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Jason Biggs shows up as a smirking lawyer who pays for things in cash and whatever, with the Fed up in his piehole for protecting his client, the person who invented Bitcoin. Cue the show taking thirty minutes to explain to Alicia what Bitcoin is, in the confabulated studio-adulterated way the show has of talking about technology, before finally she just throws her hands up in the air and says that Bitcoin makes her feel old.
Also making her feel old is Zach telling Nisa that he loves her, which weirds Alicia out, but then then plays her and Jackie off each other in a really funny, non-jerky way to keep them out of it. I don't know what he thinks he's doing with a girlfriend, I'm so sure Zach has time for a relationship, what with going to high school and his full-time job being the entire IT department of a giant Chicago law firm.
Because Alicia's been up against the Treasury before, and won, Biggs comes to her for help. Balaban is not thrilled to see her, and the legalities of the case are a thicket of whether Bitcoin is a currency or a commodity, whether you are bartering with it versus paying for things with it, etc. I don't know why I'm bothering to explain that part, never mind.
The important thing is that Kalinda spends a lot of time seducing nerds into explaining the internet to her. If you've ever seen a TV show, then you know what the nerds are like in this episode. In the end, somebody invented Bitcoin or something, it doesn't matter, it never matters on this show, although there are some cute almost-smiles between Alicia and Kalinda as they pull a succession of tricks on Balaban that hearkens back to the good old days.
Meanwhile, Elsbeth invites the State's Attorney's Special Prosecutor's Hand-Picked Team of Assistant State's Attorneys to come visit her office -- which is now just a smoking hole in the side of a mountain, without even tables or chairs or walls, and birds flying in and out of it at their leisure -- so she can dick Wendy around some more, and also find out who the judges are in the debt-forgiveness/bribery case Wendy's still building.
Kalinda goes through the files on those three judges, coming up with one case that looks pretty bad: A bench trial that ended up $8M in L/G's favor. Meanwhile, Dana's tasked with acting all bisexual and also scaring the bejesus out of Kalinda, and does a great job with both, producing the conflict waiver from last week's divorce case and threatening Alicia with disbarment if Kalinda doesn't give her something.
Going after Kalinda's feelings about Alicia is just about the sickest/smartest thing WSC has come up with yet, and it's so awesome and plot-devicey, but it's also still somehow shocking how she pretty much immediately turns over the incriminating file. Is she selling out Will to save Alicia? Doubtful; I'm sure in two weeks we'll learn that Will is cool with her handing that file over, or she's giving them just enough rope, or it's about anticipating how they will come after him, etc. Still, pretty chilling.
Two Weeks: Wendy puts Alicia on the stand and asks her if she ever slept with Will, is a thing that will happen. So it seems like the episode is going to be some kind of a bloodbath. In the meantime, let's quietly review what we've learned about Bitcoin, and about making nerds do your bidding.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!RECEPTION
Another day, another smirking scofflaw in the Lockhart, Gardner reception area. This is a Mr. Stack, Jason Biggs-played and tailored-suit wearing, who grins at the black-suited gentlemen shadowing him as though he is untouchable.
Alicia: "Mr. Stack? I'm Alicia Florrick. You're here to bother me?"
Suits: "This is a mistake, Mr. Stack. You walk through that door, we can't help you."
Stack: (Mugging, smirking, etc.)
FLORRICK
Alicia: "Okay, what is your deal? And let me say from the start that we're a full-service firm, we don't really do walk-ins. I had a busy day of avoiding people that were recently central to my life ahead of me."
Stack: "I'm not a walk-in! I called ahead."
Alicia: "To tell me you were walking in, yes. That's where the term comes from. Who were those dudes, and what do you want."
Stack: "They were agents of the US Treasury, and they want to put me in jail for not revealing my client's name."
Alicia nods at Kalinda, who goes out to bother the Treasury guys and get their badge numbers and stuff.
LOCKHART
Stack: "I practice digital information law in New York. The US Treasury wants to arrest one of my clients, a client who asked that I maintain his anonymity. This is a subpoena to submit to questioning, or be imprisoned for 18 months."
Alicia: "Why are you making this our problem?"
Stack: "Your problem specifically. Heard tell of a woman with alabaster skin, who went head to head with Bob Balaban and won."
Alicia: "It was actually this magical fairy lawyer who shows up when the wind changes, and but anyway we don't need more governmental bullshit right now."
Stack: "I brought loads and loads of unmarked, nonsequential bills."
Diane: "Yeah, well, that does make you seem more trustworthy."
Diane: "Is that money counterfeit? I mean, what is your damage?"
Stack: "Why would you think that? Just because I walked in here with a shit-ton of cash and the US Treasury on my ass?"
Diane: "Yes. For reasons such as that."
Stack: "Two different things. My client -- whom I refuse to name and will continue to say that every five seconds throughout this entire episode, so don't get any ideas -- invented this fascinating thing called Bitcoin, which is a digital currency. And since secondary currencies are a violation of federal law, somehow these guys think my client should be arrested."
ELSBETH TASCIONI LAW FIRM & PEACOCK FEATHERDUSTER EMPORIUM
Will: "Okay, but he's not going to pay us in imaginary money, right?"
Diane: "No, in super sketchy cash money."
