Cold Equations

S03E02

The case: An entitled bajillionaire mountain-climber with, as it turns out, a penchant for looting the bodies and supplies of other mountain-climbers. The titular Death Zone lies above the 26,000 feet where oxygen stops being able to support life, but the metaphor is solid: at some point in your rise, you are going to have to do things you never thought you'd do, in order to sustain yourself. The law of the mountain.

How they get there is very twisty: There's a book coming out that alleges these things, and within the first minute of the episode, Alicia gets a libel suit thrown out. But then -- thanks to Eddie Izzard's quick use of Amazon to buy copies of the book for British use -- the whole case comes back up in UK court. Much like the NCIS episode last year, it involves a shy lawyer with experience of the realm of British law that Alicia eventually comes to respect, etc., but mostly it's just a great way to get Eddie back on our TVs again.

Meanwhile, Eli gets a possible new client that he's not allowed to know about, managing a crisis that he's not allowed to know about, for a political candidate whose aspirations he's not allowed to know about. Enter Kalinda, who works a brilliant case and fascinates Eli exactly as much as you would've hoped. They solve the wrong case, but in getting the wrong answer they find the right one: The operative who approached Eli is actually hopping to a GOP candidate and didn't have the money to vet him himself, so he set up the investigation as a way of testing Eli's skillz. Or, in our version of reality, as a way of introducing Eli and Kalinda to each other so that the foundations of the world might tremble.

Finally, Peter's office approaches Diane with an offer: Lockhart, Gardner will be the State's Attorney's civil representation (things like hospital suits or whatever) -- as long as they submit to an internal audit. This is couched as being an issue because of Lemond Bishop (who apparently is still an L/G client) but really it's about fucking with Will and Alicia.

Will and Diane decide to keep Will out of it, of course, and Diane swims with those sharks alone -- but an after-hours visit to Alicia's house confirms her worst fears: She and Peter have split, and Alicia's hiding it. What was last year's greatest advantage -- Alicia's connections -- might be turning into a toxic asset. And worst of all, Will gets pushed into a corner where he not only keeps mum about the affair, but promises to side with Diane against Alicia if things go south.

Lots of yucky, but that comes with the territory at this point. The image of Alicia (or any of them) looting corpses on a career-path K2 is pretty horrifying, but as long as it leaves us with Kalinda and Eli falling, naturally, into mutual obsession...

week: The Edelstein approacheth [Bobbi Bernstein/Dan Rydell reunion! -- Ed.]. Alicia helps Will fight one of his many bitter exes in court-ordered mediation, while Eli and Diane clash over the best way to handle a dairy industry crisis of some kind. Ha! So edgy. And you know it will be, too. Only on The Good Wife would you be like, "Man, the public relations issue that dairy's going to have week looks motherfucking tight."

Robert Lambros was a mountain-climbing guide who died 28,000 feet up Everest, in a spot known as Hillary Step. His brother Danny -- Alicia's client -- wrote a book about the tragedy alleging that a man named Oliver Cardiff, climbing with a British team, came upon his body and ganked his oxygen before continuing.

The witness on the stand, a documentarian who was friends with the Lambros brothers, nonetheless testifies that Danny's book is wrong, and thus libelous, because Cardiff was below them with his British team of climbers while Danny was even further down at basecamp. So the film guy is the only person, maybe, who knows what really happened. He's the Jon Krakauer, if you will; it's not about him.

Alicia stands, apologizing in advance for taking down her client's buddy, and brings up the big theme of the episode: The Death Zone. That's the area above 26,000 feet where oxygen no longer supports life, and perceptions are not to be fully trusted. This is an issue because it gives the episode its name and forward thrust, narratively, but also because the documentarian in question has a problem with canned oxygen: He thinks it's destroying the sport, so he doesn't use it, so his perceptions at the Hillary Step can't be trusted.

For an American libel case, Cardiff needs to prove not only that Danny's book is incorrect, but that he knows it's wrong. And since the plaintiff's case is based on this film guy's Death Zone perceptions, the judge pretty much throws it out within the first three minutes of the episode. Danny and Alicia are both stunned, but happy; Cardiff's over there conferring with a British attorney that you know is going to matter because he's played by Eddie Izzard. If this were all the law we needed to practice in this episode I'd be happy, but not even this show can cheat CBS's procedural quotas that hard.

Alicia: "Hi, Eli!"
Eli: "Where are you? The meeting's in ten minutes."
Alicia: "And what meeting was that again?"

