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Bob Balaban! Carrie Preston! Aaron Tveit! For an episode with no Finn, this episode sure had great guest actors -- not to mention the funniest five seconds of Julianna Margulies's entire career. The main case was super interesting this week...
Wait, hang on. I'm getting ahead of myself. Obviously the most important thing here -- the thing that you'll want to hear about first -- is the thrilling cliffhanger of whether or not Dana left the SA's office for her defense job, and the answer there is: No. She is still at the State's Attorney's office, having been dicked around about the job for crappy reasons. She is still someone we met five seconds ago and don't care at all about, but it's crucial that you know her career remains in the public sector.
Meanwhile, Kalinda was less of a character and more of a Kalinda-shaped blur this week, tossing off her two lines of dialogue from the middle of what seemed to be a sprint. Maybe doing some non-Peter business for Eli that we'll just have to imagine for ourselves instead of getting to see it.
Anyway, the case was interesting: A citizen claiming the US government tortured him as a terrorist suspect ends up bringing the Treasury, the DOJ and the DOD into the mix, and before you know it Alicia's been ordered to spy on her client because the eponymous order supercedes privilege, and at some point she realizes that her association with this guy is ruining her standing with Lockhart and Gardner (the old "if she becomes a liability" thing is getting more and more obvious) so she goes outside the firm.
Alicia hires Peter's beautiful red-headed ADD fairy lawyer from last year to mesmerize the Treasury monitor with her Jedi mind tricks. (In the end, he is stymied by the adorable attempt at dissembling by Alicia mentioned above, a five-second voyage into her secret Maya Rudolph insanity world that I may have rewound and watched a good twenty or more times.) The guy gets off or the US settles or something and Glenn Childs is creepy and there are lots of military guys running around feeling conflicted. But mostly it's about everybody at L/G acting super adorable, and everybody at the SA acting sleazy as shit.
The latest random thing Peter Florrick's obsessing on: Getting rid of all long-term cases that aren't about either drugs or Homeland Security. What this means, of course, is that though he's building a RICO case involving the many sins of Lockhart, Gardner, his real aim is the meth dealings of, you guessed it, Lemond Bishop. He sends Cary and Dana over to intimidate him Will with the facts about that embezzlement, which we know now took place in Baltimore fifteen entire years ago. Peter and Will come very close to blows, and nearly have an actual conversation about Alicia and Will dating, but then don't.
Who does, though, is Diane, who -- thanks to that hyper-annoying "Mom pick up the phone" ringtone with Grace's voice -- figures out the deal and then does the most Diane Lockhart possible thing: Schedule a mandatory sexual harassment seminar, complete with corny cheesy training videos. Diane was awesome in many, many ways this week. That's merely one.
Another one is how easily she's falling under Caitlin's spell, just like everybody else... Although I must say that as a Kalinda, she makes a very good Caitlin. For the second week in a row, that crucial Final Clue has been ridiculously misguided: This week, Caitlin counts the letters in a common adjective redacted throughout a transcript and realizes it's been automatically censored, because it's also a man's name to whom they're referring in the words themselves. Which is clever, a cool idea. Except when we meet the guy, it's his last name, not his first, so the whole thing -- "curt" is both an adjective and a man's given name, therefore we know who to subpoena -- makes no sense. Whatever, we'll get Ms. Sharma back eventually, I'm sure of it.
What else happened? Grace is back into Sexy Young Priest Who Can Vlog To The Young, who's always a treat. Jackie stickers her stupid nose in to mess with that for about one second, and then dumb old Grace earnestly volunteers to act as her father's moral compass, which was as grody as it sounds. I guess the deal there is that it's time for the kids to do their usual switcheroo and Grace will decide that divorce is evil, putting her on Peter's side, while Zach's epic and never-ending exploration of sexual shame continues to keep him on Alicia's? I'm guessing. I feel like the show is always teasing with the idea of Grace just tipping into outright priggishness, just Humpty-Dumpty off that beautiful wall forever, so I'm excited by any kind of puritanism coming from her.
week: Saucy sexpot Chris Matthews throws his weight around in a sensual, low-key fashion; Kalinda "meets her match," whatever the hell that means -- I'm assuming it means a great white shark riding a motorcycle that also flies and is on fire and shoots guns out of its mouth -- and Alicia learns one more time about how defense law often involves guilty defendants. I love it when she learns that very basic lesson over and over, don't you?
Want more? The full recap starts right below!MARWAT CASE
Our client Danny Marwat is an Arab-American, second-generation maybe more, who worked as a translator in Afghanistan back in 2007. For some reason he was arrested and tortured the day after the Marja offensive, which is where we get our first objection from Aaron Tveit's character, an AUSA named Zschau, because of the Classified Information Procedures Act. Which is funny, considering the US says the torture never happened anyway, so the lawyer tells him to answer. It's pretty ugly shit. Suddenly, good old Glenn Childs shows up in the courtroom, looking dour as usual, and it turns out that he's an AUSA now too. Did we know that? I guess he landed okay after Peter won his office back.
Diane: "What happened at Camp Whitcomb after you were arrested?"
Danny: "All kinds of horrible shit. America can get kind of weird on you."
Diane: "What were they looking to find out?"
Danny: "If I ever met Satar Yusuf-Khel, a tribal leader with connections to al-Qaeda. A person I have met, but am lying about, under oath, to make this episode longer."
Diane: "Why are you suing now, in 2011?"
Danny: "My government tortured me. They won't even acknowledge that they did this to me. I don't want this to happen to anyone else. This isn't about the money."
Childs: "Good. Then let's all go home."
Judge: "Still a cocksucker, I see."
