Goodbye Kalinda Sharma

S03E22

A surprise windfall in a pharmaceutical class-action draws the attention of Patti Nyholm, who teams up with Louis Canning to accuse Lockhart/Lyman of nuisance suits and legal misconduct. But their real aim keeps shifting: First it seems like they're just gathering intel for an appeal on the original case, and then they start asking weird questions about the judge involved, and then it starts being about Basketball Wednesdays, and before you know it they've subpoenaed everybody on the entire show, from Alicia to Peter himself, to somehow link Will to this judge, or Peter to the judge, or Peter to Will, or Alicia to this judge...

Just when it stops making sense altogether, by design, they get the call they were waiting for: Patrick Edelstein, the Zuckerberg stand-in, has just left the firm and taken 20% of their business with him. Functionally destroying Lockhart/Gardner at the roots, maybe permanently, which is exactly what their corporate masters wanted all along: To shut the firm up, by bankrupting them, for being too good at their jobs. It's a funny way to bring all the Wendy/Peter/Will stuff to a close, but also -- bringing in as it does a fairly large number of guest stars, either in person or by name or association -- putting a new spin on the whole deal, and bringing the firm to its knees like minutes before Will was about to come off suspension.

And he's not the only one who could use a financially healthy L/G right now. After Alicia calls a random person about a check in Kalinda's file -- Leela's husband, aka the man Kalinda was willing to kill Blake and/or fuck Peter to hide from -- things get very sticky for her, too. She spends most of the episode in her amazing apartment, digging out wads of secret cash and secret guns to go on the run, and is disappointed to learn that Will can't slip her the last bit of advance money that could get her out of town forever.

Through the machinations of the Canning/Nyholm case, Alicia's treated to the hellride freakout situation of being in close quarters with Will, Peter, Eli and Cary, but a visit to Jackie's hospital room and a quick peek at the actual problems Jackie's having calms her down immensely. She lays off the old bag, lets Peter move into the Highland Park house with the kids, and even -- in the last shot of the season -- agrees to stay for dinner.

By surprising parallel, we learn, Kalinda's also changed her mind about running from marriages past, and ends things sitting a chair, facing the door, gun in hand, waiting for a knock... Which finally comes. Oh, girl.

A brave way to end the season, with cliffhangers that rival the last two seasons' in some ways, but still, overall a bittersweet story. It moved fast, and the stakes were awfully high, but the mounting dread -- something the show does well -- made the collapse of Lockhart/Gardner seem almost anticlimactic, given that Diane and Will are constantly worried about money for one reason or another vs. Kalinda waving guns around without any friends. It's a complete, bookended run -- there's even an elevator scene for Will and Alicia, with the doors opening and closing on them -- and the last batch of episodes has been a pretty wild ride, but I'm definitely looking forward more to what season has to offer. Which means it did the job, right? Still the best show on TV, for my money.

PREVIOUSLY

On the worst day for him to pull this, Mike Kresteva openly went after Alicia, as Peter's weakest link, during the upcoming gubernatorial race. Between this and Jackie's bullshit, Alicia decided to say fuck it, and go into the race with her Good Wife hat on. And while provisionally forgiving people, she managed to get Cary back on staff at Lockhart/Lyman -- and even pulled up a chair for good old Kalinda.

3RD YRS

Alicia fusses with her beer, while Kalinda just grins to herself and waits to see what happens .

Kalinda: "I'm not just randomly here. Cary asked me to come..."
Alicia: "No problem no problem at all hey, the IRA agreed to chill out about your case if you just..."
Kalinda: "You mean the IRS. Listen, I'm not gay."
Alicia, signaling for a tequila shot: "...Um, okay?"
Kalinda: "You asked."
Alicia: "Yeah, like two years ago."
Kalinda: "Well, I wanted to answer. I'm flexible.*"
Alicia: "I kind of figured that out when you fu... Um. Hey, so does that mean you and FBI Agent Lana Delaney..."
Kalinda: "Kinda yes, kinda no, but it does play a part in the mystery there."

*("What that means, if you've never seen a TV show before, is that by episode's end I'm probably going to sleep with a dude.")