That's Alicia's idea of a joke! Funny little lady. Eli is not amused; another funny little lady, honestly.

L/G

Eli's brought in -- by way of secret stairway jiggery-pokery -- a fellow fixer, Mickey Gunn (played by awesome Michael Kelly, who was one of the greatest parts of Generation Kill) for some kind of very secret meeting.

Will: "Who was that?"
Diane: "No idea."
Will: "Do you ever get the feeling we're losing control here?"

For just one example, it falls to the State's Attorney to choose a law firm for all civil cases against the department. Childs had some bunch of jerks, but Peter fired them and now he's holding a little bit of an auction for the new firm, looking at around $20M a year in new business. Diane sees dollar signs, but L/G is of course Alicia's (and Eli's, now) firm, so it's tricky.

Diane: "I'm trying to manage expectations and assume he'd never even invite us to pitch."
Will: "Without responding to that, I will tell you that this at least has to look like a competition. Also, what you can never know is that Peter and Alicia are engaged in a serious WASPy war of emotional attrition right now. I know, because I am the Waterloo."
Diane: "Okay, well since I can't even allow myself to imagine Alicia having marital problems, because then I'd have to take away her new office, let's discuss details at length."
Will: "There are eight firms involved in the auction, including us. He doesn't want it to look like a sweetheart deal, due to how people are always going to suspect him of corruption, because of how he's totally suspicious. And corrupt."

Diane: "You go do boy things. Mr. Big is heavy into dude politics."
Will: "Uh, no. You go do Diane things. That bro won't even look me in the eye."
Diane: "See, again, I feel like there's something I should know about your involvement in Alicia's marriage, but I am physically unable to complete that thought."
Will: "Okay, then why are you being so cagey?"
Diane: "Have we... Met? The State's Attorney's office makes me physically ill, even now that Peter's in office. I just don't want to be blindsided."
Will, verbatim: "Have you noticed you're turning into me? All the sports metaphors?"
Diane: "A better version of you."

GOLD

Mickey Gunn -- in his adorable Kermit-green socks -- seems like a little bit of a Carville stand-in, which is funny because he's always looked to me a little bit like an attractive version of James Carville; anyway, here are the pertinent informations: Mickey hasn't gotten laid since 2008, Eli hasn't gotten laid ... in a while. They like each other, but they hate each other. Eli had a great idea for Weiner but it happened over the summer, so oh well, we won't get to see it on the show.

Mickey: "So you're the flavor of the month these days in crisis managers..."
Eli: "I hear you're the flavor of the month in strategists. What campaign are you on?"
Mickey: "I can't tell you. He has a problem. I can't tell you that either. He's launching an exploratory committee regarding a campaign about which I cannot tell you."
Eli: "You want me to crisis manage a crisis you can't tell me?"
Mickey: "More like he wants to know if the controversy will sink him, or how to deal with it, without actually waking the dragon."
Eli, verbatim: "This is BS. It's like a bakeoff without any ingredients."

So now we have another bakeoff happening, between Eli and two others, with even more untrustworthy moving parts, but at least one of them isn't about Alicia...

Alicia: "Hey, you wanted me to step into this meeting for about one second?"
Eli: "Yes, Alicia, thank you for physically walking into my office."
Mickey: "Ha! Nice one. Saint Alicia's working with you. Got it."
Alicia: "Sometimes standing around is a thing I do that makes incredibly dramatic shit happen. Possibly this is one of those times. Really, it makes me feel much more powerful and competent to be a cardboard prop, over winning awesome libel suits like I just did before this quote meeting."
Mickey: "I will be back here sexing it up with y'all on Thursday. Peace!"

Eli: "Who's the investigator here?"
An Unearthly Choir: "Ohhhh girrrrrrrl"
Alicia: "Um, Kalinda Sharma. Why?"
Eli: "I need her to investigate a scandal before it happens."
Alicia: "Sounds like her kind of deal. Hey, punch her in the box for me. But also tell her she's doing a great job. I'm conflicted."

HALLWAY

Cardiff: "Boom, I'm back!"
Alicia: "I just kicked your ass, bro. Turn tail or I'll do it again with this knuckle sandwich."

Eddie Izzard: "Cheerio, Guvner."
Alicia: "Do I know you?"
Eddie Izzard: "Instead of answering that no-doubt apposite question, permit me to educate you in the ways of my people. In the UK, you see, libel laws are reversed and the burden of proving the information lies on the libelator."
Alicia: "This was already adjudicated, dude. Nothing but net. I killed it."
Izzard: "Right, but two weeks ago my British staff bought a bunch of copies off Amazon."
Alicia: "Bollocks."