Will: "Do we really need to fuck again with the government so soon? Bob Balaban was pretty intimidating, I hear, for being so adorable. I thought we were avoiding this kind of thing."
Diane, verbatim: "We swore off the ones based on idealism. This one has cash."
(Beat.)
Diane, verbatim: "...And I know how that sounds."
Will okays it, and Diane can tell he's a little weirded out by Elsbeth's continuing weirdness, but he's also sticking by her because she is awesome, so Diane just promises to visit him in jail once a week and he signs off, smiling, just as Darth Wendy, Dana and Cary enter the cave of candyfloss dreams and toadstool concertinas that is Elsbeth's office.
L/G
Stack: "I'm pretending not to be scared about this, but I kind of am."
Alicia: "Yeah, you should be."
Stack: "I was kind of fishing for something comforting. But I guess the truth is comforting too."
Alicia: "My current conundrum, writ large. You are a rum one."
Diane: "...Okay, Will signed off and we're taking your case. Now just go take your cash and turn it into a cashier's check like a normal person, and we'll be great."
Stack: "Only in America is greater abstraction more desirable."
Diane: "I can already tell you're going to be highly enjoyable to deal with."
Alicia: "He's a rum one."
TASCIONI
Elsbeth's office, which the last time we saw it looked like the climactic battle of a John Woo movie, now looks like the end of Fight Club, thanks to their having found asbestos in the walls, so now the walls don't even have walls. It looks like the end of the Cold War, with just like chubby little Gringott's employees in bowties waddling around with big baskets of dandelions. Fantasia's still nowhere to be seen but I honestly do think at this point she's a literal unicorn. Probably she's just downstairs going to town on some oats and clovers.
This is a proffer session, which I don't really know what that means but in practice it means that if Gardner can help them with their fake investigation into the imaginary bribery scheme that will somehow lead Wendy to her revenge against Peter Florrick, then they will drop the grand jury investigation and he will not, like any old ham sandwich, be instantly indicted. It seems like a deposition without the on-the-record part, in practice.
...Or at least it would be, if Elsbeth weren't doing her magical shit to their brains, offering them drinks of dew and moonlight while they're trying to talk, ordering up breakfast smoothies from her nonexistent unicorn administrative assistant, and generally throwing a one-woman hootenanny complete with dance moves while they're trying to proffer each other or whatever. At one point, no lie, she offers them blankets in case they're cold.
SA, finally: "If you supply us with truthful information as to your knowledge about judicial criminal conduct we'll close this investigation against you. No grand jury. The name of your bookie was Jonathan Meade, is that correct?"
Will: "Jonathan Meade was the name of a friend of mine, who I invited to one of my Wednesday night basketball games. He acted in a lot of capacities. At one point he was even an actor."
Elsbeth: "Really? In what?"
Will, loving it: "I... Um, I don't know, but I think it was a low-budget movie."
Elsbeth, overexcited: "A horror movie!?"
SA, annoyed: "...And you witnessed several judges placing bets with Jonathan Meade?"
Elsbeth: "Could you be more specific? Which three judges?"
SA: (Balks, of course.)
Elsbeth, breathlessly: "Mr. Gardner needs to know what you're after in order to help you and there were a lot of judges at this basketball game over the years and how many of them talked to your actor friend?"
Will: "Quite a few?"
Elsbeth: "See so how can we help you if you won't give us any direction on how to help you?"
A Judge Winter, a Judge Dunaway, and a Judge Parks, all of whom we've seen before. Which is precisely when I had the gut-dropping feeling of realizing that this whole season is going to come down to remembering which judge did what and when. Like I even would recognize their names; this literally didn't occur to me that we would have seen any of the judges they have been talking about on the show, which obviously that's the whole point.
So the reason I didn't get this done before the weekend is that I had to go back and figure out all of this, because you know what makes zero impression on Jacob? Baby Boomer Authority Figures. You could tell me one judge was played by Jane Kaczmarek and then in the very sentence, George Takei or Arsenio Hall, and I'd believe you, thrice, because they all look the fuckin' same to me.
JUDGE ROBERT PARKS
Is the one that always ends up in hospital rooms yelling at Patti Nyholm about fetus hearts or tattoo ladies, and he was also the judge in the rat-fucking case where Blake killed that perverted doctor. Like with Judge Dunaway, they've talked in given episodes about how he is predisposed toward L/G, but specifically to Diana rather than Will. He's dumbly susceptible to Canning and Nyholm-type drama, but has a winky cleverness, like when he ignored Patti cutely turning traitor on her former firm in the middle of a trial, or when he responded to fishing-expedition objections with, "What fish are you afraid they're chasing?," which I loved. Oh, and he was this judge too, one of the all-time best moments of the whole show:
Patti, scoffing: "I wish Mrs. Florrick didn't think she was arguing before the Supreme Court."
Alicia, FTW: "And I wish Miss Nyholm did."
On the other hand, he was a key Lifeguard, protecting that racist horror Judge Baxter, and he's anti-choice. So that's scary. And of course at the end of the episode it's Parks that has the most problematic files.