Team USA: "Since we're blocking L/G from getting access to our secret court proceedings, and thus they can't even prove he was ever at Camp Whitcomb, we would like you to dismiss this case. Basically, we are in charge of everything. Including how creepy we are."
Alicia's Sense of Justice: "That is not justice."
STATE'S ATTY
If you were wondering what it says on the giant Doomsday Clock here in TWoP offices as to when Dana Lodge's last day at the SA, I will tell you that tomorrow is her last day. If you were wondering who the hell Dana Lodge is or why we care, you are not alone. The show has tried to Inception you into thinking that we are old friends with Dana Lodge, but in fact we've only just met her. Downside, it makes the show feel less trustworthy, especially considering how many SA ladies we've already dealt with this season, and asked to care about, who then disappeared without explanation. On the upside, Dana Lodge is pretty awesome.
Along with the appearing and disappearing personnel, we also have Peter Florrick's continual onslaught of policy and operations obsessions. Like first he was all, "No plea bargains!" and then he was like, "Cary embodies white privilege!" Now it's about reviewing all long-term investigations that started under Childs, and cutting all the ones that aren't about drugs or homeland security.
Dana: "...Except for my one, right?"
Peter: "Who are you and why are you here?"
Dana: "I worked on this one long-term investigation with Matan for two whole years and even though tomorrow is my last day, I don't want you to cut it."
Everybody: "Aw, is today your last day? We didn't know that because you haven't been talking about it in every single scene for the last thirty thousand episodes."
What it is, though, is interesting, because what it is is a RICO investigation into corrupt defense firms. And why that is a big deal is because last year, Blake Calamar (boo!) walked in there and said that Will Gardner borrowed $45,000 from a client's account to cover his gambling addiction. He put it back, like Celeste told us before, but Blake's cover-up didn't quite get the job done. Even more interesting is this:
Cary, wrinkling his cute little nose: "How long ago was this? Will Gardner is an outstanding person and I don't like you going after him."
Dana: "Fifteen years."
Cary: "Fifteen years ago Will lived in Baltimore and worked at a firm with Celeste and had only just begun healing from his and Alicia's first bout of bad timing. Will Gardner may not be a saint, but he is certainly not a demon. Fifteen years may not be twenty, but it is certainly not ten. Baltimore may not be London England, but I do know one thing, and that's that we live in Chicago. Not our jurisdiction."
Dana: "Wow, so I guess you are gay for Will Gardner? Anyway, it points to a pattern of abuse among the attorneys at L/G."
Peter: "On the one hand, even I think that is a real damn stretch. On the other hand I didn't get Abercrombie over here the Deputy position because I don't have a corrupt obsession with Will and his firm. I am going to have to think about this."
L/G / SOME HOTEL / HOME
For this part, the word lunch is replacing the word fuck. As always, the word phone is replacing the word call.
Diane: "Will, I am phoning you to explain how we have to prove that Danny was at that top-secret camp without actually being able to see anything related to that top secret camp."
Will: "That sounds hard, partner of mine."
Diane: "Kalinda has an idea."
Alicia: "Lunching of course she does."
Will: "Be quiet! They think we are having a meal, not in a hotel room getting our lunch on."
Diane: "Will, also this means that we are going to start shit with the AUSAs. Like maybe really piss the government off."
Will: "They are in charge of everything, even how creepy they are. It's scary."
Grace Florrick's obnoxious ringtone ("Hey Mom pick up the phone hey Mom pick up the phone hey Mom pick up the phone...") starts going off, and everybody on both sides of the call freeze like it's a bomb, and Alicia jumps out of the hotel bed they got to lunch in in a cute nightie and goes to talk to her horrible daughter.
Kalinda's Face: "OHHHHHHHH SHHHHIIIIIIIIII"
Diane: "Um. Where are you, Will."
Will: "Oh, I am just at lunch."
Diane: "I think maybe that's code for something else, like maybe you're having sex with the subordinate married attorney you bribed our partners into hiring several years ago."
Will: "I have to go. I don't know what sexual harassment is."
Alicia: "Christ, Grace. What do you want? I'm at lunch and you are the worst."
Grace: "Can I go to Bible study tonight?"
Alicia: "That is exactly the kind of shit I'm talking about. I will discuss this with you when I am wearing pants."
Diane: "Lisa, can you get Alicia on the phone and phone her for me on the phone?"
Lisa: "Diane, she is at lunch. She and Will are lunching up a storm."
Diane: "I put two and two together, Lisa. And now you have confirmed my math."
Grace: "Talk to me, sexy young internet preacher. For you are my only friend besides that awful, awful tutor."
Sway or Whatever: "How many times does Jesus condemn gays in the Bible? Zero! How many times does Jesus condemn divorce? Six times! But listen to any preacher, and who do they say is going to Hell? Gays, not your divorced parents."
Grace: "Are you saying my parents are going to Hell?"
Lisa Ling of Jesus: "No, it's just that gay people didn't exist back then. One of the many problems with getting your sense of personal morality from the obsolete social codes of an alien culture rather than using the mind and conscience God gave you."
MARWAT CASE
How they will prove Danny Marwat was at Camp Whitcomb: The contractor in charge of providing food services to the inmates. Seems Danny's detention was during Ramadan, the only thing that could make it more depressing. Oh, and also he is lactose intolerant. Danny Marwat has the shittiest life of anybody I have ever met. If you are hanging with Danny Marwat you should watch out for falling pianos. Tveit objects to looking at the requisition list for this particular time because of the Classified Information Procedures Act, which is like his favorite Act and he should marry it
Judge: "Again, I think whether or not a 2007 Ramadan meal was lactose free hardly threatens the security of our brave fighters in Afghanistan, but thanks for being adorable."
Food Guy: "Ramadan fasting meal, quantity one. Lactose free."
Judge: "Okay, that's convincing enough that the suit goes."
