In an episode of pretty much continuous shockers, twists and hilarious returns to old relationship dynamics, it's nice to see just how far some of these motherfuckers will go to blow Alicia's mind. The case itself -- a West Memphis Three gloss that Kalinda solves in her usual way -- is important mainly for the fact that Alicia's relationship with Cary is improving at a rate equal to his dissatisfaction at the SA's, and that it gives Kalinda cool stuff to do while the rest of the episode is going on.
Will sleeps with one of the lawyers involved, who is a pretty yucky person but not a super yucky person -- very much like most of the women he sleeps with -- and Eli is forced to abandon Vanessa's IL Senate campaign, after sleeping with her, due to some backroom boy's club stuff that is par for the yuckiness course. Parker Posey is very lovely, and sparkles more in this episode than to date, but I can't say I'll miss Vanessa too much.
Right. So the Jackie Showdown ends with Alicia's sudden realization that Jackie is buying the old house so that she can move in with Peter and the kids and just actually replace her daughter-in-law as the woman in their lives, and Jackie just barely bothering to say she's wrong. Softening toward Kalinda more all the time, Alicia hires her to look into Jackie's affairs, and learns that she borrowed the cash from the kids' trust. But before she can even apply pressure about it, Peter's flipped out in his mom's face and told her to back the hell off... Resulting in a truly trippy fake (?) stroke that is either really sad, or the awesomest power grab that old bitch'll ever try.
But Peter's having a hell of a day anyway. Mike Kresteva visits Alicia with the Blue Ribbon report, which clearly indicts the once and future State's Attorney of covering up the shooting, and Alicia repeats her dedication to staying far away from that. But somehow, as Mike is announcing his campaign for Governor, this story transforms itself into a whole other situation, where Alicia tried to force Mike to keep her husband's name out of it. Just blatant, flagrant lying. Her whole face goes cross-eyed like when you shake a pinball table, and Mike's like, "What. That's totally what happened."
He is totally the fucking worst, man! He's the anti-Elspeth! He is evil! He is like Louis Canning and Wendy Scott-Carr had an evil baby! It crawls along the ceiling! It drops on you unawares!
So even though Eli tells her to ignore it, Alicia stomps on into Mike's office to yell at him about lying, and he plays this amazing Jedi trick on her where, like a schizophrenic, he is able to morph reality into whatever he says, which causes her to scream at the top of her lungs like it's a playground and she's adamant that the sand is not actually lava. It's wild watching her come up against the fact that sometimes people just tell lies, but even more amazing watching how pissed she gets at the very idea. Like just the act of trying to compute the fact that people lie to your face is almost too much for her -- and of course, watching Eli walk her through the grossness of reality was a very welcome return to their friendly/pissy sparring matches of yore.
So, pissed, she tells Peter to run the fuck for Governor, and after a similarly slimy run-in with Mike -- who very openly details his plan to come after Alicia first and foremost, which Peter keeps to himself -- Peter finds himself once again on the dais with his Good Wife at his side, announcing his candidacy. It's an image that's come to mean so much: The freeze-frame on her quiet face, the million things we know are going on in there, the chilling consideration of what it means to see her, back there, again... And the true and total excitement of knowing that whatever happens with Jackie, Mike's made himself enough of a threat that they'll put any amount of their shit on hold to see him taken the hell down.
week: Possibly it's wishful thinking on my part, but it seems like Cary might finally be coming home.