Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | 3 USERS: A YOU GRADE IT My Brain On Thief
By Jacob Clifton | Season 4 | Episode 14 | Aired on 02.17.2013
Alicia: "Got kids, Mr. CEO?"
CEO Guy: "Three. A self-righteous hippie, a self-hating gay dude, and an artist who is just becoming a woman. They all run a funeral home together and talk to dead people in their imaginations. Just kidding, I'm not actually Nathaniel Fisher Sr. I have a thirteen-year-old daughter, is the answer to your question."
Alicia: "Drink a lot of Thief?"
CEO: "Watch yourself, lady. Don't you bring my daughter into this."
It goes in a million different directions, all of them hell: This might happen in a real trial, sure, but it's not a real trial, it's a mock trial, so instead of doing her job as plaintiff, she is actually just pissing off the client. It is wicked ugly. Nobody is happy. Alicia herself is like, "Wow, I am really taking this pretty far."
ALONE
Will: "You got a problem? How about you talk to me instead of torpedoing everything around you?"
Alicia: "Did you not ask me to do this case?"
Will: "Yeah, we asked you to take this seriously. Not dick around to prove a point."
Alicia: "Then be a better lawyer and win the case."
Will: "Oh my God, grow up. You can have two things in your head at the same time. You're being disingenuous if you're gonna pretend you can't get your head around this."
Alicia: "Then FUCKING FIRE ME."
It stops being about the partner thing suddenly; with a wrench.
Alicia: "Listen to yourself! You are not the injured party here."
Will: "And you are?"
Alicia: "I am. Yes."
Just because you're running toward something doesn't mean you're leaving nothing behind. She reached inside her chest and broke something in there -- a little silver apparatus, a tiny bronze mechanism -- so that it wouldn't hurt them anymore. And she went walking. All the way back home.
And all this time, he's thought she was this cold icon, this St. Alicia who caught him one day, out of the corner of her eye, at his lowest point, and thought: Too dirty. Never again. She swam back up, toward the light, and left him in the dark. You dress it up in "complexity," you dress it up in "bad timing," but there it is: If he's the injured party, she's a bitch.
But if we're both injured, and we're both yelling about it now, if we're both dressing it up in other words, then we're probably both still broken. It never occurred to him how brave she was. How strong she was, to break her own heart. They line up for hours, in droves -- Will and Peter, Cary and Kalinda -- just to see what it looks like, behind that smile she pastes on: This is what it looks like. A heart built for compassion, leaving none for itself. How could you not kiss her, after a glimpse of that?