Last week on The Good Wife, we witnessed the tumultuous first day of Florrick Agos after their dramatic exit from Lockhart Gardner the episode prior. This week, the rest of Alicia and Cary’s first week plays out, alongside a re-energized Lockhart Gardner with Diane and Will together again at the helm. While last week ended with the triumph of Florrick Agos securing Chumhum as their client, this week, the chaotic cookie of independence continues to crumble. In fact, at times it feels like the cookie has been pulverized to dust.
The episode begins with what appears to be an upstanding young white bro, played by Hunter Parrish (Weeds, Spring Awakening), getting pulled over and harassed by a cop, to the point of forcing him to return to the station with him for a breathalyzer test, even though he clearly hasn’t been speeding and also isn’t drunk. He sits at the station, no breathalyzer, for over an hour, until he calls up Alicia Florrick at Lockhart Gardner, who represents his apparently rich family.
Alas! Alicia ain’t there anymore, and Will swoops in to take control of the case. When he arrives at the police station, he discovers another familiar face is already there, chatting up the cop: one Miss ASA Geneva Pine, who is always played so excellently by Renee Goldsberry, who deserves more roles. Clearly the DUI arrest is a fake, sneaky way for what Geneva’s really after: a murder conviction for a girl’s death at the college that the young man, whose name is Jeff, also attends. “Familial” DNA has been found under her fingertips, meaning that a male in Jeff’s family has most likely committed the crime, and he is the prime suspect.
Other trouble is abrew at the Lockhart Gardner offices, meanwhile, as they are being sued for $6 million for malpractice from a botched adoption. A Chippewa tribe has claimed rights to a child from the adoptive parents that Lockhart Gardner represented. The Good Wife once again cleverly incorporates recent headlines into their storylines, this time the heartwrenching “Baby Girl” Oklahoma case that received national attention this year. The twist in this malpractice suit: the supervising lawyer was Alicia Florrick, whom Diane and David Lee would like to testify on their behalf, to confirm that they did nothing wrong. And hence begins what I imagine will be a series of battles of the minds for the rest of this season.
When Alicia walks into the Lockhart Gardner offices for the first time since her exit, standing proudly on her own terms this time, she openly smirks when one of the receptionists almost trips over herself to bring the news of her shocking arrival to Diane. Not needing to be herded, Alicia walks back into the offices by herself to share a snarktastic convo with David Lee. Alicia and Diane then refer to the other as “Mrs. Florrick” and “Mrs. Lockhart” before sitting on opposite sides of the table in the conference room, which hits you right in the feels. Alicia hesitates before giving them the information about the case that they need, eventually saying, “You know that $150,000 for my partnership I put up just a little while ago? I’d like that back please. And then you’ll get your testimony.”
This type of blackmail, while not unreasonable, is a game that other members of Lockhart Gardner usually play, not Alicia. But Alicia appears to be reveling in it. Diane wonders if she’s always been this way, or if she’s changed. Alicia shoots back, “I had some of the best teachers in the world. I couldn’t help but change.” Alicia knows that she needs the money, though, because all at Florrick Agos is not well. They still don’t have offices, and their financial outlook is not good. It’s so not good, in fact, that they bring back in monetary expert Nathan Lane, which caused me to whoop for joy. While Nathan Lane is always the most excellent, I particularly love his earnest, nerdily serious yet lovable role on this show. Unsurprisingly, he delivers what they already know: their money situation sucks. It sucks real hard.Tech savvy son Zach also notices that someone has hacked into all of the family’s computers, turning on their webcams without any of the Florricks’ knowledge. After informing Alicia, who responds in her typical, “What is this box with wires you speak of?” way, she and Cary decide that if Lockhart Gardner is spying on them, instead of stopping the hack, they should keep it going so they can plant false information.