JUDGE HARVEY WINTER
Was Peter's appellate judge during the first season, and a big fan, until he told the ASAs not to bribe Winter -- or did he? -- and they signed affidavits saying he did, which lost him bail. Then in the appeal, Kalinda managed to blackmail him while giving testimony without anybody else realizing it, because as it turns out he's got a serious racist antebellum mammy prostitute kink going on, which got Peter home. The last time we saw him, he was down on the docks yelling about the party-boat rapists and how unfair international politics can be, especially when China is so set on being super-creepy.
JUDGE PETER DUNAWAY
Hates being interrupted, likes putting attorneys in Time Out, and accidentally friended Button Lady. He's pretty adorable and grumpy, and shows a strong predilection for the likes of Diane and Coyne. He got pissed when the jury handed down a guilty verdict, making them each say it out loud, and then did everything he could to back the defense while they ran around freaking out, but that's not entirely suspicious, since it was a murder trial. He was published on judicial misconduct, and didn't blink when Dana prissily sent Wendy after him... Except then he did, and both Coyne and Diane noticed that his demeanor had changed to somebody who was either being decidedly impartial for appearances, or was actually running scared. In the end, he accidentally caused the mistrial himself, getting so pissed off at his mistake -- unless this also was theatre -- that he did a whole speech about how he doesn't want to be a judge anymore.
CONCLUSION
I don't know that there's anything to conclude, since the judge-bribing thing is a smokescreen against Peter, but if we're looking at sheer corruption I think it's safe to say that Winter's got the fullest narrative going already, so it wouldn't really add spice to his portrayal if he somehow were a secret basketball-club-gambler-corrupt guy, like, on top of being a mammy person. Dunaway's only appeared lately and only in this season, but he's a totally interesting guy and he's the only one that's had a personal run-in with WSC, which made him act weird, and also reverses the whole race thing this show's always trying to pull. But Parks is likeable enough that he'd be the true shocker. I don't know what odds are or how you invent them or what they mean, but I would say Dunaway is three times likelier than Winter and five times likelier than Parks to be the most corrupt of the three, but whether or not that will ever matter the point is that Parks is the one with the problematic file, and the only really cool one.
WHICH ESSENTIALLY ALSO CONCLUDES THE PROFFER SESSION
You know, since that's all Elsbeth really needed, so she and Will immediately start acting like they've misplaced their minds entirely -- a different act from her usual one, but not by much -- and it's even funnier because it's the opposite but also kind of the same shit she pulled on Wendy last week, if you think about it. First the clean judges, now the dirty ones, and both times Wendy just handed it over.
To her credit, Wendy doesn't falter, just writes the meeting off and tells Dana to stop "cultivating" Kalinda as an agent and start planting shit with her. Meanwhile, Elsbeth interrupts her own question to Will -- about exactly what his vulnerabilities are -- to locate her own lost earring, which she finds in the field of heather, exactly to the right of where her desk used to be, and where now there leans a shipwrecked tugboat, daisies growing in the forecastle.
THE TITULAR BITCOIN FOR EPONYMOUS DUMMIES
Alicia manages to sit still for most of the explanation of Bitcoin, which is to her credit considering any time technology exists in this world she gets flustered and starts pulling Baby Boomer mom shit. Nisa -- who is apparently still in the picture with Zach -- joins in a conversation about Bitcoins that is super fascinating and reiterates about how nobody knows who Mr. Bitcoin really is. Perhaps he's Japanese, maybe he's Irish, maybe he's some hot lady Kalinda's gonna sleep with. You just never know.
Alicia: "This stuff makes me feel so dated! Which is a choice I am making! It's part of my persona, which I've consciously chosen in order to let myself off the hook about interacting with the world in which I live! Rotary phones and pennyfarthings! IUDs that look like shit the DaVinci albino would be into! Meat in a gelatin mold! For dinner!"
Nisa: "Uh oh, she's going into Big Chill mode. I'm going to bounce. Love you."
Zach: "Love you too."
Alicia: "...Aaaaaand I'm back."
FIRST MOTION
The Honorable... See? I already forgot.
The Hon. Peter Dunaway: "I'm kinda quirky!"
Bob Balaban: "Charmed, I'm sure. So we're saying that this unregulated currency is being used in a digital black market guaranteeing anonymity to money launderers, drug dealers, child pornographers, whoever. Whatever's awful. And so we think that Biggs should be in trouble because he's preserving Mr. Bitcoin's anonymity through the smokescreen of attorney-client privilege."
Alicia: "I don't think I would call attorney-client privilege a smokescreen, Your Honor."
Balaban: "Okay, but that's about communications with the lawyer, not the entire identity."
Alicia: "What if you were communicating about your identity?"
Balaban: "Anyway. They give up that right if they're doing crimes."
Alicia: "Which we don't know if they are yet."
Judge: "I am so damned quirky! But the privilege thing isn't going to cut it. Round One to Alicia."
IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING
Alicia: "That went well."
Biggs: "Thanks! Now I have to go deal with Occupy Wall Streeters. They're pretty much just like Mr. Bitcoin, but they don't pay as well. On the other hand, they pay me in actual money and not magical autism points."
Bob Balaban, dropping from the ceiling: "Jason Biggs, you're under arrest! For being Mr. Bitcoin!"
Alicia, verbatim: "Oh, come on!"
Balaban, same: "I am coming on!"
