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Those ads weren't jerking us around: There really was a fair amount of AWOLNATION's "Sail" in this episode. In this awesome, awesome episode.
So the Special Prosecutor that Peter decided on -- after taking himself out of the Gardner investigation -- is Wendy Scott-Carr. As usual, she treads the line between poise, self-righteous and no blinking (I call her "Weaponized Alicia"), but here's the kicker: She's more interested in going after Will directly than the Peter/Dana/Cary team ever seemed. Like, "I don't even care about Bishop anymore" interested. WSC visits Diane for a little facetime, trying to turn her, for which reason Diane becomes this terrifying angel of righteousness who spends the rest of the episode having fucking had it, straightening out life's messes, giving people what for.
Such as Will, who is no longer allowed to sleep with Alicia, and Eli, whom -- after a brutal cheese-related smackdown by fruit lobbyist Amy Sedaris -- gets called a big old baby and then served a bunch of scotch to help with his big baby man-feelings. I guess since she's getting hardcore with Will for the moment, she's got to shore up support elsewhere, but since she's right about absolutely everything this week it's not as precarious as last year's whole Bond-related "mommy and daddy are fighting" vibe. Still, interesting to think Diane might end up emotionally ganging up on Will with Eli, considering Will's never really seemed too partial to the little elf.
Over on the SA side, nothing really of note happens beyond various luuuuuv triangle stuff, such as: Dana bought a jacket similar to the ones Kalinda wears, possibly to make Cary want her more; Dana loves flirting with flirting with Kalinda almost as much as Kalinda seems to find it hilarious; and Kalinda manages to talk about lesbianing just hot enough that it finally drives Dana right into bed... With Cary.
So if you've ever lived in an apartment complex, now you know the thing that will happen, which is that Dana ends up super gay.
Will doesn't tell Alicia about Diane's decree, which should be weird, because he's too busy dealing with their case: Riding high on a premature report from Kalinda that the SA was going to leave him alone, he agrees to help that awesome military attorney from last year with a murder case in JAG. It's the same amazing judge, also, so you get to have fun with returning recurrings.
The case isn't so fun -- it involves drone errors and little dead kids -- but continuing the theme Diane started back at L/G, the Judge lady drops some major reality science on Alicia after the fact, which seems to settle her head on straighter than it has been for awhile.
Which girlfriend is going to need. In all her fumbling, Jackie Florrick managed to turn on Alicia's webcam last week. Alicia tries, not very hard, to keep the actual spying part away from Grace and Zach, but they figure out that Jackie's crossed the line pretty easily and give tacit approval to their mom's declaration of war. Jackie's stunned to find Alicia has changed the locks, but after a few heated words Alicia tells her to eat a bag of infinite dicks and then offers Zach that car so Jackie doesn't ever have to pick up the kids again.
It is incredibly satisfying.
In two weeks: Grace is brutally murdered, from what I can tell. Happy Thanksgiving!
Want more? The full recap starts right below!UAS
AWOLNation's "Sail" plays while Sergeant Gina Elkins sits in a truck in Nevada trying to figure out whether she's allowed to fire on a target in Waziristan. Over at the DOD, a bunch of old white dudes try to do the math: There are, at first blush, four non-combatant adults and one child nearby, and a mosque 110 feet away from the truck she's aiming at. There's a buzzing noise back from the kill algorithm that I think means a giant NO, because the collateral damage is too great for the person in the truck: Their deaths outweigh his. Anyway, she fires.
You can't really tell if she heard back and ignored it, or whether she jumped the gun or what, but from our perspective it seems obvious that she shouldn't fire the two Hellfires, and the truck shouldn't be exploding, and there shouldn't be a man running around on fire, falling to his knees, but either way, that's what happened .
Sometimes you can get so tied up in your goal that you forget how you're going to get there -- what the damage will be, what variables and factors you're leaving out because there's nobody watching. Ursula K. LeGuin said, "The ends are the means." A helpful rule of thumb. Guards against creepiness, guards against mission creep.
L/G
Captain Hicks (!) comes running to Lockhart, Gardner, once Gina Elkins requests extra civilian defense. He's working against mission creep, too: Spreading out the damage so it stops being damage. He's chosen Will and Alicia because they've already done part of the work of breaking into the insanity of military justice, on that cuckold case last year; they're the worst of a bad lot and he's all alone.
Hicks: "12 counts of murder."
L/G: "What did your client do, shoot up the base?"
Hicks: "Sergeant Elkins works in the UAS division. Unmanned Aerial Systems. Drones. Sergeant Elkins is charged with disobeying orders and firing two Hellfire missiles on 12 unarmed citizens in Waziristan, Afghanistan."
Alicia: "And you're defending him?"