Alicia gets a text about an ongoing case, which is coming in tomorrow probably; Kalinda says it's good they're finishing up, but Alicia has a weird feeling. I wonder if her weird feeling will turn out to be correct?

HON TRENT WYNTER, PRESIDING

Not to be confused, I guess, with Judge Winter? For a show where this stuff matters, it should matter all the time and not just sometimes. It's been hard enough just trying to keep them straight.

Judge: "Diane, nice to see you. I hope Will's doing okay."
Diane: "He's like a kid with five days left 'til Christmas!"

Louis Canning -- which could account for the weird feeling right there -- privately crosses out his settlement offer of $1.3M and ups it to $4M, given this easygoing rapport, but then randomly the Judge enters his decision for the plaintiff -- who alleges sterility after using this acne medication Canning's defending -- and whom the Judge finds so sympathetic ("heinous" is the word he uses for Canning's client) that he ups L/L's ask of $18M all the way up to $25M. Canning whines, the Judge assures the plaintiff that regardless of Canning's appeal he did justice today, and the courtroom erupts.

By Jacob Clifton

Diane can't wait to tell Will! It solves their financial problems! Or at least it would pay off their offices' balloon payment, if Canning weren't already planning to delay this one forever. As though she's never met the man, Diane assures Will that Canning will settle eventually after a huge judgment like this...

STATE'S ATTY

Peter pulls Alicia aside to tell her some dicey stuff: Basically, Jackie put 10% cash down on the Highland Park house, so he'd prefer to finish up the purchase and then flip it in a little while.

Alicia: "And you're moving in, right?"
Peter: "Yeah, but only to spruce up the place."
Alicia: "Uh huh. And why are you telling me this?"
Peter: "I want everything on the table and I don't want you to second-guess or freak out or anything. We're doing so great right now, with everything, and I don't want you to think I'm trying to..."
Alicia, verbatim: "Colonize our past?"
Peter: "Fair, I guess. So, Cary's back with you? He's a good guy. Wish him luck."

LOCKHART/LYMAN

Will: "So you'll be working at this lunch table in the middle of a crowded corridor. Just until we figure out something permanent, or I've driven you insane."
Cary: "Perfect. Yes. This is the crow, this is where I will eat it."

Alicia pulls Kalinda's files, and out drops a Canadian check -- what they call a cheque, or sometimes a bank draught, as I remember from the old days of this very site -- for $21,000 from October of 2007. Her eyes bug out a little at the amount, but she doesn't know yet to be scared about Toronto. We do, because of Blake, because of Leela, because of her husband, but of course Alicia couldn't know about that part of Kalinda's life.

She calls the contact number and the guy is crazy sketchy, but not so sketchy that she doesn't... Immediately tell the guy pretty much everything except Kalinda's name. He is scary as hell, demands to know the person's name or at least the cheque number, and the scarier he gets, the faster she works on getting off the phone: Finally she says she'll find the cheque and call him back.

Cary: "Nice office!"
Alicia: "No, it's just because of Eli Gold. After he leaves, I'm out on the floor with everybody else. Where are you?"
Cary: "Out on the floor with everybody else?"
Alicia: "Heh. Then I'll have company."
Diane: "Canning's here Canning's here get up Canning is here."

By Jacob Clifton

LOCKHART

Diane: "Mr. Canning, what's up?"
Louis: "No big deal, just texting my lawyer. Lawyers having lawyers. We should all get progressively smaller, like matrushka dolls..."
Diane: "Are we negotiating or like, what's going on here?"
Canning: "You have five minutes to take my one-time settlement offer of zero dollars."
Diane: "Or what, you have a bomb?"

KIND OF, YEAH

Out in the lobby, who's he talking to? Oh, just fucking Patti Nyholm, taking her sweet time changing a baby on the couch while her hot husband or nanny deals with her other billion babies.

Will: "Oh, Christ. Why are you here."
Patti: "You don't have a changing table in your bathroom! I could sue."
Will: "I'm sure. Why the eff are you here?"
Patti: (Thirty kinds of mean bullshit about his suspension.)
Will: "And again, why?"
Patti: "The lawsuit! I wish you were a lawyer, you could fight me on this one."