I loved that. Anyway, if Bitcoin is a real currency and if Jason Biggs is pretending to be his own lawyer or whatever, then the penalty for that is ten to thirty years. So I can see why the Treasury would be about that, but what I don't get is, it is a currency. You use it to buy things. Specifically things like drugs and child porn. So why not just immediately jump to that kind of testimony instead of running around hitting a bunch of people with Kalinda's sex ray and randomly making even huger messes? Ah. Credits and then Alicia explains.
Alicia: "This is about getting around your judgely order and that's it. You ruled that he didn't have to give over the identity, so now they're trying to Childs him into freaking out."
Balaban: "Here are many pieces of paper!"
Alicia: "Yeah, which Jason Biggs would have signed because he's their lawyer?"
Balaban: "More pieces of paper!"
Alicia: "Yeah, because if you're being anonymous you would have your lawyer pay for subcontractors?"
Balaban: "Infinite pieces of paper!"
Judge Dunaway: "I'm swamped. Look at all this paper!"
Suddenly the judge's mind is blown by the paper and by Balaban bringing up Occam's Razor, which is like the most risibly obvious thing, like if somebody on Jersey Shore mentioned Occam's Razor maybe you would think, "That's kinda hifalutin," but that's like the only circumstance. Anyway, Jason Biggs gets out on bail from his arrest a second ago, and Alicia thinks about spitting in Bob Balaban's face, but it is too beautiful.
L/G
The name partners and Alicia toss around the old football, now that Balaban has won his day in court, and finally Will suggests they just prove that Bitcoin isn't a currency, but a commodity, much like -- it is said -- a bushel of fruit. Oh man, have you seen those shitty manipulative collector-coin ads on MSNBC lately? They always come on during Suze Orman and they've gotten so fucking crazy.
"If you don't buy these gold buffalo coins we made up, with the Twin Towers and Kenny Chesney on it, and like a bald eagle giving birth to the Iowa primary, you will only have yourself to blame. Because in a minute, you are going to be put in a home and your children are definitely going to die in a nuclear blast. Don't spend your life wracked with regret -- the postapocalypse is going to be hard enough."
Jason Biggs, one hundred times: "I can't tell you anything about my client without violating attorney-client privilege."
Alicia: "No, she was asking if you wanted coffee."
Jason Biggs: "I can't answer that."
Alicia: "Do you know what time it is?"
Jason Biggs: "Sorry. Privilege."
However, Mr. Bitcoin wrote a manifesto when Bitcoin came out. You know, like how normal people are always writing manifestoes. Like how stable individuals are always doing that.
Kalinda: "I can use made-up linguistic technology to figure that out, it's all very complicated. Basically I will googlewhack every phrase in the manifesto and then start hurling accusations at random folks."
Alicia: "If I weren't pretending you don't exist, I would so get weird about that word and how everything's so technological these days."
Diana: "You should go to Decode-A-Con. You know, Decode-A-Thon? The conference of cryptographers? You know, cryptographers? That very real, monolithic subculture that totally exists and has its own customs and social mores and quirks?"
Everybody: "Or else it's actually just Jason Biggs, and this is the most annoying shit that ever happened to us."
Decode-A-Thon: "Wait."
PARKING GARAGE
Will: "Kalinda. I have a vulnerability."
Kalinda: "Emotional or legal?"
Will: "Good one. No, it's just that my bookie we suddenly keep talking about, Jonathan Meade, once forgave me a debt of like eight grand. So I guess that could look bad."
Kalinda: "Uh, yeah. Yeah, it could."
Will: "Could you go into our files and look for anything hinky with cases involving those three judges Jacob was talking about before?"
Kalinda: "Sure, right after I get back from the episode of dipshitty NCIS that somehow found its way into our vastly superior show. Hey, Friendo. Are you freaking out yet?"
Will: "Kind of."
Kalinda: "Wouldn't that be sooo weird? Like if we had feelings and were human people?"
Will: "I know, right?"
FIRST WITNESS
A screaming, sweating forehead is called to the stand to scream and sweat. It doesn't have shoes on, because it's just a forehead, but Dunaway is okay with that.
Balaban: "Forehead, why are you here sweating on everything?"
Forehead: "I AM THE REDDENED, PUFFY HOST OF A SHOW CALLED MAD MONEY."
Balaban: "Okay, but so why?"
Forehead: "BECAUSE BITCOIN ISN'T A CURRENCY. THERE'S NOT A CENTRAL BANK, AND IT'S COMPLETELY PEER-TO-PEER."
Balaban: "Forehead, are you aware of the fact that you are a jackass on TV? As your job?"
Forehead: "TO BE HONEST I WOULD DO IT FOR FREE."
Dunaway: "Could you be nicer to him? I am a huge fan of him and you're pissing me off."
Forehead: "WASN'T IT MONTAIGNE THAT ASKED, HOW MANY VALIANT MEN CAN SURVIVE THEIR OWN REPUTATIONS?"
Everybody: "Christ, who cares. Just go home."
DECODE-A-THON, THE CONFERENCE FOR CRYPTOGRAPHERS? DUH?