It's important that Alicia be the first to make that mistake. Gina is a woman. A woman with a background, a woman who can pay for L/G defense. Alicia, of course, is in from the jump -- she likes Elkins, she defends women -- but Will isn't so sure yet. Not quite yet. He has to take a call first.
The thing about war is that it's all murder, so the words don't mean what we usually think they do. What makes soldiers heroes is that they're willing to take on the burden of state-sanctioned murder; to pay the price so we don't have to pay others. You think combat pay is about the hazard to the soldier, but it's not: It's about being a person who kills. But succumb to mission creep; kill the wrong person, in the wrong way; kill twelve people forty yards from a mosque; watch a man burning on his knees, and suddenly you are a murderer.
Wendy Scott-Carr: "It is I! Special Prosecutor Wendy Scott-Carr! Are you scared yet?"
Dana & Cary: "Yes."
Wendy Scott-Carr: "It makes it seem like a good-faith move for Peter to give me this position, because I hate his ass so much. But really he's doing a double-move, because I am the scariest motherfucker alive."
Dana & Cary: "You seemed so nice on those ads. And it was tough watching you go through the whole jungle fever grossness."
Wendy Scott-Carr: "I am a caring mother and a conscientious public figure, those things are true. But it's also true that I gave myself cancer just to fuck Glenn Childs and Peter over, and I will give any motherfucker cancer if they dick me around. Starting with Will Gardner."
Dana & Cary: "You know this investigation isn't really about Will Gardner."
Wendy Scott-Carr: "It wasn't, fakely and nominally, about Will Gardner. But now I am here, and I am a goddamn loose cannon. I lost a very public, very ugly campaign despite being the best candidate, which means I have to start over making my bones, and this is how I am going to do it. Be better than Peter while working under Peter, which is what women have to do, but which also vindicates me retroactively and sets up the possibility of a future campaign. When you look at it that way, I have no choice but to destroy his wife. The thing he could never do."
Cary: "Please don't give Alicia cancer. I secretly like her."
Wendy Scott-Carr: "Some people just want to see the world turned to ash. I will burn Lockhart, Gardner to the ground and then salt the ground so no more briefs or motions will grow there. Peter Florrick will rue the day he rubbed this lamp."
COURT MARTIAL
Colonel Leora Kuhn, military judge presiding. She's the one that hates them because they are civilians and don't get it, and especially hates Will Gardner because he doesn't understand that gender doesn't exist inside her courtroom so all his tricks -- the cutesy Cary ones, the loud-voice Peter ones, the sneaky Eli ones -- don't matter, and just piss her off.
Kuhn is like the immune system of military justice because she doesn't want these idiots to see behind the curtain and throw their whining around. She knows the system, she knows the stakes, and she knows what you give up when you join up. And they can't understand these things, or else they would have: They are de facto meddling martinets, absolutely annoying and a pain in her ass no matter how much they try and fail to understand about this crazy Wonderland of military law. No matter how nice Alicia is, because nice doesn't fly here.
The thing about being all about ethnic ladies is that if you accrue a certain number of them at once, they will outnumber you and gang up on you. And if you're Cary, if you're so used to being on top that you don't even know there's more to the world than the part of which you are yourself aware, well, that can be a scary moment. Maybe some people join the Tea Party when they feel like that is happening. Cary, I imagine, will just try to sleep with all of them. A much more sensible plan if you ask me.
COURT MARTIAL
Ventura: "Actually there were no delays that day. That whole defense is bunk."
L/G: "Objection! The prosecution didn't get there by questioning, essentially."
Kuhn: "Overruled, because fuck you."
Prosecution: "So we don't know why she ignored the order, and you were stunned when you sat there and saw yourself murder a bunch of people. Okay, thank you for your testimony. And you know what? Thanks for your service to this country."
Jury: Nodding. Juries are stupid no matter the jurisdiction. Use it. Be smart.
L/G: "Hey, can we recess? That was our whole def..."
Kuhn: "Nope, because fuck you also again."
Alicia: "Um, okay. Ventura, do people ever die in war?"
Ventura: "I don't recall."
Alicia: "Collateral damage happens sometimes maybe?"
Ventura: "Maybe. I wouldn't know about that."
Alicia: "In fact you cause unintentional or accidental civilian deaths so often that y'all refer to them as 'Squirters'?"
The Armed Forces: "No, that would be tacky!"
Alicia: "My bad. How about the eight squirters the week before this incident?"
Ventura: "There were nine, actually."
Alicia: "My bad, again."
Everybody, secretly: "Good one."
Alicia: "And how many prosecutions and arrests have resulted from any of these civilian deaths?"
None.
Alicia: "So we're calling your little van in Nevada the battlefield, because you're at war even if your body isn't in trouble of being also killed."