BAD DREAM TEAM

Louis: "You all know my lawyer, Patti Nyholm?"
Patti: "Hey, everybody! How are negotiations going?"
Louis, checking his watch: "It's time to decide... Now."

Lots of fast talk, so I'll give you the basics. Canning's still with the drug company, Patti's of course with their insurers, and they've joined to bring suit against Lockhart, et. al., for what they say is a whole mess of wrongdoing: Bringing suits without merit, shaking down their clients, and the worst one of all... Judicial bribery. You can actually hear goosebumps break out all over Will when she says that one.

Patti: "You asked for a bench trial, and got $25M on a trial we say is without cause."
Will: "And you are a crazy person. And I was cleared by a grand jury."
Patti: "No, you were the one ham sandwich that didn't get indicted by a grand jury. But I know you dicked the system, and I'm here to screw you over five days before Christmas."
Louis: "As am I!"

They even bump fists. It's somehow as terrifying as they think it is.

HOSPITAL

Jackie's still in the bed, watching an old Ava Gardner movie, when Eli comes to visit.

Jackie: "Shouldn't you be in synagogue?"
Eli: "Uh, no? Anyway, Peter's not here, so listen the fuck up. Your son is not going to become governor without Alicia, and then you screwed her on this house thing, which endangers your son, my job, and so help me God your chicken neck. Apologize to her, because I'm not doing this without her."

By Jacob Clifton

Jackie stares at the TV just long enough for you to think something has actually happened to the works in there, and then tears up.

Jackie: "I dreamt I died. Nobody even cared, they just kept going about things."
Eli: "Do you want a nurse, or..."
Jackie: "Don't Jews believe in God?"
Eli: "Monolithically, yes. All exactly the same way."
Jackie: "I don't want to die."
Eli: "Oh, man! I'm getting you a nurse."
Jackie: "I don't wanna die. I don't wanna die. I don't wanna die..."

Whoa! What is she doing? What is going on here? What if she comes and goes now and only sometimes is evil and the other half the time she's just ordinary and annoying? That would be a sad day for a proud woman. I hope she's just fucking with him; either way he flees.

LOCKHART/LYMAN

Will: "Not to discuss legal matters, but it seems pretty clear that Patti's just doing this whole case for discovery so they can have information for an appeal down the road. She's deposing people that were on the case the whole time -- me, Kalinda -- which means she's just fishing for ammo."
Eli: "So you guys have to stonewall her. Anything they ask, ask for more clarification, what the question means, that kind of bullshit."
Will: "Spoken like a lawyer!"
Lyman: "I just don't trust a man with a limp."
Everybody: "Thanks, crazy. We all set?"

One of Patti's kids rams into the door at full speed; it's adorable.

Will: "Thing is, it's a Pharma case. Every litigator touched it. So as far as people that can work with Kalinda on this..."

It's Cary, of course. He's the only one who's been gone. Heh. So now they've got this random case teaming up all kinds of people, and the Kalinda and Cary show is very interesting, but mostly I just wanted the finale to be, Kalinda And Alicia Go On A Long Walk Somewhere Pretty, Like By A Lake Or Something.

SHARMA/GARDNER DEPOSITIONS

Canning: "Have you ever misrepresented your occupation to mislead a witness?"
Kalinda: "Could you be more specific?"
Canning: "Sure. Have you ever misrepresented your occupation to mislead a witness, like that time you lied to my wife and told her you were a reporter doing a story on me, and then I found you in my home? And you stole shit from my office?"
Cary: "What's the relation here to the overall point you're making?"
Canning: "If she's never broken the law while investigating a case, there is none."
Kalinda, off Cary's nod: "...Could you repeat the question?"

By Jacob Clifton

Patti: "Sure. Were you Kalinda Sharma's direct supervisor on this acne case?"
Will: "We don't have those."
Patti: "Did you tell her to investigate, on this case?"
Will: "Investigate how?"
Patti: "Ugh. You want me to pull a judge out of court just to waste more time? You're the one that needs to pay off your office space balloon payment."
Lockhart & Gardner: "Uhhhh. Hmm."