It's so cheap and dumb and I am sure this is a real thing because this show isn't completely stupid but whenever shows like this, CBS shows, try to do the hacker thing it's like... Maybe it was one of the CSIs but I think it was NCIS, I always think of how one time they were chasing a hacker through the internet or some shit and it was getting really intense, and then finally it was so intense that two different people were typing on the same keyboard. I should look up a link to the video, honestly, because it is the dumbest thing you've ever seen. Just these two poor actors, yelling at a computer screen, as they chase a hacker somehow through the internet, both typing on the same fucking keyboard, at just a furious rate.
Anyway, fervid technobabble greets us -- "so hieroglyphics were the first cryptograms!" and shit like that -- as Kalinda makes her way through the crowd to find the woman she googlewhacked so she can take her in the ladies' and googlewhack her some more, probably. If I know Kalinda.
LADIES' ROOM
Kalinda: "Hey, we're all alone in here."
Elaine Middleton, MIT: "Yeah, because there is only one woman who has ever touched a computer and it's me."
Kalinda: "The silence and the sexiness in here is deafening. Anyway, I googlewhacked you and have decided you are Mr. Bitcoin."
Elaine: "You'll have to googlewhack harder than that, because actually it is a Chinese man who is here at the conference."
Kalinda: "Cool! Listen, is he sexually frustrated and socially inept?"
Elaine: "Uh, have you ever seen a TV show before?"
Dana: "Hey, Kalinda. I haven't been on this show in a bit."
Kalinda: "Look who you're talking to. What do you want?"
Dana: "Could you meet me at that fern bar where we always act gay?"
SECOND WITNESS
How funny would it be if your go-to improv character was like, a guy who always early-adopts the wrong thing?
"I stayed at the Crestview Priority Inn last November, and paid for it with Bitcoin. I stayed in that night, just listening to my Zune and watching movies on my Betamax. I was in Crestview to buy some Sony MiniDiscs, as I recall."
HOME
Alicia: "Mr. Crestview Priority Inn? I need you to come to Chicago and explain that the Bitcoin purchases this dork made were part of a one-time promotional thing that in retrospect was regrettably nerdy and not even about to happen... Sure, I'll hold."
Alicia: "Hey, Zach? Could you fall back with the Nisa thing? I wasn't even sure you were dating and now you're tossing the word Love around, and..."
Zach: "Mom, I can't believe you're saying this. Me and Grace, we just love black people! Gah."
Alicia: "This is not about race, this is about you getting a girl pregnant. Or getting bad grades, or... I'm not entirely clear on what all it's about, I just know that throwing words around like that means a lot of intensity and stuff we should probably discuss soon."
Zach: "I was really hoping the race card would work."
Alicia: "That just proves how young you still are... Yes, Mr. Crestview Priority Inn? No, I'm sorry you heard that... No, no, I'm not a racist. The Florricks love black people! Love 'em."
THIRD WITNESS
Mr. Crestview Priority Inn: "You know how sometimes something seems like a cool idea, you know, and then later on you feel like maybe you committed too fast?"
Alicia: "Like that show Community."
MCPI: "Yeah, exactly! It was so great at the beginning, and then just became FUBU for Aspies. They've already got Bones, do we really need an additional two Big Bang Theories?"
Balaban: "So what you're saying is that you were taking Bitcoin, but you would also take frequent-flyer miles? Diner's Club? McDonald's Monopoly stickers, like from a hash brown, from the side of a hash brown, you would take that as payment? Pretty rocks, perhaps? Were to glitter?"
MCPI: "Look. I'm not saying I'm a financial wizard. I'm just saying we took Bitcoin, and it was stupid, and we don't do that anymore. But in terms of your legal argument yes, frequent-flyer miles would work, but they're nontransferable."
Balaban: "Whereas Bitcoin is transferable, and you can use it to buy anything you want. You could go to Amazon right now and buy a book, maybe, on how to run a hotel..."
MCPI: "-- It's an inn."
Balaban: "...An inn, and pay for that with that. Like it was money."
MCPI: "Although I'm not sure exactly how you transfer Bitcoins to another person. I think they call it 'yiffing.'"
Balaban: "It's a currency, bitches. No more questions."
BOOTS & BATS BAR & GRILL
Dana: "Okay, I'm just going to tell you that Wendy Scott-Carr is up my ass about Will, and you're the pressure point. I'm being ordered to come after you. Okay?"
Kalinda: "So far, so good."
Dana: "So you need to make a very important choice now."
Kalinda: "Meaning ultimatum. Uh, last motherfucker offered me one of those, I took a baseball bat to the inside of his mind."
Dana: "Was there sexy frisking? Sort of hot, but also exceedingly uncomfortable to watch at the same time?"
Kalinda: "There was like an hour of that."
Dana: "Okay, well, then I'm giving you an ultimatum for sure! I have here Alicia's forged signature on that conflict waiver from last week."
Kalinda: "...This is literally the most fucked-up thing you could possibly do to me."
DECODE-A-THON
Kalinda: "Hey there, ya little pocket monster. Whatcha doin'?"
Bao: "Cryptocaching a GPS socket and then I'm going to iterate."
Kalinda: "Awesome. Listen, I'm here to awaken you to the mysteries of manhood."
Bao: "Lady, you did that just walkin' over here."
Kalinda: "Gross me out. Uh, are you Mr. Bitcoin?"