Jury: (This is true of everybody in this room, so paradoxically they don't take offense because that's like the very first thought you have to think.)
Alicia: "And that means that Elkins was on the battlefield in Afghanistan, meaning that this is a prosecution of a soldier who accidentally killed a civilian on the battlefield, right?"
Prosecution: "Objection! Tacky! Messy!"
Kuhn: "Word."
Alicia: "That's okay. I think the jury understands."
Kuhn: "Mrs. Florrick! Tacky!"
Alicia: "Neener. No further questions."
Alicia: "Hmmm, no. We're doing the fake feminist defense and you're going to be the one that does it."
Hicks: "Fine. I didn't really think any of this was going to work anyway. I just figured you were a better way to contain the civilian fuck-uppery than trying to bring in yet more civilian idiot newbies. Plus, you make me look good by comparison so Kuhn will still respect me."
L/G: "But the brilliance of the adversarial system of justice is that it works just this way. We do our best, they do theirs, justice is served."
Hicks: "Right, but she killed a bunch of people. Justice will be served, no matter what a great job you do, so keep it clean and don't succumb to mission creep."
Alicia: "Nope. My Alicia powers don't work unless I totally believe in my defense. The only thing I can compartmentalize is my affair; everything else goes into the Alicia hopper that shoots out feelings and compassion in every direction, dazzling everybody. It's what keeps me from being Wendy Scott-Carr."
Alicia accidentally opens up the webcam on her computer and finds the footage of Jackie being amazing slash a bitch last week, so she excuses herself. She's huffy about it, and funny about it, but there's something very much like relief in it too. She can't go to war with Jackie without putting the kids in harm's way, and Jackie only makes their fight about the kids. This is the first time she's attacked Alicia directly, without even plausible deniability, and it's practically not even about Peter -- or in the worst possible case, that is what it's about, but it doesn't really matter because this is a long time coming.
Which means two things: Number one, Alicia goes into defense mode because this just got personal, and number two, the bitch is finally going down.
JEANETTE WINTERSON BISEXUAL BOOTY CALL INVITATIONAL
Dana: "It's not gonna work. Seducing me, I mean."
Kalinda: "Pssht. I don't even wanna seduce you. Too easy!"
Dana: "Uh oh, you are totally seducing me. But I'm not sure I understand how lesbian sex works. Would you describe it to me in detail, out of a purely scientific interest?"
(Actually she calls it "baseball without the bat," which must be so annoying to lesbians to even have to answer questions like this, but also made me think of Blake again.)
Kalinda: "[Describes lesbian sex in a way that makes it sound like the greatest thing ever invented.]"
Dana: "Whew! Let's talk about Cary. You want to hurt him, yeah?"
Kalinda: "Actually, not really. We are kind of cool right now. He sort of made me feel like a ho last week, but to be honest I wasn't even really sure what I was thinking."
Dana: "That's cool, he wants to hurt you. So it's even stevens."
Kalinda: "Hurt me? How?"
Dana: "Through me."
Kalinda: "Like a ... sexual drone pilot. Huh. Maybe he is freaky enough to handle all this I got going on. Listen, how's he going to manage that?"
Dana: "There's a special prosecutor, it's Wendy Scott-Carr, we're not going after Lemond Bishop, we're after Will Gardner on bribery, banging judges..."
Kalinda: "Ha!"
Dana: "Oh, did I say banging? I meant bribing. I must have just said that because I was thinking about lesbian sex some more. Boy, I'm drunk! A lady could really take advantage of me right now in this drunken, lesbian state..."
Kalinda: "Now I know how Cary felt. You are either playing me or you aren't, but either way I got blueballs because I am putting you in a cab."
Dana: "But what about all the lesbian sex?"
Kalinda: "Yeah, right. Or maybe not. Good Lord this sucks, this situation. No wonder Cary always looks like he's about to start crying."
Dana: "My cab is here! For sex! But with whom?"
(Beat.)
Dana: "That was some awesome sex, unseen sexual partner!"
Cary: "...It is I! Cary Agos! I am soft like a woman!"
Dana: "Hey, I got this idea. Let's both pretend the other person is Kalinda, and then have lots of lesbian sex with each other."
Cary: "On the one hand, that has to be the motherfucking creepiest thing I've ever heard. On the other hand, I am totally cool with it."
Kalinda: "You gotta stay up pretty late to make me, the creepiest person of all time, seem like the most innocent one of all. Well done, you sick bitches."
HOME
Alicia: "Zach, help Mommy. Is anybody going through my computer?"
Zach: "No, just this one webcam thing you already saw."
Alicia: "On an unrelated note, I had the keys changed and here are your new housekeys. Do not share them with anybody, even your grandma."