SHARMA TAX CASE

The scary guy from F&E Construction calls again, menacingly asking why she never got back to him with the cheque number. She says she needs to get her ducks in the row, and he starts talking like Ghostface about how she won't call him back, has no intention of calling him back, and she gets all St. Alicia for a second -- "I said I would, motherfucker, and that means I will" -- before she pulls herself together and realizes this is a bad, bad situation and arguing for her own moral fiber is not the move here, because there is no move, because whatever nastiness is coming she can't get sucked in. She hangs up on the guy, which I guess is as close as you can get to running screaming out of the room when you're just on the phone with the Face of Pure Toronto Evil.

GARDNER DEPOSITION

Over Diane's objections, Patti presses Will about whether Wynter was one of the judges that Will introduced to bookies at the basketball nights. There's kind of a conversationally interesting point of law here where Diane tells her to stop it, because the grand jury transcript was sealed, and therefore Patti's asking from a position of asking about things she shouldn't know to ask about, but Patti's answer is that the questions and answers themselves only depend on Will's knowledge, of the grand jury and of what happened on the basketball court.

Mostly I don't know how to feel about any of this, because I feel like a certain one-time State's Attorney hopeful is like Beetlejuice and if you say anything like "Wednesday Night Basketball Games" or "Grand Jury Investigation" too many times, she's going to show up. Float down from the ceiling, as time runs backwards and pennies roll up the wall and the plumbing goes haywire. And I mean, shit is already scary enough considering you've got Patti, Louis, and whatever psychopath murderer Alicia's just sent an embossed invitation to come visit Chicago and kill everybody.

By Jacob Clifton

CHAMBERS

With Will standing right there -- hair looking great, I might add, if a little anachronistic -- Diane tries to explain that Patti and Louis are going down a road they shouldn't be going down. In the pursuit of various files and folders, Judge Wynter reveals himself to be in a wheelchair, which sends Canning on a personal mission to explain in detail his movements as relating to a condition he has called tardive dyskinesia, which sends the eyes of Diane and Alicia heavenward...

But also Judge Wynter's, who thanks him for the pointless information and stares at him until he makes himself look deeply stupid, which is like Christmas for everybody. In the end, the judge tells them they need to prove that somebody's actually leaking this grand jury stuff to Nyholm and Canning, with the unspoken warning hanging in the air for anybody with the capability of shame -- so, not Patti or Louis -- to notice it.

For myself, I have questions about Judge Wynter's style of basketball play. Not because I don't think anybody can do anything, or that Will would set up illegal bets to entrap judges and not abide by the Americans with Disabilities Act, but just because: This is not what I should be thinking about right now. It's weird to set up this particular thing and then have the judge say he's never sat on the bench for a Lockhart/Gardner case and be in a wheelchair and also be part of the Basketball Thing. Or but also, if he's ruling on whether or not they can ask about the grand jury thing at all, whether or not it's sealed, shouldn't he not be involved in this? It's confusing.

OUTSIDE

Will: "Kalinda can be on this leak so fast it'll blow their hair back..."
Diane: "No, because and then what. This basketball thing is killing us. This guy gave us $7M above our ask, and now he's getting implicated, that balloon payment's coming up, everybody's watching us. Patrick 'Zuckerberg' Edelstein's talking about pulling 20% of our business away with him..."
Alicia: "Whoa, I just realized I shouldn't be hearing any of this."
Will & Diane: "It's fine. You know how we're always in financial trouble? Well, guess what's going on now. Just keep it to yourself, okay?"

By Jacob Clifton

In the end, they decide to drop that acne class they just won, basically in the hopes that Patti Nyholm will go away and stop being so scary.

NEGOTIATION

Short answer: No. Long answer? So much worse.

Patti: "Oooh, a fruit plate! Hey, wave to my kids!"
Will: "We drop the acne class, you go away. That's a huge win for you."
Dream Team: "Nope!"
Diane: "You have no case. Without calling on sealed grand jury transcripts..."
Patti: "Not about that."
Louis: "See, we're not really hear about that either. You wanna tell them?"
Patti: "Go for it!"
Everybody: "Oh, boy."
Dream Team: "We're not here to win a case, we're here to destroy you. You pissed off the wrong corporations, and now they want you bankrupted. We are literally here to put you out of business. Okay? Later!"