While this allows for a hilarious scene where Cary has Nathan Lane read from a false script near the computer, and Lane gets to pretend to be a bad actor, it also just doesn’t feel right that Lockhart Gardner would do this. They can be sleazy sometimes, but they normally use the law to be sleazy, and this also seems too technological for any of the main hitters to really be in charge of. Alicia says she can see David Lee doing it, but let’s all remember that he’s the man who never takes his chunky Bluetooth out of his ear, rocking it like it’s 2003.
Making this episode even better is the fact that Kalinda is back on the scene in a real way this episode, doing some out on the street investigating again, the first time we’ve seen her do anything other than push paper around the Lockhart Gardner offices in what feels like forever. And she wears the loveliest leather jacket while doing so! We first see her helping to question Jeff, who’s now sitting in jail until Geneva Pine can wrangle up enough evidence to formally charge him with murder. As Jeff immediately and vehemently denies any possible wrongdoing in the case, constantly implying that he is as removed from this girl and this murder as anyone can possibly be, Kalinda’s perfectly glossed lips twitch and her eyes roll ever so slightly, indicating that every one of her Kalinda bullshit sensors is going off. As soon as they leave the cell, she says, “He did it.” Will says no. Kalinda’s like, “Nope, he did it.” This guy is a puzzle: he seems incredibly sincere, and you can tell Will really believes him, or at least wants to, but you best listen to Kalinda’s bullshit sensors.
Kalinda then investigates an uncle Jeff mentioned, although this interestingly ends up being a dead end. As she begins questioning him at his doorstep, he interrupts to ask, clearly confused about all of this: “Who are you?” To which she responds, simply, beautifully: “Kalinda.”
As she continues to explain the situation, he stops her once again when he realizes she’s searching for a male member of the family. He disappears into the house and returns with a photo. “This is me. Pre-op.” He says that it was over 20 years ago, and his nephew has no idea-that he’s always just been Uncle Jimmy to him. Trans characters seamlessly integrated into major network shows like it ain’t no thang: yes, please. More, please.
Kalinda then moves onto Jeff’s half-brother, a lovely seeming chap who works at some type of warehouse, who spits his gum onto the ground in response to her greeting. When she asks where he was on the day in August last year when he called out sick from work, he suddenly hurdles over a table, shoves Kalinda in the ribs into a pallet of crates, and runs out the door. Kalinda calmly brushes herself off, and proceeds to collect that spit out gum for DNA.
After Diane presumably hands over Alicia’s partnership money, Alicia shows up to testify in the Chippewa adoption malpractice suit. She’s cool and collected, explaining that she did everything correctly, including informing the adoptive parents about the Chippewa heritage and possible complications therein, but that anyway, the actual supervising lawyer on the case was David Lee. Classily, though, she refuses to impugn her former employers further, even when the opposing lawyer, played by Christian Borle, pushes her to. The most important thing about this scene is that Diane Lockhart says some complicated German word flawlessly and it is a gorgeous second of television. The second most important thing is that Christian Borle reveals that Lockhart Gardner sent the Chippewa tribe a $10,000 bribe to not oppose the adoption, and that it was this very bribe that turned the tribe against it.
This is news to Alicia, and apparently Diane, and also suddenly gives a lot more heft to the scary $6 million suit. After this, David Lee begins an effort to turn the responsibility for the suit from his shoulders to rest squarely on Alicia’s. He calls her up to let her know that since she became a partner in the middle of the adoption case, and since she did a majority of the work on it, she is personally responsible for it. Luckily, Nathan Lane is around, and he’s able to jump in and say, I was handling the books at that time, and you are full of shit, David Lee. One more for Alicia.
Except-when the pressure is fully on David again, he places the blame on Anthony, one of the fourth years that left with Cary and Alicia. You know, he’s the annoying one who keeps harping on about the bonuses, who threatened to sell them all out when he was about to get fired at Lockhart Gardner. Anthony says to Alicia, yep, I did that, and I got crazy old Howard Lyman to sign off on it. Florrick Agos is all, “Man, are you a jackass! But go testify against Lyman, because that’ll finally get this off our backs.” So Anthony goes. And then-and then!!!-he says that he wrote the check not under Old Man Lyman, or under David Lee. He did it all under Alicia’s direction. Under Alicia’s direction, and Alicia’s only.