Zach & Grace: "Aw hell, what did she do now?"
Alicia: "Nothing! Everything is fine! I just think Jackie misses being over here all the time and I think she wants to bug me all the time, so..."
Zach & Grace: "I mean, she picks us up from school and stuff because Chris Noth is so busy doing other stuff."
Alicia: "I know. I just want to put the fear of God in her..."
Zach: "-- Oh! She totally went through your computer! I have seen through your cunning smokescreen of demonstrating wordlessly exactly what is going on."
Alicia: "I... Look, things are good with your Dad right now. We're friendlies. I'm not starting shit yet. Beware of mission creep. But I will tell you that I fear she may be acting on her own, in her obsessive Peter's-Mommy way, to get sole custody."
Zach & Grace: "We're growing up, that's unnecessary."
Alicia: "Everything your grandmother does is unnecessary. This is merely one thing."
Zach & Grace: "We're not six!"
Alicia: "She wishes you were. I'm pretty sure she still thinks your dad is."
Zach & Grace: "Hey, if a person were to get on your computer and start creeping around, would they find anything worthwhile for a divorce suit?"
Alicia: "No, just pictures of cats and whatever. I don't even know how to use the thing, dude. Well, maybe... No. No."
Grace, outside: "We have to watch Grandma."
Zach: "I know."
Grace: "She's such a bitch!"
Not only is Grace cool right now, she also looks great. Super cute! Well done, Gracie Florrick. Provisionally, you can stay. I just hope you don't get abducted and brutally murdered in the episode. That would really kinda make Jackie's case for her -- which would, in turn, be so totally Grace to do that. Just fuck everything up for everybody by getting murdered.
GOLD & ASSOC.
Corn Hotline: "Your call is very important to us. Please stay on the line and your call will be answered in the order..."
Eli, losing it wonderfully: "It's her. It's her voice!"
Diane: "Welcome to Bread, Eli. Bread, you guys are our new buddies. MyPlate screwed you, because in the Pyramid it was all about Bread. Now it's just Grains. So let's unite and take down Vegetables together."
Bread: "But what can we do? We are only Bread."
Eli: "Let's go after Corn. Of all the American lies, Corn is the worst. It is the underpinning of our economy in some ways, but only in the same way as oil or subprime repackaged derivatives. Corn is Too Big To Fail. It supports the Freankensteinian corruption that is Chicken, it has a deathgrip on Congress, it's got $3.5B a year in subsidies. It is the Wall Street fatcat of food. So we take the lie that Corn is a Vegetable, and turn it into the half-truth that it is a Grain. Then you, as other Grain, will own Congress."
Little Children: "We are so hungry for real food! Stop killing us!"
Michelle Obama: "Fuckers can't lose. Sorry, little children. They got us by the short and curlies. I can't do this on my own."
Republicans: "That alone is a good enough reason to fuck over little children and murder them. Serves you right for marrying a black man. Corn uber alles."
COURT MARTIAL
Alicia: "How are you, Gina? Still sad about all those people you killed? Are you in touch with your parents? And their money? Are they coming? Are they prone to cry in front of juries? No? Well, is there anything I can do to make you stop making that horrible face? Would you like some delicious Corn products?"
Witness: Staff Sergeant Nora Swan, Aircraft Structural Maintenance. Former bunkmate of the accused at Addis Air Force Base, and exuberant drug user. Turns out she supplied Gina with a stimulant called Adriphan, but that "supplied" is kind of pushing it because everybody does it because war happens all the time, not just when you've had a nap. Last possible thing before the sexism gambit, but not really anything in Gina's favor either.
Alicia: "So, other people in the unit take these pills? In fact, isn't it an open secret that Adriphan is taken by almost everyone, from fighter pilots to...?"
Prosecution: "Objection, Your Honor! Calls for speculation."
Alicia: "Actually, I don't think it calls for much speculation at all..."
Kuhn: "Mrs. Florrick!"
Alicia: "My bad again."
L/G INCURSION
Wendy Scott-Carr, with Dana & Cary as her heavies, visits Diane in her lovely, huge, well-appointed office.
WSC: "My parents always wanted me to take the corporate path..."
Diane: "But you were the rebel?"
WSC: "I tried being a defense attorney, but... I realized I didn't like guilty people."
(Beat.)
WSC, disingenuous: "Not that you do..."
Diane, arch: "Oh no, I do. I love them. That's why I work here."
Dana, outside: "This isn't going to go well, is it?"
Cary: "Nope. This is where I sat when I was waiting to be fired, actually."
Dana, cutely: Takes out her gum and sticks it under the chair.