Izzard, verbatim: "I am a Queen's Counsel of the Royal Courts of Justice, and this is a writ of new proceedings for libel."
Alicia: "So you were planning this the whole time? Danny didn't do anything wrong."
Cardiff: "He accused me of killing his brother. So I want £20M."
Alicia: "What is that in real money?"

The British lawyer who just arrived to help Alicia, Timothy Ash Brannon, is a quirky son of a bitch. Loves him some Sudoku. He also does crossword anagrams of people's names when he meets them -- "Alicia Florrick," with two r's, becomes "Filial Air Crock" -- and also he has self-esteem issues because he's not a posh barrister like Izzard, but a cringing solicitor. As somebody with a long interest in UK law -- the reason I like hanging out with 1-L's, in addition to how they are not yet shadows of their former selves -- I guess this stuff is interesting enough. You can learn a lot from The Good Wife, sometimes. Mostly he reminds me of that one guy from the JAG episode of this show, where the military lawyer was such a dear and everybody still had to work together.

Brannon, Esq,: "You know, just off the plane, and a bit punchy. Where are the Olsen Twins? Et cetera."
Alicia: "Not on my best day would I have time for this quaint bullshit. Will, meet Timothy."
Brannon, Esq.: "Will Gardner, no middle E = Warden Grill."
Alicia: "Yeah, he does that too. He's a regular jukebox of irritating shit."
Brannon, Esq.: "We call a deposition a letter rogatory. Also we call a truck a lorry."

CONFERENCE WITH NAMED PARTNERS

So now they have to redo the entire case, over satellite -- with no doubt an even more annoying Judge, or Magistrate, or High Counsel Litigatrix Superiorum, or something -- and they can't use the Death Zone defense because they can't prove iffyness, they'd have to prove the book was true, which can't be done. And they can't stall, because Danny's assets are Canadian, so they're frozen.

Diane gets down to it, then: They have to prove that Cardiff took Lambros's oxygen, which means starting at zero because that was never the thrust of the case when it was American. Kalinda lurks; Alicia finally brings up this phone call that Robert phoned his wife on sat-phone just before he died and Kalinda goes running for it.

BUT THEN

Eli: "Are you the investigator? Do you have a minute?"
Kalinda: "Do you want me to have a minute?"
Unearthly Choir: "..."

Kalinda: "So there's a scandal of some kind, but you don't know who or what it is? And how does this work, when I investigate for you? You're one of my bosses now?"
Eli: "I think so? You probably invoice in some way?"

Five seconds later...

Kalinda: "Okay, so what's really going on is that you want me to find out the shit so that you can use it to force him to hire you. You don't even care about the bakeoff."
Eli: "...Are you like my lost twin sister? Can you see inside my brain? Was that an unearthly choir? Am I in the Death Zone? Are we in love? What is happening?"
Kalinda: "Just breathe. This happens sometimes when people meet me."

STATE'S ATTORNEY

Peter: "Sorry to keep you waiting while I was on the phone right here in front of you!"
Diane: "Yeah, I bet you get a lot more phone calls now that you're not in prison."
Peter: "Good one. Good burn, Diane. Hey, I invited Cary to this meeting just to fuck with you. He tells us all your secrets."
Diane & Cary: Secretly miss each other. Secretly hate each other. Secretly agree that Peter is kind of a douche.
Peter: "So yeah, we've narrowed down the Chicago firms to three, including you."
Cary: "Civil cases, like County Hospital, Police, SA's office. We think you're creepy enough to handle those cases and keep people from getting money out of our corruption."
Diane: "I am so much creepier than you think."

By Jacob Clifton

BUT THEN

Eli: "Are you the investigator? Do you have a minute?"
Kalinda: "Do you want me to have a minute?"
Unearthly Choir: "..."

Five seconds later...

STATE'S ATTORNEY

Cary: "Well, but it's still a thing because..."
Diane: "Chinese Wall! Chinese Wall! I have established a Chinese Wall between Eli and Alicia's work, and anything have to do with the SA."
Peter: "I don't care about public image, it's not about that."
Cary: "It's about Bond's drug dealer, Lemond Bishop."
Diane: "Holy shit, still? Look, even when we were super-creepy we still only handled his shell companies and money-laundering and other pretend legit businesses."
Peter & Cary: "It's not that we don't trust you on that -- you'd have to be idiots or criminals to do otherwise -- but it's just that we want to squeeze you firmly by the nuts. Don't think we're being more patronizing than we are, which is still plenty."