Childs: "Fine, the Defense Department will turn over all the secret court transcripts requested by L/G like you say, but also we want to request Executive Order ."
Diane: "Your Honor, and the TV audience, allow me to explain that is intended to ferret out fake charities funding terrorist organizations. This is a lawsuit Danny has brought against the US government."
Childs: "And can I also state for the viewers that also has broad application when a terrorist hires a lawyer, and Danny is kind of a terrorist, because we must have suspected him of being a terrorist, or else we would not have kidnapped and tortured him. Which we did not do."
#: "The lawyer must make available for inspection any relevant information, reports or records requested by the Secretary of the Treasury."
Diane: "This is a straight-up egregious violation of attorney-client privilege."
Judge: "I know, but he got you."
Diane: "Fuck that. Alicia, you go talk to this Treasury guy."
Alicia: "I have never done that before!"
Diane: "Alicia, get your hand out of my partner's pants and go do it. We're in a strange new post-9/11 world. None of the rules apply. The innocent and inexperienced thing won't get you out of work this time, because nobody's ever done this before, because nobody is as much of an asshole as Glenn Childs."
TREASURY
So fine, Alicia will be meeting with Bob Balaban, the designated Treasury monitor on this case. He explains that she's just going to be reporting to him about some stuff from time to time, and that there's a wall between him and the Department of Justice so she needn't worry about the egregious violation of privilege, except for how Treasury is like the scariest one of all sometimes. Or at least it used to be. I think all the scary Treasury things went to DHS. Maybe that's why they're grumpy, because they lost all of their scary things.
In case you were wondering, Bob Balaban is still completely beautiful to look at, as he has been since like Midnight Cowboy: Like a painting of a statue of a Weimaraner. In Heaven.
Balaban: "Okay, is Daniel Marwat involved in your trial strategy sessions? Has anybody else been involved, other than your firm lawyers, in these strategy sessions? No one of Middle Eastern descent? No? Then who is Kalinda Sharma?"
Alicia: "She's an investigator with our firm. But she's not... She's an employee."
Balaban: "Right, but she's not a firm lawyer and that was my question."
Alicia: "Oh. I see how it's gonna be."
Balaban: "It gets weirder. Marwat ever receive remuneration of any kind from overseas? Ever make calls overseas? No? But you have seen him make calls, right? How many occasions? Was he speaking English? Was anybody at your firm close enough to say what language he was speaking? Ever mention the Afghan region of Badula Qulp? Could you please make a note if he ever does in the future?"
Alicia: "Bob Balaban, you are amazing to look at. It's like Middle Earth is real and elves are real and magic is real, or as if Tim Gunn were real. When I look at you I hear Steely Dan. But you are not going to make me do your Treasury investigations for you."
Balaban: "Fine. Come back later so I can menace you some more."
Alicia: "I hope everybody on this episode says 'Chinese Wall' a bunch of times. We haven't repeated that word over and over in a while."
L/G
Diane does one of those all-hands meetings where they all cheer and groan in unison, which is always fun on this show when they do that.
Diane: "The good news is, they complied with our subpoenas."
L/G: "Yay!"
Diane: "The bad news is, they depo-dumped us."
L/G: "Groan!"
A dump truck as big as six skyscraper floors backs up to the conference room and millions of tons of secret court proceedings come flooding in. Almost entirely redacted. And yet they have to scour them because sometimes the censors miss something, whatever, this will end up being important later and they'll explain why it's happening in more detail. Their aim: Find a governmental official involved in ordering Danny's arrest and torture. An actual person. (The way they find this is almost as annoying as the first-name-last bit from last week, but whatever.)
What's funny and is interesting is, this episode is about the AUSAs and Treasury feeling their way around L/G's privilege and us getting outraged about that, because the point is that Danny is a tortured American. But if this show were called The Good AUSA and we were focused on state interests, then this would be about a defense law firm feeling their way around clearance levels and checks and balances, and us getting outraged about that.
The point would be that bringing a civil case, trying to get into our documents, is a matter of national security and trampling it, because ten years after 9/11 people think they can just come after the government and make a bunch of money off the turning tide of public opinion. You know? Or indulge old Blackwater grudges about the way government cronies used the atrocity and suffering of the war to make money, little silly things like that.
Which is the most interesting thing, and especially because of this: It's why nothing Will says below makes rational sense, but must be said in order for the episode to make sense. Watch the way he links up random phrases and believes they prove something. It's scary and awful sad.
Will: "Diane, in private can I just say that the US is obviously not gonna cough up $6 million, and we know it, so why are we doing this?"
Diane: "Because it's the right thing to do?"
Will: "No, you think it's the right thing to do. I was in DC on 9/11..."
Diane: "-- Here we go."
Will: "...Our government took steps to prevent another 9/11. I saw the smoke from the Pentagon!"
Diane: "...Danny is innocent?"
Will: "Which is why he's free."
Diane: "After he was tortured."
Will: "Wait, do you think anybody's being tortured now under your friend Obama?"
Which is when you leave the room, because he's not being a lawyer right now, he's having a thing. Having a moment. Very different from the usual Will. You're entitled to take a moment, but when you stage it professionally like this it can have ramifications. The danger is in knowing the difference. Because the proper answer is very simple, and it goes:
"Yes, but reparations after the fact are nothing new. Danny's torture was a mistake, maybe avoidable and maybe not, and I'm not going to argue with you about whether it was necessary. But that doesn't mean we don't bring suit now. It doesn't mean you say Bygones, sorry I didn't have the information you were torturing me for, and it doesn't mean you go off on some wingnut thing about the smoke from the Pentagon and your unrelated pantyliner feelings about it. They did what they had to do, we're doing what we do , and both of those things can happen."