WSC: "Do you have children, Diane? Just kidding, I already know you don't. But anyway, I found the best way to raise mine was to tell them exactly what is expected of them, how they misbehaved, and what they have to do to get back in my good graces."
Diane: "I didn't even know you had graces, and suddenly I seem to be out of them..."
WSC: "Yeah, I was being condescending. That's kind of my deal. Actually, I was threatening Will."
Diane: "He's not here right now, maybe you could go fuck yourself and come back later."
WSC: "I'm leading an investigation into judicial bribery. There are three judges on the bench who are receiving payments in trade for their decisions."
Diane: "Oh my God, right here in River City? Prosecutors tend to treat accusations like facts."
WSC: "The narrative I'm building is that Will is some kind of bribery mastermind who arranges basketball games and there he introduces judges to bookies, teases them into betting addictions, and then trades those debts in for favors."
Diane: "You know how stupid this sounds."
WSC: "Yeah. But I'll still fuck you up with it. Listen, we know your hands are clean..."
Diane: "Really, bitch? How do 'we' 'know' that?"
WSC: "So we're doing this the hard way, huh? Fine, how about you demonstrate your hands are clean by turning on Will. How you like them apples?"
Diane: "I do not like them apples at all, Wendy Scott-Carr."
Kalinda: "Well, look at this, my two favorite people! For sex things! And information."
Dana & Cary: Tails wagging, but feeling weird about how they had virtual lesbian sex with her last night.
Kalinda: "Get home all right?"
Dana: "Um..."
Kalinda: "Cary, did you sleep all right?"
Dana & Cary: "She knows! Our lesbian secret!"
Kalinda: "Nice jacket, Dana."
Dana: "Thanks! I bought it at the lesbian store. I remembered what brand from how I stared awkwardly at the label in back of your jacket for a million years that time, and then bought it."
Kalinda: "Is that to make Cary want you more, or because it's like you're having sex with me by wearing a same jacket?"
Dana: "Both! Everything is so weird right now!"
Diane: "Well, so nice of you to drop by. I will be dealing out some justice of my own on you assholes."
WSC: "Thank you so much for your time."
Diane: "No, thank you so much for wasting mine."
Kalinda: "Diane, we need to talk for a sec."
Diane: "That much is very goddamn clear."
Kalinda: "Bye, Two Favorite People!"
Dana & Cary: Hands in pockets, blushing, kicking at the carpet, mumbling.
That's mission creep, too. Watch.
NOT A SMOKING SECTION
Diane: "Hey, you're being investigated."
Will: "Yeah, I totally know that? It's fine."
Diane: "No, it's heating up. Kalinda was wrong for the first time in a long time. Peter's got Wendy Scott-Carr up our asses. She just tried to turn me."
Will: "I know all about this. It's about Lemond Bishop."
Diane: "No, you idiot, listen to me talking. It is now about you. Just you."
Will: "They are trying to scare you."
Diane: "They have succeeded. Listen, they have shit on you."
Will: "I am squeaky cl..."
Diane: "Please. This particular thing, of the billion creepster things you do, is about judicial bribes and the Wednesday night basketball games. [The basics.] Look, don't say anything to me, I don't want to know or be subpoenaed. But fix it."
Will: "But it's not..."
Diane: "Oh my God Will. We used to have a shorthand. Fine, I will spell it out. This is an SA fishing expedition, to sink us as a firm, because you are fucking Peter Florrick's wife."
Will: "Harsh!"
Diane: "Yeah, because you're not listening to subtle hints or our secret twin language anymore because you don't want to hear what I'm saying, so here's what I've been saying, translated into English. Stop fucking Peter Florrick's wife. You are her boss, which first of all, and secondly he is our enemy, and he is going to kill each of us. He is going to come in here with guns, and ASAs, and Glenn Childs, and mortar shells, and he is going to take us down one by one. He will take the scalp of David Lee, he will chase Caitlin into the bathroom with a bayonette, he will throw little Eli through a glass wall, he will hunt down America Ferrera and gut her like a fish. This is war, Will. Plausible deniability is not going to do it. Your dick is killing us. You have forced me to abandon decorum, and for that, I cannot forgive you right now."
Will, kicking things in impotent rage: "Don't wanna!"
Diane: "Don't care. I have to go make a blanket fort with Eli and bunker down."
CORN HQ
Even their conference table is Corn. A giant Corn.
Eli: "You, gentlemen, are a grain. You are not a vegetable. In fact, other vegetables gain more by being associated with you than you with them. That is why you were left off MyPlate. Where is Corn? It is subsumed in Vegetables. Subsumed. But we aim to change all that. With this!"
He reveals a body diagram, like a gingerbread man, with sections for the exact same shit as all the other ones, but in different amounts. At the center of the body, where the heart would be if it weren't diseased and full of cholesterol and high blood pressure, is a giant ear of Corn.