Patti runs out into the hallway to fuss cutely with her kids, Louis climbs back into the nearest drain and thence back home in liquid sewage form, and Diane, Will and Alicia stare into space. Until the light over their heads suddenly goes out, and then they all just kind of melt into the exhaustion of horror.

PLAYGROUND

No idea what's headed for her, Kalinda follows Patti and the kids to a park, where she meets up with a third antagonist: The similarly baby-toting Andrew Wiley. Wow, it's almost like this is a season finale.

Kalinda crouches with a little girl, drawing in chalk on the sidewalk, as though it's possible to camouflage Kalinda with any amount of business, but it doesn't matter: She's seen them talking, and it's cool that they know it. They wheel their strollers toward her as a team -- the accidental architect of the Leela witch hunt and the latest soldier in the Will one -- with hateful little faces on their faces.

Once again, Patti says she's not getting anything but Andrew's own testimony in the Will investigation -- and that it's a play date -- but at least Kalinda's found the link. I so wanted Andrew to end up a Whiter Hat than he ever was, but if we're going nuclear on some people, I guess he deserves it, at the least, for his part in the original Leela mess that made this season so painful.

STRAIGHT TO CARY

Cary: "Uh, hi?"
Diane, Will & Kalinda: "Andrew Wiley's the leak."
Cary: "No, he's not. He plays by the rules. Or are they saying it's just his personal testimony?"
Will: "Yep."
Cary: "And so but I also cannot say anything about that grand jury, for the same reason."
Diane: "Well, I have an idea."

Jackie: "Alicia. It means so much to me that you came."
Alicia: "I'm not here to visit, you old bag of crone! I'm here to tell you to lawyer up. You stole money from my children to steal my old house out from under me."
Jackie, weeping: "Alicia, I'm so sorry! Our family has just been through so much..."
Alicia: "And here come the waterworks."
Jackie, still on it: "No, I just thought I knew best, and I really was just trying to..."
Alicia: "Cut the shit, Jackie. What are you after?"
Jackie, nope: "Alicia, all I want is for you to accept my apology! I just know that it would be good for the children. And for Peter..."

Ohhhh, get this shit right here.

Alicia: "There it is. You want Peter to win the election, and this is how you're going to do it. Eli was here. I bet you a billion dollars Eli came here and instructed you to say this."
Jackie: "I dunno, I can't... I feel so stroky right now I can't answer your question..."

That same scene she was watching earlier, in the same old movie. Hmm. Something's going on. I have a weird feeling. Her eyes aren't entirely tracking.

Jackie: "He can't do it, without you."
Alicia: "Fine. Jackie, here's what I want. Put the house in the kids' names and it's no harm, no foul."

There it is: The TV's off. Alicia said Eli, and Jackie remembered Eli, right down to the movie on the TV. She's slipping around; she's in two places right now. Alicia's still talking, and she gets so scared she can't even remember what they're talking about. When she looks up at her daughter, now, the fear is real. And Alicia can't see the difference, because Jackie's a liar. She's two women, right in front of you, the mother and the monster, and you never know which one you're looking at.

CHAMBERS

Whoa, Judge Wynter is Cousin Larry Appleton. That is crazy. Anyway, Canning tries again to bond about being disabled, and again is brutally rebuffed, and they've got Wiley in there now and Cary too, although Alicia's not here for this meeting so it's not that much more crowded.

Cary: "Your Honor, there was a question about the time that Will slipped that one judge two grand for Unicef, which Diane and Will know was a trick anyway, but Wiley doesn't, because he was the witness to the exchange..."
Patti: "Which makes it about him..."

Cary: "Yeah, but you said it was about his grand jury testimony. Not things he saw or heard about outside of that. You asked Will a question you couldn't ask when you asked about that. Right, Andrew?"
Wiley: "Oh my God, that's right! I never spoke about..."
Patti: "Andrew, stop! Stop right now!"
Wiley: "Nope, I broke the rules. Sorry, guys! My bad."
Diane: "So anything about Will bribing judges should be excluded, then..."
Louis: "And I'm adding Alicia Florrick to our witness list."