Instead we're getting this from him: "Do you think anybody's being tortured? No. You're trying to fight an old war, Diane. Rumsfeld and Cheney are gone. They're writing books." Like this is purely politics and grudge -- because to him, it is -- and not about a single guy who got burned by the post-9/11 crunch. And you know what, it's Diane, he may well have a point. She could be fighting an old war and still complaining about the abuses of that time, but that isn't exactly a bad thing either. They're writing books now, but we gave their corrupt asses the leash to begin with, which means that somewhere along the way there was an old war we forgot to fight. There was a reminder we didn't write down, and it has to do with the government being in charge of everything, even how creepy they are.
AWKWARDTOWN, IL
Speaking of Lockhart-Gardner stress, who's that knocking on the door? Why it's Bob Lachness, the L/G insurance agent, and he is here to discuss with the partners Diane's request to the amount of their workplace insurance. Defined as suits from employees, quote "Sexual harassment, coworkers or bosses sleeping with underlings, you know, that stuff." Fifteen to Lockhart. You can actually see Will's spirit slowly breaking as the guy says this.
Lachness: "I can keep your cost low if you have everybody here take a sexual harassment class." Thirty love. They both get their game faces on and he's got about fifty things going on, on his face, and it's just really good how this goes down. Because especially given the energy in the room just a second ago, she can't be taking him to task or pulling any kind of rank on him, because they're equals and they love each other, but she can come around the back way and be like, "I'm not being a bitch, this is actually why this is a problem. You think you're special, you're not special."
"Hmmmmm. What do you think, Will?" She fairly sparkles, forty love. It's like watching Cesar Milan kneel on a dog's throat and the dog just goes, You know what, I give. "I think I trust your judgment, Diane. As you trust mine." Match. He sprints the fuck out of there. It's like her eyeballs are pushing him out of the door using only waves of willpower.
And I mean, that was a pretty harshly Diane way of doing that, but so much safer and smarter to have the actual person representing the actual problem in there, once she figured out what's going on. Visual proof of why this affair is a bad idea, talking in terms of dollars and cents, which are the things that scare Will. I guess you could have Eli in there, because of the Peter connection and Alicia's connections, but this is so much less confrontational, which is the part of Diane that I like best: Why get weird and fighty about it, or question your judgment aloud, when I can just have this guy bring in a video about why you shouldn't be sleeping with Alicia Florrick?
DEPO DUMP
There's a whole thing in the direction of the episode where we flip between Caitlin reading the redacted transcripts and then being acted out. It's pretty cool to watch, and funny because whenever you hear a beep you just think, like, "cockface" or "dickmunch" no matter what they're talking about, but I don't know that it would come through in a recap, so we'll skip to the end.
Question: "And did Dr. Assbite bite the ass of the accused?"
Answer: "We intend no disrespect, Your Honor, but you can vigorously munch on the dick of this clan, and sponge-bathe the hairy naked legs of your mother."
Suddenly Caitlin realizes that the medical authority at Camp Cockknocker has a really long name.
Diane: "I mean after all, what are the chances of a bilingual doctor in Afghanistan having a super long name?"
Alicia: "We just look for Army doctors with twelve-letter names, and I guess there won't be that many."
Diane: "That's hard for me to believe, but whatever gets the legal shit over with so we can go back to talking about sex and Bob Balaban and intra-office politics."
Alicia: "Listen, Bob Balaban asked me if Danny had spoken to anyone overseas."
Diane: "I miss attorney-client privilege. This is so weird."
(It's actually pretty funny how much this shit bothers her, like viscerally, like whenever the Treasury thing comes up, she literally grunts and grits her teeth and looks like she's going to throw a desk through a wall. She's so old-school!)
Alicia: "He also said Badula Qulp like a hundred times."
Diane: "How come?"
Alicia: "I don't know, I was dazzled by looking at him."
Diane: "He's trying to make you his eyes and ears!"
Alicia: "There's a Chinese Wall between Justice and Treasury, but obviously this makes me uncomfortable."
Diane: "I was uncomfortable because nobody in this episode had said 'Chinese Wall' yet, the only word we ever say on this show, and then you did. So now I feel better. But in other news, I'm not looking you in the eye and I'm totally freezing you out because guess what, I just remembered I'm mad at you."
Alicia: "Oh dear."
STATE'S ATTY
Peter: "Why don't you want me to RICO Will Gardner?"
Cary: "It's fraught. He's my old boss, your wife is his new..."
CARY.
Cary: "...Employee..."
Good save, you fantastic little shit.
Cary: "I think if Will Gardner were anybody else, we wouldn't go forward, and that's the rule you've used until now."
Peter: "Yeah, but see but that's why how come we have to. Because of that."
Cary: "Um, I don't follow."
Peter: "Yeah, because like you said we have to do it. Because of that."
Cary: "Peter, you're not making sense. There's no drugs here, and no homeland security."
Peter, verbatim: "There is drugs!"
Like magic, he produces Lemond Fucking Bishop out of nowhere, and he's like, we're not doing obvious creepster stuff against my wife and Will Gardner, we're just using him and exposing him and threatening him and having real ramifications on his life because of ... Lemond Bishop. Which was already Childs's stalking horse and also it's like, get a hobby. But then again, Cary got his new office for a reason, so how hard's he going to fight this? Finally he agrees to take point on the L/G investigation, but only for the gross reason of that Peter came up with a way around the ethics of it. Also because it's Dana's last day, I don't know if I mentioned that part but it's either today or tomorrow.
Jackie calls Peter -- because it's been ten minutes -- and once again she has gone to Alicia's house where she is not invited, to pick up the kids on his behalf, and of course she's there early, and of course she is going to town on everything as usual.