Eli: "Corn is at the heart, you see. A place of prominence. To reflect its importance in the American diet, as it slowly kills Americans. It is to all our benefit to rethink the current food chart. All of us except the people who will actually eat by these gerrymandered, fucked-up, lobbied-out, dirtied-up rules."
Corn: "The heart, the heart. He Who Walks Behind The Rows dwells in the heart of America."
Eli: "He Who Walks Behind The Rows will thank you and bless you. Just help me fuck Vegetables so I can get that lady."
Corn Guild: "He Who Walks Behind The Rows will thank us and bless us. All thanks to He Who Walks Behind The Rows. He dwells in abundance. And government subsidy."
Stacie: "Haha, that idiot is in there right now plugging some stupid gingerbread pyramid... Oh hey, Eli! Cutie-cute, that's what you are."
Eli: "These Corn motherfuckers are scary as hell. It's like an entire lobby made up of Grace Florricks. Meanwhile, what is going on? Why are you courting them?"
Stacie: "Oh, that's me fucking you again. That's like three times. Listen, Corn and Fruit were always secret allies, thanks to me. We are all Produce. You're just what gets skimmed off the top of Dairy."
Eli: "You're making me mad, cow."
Stacie: "Good one! I still win though. Go to hell. You take your Cheese and you go to hell. For I have already won. Let the Pyramid be your grave, as in days of yore."
COURT MARTIAL
Alicia: "Take this one with Ventura again. You have to do the sexism attack you rightly railed against, or else it'll look like outsiders meddling."
Hicks: "That is what it is, though. That is what is happening."
Alicia: "Please? I am very pretty."
(All rise.)
Hicks: "So you're saying there was no transmission delay."
Ventura: "Yes, in this case. In this case, there was none, and Staff Sergeant Elkins simply overreacted and ignored the order."
Hicks: "So is that why you started an online petition in the spring opposing the integration of females into the submarine force? Because females can't take orders?"
Ventura: "Sure, I'm a sexist dick in a lot of ways. But I probably have a fairly sensible-sounding reason for that, and anyway it's not relevant here."
Hicks: "And the only problem you've ever had with an NCO, she was a lady also? You had her transferred out of your area last year?"
Ventura: "She was being disruptive during our shifts. My CO replaced her on my recommendation. But again, this is cross and I'll never explain that more fully, so it comes off looking really bad."
Hicks: "As was my intent. Anyway, so now you work with a guy again?"
Ventura: "Yes. And he is manly as fuck."
Hicks: "No further questions."
HOME
Jackie tries, and fails, to get the door open. Suddenly, Alicia appears in the doorway, grinning like Wendy Scott-Carr.
Alicia: "Helloooooo."
Jackie: "My key seems to be sticking..."
Alicia: "Yeah, I know."
Jackie: "Explain to me why you changed the locks, young lady."
Alicia: "Yeah, it's because I don't want you in here anymore. Boom."
Jackie: "You don't want me picking up the kids?"
Alicia: "Not especially, but I haven't figured that part out yet. I can't control what Peter needs from you..."
Jackie: "-- You need me too, Alicia..."
Alicia: "-- Ahem. But I can control my home. I don't want you in here, Jackie. I don't want you going through my things. I don't want you in my computer."
The Jig: She is up.
Jackie: "You're hurting your children!"
Alicia: "Not sure how you got there, but whatever. That's between me and them anyway, and I would never take your word for it."
Jackie, losing it: "They're not safe with you!"
Alicia, chuckling: "Go ahead, Jackie! Reach into that bag of tricks. What do you have that could hurt me?"
Jackie: "Zach is dating Eli Gold's daughter! A Jewess!"
Alicia, nastily: "Oh my gosh, that's terrible!"
Jackie: "They were in your bedroom!"
Alicia: "Bullshit. What else you got?"
Jackie: "Grace goes into her bedroom with her tutor! And locks the door!"
Alicia: "Grace's door doesn't even have a lock, you crazy old bat."
Jackie: "Um, she pushes the chair against it! They do lesbian autism drugs in there!"
Alicia: "Look at me, Jackie. Look at my face. You no longer have the power to wound."
Jackie, trying anyway: "They're your children! You need to be their mother!"
Alicia, smiling sweetly: "Good night, Jackie."
(Click.)
I don't think there's any amount of lacking compassion in there either. It's got to be scary to be so old and left behind and think that everything is so scary all the time. She worries, worries, about her son. So much. And her grandchildren. And she knows something fishy is going on with Alicia. All those things are true. It's sad that their relationship is set up that Jackie can only attack her, instead of talking to her, but Jackie made that rule for herself a long time ago and -- now that Alicia has broken the golden rule, the Good Wife rule that says you overlook everything because men are more important than women -- she's become a threat. To the world, as Jackie understands it.