LOCKHART/LYMAN

Kalinda: "I have to witness-prep you. They're trying to get to the bribery thing another way..."
Alicia, stony: "F&E Construction."

Tears in Kalinda's eyes before she's even processed what Alicia said.

Kalinda: "What? Why? What?"
Alicia: "There was a cheque for twenty-one grand in your file..."
Kalinda: "That should not be in my file, it should be with my personal stuff. Can I have it back? Like immediately?"

Back in the office, she hands it over, and you can see Kalinda so eager to get it and hide it away, like that was a close one, and just as she's folding it seven or eight times, however many times you can fold a piece of paper until it's as small as it can get, Alicia admits she called the number, and you can see everything crash down again.

Kalinda: "When."
Alicia: "Tuesday."
Kalinda: "Did you speak to anyone?"
Alicia: "Oh yeah. He asked for the cheque number..."
Kalinda: "Did you give it to him?"
Alicia: "No, girl. I did not."
Kalinda: "Well, it's been nice knowing you either way."

Alicia: "He called me back, Kalinda. What's going on?"
Kalinda, fake smile: "Old thing. Just an old thing."
Alicia: "An 'old thing'? He was really scary. Is this about Bishop?"
Kalinda: "No, just an old thing. I'm gonna go take care of it right now."
Alicia: "Kalinda?"

She looks up, and away, and then back. Waiting for Alicia to ask. But she never asks, so Kalinda fake-smiles her way out of the room...

And the music gets very intense once she's out of there. In the elevator, she pulls her glasses out of her jacket like a gun. Straight to a hardware store, where she buys the biggest sledgehammer she can find.

Into a wildly green-walled apartment building, all nature and trees, past all-white rooms -- Is this an empty apartment? Safe house? No, she just lives this way, for this reason. It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen! -- and busts a hole in the wall behind a mirror. Dufflebag, handgun, wads of cash, journals, passports, the whole thing. And when she's all packed up, she sits down for a moment and says goodbye.

By Jacob Clifton

Goodbye, wonderful apartment. Goodbye, girlfriends I hurt and boyfriends I hurt more. Goodbye, best friend I ever had. Goodbye, life I fucked up again.

Goodbye, Kalinda Sharma.

FLORRICK HOUSE

Alicia's snuggled down on the couch with Grace and Zach -- whom it's nice to see! -- watching that tornado movie with Helen Hunt and Bill Pullman when she gets the call. They're talking about the house and the apartment and upkeep on condos and whether she'll buy the condo -- maybe, she does like it -- or the house -- no way -- and how her raise at L/? isn't the end of things because if they downsize she doesn't want to be the most expensive third-year, and she never even thought about that until today, and this and that.

Grace: "We should all live in the house, together. Not like you're married..."
Alicia: "Uh..."
Grace: "But like a commune."
Alicia: "Heh. You are likeable on occasion."
Grace: "And Zach?"
Alicia: "No, he's getting too big."

She's tickling her son when the phone rings.

Alicia: "Hellooo?"
F&E: "Alicia Florrick."

She hangs up immediately; takes a breath before she calls back to the kids that it's not work, don't worry about it; gets Kalinda's voicemail immediately. The wind's picking up.

FLORRICK DEPOSITION

Kalinda's not at work the day. A million Nyholm kids in the halls, but no Kalinda. She's just gone.

Patti: "Did you interact with Judge Wynter at all during the acne case?"
Alicia: "Nope!"
Patti: "But somebody you know has a relationship with him, right? Your husband. Who met with him three times that week before the $25M verdict. And you don't know this?"
Alicia: "No idea about this."
Diane: "What does this have to do with anything? What, are you going to subpoena the State's Attorney?"
Louis: "We already did."

Will: "Yeah, I guess convicts call it 'short time.'"
Peter: "Oh, man. I was all set to be the asshole this time."
Will: "Yeah, now I feel like a douche."