Jackie: "Grace wants to go to a Bible study. But it's at a nightclub! Alicia said it was fine, but I don't know. To me, it sounds a bit cockeyed. What kind of Bible study is at a nightclub?"
Even Peter: "Mom. Get off Alicia's dick like just this one time, please."
MARWAT CASE
Dr. Val Phouayvongsa: "My name is Dr. Val Phouayvongsa."
L/G: "How many letters are in your name, Dr. Val Phouayvongsa?"
Dr. Val Phouayvongsa: "All of them. All of the letters."
L/G: "What did you do in 2007?"
Dr. Val Phouayvongsa, verbatim: "I advised officers on advanced interrogation methods. Abdomen strikes. I explained how an open-handed slap was preferable to a punch, which could cause internal damage and thus be considered, uh, torture."
L/G: "Charmed, I'm sure. Were you asked to examine an inmate after an interrogation on November 12?"
Dr. Val Phouayvongsa: "Yeah but he had a hood on. They did keep calling him Danny, though."
Zschau: "This is all very interesting, as far as establishing the fact that Danny was there and being tortured and the rest of the facts of the suit, but I'd like to call a surprise witness! It is Danny Marwat! And then I would like to show you a picture of yourself! Hanging out with Satar Yusuf-Khel! Just like a TOTAL TERRORIST!"
RECESS, OBVI
Diane: "Uh, you totally knew this dude?"
Danny: "No, not like we were terrorists together or anything! His daughter was dying from dysentery. I brought him medicine, that's all. I took it to his home in Badula Qulp..."
Skrrrch.
Diane: "Alicia, you wanna get the fuck on up out of here?"
They explain the whole #thing to Will, laboriously and for our benefit, and Alicia bounces. This leaves Will and Diane to fight an old war some more.
Will: "You poked the bear, I asked you not to poke the bear. They've been right since day one, our client did it."
Diane: "To save a girl's life?"
Will: "Oh yeah, he's a real humanitarian..."
Diane: "First of all, shut up. That's the definition. And secondly, shut up because you're going to scare Alicia if she sees us fighting."
Will: "Well, fine. We are dropping the suit. Fuck if he was tortured or not, he lied to us."
Diane: "I agree, actually. We way overextended on this one."
Cary Agos randomly calls at this point to schedule a meeting with Will pursuant to Peter's total drama. Meanwhile, Dana is silently launching rubber bands at Cary while he's on the phone, about her RICO investigation that almost got cancelled, that he is now the Deputy in charge of. Lady, I understand it's your last day? But don't hurt the face. Okay?
Cary: "Yes, it's about an investigation."
Will: "Had a feeling this was coming. Am I under indictment?"
Cary: "No! ...Well. Not yet."
TREASURY
Bob Balaban: "I just, I think it's just the name. Red velvet. It just makes it so desirable."
Oh, I forgot to tell you, his personality is that he likes cupcakes. Remember like 2009, when that counted as a personality? Bob does. I can't wait until he discovers food trucks. His Treasury Secretary mind will just blow, once he learns about those. Macarons. Yelp.
You know who's worse than that, though? Bacon people. Bacon is the Betty White of food. Just shut the fuck up about it. Everybody hates the word "moist," everybody likes bacon, nobody is more interesting because of those things.
Alicia: "Actually we're dropping the case, so I no longer have to deal with you and your cupcakes and your perfectly-shaped head and those signature round-frame glasses that say, I may be five hundred human years old, but I can still get DMT."
Bob Balaban: "Guess what, Justice has brought criminal charges against Mr. Marwat, so we're not done. My guess is this is about aiding and abetting a terrorist, but we have this Chinese Wall, so I'm just guessing about that. And even if you're not going to be the attorneys, I need you to sit down and tell me, since we last talked, has Marwat mentioned anything about the Badula Qulp region? [Beat.] Alicia, do you want me to repeat the question?"
(This is where you start getting that myocardial Good Wife feeling, like the music is a fast train coming down the tracks directly for you. Usually that happens just before the credits, but not always.)
Alicia: "No..."
Bob Balaban: "Do you mind answering it?"
Alicia: "...I do. I mean, I can't."
Bob Balaban: "Actually you can. The penalty for not answering is eight years in prison, and a fine of $250,000. So again, did Mr. Marwat mention Badula Qulp?"
Alicia: "Is it my right to consult a lawyer?"
Bob Balaban: "It is always your right. But I wouldn't advise it."
Alicia: "Uh, yeah. I want to consult with a lawyer. Especially now that you said that."
L/G
Diane: "I will take every last one of these motherfuckers down and you know why? Danny admitted to that lie about this because he expected attorney-client privilege, and now if you tell the truth he'll be arrested."
Alicia: "On the Me side, though, $250,000 fine and eight years in prison."
Diane: "Did he say anything about the firm?"
Alicia: "The what now?"
Diane: "The firm? Did the monitor ask about what we said to you?"
Alicia: "No. Did I mention this is about me?"
Diane: "Oh man, they could come after us."
Will: "I know! I am so scared for us!"
Alicia: "Guys!"
L,G: "Sorry. We already have a lawyer for you. And by you, we mean us."
Alicia: "Um, yeah. I'm going to go find my own lawyer. You guys are being tools."
L/G LOBBY
Dana: "Yeah. This place looks like somewhere you would work."
Cary: "Um, wasn't it your last day like for the last six weeks? Shouldn't you be at a defense firm not unlike this one?"
Dana: "It is going to be my last day for at least another week."
Cary: "This is the most thrilling storyline of all time. I'm starting to think that you're like one of those women that lies about being pregnant all the time."
Dana: "Do you get women pulling that on you a lot? Because of your virility and poor impulse control and taste?"
Cary: "At least it would be more interesting than this game of narrative chicken with a barely relevant tertiary character's ongoing human resources issues."