Alicia is the call coming from inside the house, in a lot of ways that are so deep-set in Jackie's psyche that they color everything she says and does and thinks. Her obsession with Peter has always been half about being his mother and half about him being the only man in her life; without a man, a Good Wife has no meaning, and now that he's out of the house the only thing Jackie knows how to attack is Alicia, through the children. Not to break something, but to make something right again. To save the world. Mission creep; motherhood gone septic. For Jackie, the easy answer she was taught was simple: Men.
And the saddest part of all is that you couldn't explain it to her, using any words at all, because these are universal truths about women and men that form the foundation of her, and her generation's, understanding of the world. Try to explain "red" to a dog and see how fast he gets bored; tell the fish about "water" and they'd act just like this: Like it's Alicia that's a traitor to her gender.
In war, if you stand on decorum they will tear you apart. For Alicia at least, for a lot of us, without decorum you fall apart. But it's also true that decorum and right action, together, can always guide you eventually to a third way, in the real world at least:
Alicia: "Hey, Zach? Get your coat. Let's buy you a car. Boom."
GOLD & ASSOC.
Cheese fires Eli, and thus ends the great Cheese Lobby story of our times. He is crestfallen. Not just because of Cheese -- which will wreck L/G's quarter at the worst possible time, of course; it's like $5M between the firm and his own concern -- but because he didn't get the lady.
Eli, whining: "I need something to drink..."
Diane: "Well, don't get morose. Win them back."
Eli: "[More whining.]."
Diane: "Do men really have that much success in their life that the first setback that comes along, they get all weepy?"
A: Yes.
Eli: "I'm not weepy, I'm... Tired. It's hard doing this. I don't sleep at night. I stare at the clock, I think about nothing else. And it's not productive time, it's stare-at-the-clock time."
Diane: "Well, why not just give up and eat some worms, you big baby."
Eli: "Can I just have a minute to feel bad for myself?"
Diane: "...Actually, yes. I had a pretty awful day too, thanks to Will's stupid dick."
Eli: "I don't like losing. I'm always looking for when things start to turn south. What if it's now?"
Diane, calling an audible: "Eli. We're gonna wallow for a few hours now. We'll drink. I'll put you in a cab. You will sleep it off. You won't feel good in the morning. You will come in late, but you will come in. We'll sit, we'll talk. You've been lording it over us up until now..."
Eli: "-- I have not..."
Diane: "Yes you have. Don't argue. You are brilliant, but you're not God's gift. We'll sit and talk. We'll hatch a plan. And Stacie Hall is going to rue the day. And that's a fact. But for the moment?"
They clink. They wallow. Will has no idea what he's in for. Also it is amazing. Diane is the best, when she's not being the worst. Which, to be fair, is rarely. But in all the storylines this week, I think there's another interesting thing Diane is doing, having to do with mission creep. You don't get personal. You don't start thinking you are the Cheese, because inevitably somebody is going to move your cheese, and you must remember that it isn't you.
It's hard for men to understand this, because 99% of the time they are the Cheese. But Diane was born knowing it, and she wouldn't be Diane without it: The system is already gamed -- like Jackie, like men and women, like dogs and red, like fish and water -- so the facts on the ground are this:
When you're a woman, you don't ever really win. You get best of three, because you started one down. So that means losses don't count as losses, until the game is over and the dust settles: It just means you double down. Something Eli is going to need to learn; something it may already be too late for Will Gardner to figure out. But it's something Diane knows, and Wendy Scott-Carr; it's something Alicia is learning.
COURT MARTIAL
Verdict: Twelve counts of murder, of course. Alicia takes out her thoughts and lays them down, one by one, sorting them out on a bench outside chambers. Judge Kuhn passes her by, they nod darkly; Kuhn rethinks and steps back. There's something in Alicia's mournful look that trips her up.
Kuhn: "You thought it was unjust. Why?"
Alicia, too emotional for this conversation: "She was scapegoated! She's being sent to prison because she was used as a scapegoat for an inaccurate drone program..."
Kuhn, shaking her head: "No. She was convicted because she did wrong."
Alicia: "She was a woman..."
Kuhn: "Oh, please. Do you know what that defense says about the thousands of women who serve honorably? We don't want that defense."
As a gay man raised in a stridently feminist household, it's something I hold very sacred. You can't be the girl who cried wolf, because it makes it harder for everybody else down the line. Including you. You are not holding the line when you bring feminism into situations where it isn't the main thing. You are making it about you, when you do that; you are making yourself the Cheese, and you can't hope to make a rational decision once you've done that. The other side of that, though, is that it's nearly impossible to tell on a case-by-case basis whether it's a valid complaint or not. It's a nuclear option but it's also a constant frontline battle, and telling the difference is a value decision all of us make every day. There may be plenty good reasons to kill individual cops on an individual basis, but nothing like the very good reasons we levy the harshest possible penalties against cop killers. This is the basis of law. And of the kill chain.