By Jacob Clifton

Diane: "I'm sure you'll find that every major law firm has a few potentially unsavory clients."
Peter & Cary: "It's not that we think you're dirty. We prefer to call you tainted."
Diane: "Yeah, why would you wanna be insulting when 'tainted' is such a better term."
Peter & Cary: "So you need to voluntarily submit to an audit by the Illinois State Department of Taxation. It won't violate attorney-client privilege, just show us that your hands are clean from any drug money. And then maybe jump through some other hoops, but mostly we are openly threatening you. Do you have any weird assets or cash? Just between us."
Diane: "...Shit y'all, I gotta bounce. I'll talk it over with my partner."
Peter: "Oh, do you know Will Gardner? What a coincidence."
Diane: "Yeah, he's my ... law partner. At my law firm. Which is called Lockhart, Gardner."
Peter: "Small world! Hey, since this whole meeting was about getting him over here and humiliating him like we're doing you now, why not bring him along time we're calling you names and throwing around jazz hands? Anyway, sorry! I just have to take a call from my son while we're having this meeting. My son Zach, we're having dinner. At our house. Where he lives."
Diane: "I can't help feeling like something weird is going on here."
Peter & Cary: "It is. It is so weird. Bye!"

CARDIFF/LAMBROS

His Lordship is annoying, in the grand Good Wife tradition: He insists they all pretend they're on Greenwich time, he makes them start every sentence with "Your Lordship," he natters and nickers and whickers and wanks. He prefers barristers to solicitors, obvi; he is having none of our American guff. Sadly, no wig.

Will, catching a hint of testosterone on the video waves, comes on all blustery about how this is bullshit, this case is bullshit, Cardiff is bullshit, it's "libel tourism pure and simple," which means that rich folks like Polanski and Schwarzenegger take their libel suits overseas since they can't win them here, etc. His Lordship tells Will to shut up and go away, and we delve into recent discussions of changing the libel laws to prevent it, until News Of The World, which also happened at the wrong time to be on this show.

By Jacob Clifton

At some point Will turns his back on the judge while explaining that only 18 overseas copies were bought, by Cardiff, and His Lordship makes quite a stink. Izzard brings up that it doesn't matter when or why the books were bought, and even brings in case law regarding some similarly Amazoned copies of Funding Evil that caused the book to be destroyed. Will's had it; Timothy quietly suggests that Alicia take over since, as he says, the judge "likes demure."

After the second time Timothy has to correct his name for the judge, Alicia just starts looking sad for him (and in general), but they bring in the sat-phone on which the dead fella phoned his wife before dying. It's a sad message, a sad call, which the wife only saved because -- and YMMV but yikes -- she wanted her son to hear his father's voice and be able to remember him. He called every day at noon. Much of this last call is the poor wife's voice, exhorting him to stand up and live. Very sad.

You can hear him spot the British team -- Cardiff's team -- at which point Alicia halts the recording: "But they didn't stop for him. And they took your husband's oxygen tank."

GARDNER/IZZARD

Will: "No apology, no money. But we'll agree not to print the book in Great Britain."
Izzard, laughing and then scarily not laughing: "Very emotional in there. Nice touch using the female lawyer. You Americans certainly do enjoy your drama... God, I do love you Yanks. You are so easy to distract. With our accents and our periwigs and our tea and crumpets. But I am not the England of Big Ben and bobbies. I'm not the England of doilies and cucumber sandwiches. I'm the England of football hooligans and Jack the Ripper. And this England don't play nice, and it don't play fair, and it don't ever stop."

Nice speech, but Will's not thrown because he is a cold motherfucker: "When you want to intimidate someone don't use so many words. Intimidation isn't a sonnet."

Izzard gives Will back his baseball bat, and they go back to the meeting. It is never made clear why he's brandishing it, or why Will's office is almost pitch black during this conversation, but I think we all know why it was: It's because Eddie Izzard is a passionate actor! As is Josh Charles.

CARDIFF/LAMBROS

Izzard brings up that Mrs. Lambros was once a mountaineer, until she had their son, and thus establishes her credibility about the way that works. (He pulls some slight blame-the-victim on this one, since the dead fellow didn't stop climbing or relegate down to easier peaks for the sake of their family like she did.) Specifically, though, he wants to talk about hypoxia and its related hallucinations. Specifically, that he hallucinated the approach of the British team because he was already too far gone.