Bao: "No! Elaine is. What a shell game this is. This Decode-A-(Game-Of)-Thon(s). And anyway, look at the 'newest block' of Bitcoin, it has a statement 'embedded in the code.'"
Whatever, you lost me. The secret unbreakable code of the Bitcoin now also has a string in it that says, "Jason Biggs Is Innocent." Ugh, I don't know. I like Neal Stephenson just fine, or at least Snow Crash and the first big one, and anybody who's read a book by him feels like they are secretly a cryptographer, so maybe the problem's that I'm standing too close to it, or that I just think I'm close and -- since I actually don't know anything about anything -- I'm far away and with blurred vision, but I swear to God the person that says "Bitcoin" to me is going to get it.
I'm starting to feel about "Bitcoin" like the last two months have made me feel about the word "Skyrim," like, why does everybody in every conversation in every part of your life or the city where you live, why do they all keep saying this word "Skyrim" all the time and trying to explain what a "Skyrim" is.
Interlocutor #1: "Hey honey, I haven't seen you in a while. Want a cheeseburger?"
Interlocutor #2: "No, I just want to talk about this 'Skyrim' some more."
Interlocutor #1: "Okay, how about a blowjob?"
Interlocutor #2: "They don't have those on a 'Skyrim.' Just people that are half-dragon, but they look like people, so you can't tell."
Interlocutor #1: "So, really they're just people?"
Interlocutor #2: "Uh, no. They are dragons, that just look like people. 'Skyrim' people."
Interlocutor #1: "Any offers that came up earlier in this conversation are now off the table. You do realize that."
Interlocutor #2: "What? Sorry, honey. I wasn't paying attention. I was thinking about what I should probably do later when I am saving the 'Skyrim' or making a journey in it or whatever is the ultimate point of this."
WITNESS
Take it away, kids. Make sure to say some words that sound like plausible English, but mean less and less as you go on.
Alicia: "Your Honor, the time code of the embedding on this new block of Skyrim -- embedding that only could be put there by Skyrim's inventor -- was at exactly the same moment Jason Biggs was in court yesterday."
Balaban: "Which means nothing, Your Honor. It's the easiest thing in the world to arrange for a delayed embedding. And in fact, if you were trying to establish an alibi, wouldn't you delay the embedding for exactly the moment you were in court?"
Yeah, that's a for sure real thing they are talking about. They have studied up, and now they know all about "time codes" and "delayed embeddings" and whatever horseshit. Suddenly, Elaine is on the stand.
Elaine: "I dunno, maybe Jason Biggs is Mr. Bitcoin."
Jason Biggs: "We cryptographers are always doing stuff like this to each other. I should have known better. 'There is no honor among cryptographers.' I think Montaigne said that."
Actually, what he literally says is so funny, he goes, "She's gonna set us up... Jealousy. Cryptographer jealousy. The ugliest kind."
It's like those occasional SVU episodes where they just leave the trail entirely and head off into, like, "This guy had a sperm bank cult and made all the girls have a pregnancy pact for the purposes of a clone war" and you're like, "Ripped from exactly what headlines? What is this periodical you're referencing?"
PETER'S CITY APT
Nisa: "So your mom said to cool it, and you decided that meant we should sneak off to your dad's secret apartment in the city?"
Zach: "Yeah, that made sense to me. It'll be nice to do homework alone in this empty house where it's just the two of us."
Jackie: Pops up from behind the kitchen island like a jack-in-the-box!
Nisa: "Ahh! A loud-mouthed old bitch that doesn't know what she's talking about! Run!"
Zach: "No, it's just my awful grandmother."
Jackie: "Zach, weren't you dating that Jewess?"
Zach: "Eli's daughter? No, she's in college. Also insufferable."
Jackie: "So, this young lady. Kind of a lateral move, huh?"
Zach: "So help me, Jackie. We love black people, you know that about us..."
Jackie: "No, I just mean because you're back in private school now. And she's, you know, not..."
Jackie proceeds to give him almost verbatim the speech that Alicia did earlier, which basically came down to the fact that young people in love are by definition idiots in at least three ways and that you can't base your whole life on one mistake and let's just see where it takes us, etc., and finally he's like, "Mom said the same thing. Deal with that."
But she can't deal with that, Zach, because she's a loud-mouthed old bitch that doesn't know what she's talking about, who lurks about in her grown-ass son's second apartment in the middle of the day for no goddamn reason. It would be asking a lot to have her devise a response that would both affirm her own correctness and simultaneously talk shit about Alicia's parenting. No matter how much she wants to.
DECODE-A-THON
Kalinda: "But surely we can trace the latest snarky embedding to the place it was time-coded or whatever the hell we're talking about."
Bao: "Yeah. Here's that IP address."
Kalinda: "That's my IP address! The call is coming from inside Lockhart, Gardner!"
Everybody: "So obviously it is Jason Biggs, right? These people. But I mean, we can at least stop looking for Mr. Bitcoin. Or until Kalinda realizes this is the unholy love child of Orient Express and Waiting For Godot and it doesn't matter. Because it absolutely does not matter."
Diane: "Kalinda, how's Will's thing going. Is he okay? I'm going to instruct you now, in very coded language, to keep me abreast of the situation."