Alicia is flabbergasted. I am flabbergasted. When she confronts him after he walks out of the conference room, he doesn’t even respond, but walks right to Diane, who shakes his hand and welcomes him back to the firm. David Lee explains that there was a partner opening, you see, and Anthony was glad to take it. Have fun collecting that $6 million, he says.
So. Much. Rage. Here’s the thing, though, after a few hours of thinking about it: Anthony is the worst. The worst of the worst of the worst. And now he’s a PARTNER at Lockhart Gardner? For crying out loud, Diane, I know you want to get back at Alicia, and I know you want this lawsuit gone, but good god, at what cost?! You know now that he will openly lie during legal testimony, and will do anything that serves him and him only. Good luck with that, y’all! My rage for Alicia is still burning in a fierce way, and yes, Anthony will be able to fill Lockhart Gardner in on all of the woes and secrets of the young Florrick Agos. But evil only lasts so long, even in the law. In time, Florrick Agos will be able to say good riddance to THAT. (Hopefully, if they last that long.) We can only hope that one day Kalinda will be able to kick him in the balls.
Other things in this episode: Alicia’s brother shows up again when he randomly runs into Will and Will fills him in, albeit not willingly, on Alicia’s current status of working for herself from her living room, which Owen knew nothing about. Owen then comforts Alicia about her heartache over Will, which it’s clear to him this is all about, which she ignores. He does note that she seems to be in “warrior princess mode,” and this she happily concurs with. “Well, I’m kicking butt,” she says with a delicious smile. Owen then actually goes to Lockhart Gardner to inform Will that the reason Alicia left was because she was afraid of falling in love with him, and that, essentially, he should go get it. This seems a bit bold of Owen, but then again, he is one of the only people on this show who seems okay with actually expressing real emotions, so, I suppose it’s nice to have that balance. The atmosphere between Will and Alicia themselves also seems to warm slightly from the arctic chill it’s been frozen in, slowly melting from hostility to longing.
Zach determines that the webcam hack in their computers wasn’t from Lockhart Gardner, but from some douche at his school who has been filming Grace naked and putting it online, which is so skeevy and gross that Zach rightly punches him out in the halls of their school, where they apparently have fancy uniforms but no hall monitors in sight. After thinking that he’s taken care of it, however, Zach is surprised to once again notice the little green recording light flashing on his own computer at the end of the episode. Dun dun dun, someone out there is still being creepy and weird.
The Jeff case remains unresolved, a storyline that is clearly going to continue throughout the season. Since they can’t get enough evidence, Geneva offers a plea deal of two years in prison. Jeff still says he didn’t do it, so Will rejects the deal. But Geneva is then finally able to process full DNA results, and Jeff is a perfect match. He now faces up to six months behind bars until the trial begins. Jeff is distraught, and still not straying from his complete innocence, which Will is hesitantly standing by. I still stand with Kalinda’s instincts, but, man, I don’t know! If he’s lying, he is a really, really good actor. I’m intrigued to find out what happens next.
Finally, after Alicia’s day from hell, Cary kindly leads her over to Nathan Lane once she returns home, who has one sliver of good news for her: he wants to work for them, full time. He’s passed the bar, and he has all the business background, too. He could be a key asset. And he’ll work for free. When Alicia asks why, he somewhat bashfully says that he just loves the law. He loves the law! I love him! Of course, once the firm is profitable, he’ll want his salary retroactively. Alicia smiles. It’s a deal.
While this episode included slightly less of the high drama of the last two episodes, it was still totally solid, and allowed us to sink into the rhythm of the rest of this season, setting the course from here on out, and I am ready for it. What are your thoughts?
