhum is Lockhart Gardner’s biggest client, so it totally makes sense that they spend so much time on them, but anytime there’s a Chumhum case o’ the week and I have to spend more minutes of my life looking at Neil Gross’s irritating face, I find my eyes-and brain-glazing over. Even though I know that almost every Chumhum storyline is topical and relevant, as is this one, which involves Chumhum suing the NSA over the privacy of their users and their records.

We also see the NSA listening in on all of Alicia and Diane’s calls for a whole host of bizarre reasons, and I could have expected this storyline after Edward Snowden, but, eh. Add on top of this the fact that we barely saw Kalinda (with a complete absence of Robyn), and there were some bummers to this episode, but there were also some pluses, mainly in the form of Stockard Channing and Alicia getting drunk on margaritas and nachos.

The Chumhum storyline also throws another tear into the fibers of the fraying rope of dreams for Florrick, Agos, and Associates, as Alicia gets a call from Will telling her that Neil Gross has requested a partner to sit on his meeting with Cary, since he doesn’t necessarily trust Cary to do a top notch job. Alicia gets this call as Cary and the other fourth years are throwing around burners in their new clean and pretty office space like they’re on the streets of Baltimore, which they’ll be using to communicate their Super Secret Rebellion info since Alicia tipped them off to Lockhart Gardner monitoring their calls on their Given to Us By the People Who Still Actually Employ Us phones. This would be a fine idea, except for when Alicia fumbles between her Super Secret and Official Business phones right in front of David Lee, who she knows is hunting out the dissenting fourth years like McCarthy and the reds. Why are you guys so bad at being stealthy?

But anyway, if Chumhum isn’t actually jumping ship with them as Cary vehemently promises, Florrick & Agos is certifiably screwed. Add on top of this that, shockingly, something happened with the bank, and they now need $140,000 pronto to actually secure that shiny new office space. Alicia, however, happens to whisper, “I don’t have $140,000, Cary!” on her Super Secret Phone while Mama Channing is in her office, and since Mama Channing is swimming in money, she decides to quietly “invest” $140,000 in the new office space herself, which Alicia gives into relatively easily. The dream of a new firm lives for another day.

Another plus of the episode is how damn good Diane looks in a white suit. But what I am talking about, Diane always looks good!

Damn right.

There is yet another snafu in the hopes and dreams of powerful women here, as the chief Supreme Court douche tells Governor Elect Florrick and Head of Staff Eli that while he apparently thinks Diane is 100% the best-because duh-he has “concerns” about her willingness to stick by everyone’s favorite lawyer to hate, Will Gardner. Eli and Big are like, “But…you like her, right? And she’s the one who’s going to be on the Supreme Court, not Will, yes? So what is the dealio?” Eli even has the grace to call him a sexist old fool, and then the sexist old fool in return calls Eli a “rude backroom huckster.” I don’t really know what a huckster is completely, but ooh, BURN.

Insult time behind them, Supreme Court dude continues to state that he has CONCERNS re: the Will issue. “Don’t get it twisted! I’m not sexist. I like her; I’m just searching for backward ways in which to demean her. By the way, you do not have the gold gavel I gave you on display in your office, Big, which is sort of rude, also something something pretentious in Latin about justice.” And Eli is like FINE, and then tells Diane that she essentially has to trash Will publicly somehow in order to become a judge and Diane is like, “Gee golly, Eli Gold, that sounds swell, also go screw yourself.”

Eli then goes to search for the gold gavel, sort of like the Golden Ticket but 150% more boring, in the gift room, which is apparently something that exists. A gift room! Just to hold all of Governor Elect Florrick’s gifts! I have not held major desires to be a governor before, but now I might be having thoughts.

Like, it is literally just called the gift room! With a name plate and everything!

Alas, the gold engraved gavel is not in the bountiful gift room, but has been taken hostage by-plot twist!-Zach’s old ex-girlfriend Becca, Eli’s nemesis in smarminess, played by Dreama Walker. While she and Zach aren’t girlfriend-boyfriend anymore-I mean, she’s in college now, HELLO-she and Grace are apparently still buddy buddy, because Grace is the worst.

Speaking of Grace, when she is not busy letting her friends steal gold-plated gavels from her house, she is out shopping with Mama Channing for some sexy school clothes. When Zach questions whether Alicia will approve of these clothes, as Zach is apparently the guru of respectability, Mama Channing says, oh, no, their mom wore the same kinds of things when she was young-except hers had more holes ripped in them. While I was able to enjoy the image of a young Alicia Florrick in ripped ’80s fashion for a brief moment, all happiness was then cruelly ripped away from me as she continued: “Her father wouldn’t let her wear them. He said they were a young man’s rape fantasy.”

Wait, what? No, no, no, what is happening. She continues to say that to get around this, she would just let Alicia change into her sexy clothes in the car, har har! And everyone enjoys a good chuckle without the slightest discomfort about that really awful rape comment that just happened. I understand it wasn’t a comment that Mama Channing was endorsing, and that she in fact encouraged the reversal of his slut-shaming by letting her daughter wear the scandalous garments, but Good Wife writers, sweet Jesus, the words “rape fantasy” should just never be uttered on television, ever. Ever ever ever. In whatever context. OK? OK.

While I feel icky about this for a while, I’m able to shake it off slightly when Mama Channing and Alicia meet for margaritas. Alicia is in a good mood but Mama is sad because she’s been dumped. They get drizunk and end up having a heart to heart about how Alicia felt like her mother never liked her when she was a kid and Mama wishes she could start all over again and then they hug but Alicia holds on for too long and Mama Channing breaks it up by saying, “OK, OK. That’s enough.” Mama Channing IS this episode.

But to get back to the Chumhum case because I guess I have to, the few seconds we do get to see of Kalinda is when she tells Cary that he’s putting her in a weird position. Are her excellent sleuthing skills helping Lockhart Gardner, or Florrick Agos? But we all know Kalinda is in a weird position, and in some way or another always has been. This is nothing new, just another episode gone by without Kalinda casting those dark eyes at another lady or punching bros in the face or other things we want to see Kalinda do and we are all sad.

When it comes to the conclusion of the NSA stuff, Chumhum is able to win, sort of, enough to make it look good for them. But in the course of it all, The Good Wife does its job in making it clear that the NSA cares more about the government’s rights than about the rights of its people. And it shows the creepy and unjust side of surveillance when, in the course of monitoring Alicia, Chumhum aside, they raise a heightened alert for calls from a suspicious number to Alicia’s house. This ends up being Zach’s new girlfriend, Nisa, who happens to be from Somalia, who is clearly just calling Zach to cry about Becca being on the scene again. How dare you cry and also be Somalian, young lady!

I should also note that the two NSA agents on the case are two nerdy white boys, one of whom is played by The Office’s Zach Woods, who I enjoyed seeing. But this casting was just another example of TV showing us that no woman or person of color knows how to be a nerd or use a computer.

And in the end, after first refusing to give good ol’ Mandy Post the dirty scoop on Will, Diane ends up meeting with her again and, we assume, doing just that, as her personal dreams win over her loyalty. The previews for next week show what looks to be an explosive confrontation between Diane and the rest of the firm. Dun dun dun.

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