Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | 4 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT Here I Go Again
By Jacob Clifton | Season 3 | Episode 15 | Aired on 02.19.2012
Maybe it's just something she's figured out along the way, but overall this flinty Alicia -- still a woman who chooses her words more carefully than anyone on the planet -- has the potential to be intimidating as hell. Again, Alicia v. Caitlin seems like one of the diciest propositions, even for this very risk-taking show, just because of the age thing and the subtle boyfriend vibes they keep sending... but I can't help thinking that, done right, it could do a lot for Alicia's character that has nothing to do with man/woman stuff at all. And, this being a show that excels in talking about people as people -- even when gender's in the room giving you the hairy eyeball, which is always is and always will be -- I must say it's pretty thrilling to consider.
GOLD & ASSOC
Stacie and Vanessa team up to yell at Eli for yelling at them about the bin Laden thing. His take is that since Kalinda found it out, eventually somebody else will find it out, so -- shocker! -- his strategy is to get in front of it and come clean about it. Yes, you heard it here first: Eli says disclosure ahead of the news cycle is the best way to spin. Of course, in three seasons it's been his only strategy, but the shit that he gets into just keeps getting more and more insane, to the point that even that one strategy over and over still seems fairly ballsy. And his backup reasoning -- to spin it as open-mindedness, to preempt any attention to it whatsoever as racism, to never forget our President's middle name -- is actually, oddly, pretty sound. So I guess everybody wins, this round: They giggle, charmed; we get to look at both Parker Posey and Amy Sedaris...
And then of course Stacie fucks it all up, because she can't help herself, and within seconds Vanessa has figured out they have slept or are still sleeping together.
Vanessa: "So who are you obsessed with? Her or me?"
Eli: "No one! I'm just helping! I don't like her hurting you!"
Vanessa: "Barf. Look, either stop 'caring,' or man up and get on board."
Which, seriously. A whole episode just to get there. I mean, that's how it had to go, and it didn't cut into the Syria stuff too much, but in another way it's like, Diane and Will are still the only relationship worth a damn now that Alicia's broken up with all her people, and that could be going quiet for six months, and then at the SA who knows how bad that's going to get, so in response we get the weirdest threesome of all time. Hope you like the idea of strange sexy goblins cavorting with Our Lady of the Nineties!