The doors open on Alicia, of course, standing there with a hilarious look on her face as they stare out at her with equally hilarious faces.

Alicia: "Oh, shit!"
Will: "Yeah, look who I found!"
Alicia: "I was going to meet you..."
Peter: "Which one of us?"
Alicia: "Gross. Hey, wanna see my office?"
Will: "What's up, Eli!"

The four of them in this marriage, each kind of reveling in the awkwardness to their own degree, stand around staring at each other like, "You can call it a commune, I just call it Love! American Style!" Eli can't admit that he knows they're split up, Will very much cannot go there, so even though all of them are aware, Alicia still has to be like, "You know my husband, Peter? Well, I was just going to take him over to my office. Where I practice the law. And whatever." I sure hope a fifth person doesn't...

Oh, it's Cary Agos! Oh no! So then he awkwardly shifts file boxes around to shake Peter's hands, having just effectively cheated on him with -- and then left him for -- Alicia's firm, no hard feelings, and Eli... I get the sense Eli's still not clear on who he is, and you got Will who just gets so grumpy whenever Cary's lovely face is on the same floor as him, and Peter's still somehow got that statesman gravitas thing happening in the middle of this shitstorm. Which I admire as much as it pisses me off. A baby goes sailing through the trainwreck, Will cracks a joke, nobody laughs... And Kalinda appears. Thank God.

FLORRICK & FLORRICK

Peter loves her office, but has to get deposed. She swears it's a nuisance suit and he laughs, but when he asks her to dinner at the house, she gets him to stop pretty easily. He ignores her warnings about Jackie's possible real problems, and he congratulates her a few more times on finally "making it," which... Yeah, thanks for cheating on me with a hooker so I could eventually make you proud at this law firm, fucko. And once he's gone there's just Eli, giving her the thumbs up.

For all the sinister shit -- and there's a lot, I have no idea how much episode is left but I'm scared to death of whatever's about to happen -- this is a very funny, very loving episode. You have the whole Rogue's Gallery thing happening with Wiley even showing up, and babies just everywhere wandering at random, and then you had that whole freak show that just happened, and I don't know. It feels like a little hug from the show that we can finally rest and watch everything unravel.

By Jacob Clifton

SOME COOL BAR

Will: "You need money?"
Kalinda: "Just an advance on the work we're doing right now."
Will: "Why?"
Kalinda: (Silence.)
Will: "Kalinda, what's going on?"
Kalinda: "I have to Go."
Will: "I thought you liked it here."
Kalinda: "Very much so."

She drains her drink as he explains about the balloon payment and how they're short on Receivables and Edelstein's being entitled and she can have what he can get for her. She nearly cries, terrified.

Will: "Is this goodbye?"
Kalinda: "Just for a little bit."

I don't think he knows she's lying. She's two women, always, like the cat in the box: She's lying and she's not lying. She's alive and she's dead.

Will: "...It feels like things are falling apart."
Kalinda: "You build them up again. It's what you do."

Maybe that's true. She'll never know, once she's gone.

FLORRICK DEPOSITION

Patti: "Is meeting with a judge three times a lot, for you? Especially considering you'd only met the guy once before this big case. Four years ago. With twelve other judges, at some lunch."
Peter: "I like the guy."
Patti: "And you never talked about this suit your wife was doing? Because there's judicial bribery stuff happening, which..."
Diane: "Hey!"
Patti: "Not talking about it, just saying it was happening. And Peter was in charge of it."
Peter: "No, She Who Shall Not Be Named was running it."
Patti: "And then you took her off it."
Louis: "And then didn't take up the case again, or bring suit against those three judges..."

You can see the fear and the shame spreading across her face. Somehow, her past is coming after Alicia again. It was supposed to be okay again, they were going to be okay again. She pulled up a chair; she worried about her.

Alicia: "Is this man dangerous?"
Kalinda: "...Yeah."
Alicia: "Who the hell is he?"
Kalinda: "My husband, obviously."