Call it the wrong way and you're "being a feminist," barking at shadows that aren't there; call it the right way, and inevitably people on the other side of your understanding -- sexists, Jackie, other feminists -- will say the exact same thing.
So then that becomes the problem. And if you go far enough down that false trail, you get to a place where all feminist-sounding complaints are valid, because if they aren't then none of them are. Suddenly individual choices, thoughts and reasoning don't matter, because you're defending sacred and very much endangered territory. But do it wrong, often enough, collectively or singly, and you invalidate the territory altogether.
Mission creep.
Of course there's a feminist side to every thing that goes down: There's an a priori institutionalized gender imbalance that is always present in everything that will ever happen. And it's not enough to say, like the military does, that gender simply doesn't matter: That's just like white people saying color is irrelevant. It's a form of really gross privilege that goes unnoticed and continues to warp our lives because it's so prevalent. We are all fish and we all have to remain aware at all times that "water" isn't the sum total of reality, it's just the way of things for us right now.
But the opposite reading isn't fair either. No easy answer is ever the answer. You throw your lot in with the rule of thumb and you make yourself lazier and stupider. No doesn't always mean no. Bosses aren't always bad for sleeping with their employees. Fall to the rule of thumb, and you're not only lobotomizing yourself but you're also taking away the choice of the victims you pretend to care so much about. An easy answer is comforting, in the moment, and it will always break your heart, in the long term.
"I know this one," you say, exulting in one thing making sense, and it will -- I guarantee you -- rot from underneath the second you do that. The answer stops being the answer the moment that you find it. We were engineered that way, to be always moving forward.
Any charge like this, scapegoating or misogyny or whatever, is radioactive and must be treated with respect, because if you hold onto it you will get cancer. Given infinite play it invalidates the entire system. Not every criminal case is an ACLU case, regardless of race. Not every woman condemned for a crime is being scapegoated for her gender. We are cagey about it because it looks like a Salem trial: She drowns or floats, and either way she dies. But the truth is that this is scary mostly because it doesn't brook meaningful conversation: It all streams downhill, to an ugly place. Step outside the system, critique the system from inside the system -- in a military trial, say -- and the best you can hope for is to wreck what it's based on, both the good and bad parts. That's why the adversarial system exists, and why judge corruption -- Lifeguards -- are such a serious evil.
But going the other way with it is dangerous on another level, because it erodes the determining power of every narrative possible. And when that happens, the way of things is to revert to the baseline. A simplistic, selfish faux-feminist narrative does the work for misogyny itself, and sexism can lean back in its chair, satisfied that once again the bitches took each other down.
This was a case where a woman killed twelve people. She did wrong. And a feminist complaint does not a misogynist make. But prosecutions tend to treat accusations like facts, as Diane says. And that's the thing Alicia forgot, and that was her mission creep, and that's why Kuhn's truth sounds so fucking harsh when she says it. She's briefing an officer of the court on the reasons behind her decision, which is a rare and beautiful thing; she's telling a fairly sheltered woman about what it's like in Wonderland.
Kuhn: "The truth is there are twelve people dead because of Sergeant Elkins' actions. She went to work incapacitated by drugs, and she killed twelve people. Six children. You didn't ask one word about them. They are dead. They burned to death. Children like yours. Children like mine. Their mothers are mourning them right now. She may be pushing buttons, but they are dead. And they did nothing wrong. This was a just verdict. It was. And she will serve time for that. The problem with the charge of scapegoating is that it doesn't acknowledge at a certain point you have to hold people accountable. That is what's happening here. That's all. I have to go now. Good night, Mrs. Florrick."
Alicia takes out her thoughts and lays them down, one by one, sorting them out on a bench outside chambers. How many of them are valid? How many are from needing to agree with her defense? How many of them are valid, but not relevant here? How much of what that woman, that mother, that judge, said was true? Wendy Scott-Carr would know. Diane knows. Hicks knew it was doomed from the start. Will only took the case because he thought the heat was off.
But Jackie made her feel like a witch in Salem; Jackie made her feel pre-judged and sentenced, before she found her way out. It was a jury of half women, a woman judge, half the witnesses were women. So is Wonderland justice just like ours, but worse -- because it's patriarchal with a little patriarchy on top -- or is it better, because when this judge Kuhn says it doesn't matter, she means it? At a certain point, you have to hold people accountable: She knows this one.