By Jacob Clifton

Alicia: "You're kidding me. You really think that Robert Lambros hallucinated Cardiff taking his oxygen tank? Really? How does that work? Seriously, how does he hallucinate the loss of his oxygen tank?"
Everybody, Will happily and Tim less so: "Aw, shit."
Izzard: "It was my contention that he hallucinated its existence in the first place."
Alicia: "If you're going to blame the victim at least use some better logic..."

Izzard objects to the tone, and Alicia crawls up his ass some more, and finally the judge offers a bit of a recess. Which is fine, because Will's boner was about to enter the Death Zone anyway.

BACKSTAGE

Turns out Will has a bit of an American Revolution fantasy going on, watching "demure" Alicia Cavanaugh Florrick go after that douchebag who tried to intimidate him, and makes no funnybones about it. "I can dress up," she chuckles, and he just grunts, "I want to take you now." They think about zooming over to the bathroom to do it for the remainder of their recess, but who's that lurking past? Diane Lockhart, who is dangerously close to figuring some shit out that is going to end just about everybody's lives.

NAMED PARTNERS

Will: "Uh, no. We are totally not doing that."
Diane: "I mean, he said it was about Lemond Bishop and drug money."
Will: "No, it's about fucking us. It's about putting a bull's-eye on our back for the IRS. It's possible he's after us, I mean, Glenn Childs was this close to a RICO charge..."
Diane: "Yeah, but that was about the Florricks. He wouldn't do that to his own wife..."
Will: "Nerp. Ixnay on that ought-process-thay. Let's just say he is trying to keep it clean because of his own grody history."

What if they offered to open their books to an independent accounting firm, as a goodwill gesture? It's a good idea... But would still be -- in Will's words -- exposing themselves on a subway platform, without necessarily a good reason. Diane laughs at his "colorful and pointless" metaphor, and they giggle about the British Invasion, and the whole thing is instantly defused, because I don't know if I mentioned this but Will Gardner? Cold motherfucker. You climb high enough you can't even trust your own perceptions anymore.

TIMOTHY ESQ.

Izzard tries to bug Brannon about his Irish heritage and does this obnoxious accent thing that's about class and Ireland and solicitors and barristers and it's all totally grody, which of course arouses Alicia's sympathy, so she cuddles up and whispers at him to calm him down, resulting in the best -- and truest -- exchange of the episode.

Alicia: "What's his anagram?"
Timothy: "Jams Her Tush."
Alicia: Loves it.
Timothy: "There is this in-bred deference I have to greater rank."
Alicia: "Yeah, I know. Me too."

In the Death Zone, above a certain point, your perceptions can change. In a survival game like mountaineering -- like Alicia's life -- all you can trust is your own perceptions, your own compass. Once that goes?

Alicia: "I'm trying very hard to change."
Timothy: "Yeah? I'm not well-disposed to change."
Alicia: "No, me neither."

He smiles, but he can hear it in her voice. It's a sort of laughing darkness, a kind of Kalinda sound; he knows he can trust her, now. The law of the Death Zone is that you keep moving, whatever it takes; but there is a higher law than that.

One of the things I like best about defense law that seems hard to grasp sometimes -- even for some writers, apparently, given Alicia's come-and-go understanding of it -- is that you're not even choosing to be the Bad Guy: You're playing a part in a process designed to find the best truth. Defense law is about asking, asking, asking, chipping away at the question until the truth remains. Defense lawyers aren't scum, they're brave.

But in the middle of that trudge toward absolute logic there's a stop off at Dark Knight, the feeling that you don't mind being the Bad Guy because you can't carry the weight, like a defense attorney can, of looking like scum. It's one of the things Eli and Kalinda have in common: They don't care if you think they're assholes. Cold motherfuckers, but doing what they think is best.

And then just behind that, a third layer, where the question is about the law of the Death Zone, the cold and high-up equations that say, "If I stop to carry you, we'll both die." And while it's a nice metaphor, you don't really run into Death Zones that often in real life. And when you do, you're often high enough up that you can't trust your perceptions anymore.

CARDIFF/LAMBROS

Mandy Cox is an A&R rep, exactly the kind of insufferable person who climbs Everest. ("Everest. My mountain," she sighs obnoxiously, earning Alicia's enmity.) For some reason she is wearing spectacles. She was achieving her dream at the same time Cardiff was climbing with his team; in fact, he shared a Sherpa with her when hers got hurt.