LOCKHART

Diane: "...So drop it. Because the man just told you on the record -- at considerable expense to his own political career -- that they're separated. So what do you have?"
Will: "And we're no longer offering to drop the class action, either. Losers."
Louis: "Okay, we lost. Gotta go!"
Patti: "Oh, except we just won. We were here to distract you from keeping Edelstein. Who just texted us, and is now our client."

They bounce, and just like that Lockhart/Lyman falls apart.

Will: "Oops."
Diane: "And it's too late to call him, even."
Will: "Also by design."
Diane: "So. Tomorrow?"
Will: "Yep. Tomorrow."

ELEVATOR SCENES

Will runs to catch it, jumping in with Alicia. Good timing. Until tomorrow.

Will: "How are you doing?"
Alicia: "I'm... Okay."
Will: "Same. That was weird, before..."
Alicia: "Yeah. It was."

He looks at her, and she looks back. What's to say? The doors keep opening, and closing.

Will: "Do you think it was a mistake?"
Alicia: "No."

The doors open, and close, on Will and Alicia. Of course not, of course it was never a mistake. He wishes her a goodnight, and steps off, leaving her alone.

THE END

There's the life that you make, the life you build yourself after the old one burns away. And you think maybe this is clean, maybe this is clear. Maybe it's not the worst thing in the world, to become somebody new. Maybe it's a bit more to your liking. Maybe you make a friend, somebody you can depend on, somebody you never would have known before, or loved. Maybe you explore the lovers you never could have had. Maybe you find out what you like, or want, or need, or love, for the very first time.

And there's the life that's left behind. And you can say no, all you want. You can say it doesn't count, that it's all burnt up. Maybe you use up your second life, on silly grudges or running so hard and fast you come to meet yourself again, coming back the other way. Maybe history just looks like this.

By Jacob Clifton

Will: "Do you think it was a mistake?"
Alicia: "No."

The doors open, and close, on Will and Alicia. Of course not, of course it was never a mistake. He wishes her a goodnight, and steps off, leaving her alone.

THE END

But when the question is bravery, when the question is courage, when it's about running and not-running, that's when things get tricky. Because sometimes, change is the smart thing and the brave thing. But other times, you're just running to run: Sometimes stopping would be the smart thing and the brave thing. And sometimes the brave thing isn't even the smart thing, and sometimes the smart thing isn't the brave thing.

And you can't just ask yourself what the most true or authentic thing is, which is the best way to answer questions like this usually, because it's all you. It's all one story and you're the one telling it, so that's when it gets sticky. That's when you can surprise yourself.

Kalinda stares at the dufflebag on her bed, the goodbye bag, and eventually dumps it out again. The exhaustion of horror, perhaps. Or the compelling evidence of the fact that Alicia could not have led him here in a more random way if she'd tried, which means he will always come back. Guns or sledgehammers, Blake or Wiley, sleep with Cary or sleep with Peter: None of that means anything, never meant anything, if he can find her here. Which means it never meant anything, because he did.

Upstairs, Grace reports, one of the doorknobs is still broken. Peter offers Alicia a glass of wine and they stand in the doorway. She thanks him for telling the truth, today. The children call them in to dinner. You can't colonize the past, not really; but it can find its own way back into you.

By Jacob Clifton

Kalinda moves a chair to face the door, loading her gun. She shoves it between the cushions, and folds her arms to wait. Somebody's going to die. Somebody already did.

Alicia kisses Grace goodbye; Zach asks her to stay. Just for pizza, not for symbolism. He's getting big. She steps out of the house, leaving her family behind. There's a Welcome mat beneath her feet; it still says Welcome. You can read it, either way, backwards or forwards, upside-down or right-side-up.

Kalinda watches the door, knowing that he'll knock. It'll sound like Leela, like history knocking on the door, but he's going to knock and then things are going to move very fast. Right now she's two women, like the cat in the box, but when he knocks it's just going to be one woman sitting there. Very small, very afraid. So afraid she'd burn the world down if she had to. And tonight, she realized that she does. He's going to knock, and things will move fast.

And then he does.

Alicia watches them set out their pizza, the three of them laughing, and looks down the street at her car, and then back at her family. She can't keep herself from smiling.

She is two women. One of them died.

One of them is still alive.

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.