Kalinda: "So you can cut him loose, I getcha. Protect the firm."
Diane: "No, because he's my friend? I want to help him?"
Kalinda: "Help him off a balcony, I totally hear you. Got it. You really are a piece of work, lady."
Diane: "No, I mean like..."
GARDNER
Elsbeth: "I love your office! It's decorated so beautifully. A desk, chair for people to sit in... Walls..."
Will: "Yeah. I mean, there's no giant oak tree in the middle, covered in moss..."
Elsbeth: "I'm not even going to ask where you keep your frog farm."
Will: "Anyway, we went through those three judges and came up with some shit, but here's the main one. Judge Parks, a product-tampering case that got us a cool eight mil."
Elsbeth: "Cool! How'd you manage that? Wear your socks inside-out that day? Carry a four-leaf clover in your purse?"
Will: "No, it just kinda happened. Sometimes the ball just bounces funny."
Elsbeth: "So true! I love when that happens, it just makes me laugh and laugh!"
Will: "Elsbeth, are you even lis..."
Elsbeth: "Jury trial? Bench decision. Hey, that file on the desk that says McCormick Product Tampering Case We Won For Questionable Reasons, would that have anything to do with what we're talking about? And if so, does it have problematic stuff in it? And if so, would you mind if I just..."
Swish.
Kalinda: "Do you want me to torch this thing? Break its kneecaps? Threaten to expose its mammy fetish on the witness stand?"
Will: "As much as I'd love to say yes, I don't think those things would help."
Kalinda: "What do you want me to do?"
Will: "There is literally nothing I can ask you to do."
Kalinda: "I know. Although one thing you could ask me to do is not hand this file over to the Assistant State's Attorney who is pretending to sleep with me while sleeping with our boyfriend who is also pretending to sleep with me, just to save the woman I love most in this world, with whom you also happen to be in love."
Will: "It would be pretty long odds for me to ask you to do that, yes."
Kalinda, snagging it: "Then I'm going back to the fern bar. Tell Diane sorry I forgot to save your ass or warn her!"
Just kidding, you know she's got some kind of plan or something. And I question how actionable the conflict waiver really is, considering the $30k price tag on even moving forward with that whole deal, but whatever it is. The important thing is the story, which is that right now Kalinda is being presented with a choice: Save Alicia or save Will. And anything she does is going to be shocking, based on the fact that that is a remarkably -- not to say contrived, because it works and I love it -- shitty position to be in for her. Which will last until exactly the beginning of the episode, unless I miss my guess.
BAO-BLOCKER
Kalinda: "Bao, why are you calling me? I have to decide between my only two friends."
Bao, verbatim: "I did a deeper analysis of the IP address where the recent embedding came from? I had to use a large data set because it was stored on an untrusted server and if I amortized the verifiable computation..."
Kalinda literally just goes, "NO." It's amazing. As is:
Bao: "The thing is, there was no protection on the source computer, so I traced it to the computer where the embedding was actually done."
Kalinda: "No protection? Certainly sounds like L/G. Did you know our entire IT department is one child?"
Bao: "Yeah, it's your computer."
Kalinda: "HOLY SHIT! I AM MR. BITCOIN? TWIST!"
DEPOSITION
Balaban: "I mean honestly that would be just as interesting or meaningful than any other possible scenario."
Kalinda: "On further reflection, I am almost sure I'm not Mr. Bitcoin. Occam's Razor notwithstanding."
Alicia: "I would like to bring the Treasury's attention to a common computer hacking practice called 'ghosting,' in which the hacker blah blah blee-blee bloo."
Balaban: "Look. Whoever you're representing, they're cool with setting up your firm for a federal crime."
Alicia & Kalinda: "That's a valid point, actually."
DECODE-A-THON
Kalinda: "Got time for a meeting in the ladies' room?"
Elaine: "We cryptographers are by nature a secretive breed."
Kalinda: "Okay, so who installed Skyrim on my computer or whatever it was that went down a minute ago."
Elaine: "Okay, I'm not the one who 'ghosted' your computer and 'time-coded' the 'delayed embedding' but I will tell you that whoever did it was technolooking to be cyberfound. They didn't even bother to cryptocover their cybertracks and somehow I can tell that they also were nanodoing something cybertechnological having to do with IP addresses. Has anybody had a long boring conversation with you about those lately?"
Kalinda: "Oh my God it's all I've had to listen to all week. But I know who you mean. Looks like another trip to Furrytown for Team Sharma."
HOME
New strategy: Prove Jason Biggs is innocent by demonstrating that Bob Balaban is still looking for Mr. Bitcoin. Meanwhile, who's at Alicia's house? Not Nisa, that's for sure.
Alicia: "Everything okay there?"
Zach: "Mommmmmm, you said that we should be seeing less of each other."
Alicia: "No, I said maybe you were moving too fast."
Zach: "That's what Grandma said too. She said that we should slow down, because we're ... too different."
Alicia: "The fuck you say?"
Zach: "That it wasn't a matter of race technically, just that I'm in private school and Nisa's not, and like, I tried to explain that you were raising us right and to be aware of my class privilege, but I'm not sure she really respects your parenting that much..."