Izzard: "So you made the last assault on Everest with Mr. Cardiff? My goodness, that was not mentioned in Mr. Lambros's book."
Cox: "There were a lot of things not in Danny's book. Many of us in the climbing community were outraged at the many distortions."
Izzard: "Did you ever see Mr. Cardiff step over a body? Or take anyone's oxygen tank?"
Cox: "Of course not. As far as I could tell he was the perfect gentleman."

Alicia: "Ms. Cox, were you sleeping with Mr. Cardiff at base camp?"
Everybody: "Oh, hell no."

Will: "...Well, that didn't go so well. Where's Kalinda?"

ELI GOLD

Eli: "This is my associate, Kalinda Sharma. She's been helping me prepare for this meeting."
Mickey: "And these are my associates. I don't know their names, but they're very expensive. So let's hear it, Eli."

Day One: Eli meets the candidate and explains that scandals are owned by the first man in. "Breitbart owned the Weiner scandal. If Weiner had released those tweets with his spin, he would still be in office today." Really? I mean, didn't we see Weiner's spin? Wasn't it just like, "Look over there!" and variations on the definition of is? Actually, no, if that was going to work it would have had to be Weiner. True.

Day Two: "I don't ask your candidate to tell me everything -- because candidates lie -- but I do tell him we have to get the nanny's story straight so that she doesn't hop off to the National Enquirer."
Mickey's face: "Oh shit, you totally know."
Kalinda's face: "Yep. That's how you do it, bitch."

Day Three: Acknowledge there's entertainment value in a father of three sleeping with his nanny, and the goal is not to smother that value, but to harness it. An Adultery Spring, if you will: Just like Irish Spring, but with adulterers.

Mickey: "Good work? But you caught me leaving Burke's office because I was turning him down."
Kalinda & Eli: "Total lie."
Mickey: "No, but anyway, there's always going to be a nanny or a hooker or something. Or a dude, if they're a Republican. Mickey out."
Eli, kinda desperate: "Wait, let me try again!"

The more southern Mickey gets, the hotter he is. Just putting it out there. Green socks or no.

Kalinda: "There are no other candidates, I checked. They all have strategists already, unless it's something local..."
Eli: "Not Mickey Gunn. I mean, maybe somebody new on the national level, but not somebody he knows is problematic."
Kalinda: "Maybe a celebrity?"
Eli: "No, he wouldn't put up with it."
Lightbulb.
Kalinda: "Oh, it's a Republican. He's flipping. That's why."
Eli: "Yeah, he was looking for a primary. Awesome, again."
Kalinda, zooming out: "On it."
Eli: "Mazel tov!"
Kalinda: "Um, okay?"

CARDIFF/LAMBROS

Alicia figures out, despite Ms. Cox's sneaky disguise, that she had LASIK before the climb because she didn't want to worry about contacts while climbing. LASIK, you may know, reacts poorly to decreased atmospheric pressure: Vision becomes blurry at high altitudes in the weeks following surgery.

Alicia: "Was your vision blurry, Ms. Cox?"
Cox: "Nope!"
Alicia: "Isn't that why you had Mr. Cardiff's Sherpa carry you the last 1000 feet?"
Cox: "That's a lie! People keep saying that, but I wasn't carried!"

That's how you rattle her: By suggesting she didn't really earn it, in the end.

Timothy produces a sworn affidavit from Tenji Gelu -- the Sherpa in question -- who swears Ms. Cox never could have seen these events, period.

Cox, losing it: "He's lying! He was always lying, he hated me because I accused him of stealing my satellite phone!"

His Lordship finally throws Timothy a bone, regretfully agreeing that Cox has A) lost her marbles on the stand and also B) she was not actually a witness to anything in particular. (Meanwhile, half a world away, Tenji Gelu is still making prank calls to the Kardashians. Irony.)

THE APARTMENT

Zach comes upon Alicia in the kitchen, attempting to cook while reading lawyer stuff, and helps her out with the cleaning. She assumes he has a deathly illness for helping, but no: He just knew she was trying to work. She hugs him -- "You are so adorable, you know it's gonna happen, just let it happen" -- and goes back to her stuff.

Alicia, without looking: "How's Dad?"
Zach: "He's good."
Alicia: "Are you good with him?"
Zach: "Am I? Yeah. I mean, you know."
Alicia, worried: "What?"
Zach: "Do you think I'm ... like him?"
Alicia: "Do I think you are? No. You're different. Very different. Why?"
Zach: "I just wanted to know."

