So good! One of Momma Veronica's eclectic friends, a software coder, dies due to unsafe labor practices, and without really knowing how or why, Alicia gets pulled into consulting with the remaining programmers (including Fran Kranz!) on their legal rights. One Nancy Crozier -- still rockin' the naïf vibe and being all incredible -- and several surprise firings and rehirings later, Cary and Alicia gets the coders protected from being terminated by claiming they're unionizing.
The widow abruptly gets pulled over to the Crozier side, with the company, but Alicia figures out -- after an offhand comment from David Lee -- that the widow's shares in the company make her management, and she can't sink the vote, so in the end the group unionizes. Unfortunately, the whole thing ends up driving the price of the company so low that they're snatched up by ChumHum, without need for any of the actual employees involved, and Alicia can't help but wonder whether her firm allowed all of this Labor Board stuff to unspool just to benefit ChumHum in the long run.
In the midst of all this talk of labor and management, two other things go wrong: Number one, Kalinda figures out that Robyn's compensation -- which includes healthcare -- is practically her own salary. Cary invites her to leave with him for the new firm, exclusively, and she gets into protracted negotiations with Will about whether or not she should become an exclusive L/G employee. It's Kalinda, you can never tell, but since everybody knows her they all know that; and she's subtle enough about the "other firm" pursuing her that Will, far from sniffing out the Cary side of things, seems to think she's just invented them to start up her campaign for more cash.
Meanwhile, the L/G assistant pool also gets inspired, and starts doing their own research into their fellows at other firms, and realize they're getting screwed too. The assistant uprising, which is where Alicia puts all her feelings and need to a saint, keeps getting torpedoed by David Lee because he is the worst, and eventually without consulting Alicia the partners make offers to the ringleaders of the uprising, with (fake David Lee-type) promises of more increases to come. Alicia comes out bravely here, speaking truth to power while also trying to negotiate her own life as part of management, so it's painful to see both labor disputes ultimately resolved in such discouraging ways.
Peter's got this idea that he wants to renew their Florrick vows, which happens to coincide with a tricky proposition: If he goes negative on Kresteva to offset a sudden polling surge, his numbers will drop, but because everybody loves Alicia, she can talk shit about Kresteva all day long and it won't do anything but help. He comes to Owen with a fairly transparent request for Owen to put in a good word for him with Alicia, which ends up winning over Owen after a lifetime of resenting Peter. Veronica, on the other hand, is not prepared to ever forgive him and so -- after Alicia threatens to cut her off altogether if she doesn't stop meddling in her marriage -- goes to Will instead, telling him there's a window and it's closing, and he needs to step it up.
One Charlie Rose interview later, in which Alicia calls Mike Kresteva a selfish drunk who is ruining his marriage and family worse than Peter ever did, the numbers have stabilized and, since she's pissed at Will for the L/G stuff and feeling particularly dicked around by everybody but her husband, Alicia agrees to the vow renewal.
As a fan of the show, it was nice to see such a great, well-paced, intriguingly interconnected episode, and I know I've been saying this every week, but the string of hits in the back third of this season is just really something to behold. It's well-crafted television, just as a written product, with then the characters, actors and history all extra bits of excellence that put it over the top.
Storywise, it's interesting getting into the business side of things, as we continue getting a backstage view of how L/G's "top-heavy" management stuff continues to be its own monster. Cary has never had more fun with Alicia, and I think even he was pleasantly surprised by Kalinda's willingness to cut ties and come with him (for the right price).
We have yet to see exactly what Will's going to do with the suggestion of some last-minute wooing before the window closes altogether, but I wonder whether he'll really go too far doing anything at all, considering how quickly -- at least apparently, to those not watching a TV show about her life -- Alicia is changing. And honestly, at this point she's getting so sick of every aspect of the firm that it remains a toss-up what she'll even do in week's Election Day finale... But at this point, would anything really surprise you?