Alicia: "You get that girl over here right now. I'm going out to a movie and I won't be back for a solid four hours. Here are some rubbers, wine's in the fridge."
Zach: "...Yeah, it's pretty sweet. Last time I got a car. Anyway, you can swing by any time. Best part is, I wasn't even actually lying! I guess I really am my father's son."
DECODE-A-THON
Kalinda: "Bao, I know you cyberghosted my IP addresses and that you wanted me to find you. It's because you are Mr. Bitcoin and you want to be discovered so that you can have sex with Occupy Wall Street."
I mean literally she says that: "Have you seen the Occupy Wall Street women? They're beautiful..."
Um, have you seen the Occupy Wall Street women? Because I don't know that we're talking about the same movement. Not that they're known for being ugly, but just... By definition when you're talking about 99% of a society, it's going to take more of a bell-curve shape, right? Sexiness-wise? Maybe that's her point. I have no idea what her point is. That nerds in this imaginary cryptographer world of people who can even hold a conversation -- much less deal with the semiotic onslaught that is an interaction with Kalinda Sharma -- they can still be led around by their little nerd boners.
Not saying that's untrue either, but it speaks to a lack of finesse or effort deeper in the story when you coast on those easy stereotypes, even when they're pretty much true. I don't have a dog in this fight -- I've spent years using nerds' sexual frustration to get things done, it is a very real force -- but the whole thing is just so shallow and silly and frustrating that a line like that really sticks out. The 72-virginsyness of it.
In short, Balaban's backup Treasury guys that have been around silently Agent Smithing in the background this whole time show up, and Kalinda leads them a merry chase up to Bao's room, where she's met by Bob Balaban -- wearing a tux -- but when they get inside the hotel room, Bao has cyberghosted himself completely out of the hardware, leaving only a creepy stalker note about how he may or may not have created Bitcoin, but he doesn't really care anymore because now all he cares about is fattening her up in a pit and then using her skin to create clothing that he can wear to make his transformation complete. Or suck on her toes or something, who knows. It's dumb.
SURPRISE WITNESS
What is not dumb, though, is what happens : Alicia calls Kalinda to the stand, and she relates the whole story above, about how she and Balaban walked into the hotel room and found that letter and Bob Balaban was so sure he had found Mr. Bitcoin but once again, cruelly rebuffed by the fates of 'Skyrim.'
Kalinda: "Balaban stated that he believed I was on the right track to finding Mr. Bitcoin. Bao Shuwei, an econophysicist from Nankai University."
Balaban: "Objection, this is all hearsay..."
Kalinda: "No. No, I recorded it. By accident! I just got a new phone, and I didn't know how to turn it off!"
Which is pretty much a Team Sharma take on "look at all this paper," but the acting is solid and the whole thing is so cute that you don't really have to think about what a simple solution that was, because they tricked you into thinking it mattered who Mr. Bitcoin is by constantly talking for one hundred thousand years about who Mr. Bitcoin is.
AFTERMATH
Alicia: "Better?"
Jason Biggs: " Here's your cashier's check. It only took 20 minutes standing in line at a bank to change dollar bills into another piece of paper! America, I tell ya."
Alicia: "Christ, you're the worst. Listen, I bought a Bitcoin last night. I went online to the internet and I surfed to the Bitcoin home page website and then I bought it and then I surfed back to the internet and then I got offline. It was thrilling."
Jason Biggs: "Really? Cool , it's the future! Although I never actually explained how."
Alicia: "I don't know. It didn't feel real. Not like, say, a gold buffalo coin with Ronald Reagan's face on it and an American flag wrapped around Jesus but there's a hologram where Jesus turns back and forth into Tim Tebow."
Biggs: "Well, real's going to change. Just watch. That was a metaphor for other things going on in this show, PS."
FERN BAR & ALSO EVERYWHERE AT ONCE
This is the trouble, and the trouble is this: That all great friendships are first and foremost the story of a grand romance, and all great romances are first and foremost the story of a wonderful friendship.
After her little run-in below, Kalinda does the only thing sensible: She takes the file to Dana, drops it off, and walks away. Maybe she's hating herself, maybe she's scared, maybe this is all an elaborate way for the show to freak us out -- trust me, it's this one -- and maybe the actress wasn't even informed entirely what was going to happen, so she's playing it as smartly as she can, but either way when we respond to the Kalinda stuff, I honestly think that's why: Because the trouble here and everywhere is simple. This job means growing up in public, and that continues to be an amazing thing and a serious opportunity and responsibility, and there's still not much I'm all that clear on, but I think I'm right on this one: We spend so much time trying to discern the difference between friends and lovers, but I don't think I'm wrong when I say the finest and kindest solution is to treat each like its opposite.
But I mean, that's a thinker, so before that: Kalinda stops Jason Biggs at the elevator and says that actually all three of them are Mr. Bitcoin, she's finally figured it out, and Elaine wrote the manifesto and he came up with the idea and Bao wrote the code and so really it's all three of them -- although even when you put it that way, it's still mostly Bao -- but then he's like Maybe or maybe not or maybe you're Mr. Bitcoin too and we're all Mr. Bitcoin and Mr. Bitcoin is inside you waiting to be mined beyond the Skyrim and then there's like this baby in space and a bone becomes a space ship.
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.