As weird and sad as it is, Alicia's discretion is really a treat here. She knows what he's asking and she knows that he is okay with his dad, but she also knows what Zach's wrestling with, and how to help without actually touching it or digging any deeper than it takes to say the exact minimum to be both honest and kind. Good thing she's ramping up her subtlety, too, because guess who is at the door and not in the mood to be subtle at all?

Diane: "Hey Alicia, sorry I'm at your house I've never been to, but they told me Peter was home and I was like, Well, I guess I'll go over there to his home. Where he lives. Your home. Do you know Peter Florrick? State's Attorney? Humiliating us?"
Alicia: "He's not here at the moment, but goodbye okay?"
Diane: "You know that normally I would never even think of forcing entry into your home, but... Here I come."

By Jacob Clifton

The more southern Mickey gets, the hotter he is. Just putting it out there. Green socks or no.

CARDIFF/LAMBROS

That's how you rattle her: By suggesting she didn't really earn it, in the end.

Timothy produces a sworn affidavit from Tenji Gelu -- the Sherpa in question -- who swears Ms. Cox never could have seen these events, period.

Cox, losing it: "He's lying! He was always lying, he hated me because I accused him of stealing my satellite phone!"

THE APARTMENT

That's how you rattle her: By suggesting she didn't really earn it, in the end. By suggesting she's been carried.

Alicia: "I would ... Advise you not to."
Diane, sadly: "Okay. You really have a very lovely apartment, Alicia."

There's this in-bred deference Alicia has, to greater rank. She's trying very hard to change.

MICKEY GUNN

Mickey shows up, charming and cruel; Eli and Kalinda pass on the pitch altogether.

Mickey: "What the hell is that? Don't you think you could've told me that over the phone?"
Eli, grinning: "I could've. But that would've taken up less of your time."

For the second time in two episodes, Eli reiterates that he doesn't like being used: "You're considering joining a Republican presidential campaign, but the guy's too clean. You can't find a single thing wrong with him. He's too good to be true. And you didn't have the money to vet him, so you hinted that you wanted to hire me so I would vet him for you."

Mickey blusters until they show him a photo we don't see, then admits it -- "Poor Man's Crawfishin'! You let the tourist set the bacon trap and then you go in and raid 'em" -- but Eli calls him a fake bougie and then Eli and Kalinda put him back into the original trap from the beginning of the episode: Mickey works his ass off, gets hired by the guy -- which hasn't happened yet, which he also lies about -- and then hires Eli. That's the only way he gets the info, because apparently they found something after all.

I want to call Kalinda and Eli Batman and Robin, except it's more like Batwoman and the Riddler. Whatever it is, they are fabulous. And Eli agrees. I'm just happy we'll see Mickey Gunn again.

CARDIFF/LAMBROS

Turns out that Mr. Cardiff has looted dudes! He stole ropes and pitons from a dying Japanese climber in Pakistan, as detailed in the book Only In May. Which was suppressed by Cardiff in a suit much like this one. So he's like this mountaineering serial killer or something. Anyway, part of the suit was a superinjunction that we can't talk about the book or even the events in the book.

Izzard: "Even the request by my learned colleague here must be stricken from the record. It is as if the book and its events and even events questioning the events never happened."
Timothy: "Unless, of course, it's discussed in the English press, Your Lordship..."
Izzard: "Yes, and we would ask for a superinjunction to prevent the mention of the superinjunction."

By Jacob Clifton

It's humiliating on its own terms: After all this shit, getting free of him, making deals with the universe and Will, buying him that apartment, Peter's still in control. Actually coming after her, through her job, through her rep, through her entire life. Not to mention the fact that marriage has always been the thing that she needed to prove herself about, even among women: As much as a woman can't be lazy, a wife and mother must be less lazy still. Diane never said the second part, but it was always there. A better version of you.

Alicia: "I don't know how to answer that."
Diane: "Well, let me ask you this. If you were assisting me in this decision, how would you advise? Agree to the audit? Or not?"

Say yes, it means nothing. Say yes, it's old debt coming around again. Say yes and your marriage is fine, your family is fine, your job is secure. Say no, protect the firm, and you admit that you're falling apart and that the deal is no good, and that you knew that and couldn't say it. That Alicia's more of a liability at L/G than Cary is at the SA. That Peter won't stop digging until he finds something, and you can't trust Alicia either. That it's personal; that the Good Wife has a Bad Husband. That's she's dead weight, carried up the mountain, dragging them down into the cold.