TASCIONI OFFICE
You remember Elsbeth Tascioni, right? Played by Arlene from True Blood, but absolutely fantastic instead of being the grossest character of all time? She was Peter's attorney when Zach was taking on the FBI and ended up getting him acquitted; totally scattered but also magic? At first I thought she was secretly evil like Patti Nyholm, and then I thought she was equal parts evil and autistic like Nancy Crozier, but no, she is just quirky and smart and Not Ready For Primetime, in the larger sense of the adult world, like Andrew Wiley. Like the opposite of Kalinda, that ends up meeting her in the exact same place.
Like this, like how the whole time Alicia's meeting with her, she's having this ongoing fight with her new office's intercom system, which runs through the phones and yet somehow is connecting to somebody else's office, a mean man, and so they are having this whole conversation about and how Alicia wants her to help defeat Bob Balaban because she can't trust her firm all the way right now, so Elsbeth Tascioni says that they just need L/G to kill this criminal case, and stall Bob Balaban until then, done, I like your outfit, let's meet again later. But the whole time they're doing this, the mean man is just sort of lurking on the intercom, yelling at intervals, and then suddenly he starts barking like a dog into the phone. And it's like, that's just a regular old day for Elsbeth Tascioni, that somebody would do that. She can handle chaos because she is the magical Pigpen of it.
L/G
Will's meeting with Dana and Cary is fairly amicable for about ten seconds and then they're like, "Sorry, but remember how you stole $45,000 from a client's account to make up for a bad bet that one time?" It gets cold and everybody is kind of sad that they have to be there having this conversation.
Dana: "We're not after you, Mr. Gardner. Even if we wanted to be after you, it's not our jurisdiction. We're after your client Lemond Bishop."
Cary: "Crystal meth is a nationwide problem that has hit Cook County particularly hard. Lemond Bishop is ground zero for meth..."
They discuss how since Bond they've had this fiction about how his "legitimate businesses" are obviously laundering fronts, which I'm glad they said it finally but I'm still confused as to why he's still a client at all, I guess money. Will gestures Caitlin to come in there so she can get a load of a couple of ASAs -- "Excuse me, one ASA and a Deputy," heh -- committing a criminal act in front of her, trying to coerce him into breaking privilege.
SA: "There is no privilege if the attorney becomes aware of any illegal activities that his client intends to commit in future."
Will: "Oh so this was like a helpful little visit to remind me about basic shit."
Dana, verbatim: "Yes, a reminder. With teeth!"
Ha ha ha! Nice. I like this Dana more and more, especially when she says shit like that.
So yes, the threat is that even though the 45K is out of their jurisdiction, they will still get him disbarred if he doesn't work with them on the Bishop thing. Which makes more sense as a real story than a cover story, because the actuality Will investigation makes even less sense now that they've put all that business on the table, but I guess the whole point of stressing the RICO part of this is that Lemond Bishop is only one of many different ways Peter is going to come after Will. Anyway, Caitlin sparkles about how exciting it is to be in a law firm or whatever, and Will is just like, "Yeah, it's a fucking blast."
IN WHICH THE MARWAT JUDGE EXPLAINS THE WHOLE EPISODE ONE MORE TIME
The judge in the Marwat case explains the whole episode, one more time: "Let's just let the moment resonate. Ms. Lockhart, you asked to sue the government. I said yes. Now you're dropping the suit -- and you, Mr. Childs, are taking up a criminal case... I imagine you would like me to consider a motion to dismiss, Ms. Lockhart. On what grounds? On the grounds that how else will I spend my Thursday afternoons, if the three of you aren't here?"
He's pretty great. His Judge Quirk is that he is pretty awesome. He gives them a deadline for motions, and we get that much closer to the endzone. I remember thinking how funny it was that they dropped a case so early, but then got so caught up in not caring about any of it that I didn't notice the elegant halftime way the suits turned over just as we brought in Elsbeth -- so the way the case works with the structure of the episode is that Alicia goes from being protected to being alienated right when the two cases are getting flipped, and the thing she knows stops being a burden on one side and starts being a burden to the other side, so she was never safe but now she's unsafe in the opposite way. Do you know what I mean? That's really cool.
EXT., TREASURY
Elsbeth Tascioni: "Hey! My name is Elsbeth Tascioni, and I represent -- oh my gosh, that is the prettiest cupcake I've ever seen! -- I represent Alicia Florrick. She's someone you met with? And advised not to get an attorney?"
Even Bob Balaban: "Good one."
Elsbeth: "It's not great for a Treasury Department official to advise that, is it? Anyway, she's not bringing charges. She's too nice for that."
Bob Balaban: "Whew."
Elsbeth: "...That's why she has me!"
Bob Balaban: "Twist!"
He gets really official and bitchy with her about interrupting his cupcake time outside, and she doesn't even let on that this personal threat is a total sideswipe to getting what she wants, which is to freak his brain out.
Bob Balaban: "I have office hours. Up in my office? Up there?"
Elsbeth: "Oh, okay! I'll just sit here then."
Bob Balaban, after a beat: "Your client has a duty as an American to help us weed out terrorists! And even if that weren't the case she's under penalty of law to answer all of my questions!"
Elsbeth: "Sure, with an attorney present and transactional immunity."
Bob Balaban: "Your client wants immunity?"
Elsbeth: "No, I do. Just to fuck with you! Up is down! Black is white!"
Bob Balaban: "You're stalling me until the criminal case is settled."
Elsbeth: "Duh. Get me that grant of immunity and I'll talk to you later. Can you validate? No? No problem."
