Hamish Linklater's DOJ official, David LaGuardia, approaches Eli with what seems like an investigation into questionable contributions to ex-wife Parker Posey's campaign, if you can remember back that far. But once a very incredibly awesome Diane Lockhart gets involved, it turns out that once again the only thing anybody ever cares about is Peter Florrick.
The mysterious FBI photo of Kalinda and Eli, that Nick stole, is still not in play, but after Diane and Eli tell LaGuardia to go to hell, the fall season ends with the Department of Justice raiding Gold & Assoc. To be honest, I'm not even sure that was meant to be a storyline so much as setting up the 2013 half of the season; if there was more to it, I didn't catch it as it was happening. Still, tough times for Eli means tough times for Peter. Or actually for everybody, since he bitches so much.
Alicia spends her few minutes away from the very complicated case of the week trying to figure out who has been googling "types of condoms" on her ChumHum and throwing around an insane amount of made-up tech-speak, as is her wont. Zach is still dating Invisible Nisa, but they don't need the Talk; Grace is shoved into sudden curiosity about sex after Alicia makes the rare blunder of referring to abstinence as being a "good girl," which is so beneath her that I hope Grace fucked Hot Connor like that day. Gross me out, Alicia.
But really gross me out because eventually Zach's research turns up the fact that the person googling the condoms was in fact -- as you probably guessed -- good old Jackie Florrick. Their shared mother/son horror about this discovery is so adorable that it almost makes up for the Grace thing. Almost.
Alicia's conundra do not end there, though. The legal stuff this week is less complicated than it sounds, but basically there are two guys on trial for this chick's murder. One of them is in Chicago, where the girl died, and the other one is in her home county, where the killer dropped her body. In order to help Will defend the Chicago boyfriend against Captain Hellinger, Alicia runs info back to help prosecute the other boyfriend. (He is being defended by Becky Ann Baker, regulation hottie, whose appearance excited me even more than Linklater and about which I had no foreknowledge, and who deserves a TV show just where she goes around having sex with young guys and like solving crimes with psychic powers.)
Anyway, it's a whole thing where cats are lying down with dogs and prosecutors are working for defense attorneys and everybody's trying to screw everybody else's case. Hellinger continues to be fabulous, calling bullshit on Will left and right with such precision that I think he's developing a little crush. Once Kalinda figures out that we're defending the guilty guy, Alicia takes us all the way back to kindergarten once again about what a defense attorney actually does, but in such a way that it's actually valid this time: They are helping condemn the innocent and letting a murderer go free, regardless of who the client is. It ends probably as cleanly as it possibly could, though: After both cases are pronounced guilty, though, Will and the Captain agree over drinks that they'll help with the innocent one's appeal.
And in Kalinda News, Nick Savarese finally does the one thing. You know what I'm talking about: After getting fed up with his bullshit, Alicia fixes him with a steely eye and personally fires him again as a client, so he gets up in her face and threatens her. First Cary's face, and now Alicia? No way. Get him out of here. Certainly that's all Kalinda needed to hear, so after confirming that he's transporting drugs and smashing up his towyard, she provides him with money and an escape... Which he then refuses to take. Prompting her to, I think, kill him. You don't mess with Alicia, dude.
I mean, it's unclear. And my hope is that it remains unclear, and we never hear about it again, because it's actually a brilliant solution: The reason the Nick story got cut short was that people hated it, and the reason people hated it was that it made Kalinda look dumb and weak and boring, and also because it removed some of the Kalinda Mystery. So, how about you resolve it with a capper of total mystery? Preferably one that puts the Kalinda/Alicia bromance back at the center of things, the way it should be? I mean, it's really elegant. I'll always wonder what might have been, but if they had to shutter this early, I love the way they did it.
Year: Campaign stuff, presumably. We haven't heard from Maddie or Kresteva in a long time, and now that Eli's had his precious office supplies commandeered there's no telling how nuts he and Diane will go on the DOJ. I'm guessing if this Trustee stuff doesn't get wrapped up soon, Diane will just become a terrorist anyway, so this might be two birds with one stone. Mostly it'll just be nice to have Kalinda back in-house instead of running around having sex with ice cream and knives and whatever, considering the two people that make her wonderful to watch now share an office. Right? Can we just get back there already?