That's how you rattle her: By suggesting she didn't really earn it, in the end. By suggesting she's been carried.

Alicia: "I would ... Advise you not to."
Diane, sadly: "Okay. You really have a very lovely apartment, Alicia."

There's this in-bred deference Alicia has, to greater rank. She's trying very hard to change.

MICKEY GUNN

Mickey shows up, charming and cruel; Eli and Kalinda pass on the pitch altogether.

Mickey: "What the hell is that? Don't you think you could've told me that over the phone?"
Eli, grinning: "I could've. But that would've taken up less of your time."

Which is a legal triumph, but not really a moral one, because the fact remains that the Death Zone is called that for a reason. It's the Cold Equations, have you read that? Some things can't be argued with. Sometimes logic is the best pointer to the most good. You put on your own mask first. You get out alive. Someone lives. Death is defeated.

Because that's the deal you made. These weren't innocent victims, they were willing players. They were climbing, just like everybody else: A choice. When you're walking toward something called the Death Zone, you do it with your eyes open. Compassion isn't something you take, certainly not something you beg for, but in the Death Zone it's not something you can afford to give. Carry someone else, death multiplies. No winners.

NAMED PARTNERS

Will: "So, you decided against an audit. Smart."
Diane: "Have Alicia and her husband separated?"
Will: "...Is it any of our business?"
Diane: "If there is blowback on our firm, then yes. It is our business."

Literally. It's their business, and their lives. His, and hers. No Zach, no Grace, no Tammy, no Kurt McVeigh. Just a gun, and a dog named Justice. Is there blowback? Have they separated? Is Peter still carrying Alicia, or is it Lockhart, Gardner? Is she dead weight? Diane's high enough that she can't trust her perceptions anymore, but what her perceptions are telling her isn't matching up with what they're all saying.

Will: "Ask her."
Diane: "We can't be the enemy of the State's Attorney. He wants to audit us."
Will: "Because he wants to run a clean office! Stop being wise and intuitive about this or you'll take me down with her because of our affair!"
Diane: "Well, something is going on. If she's not working for us, in every sense of the term, you take her out. We're letting her go."
Will: "Fine."

Cold motherfucker. Way up high.

week: Will's (and House's) ex shows up, while Eli fights with Diane. Good, great! Because what we needed is more tension up in here.

JACOB CLIFTON is a freelance writer and critic based in Austin, Texas. He currently recaps Gossip Girl, The Good Wife, Pretty Little Liars and True Blood for TWoP. Jacob can be found online at jacobclifton.com, on Twitter, and on Facebook. IRL work appears in BenBella's SmartPop series of anthologies, most recently A Friday Night Lights Companion and Fringe Science.

By Jacob Clifton

Anyway. Alicia gets a sudden idea about getting the book discussed in England and runs to Eli's office, where soon enough his "geek squad" of "internet trolls" have tweeted like a hundred thousand times about the killer book that we're superinjuncted not to talk about. But then that's made it into the press, and before you know it the superinjunction has been superdefuncted.

Even crazier, Timothy doesn't even need the actual book because the questions about his behavior in Pakistan are now themselves a matter of discussion in the English press.

Cardiff: "I did nothing wrong."
Timothy: "You didn't take the rope and climbing gear from the Japanese team on Trango Tower?"
Cardiff: "I did nothing wrong."

Then he just comes out with it: Yeah, he stole from the dying Japanese guys, but just because they were dying. In fact, even Danny (the brother) climbed past a Korean on K2 in the same situation: "I left him. Every climber left him. And why? Because we would have died carrying him down. It is the law of the Death Zone. We all know we can't be carried out."

Cardiff maintains that the book is basically a lie, and Timothy casually asks whether he's going on any other expeditions soon. Izzard jumps at it, but too late: He's going to Patagonia in a month. Which provides qualified privilege as an exception to the British libel laws, which is that the book is a warning: Cardiff will climb past your ass on the way up that mountain too. Which is a loophole that means it's no longer held to the same burden of proof as a regular libel suit, so it's over. Dismissed in letter rogatory.

By Jacob Clifton

NAMED PARTNERS

Cold motherfucker. Way up high.

week: Will's (and House's) ex shows up, while Eli fights with Diane. Good, great! Because what we needed is more tension up in here.