A three-man snowman band wearing top hats is playing old Romany tunes in the quadrangle. A group of brown bears smoking cigars sits down to a poker game at the nearby bistro seating area. The birds all start singing that British Airways song from Lakmé, but the words have been changed to lyrics from the Green Day musical. A tiny man in a three-piece suit rides by on the back of a pig. Elsbeth Tascioni.
L/G
Alicia: "You want me to what?"
Elsbeth Tascioni: "Yeah, I was thinking about it all night! I like your jacket but anyway I really need your help with one of my clients, an insurance company."
Alicia: "The fuck are you..."
Elsbeth Tascioni: "You might find these files and folders interesting. Wait, those are my colored pencil drawings of fairies riding raccoons. Nope, and this is just fruit leather and not a document at all..."
Alicia, verbatim: "And I'm doing this because?"
Elsbeth Tascioni: "Your monitor is going to ask you what I said here when I handed over these files. And I just want you to be clear about what I'm saying."
Alicia, slowly: "Okay."
"I need your help on this insurance case because I'm swamped. Look at all this paper. Phew! I need help."
Alicia: "That's what you want me to tell him?"
Elsbeth Tascioni: "No, that's what you will tell him, because that's what you heard me say."
Then it's just a puff of rainbow smoke and crystalline chuckles and she's gone.
DANGER ZONE
Will ambushes Peter on the steps of a building! He won't look him in the eye! He just paces like he imagines he is a tiger of muscle trapped behind a wall of civility. Guess it's that time of the year when Will acts all tough and we pretend to go along with it.
Will: "Ya comin' after me? Mr. Clean now, ya comin' after me. Unbelievable. You believe this guy? Mr. Clean over here."
Peter: "I am not coming after you and I'm sorry if you got that impression."
Will: "You sent them to my office tryna turn me with this old BS about 45K dollars? Fuck a buncha 45K dollars, I will dick you up. Dick ya right up, son."
Peter: "Chill, man."
Will: "Fucking go scratch. Ya not above it, Peter. I don't care what conversion you had in prison. You're in the mud, kid, just like the rest of us. The mud! Ya in it!"
Peter: "Uh, I'm not the one who... You know what, fuck it."
Will, verbatim: "What. Ya not the what? What, ya not the what."
Peter: "I have not gone there. Anything I've ever said to you or done to you. I haven't gone there."
Will: "Gone where? Go ahead, say it. That's what this is about, huh? Alicia! That's why you tried to audit us, that's why you're going for RICO. Oh man, ya pitiful. Getta pair a balls and throw a punch."
I no longer understand what they are talking about, but it ends with Peter threatening Will for stealing $45K that he didn't end up having stolen, and Will's awesome comeback: "Only one of us has seen the inside of a cell." So Peter takes off and Will's like, "You come after me, that's not where this ends. Ya know it!" But I don't know it. I think it would be funny if he was threatening Alicia's life, but I doubt highly that's what he's saying.
TREASURY
Alicia has decided she hates Bob Balaban. Which, officious and bitchy aside, cupcakes aside, I still find that hard to believe. So Elsbeth Tascioni decides to sit in his office, not allowing Alicia to speak, while she spends her time reading the entire grant of immunity, which as written is tied to her answers: "As long as Mrs. Florrick is forthcoming and truthful, she cannot be charged for any of her actions." Words to live by. Certainly words she lives by. Elsbeth is immediately like, "I estimate that reading this document while you both sit here being bored will take thirty minutes. Unless you bitch at me, and then it will take longer."
L/G
More of Caitlin's thing where she reads things and they become real.
Answer: "Lieutenant Elephant Walk complied with all necessary donkey punch. His answers were horny, Your Honor."
Question: "How do you mean horny? Unresponsive?"
Answer: "No. Brief."
Caitlin figures out that the adjective they're redacting -- what we call in the legal profession the redactjective -- was a mistake because they were Ctrl-Hing somebody's name. Specifically, "The reason for the arrest is an Army intelligence officer," which I don't even know what that means in English. So Caitlin says that this word is "curt" and not "horny" like I thought, and then there's a guy she found, a Lt. Matthew Curt. Which has confused me all week because that's also a first name, but it's enough that it's an adjective that is also a last name, I guess. But if you're writing this script and you can pick any last name that is also an adjective, why would you pick one that is also a first name? It's confusing.
Anyway, Diana now likes Caitlin, and Caitlin likes that just fine. There's something about the inevitability of this conflict that is really interesting to me. Like, don't let them play us off each other for their delectation or their convenience, but then what happens if you get into competition with somebody who happens to be a cute, younger woman, how do you deal with that? How do you work that one out without feeling like a total jerk? And then it's this show, so you know it won't be that cut-and-dried, but in this case watching it come together is enjoyable in its own right because so far she seems like an okay person.
TREASURY
Long story short, the insurance company files Elsbeth Tascioni dropped on Alicia, creating today's conflict of interest, were for a company called North Guard Insurance, which provides liability coverage to employees of Martinel Security working in Afghanistan, which includes Danny Marwat.
Elsbeth Tascioni, literally: "It's that company that has the alligator in their commercials. Have you seen those? They're so funny!"
Bob Balaban: "When did you take North Guard as a client, Mrs. Florrick? And did Ms. Tascioni bring you this client?"
Alicia: "Yeah, it was kind of amazing."
Alicia then does the funniest thing she has ever done in the history of the show, you should just watch the clip, here it is actually. I have probably watched it forty times already this week.
Alicia: "She said, I need help on this insurance case. I'm swamped. Look at all this paper."
See, in a recap it's just not the most funny thing but in reality it super was. Bob Balaban gets his panties twisted all up and Elsbeth Tascioni goes, "I think the courts have shown a certain, let's say, affinity to corporations like North Guard and their rights. The Supreme Court has even insisted on their personhood. My guess is they won't look kindly on your attempt to infringe on their attorney-client privilege." Alicia has now completely fallen in love with Elsbeth Tascioni, which makes total sense because she's the only person who is authentic in her entire life and still manages to get shit done, but it just makes Elsbeth Tascioni blush. I think maybe she is the caterpillar with all the feet and if she stops to think about how she does it, she won't be able to do it anymore.
MARWAT
Lieutenant Matthew Curt, Army intelligence officer, authorized the use of enhanced interrogation techniques on Danny -- but Zschau objects that this is only material to the civil case, which is dropped and thus the circumstances of his detention are no longer relevant. The response to this -- that Zschau claims to have evidence against Danny and they need to know where it came from, overrules the objection: Without Curt offering any reason for the interrogation, the arrest and its ensuing interrogation are inadmissible. But Zschau and Curt stick to the same old Classified Information Procedures Act, and so their case is dismissed. Done. Boom.
STATE'S ATTY
Grace is up Peter's ass about whether they're getting a divorce, and he's like, It's kind of up to your mom since she's the one that threw me out, and Grace is like, I think she's doing okay without you, and that's the problem, because you're both going to Hell. And the worst thing about Hell is, No gay people.
Peter: "I want to do the right thing, but sometimes it's hard to know what the right thing is."
Grace: "Well, you should just ask me!"
Peter: "I hate ... so much... about the person you choose to be."
Meanwhile, what on earth is going on with Dana Lodge's career? I can't fuckin' wait to find out, can you? Well, I have got a surprise for you: She was not actually being hired. Much like how Martha told that firm that she was getting hired by Alicia and eventually got so betrayed for a Caitlin that she ran into the tardive dyskinetic arms of Louis Canning, Dana has thrown so many premature parties and now, what. She even told her mom.
Cary offers to tell her mom for her that it was a mistake, and it's kind of cute but suddenly Peter shows up -- fresh off deciding to remove himself from the L/G investigation, as a happy and classy result of the talk with awful goddamn Grace -- and the three of them go into this weird terrorist-recruitment mode about how they all have a reason to destroy defense attorneys: Cary got passed over for some old MILF even though he was king of billable hours, Dana Lodge barely exists except as this Schrödinger's Cat for defense attorney's legal caprices, and Peter, well, Peter was threatened by a tiny sassy little Will Gardner today, who is maybe lunching his wife, and he is not happy about it.
SEXUAL HARRASSMENT SEMINAR
You've seen real ones and you've seen fake ones, and if that's a joke that you enjoy hearing more than once you might enjoy seeing an "awesomely cheesy" eighties type of sex harassment workplace video. I'm not offended or anything, I just don't laugh at jokes I've heard before. Anyway, Diana's revenge, and also the fact that the lines of dialogue in the video are more than a little reminiscent of their first hookup, not that they're paying attention to any of this: Will makes sure to sit up front, with Alicia, as a sign of solidarity.
Alicia: "Hey! We're watching a movie!"
Video: "When an authority figure becomes involved with a subordinate, is that sexual harassment?"
Will: "Glad you're not going to jail. Sorry we weren't of more use, but way to take care of that by yourself. You know, when the entire government came after you the other day."
I mean, it's kind of like the whole thing with Caitlin, the storm coming there: We seem to have entered a rule-of-thumb sort of era with this stuff, where it's easier to hide behind slogans than to even admit the possibility of complications or that rules of thumb don't actually work for anything in real life. Is Will preying on Alicia, sexually? No. Is Caitlin using misogyny or something to get ahead? No. But if you asked whether a third-year and a named partner should be dating, you'd automatically say no, and impute a whole irrelevant power structure that isn't in play here.
And what I like about this stuff, what I've always liked about this show, is that it takes those things out of the equation and then looks at the real, organic, actual meat of the situation. Not the slogan, not the rule of thumb, not the hoary old received-wisdom ideas about power dynamics -- the ones that are not only obsolete but woman-hating in their own right, and yet have somehow gotten internalized under the label of "feminism" -- but the actual situation:
Is it okay, for example, for Alicia to be mad at Kalinda for sleeping with Peter and essentially lying about it? A dumbass would say yes, because that's her man. A person of average insight would say no, because Peter's the one that made the call. But the real answer is yes, on the other side of no, because Kalinda was the one that cheated on Alicia and it's not even really about Peter. I feel like that's the telescoping thing that goes on with everything in this show.
So for sexual harassment, it goes: Is it okay for a woman to sleep with her boss? And the stupid older person says no, because that's slutty. An average person says no, because somehow that's him taking advantage of her, in some ill-defined rule-of-thumb way you remember from middle school that involves Annie Potts and Clarence Thomas and whatever else, and even if a woman thinks she's a special case and making the choice for herself, really she's still a victim somehow.
But the real answer is, Let's ask Alicia, because Alicia knows what she's doing, even when she doesn't, and mostly because it's her body and her stuff to decide about, but also because the rest of them are adults: The extent of even Diane exerting her will over any of this is making them watch a movie.
It's possible to weigh in on a choice without making that choice for someone, when it's an adult you respect, and that is the part that seems to get left out. I guess because sexism is like government creepiness, or cronyism: When the system is so used to administrating itself, it can be hard to see your position inside it. So we tend to victimize the victim, even at the cost of valorizing the bad guy, because that's all we know. That's what she, the victim, looks like all the time.
week: A death row inmate provides a tip on one solved murder that affects a client of Lockhart, Gardner; Kalinda finally comes back into play after getting kicked around by Cary a while back; Eli's buddy finally brings in his flip-flopper candidate and we find out a little more about that guy's hobbies, which spoiler alert but they involve Eli saying the word "fellate Santa Claus" about sixty billion times. So there's that to look forward to.
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.