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The recently puffy Jonathan Groff shows up, looking slightly less puffy, to bring a case that manages to resurrect not only our old hated client ChumHum -- honestly, did you think you'd ever hear from them again? -- but also that old LA-based lady-poacher Rita Wilson, and reigning Broadway hottie J. Benjamin Hickey.
As a sort of sprawlingly awful take on the Syrian Uprising, it's somewhat topical, but the surprising ways that it fucks with everybody are classic This Show. Kalinda's got an Insurgent friend that checks in with her over Skype and goes missing by the end of the episode. Judge King Of Mississippi Denis O'Hare returns as a particularly embarrassing -- and allergy-ridden -- Occupy sympathizer. Jonathan Groff continues to be the Flavor of the Month five years after the rest of us knew who he was. And so on.
In the end, Groff gets his pretty white sister out of Syrian jail, and Viola Walsh gets a Golden Globe or whatever white people bullshit that really has nothing to do with Syrian politics and everything to do with denigrating protesters for their privileges over their intentions, because it's lazy and stupid and Crash. A particularly boneheaded Boomer take on Millennial politics that manages to go all the way into Gen X hateful before all's said and done, without ever really getting the point at all. It's pretty gross.
Meanwhile on the real show that we're used to watching, the following shit is happening: Eli talks his ex-wife, Parker Posey, out of using Amy Sedaris as her Eli, thus becoming her Eli. So now they will have more sexy '90s chemistry and hook up in a hot minute, and probably their asshole daughter will come all the way back from kibbutz in order to have a pointless problem about that. The first inklings of Alicia trying to take Caitlin in hand come off with fairly useless results, as expected. Kalinda's all broken up about her Syrian informant, who's probably dead...
And Will, after thinking he was in the clear, learns from Rory Gilmore's grandfather that he's now likely to be disbarred pending investigation, so he grabs his baseball bat and literally goes home, imparting two pieces of drama as he goes. Number one, it's finally time for Diane to be Alicia's mentor, after two and a half seasons of joking around about that, and number two, here is a huge casefile about Kalinda that we've never talked about before.
As a way of getting the main romance of the show back on track, it's pretty gratifying to have somebody just hand Alicia a case and say it's now her job to deal with Kalinda. Boom. And ditto, just having Will roll over and accept a six-month leave, considering how very much time we've spent this season on his fake grand jury, and whatever Star Chamber shit is going on between Wendy and Peter that I still don't fully grasp. I get that these are easy ways of moving the plot along. But I could not give less of a shit.
It's about time Will paid for his apparently sketchiness-filled history; what's sexier than Will manfully and honorably paying for whatever. And it's more than fucking enough slow-burn to get Kalinda and Alicia back together. Frankly, I wouldn't care if Kalinda caught some kind of Michael J. Fox syndrome and needed an innards transplant and Alicia was the only donor. If Alicia accidentally slept with Lela's old husband and it was bygones. I wouldn't blink if they got stuck and spent an entire episode in an elevator with just their feelings, some ice cream and a limited supply of feminine hygiene solutions. I wouldn't mind if those two ladies ended up crash-landed on a desert island and had to work together to create motherfucking shelter and find food and water. Whatever gets their asses talking again. We have been through enough.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!PREVIOUSLY
CBS said to themselves, "We have only one good show on our entire network, so let's dick everybody around by playing it at random moments whenever we feel like it. Whaddya say? Twenty-one minutes past the hour? They'll never see it coming."
As part of what she sometimes claimed was an attempt to revenge herself on Peter Florrick, the intoxicating Wendy Scott-Carr empaneled a Grand Jury to indict Will Gardner on a complicated bribery scheme. The GJ failed to indict, and Peter realized that Wendy had gone off the deep end, so he relieved her of her duties as Special Prosecutor. In return, proving once and for all that she has lost her mind, she went after Will on an embezzling thing from like fifteen years ago.
Oh, and we've had a couple run-ins with Rita Wilson's tech client ChumHum, a Faceboogle sort of company that has, for all their storied business ethics, a longstanding mutually beneficial relationship with various evil dictatorships. They're icky, but hoodie-wearing owner Neil Gross is a dizzying amount of dreamboat, so it works out.
HAM SANDWICH PARTY 2012
Still at that post-GJ party where Diane and Will are dancing to that cute Whitesnake cover when several things happen at once.
Thing #1: Viola Walsh (Rita Wilson) calls Diane regarding an ongoing Syrian case that's going to court finally -- a class action L/G is doing against one of her tech clients.
Thing #2: Cary Agos calls for Will Gardner to make sure he knows he's safe -- a double-edged Thing, since Cary's trying to just be nice and has no idea that WSC is not done fucking everything up.
Thing #3: Among 23 congratulatory calls (including six judges) Grandpa Gilmore calls to let Will Gardner know that he is not safe in any way -- but Will is too busy being happy to take the call.
TO BE RUED SHORTLY
Will engages in a slight montage of Syrian atrocities, and makes Diane laugh when he says he wants back in on this case: He only gave it over because he was going to jail, but now he's not. Diane tells him to take the week off and get his groove back, but he won't be denied.
On her way back in for the Syria thing, Alicia looks askance at Will chatting with Caitlin at the party. I trust this show too much to think it's going to be girl vs. girl exactly, but they have kind of been setting up a whole thing where Alicia's position in the firm can't exactly be threatened by her without her forming some kind of personal alliance with Will -- and we've seen Caitlin trying to do that exact thing.
Chalk it up to Alicia's intuition and see what happens, because it's not exactly a war on feminism to suggest that, having been recently told her successes were in part due to her own historical relationship with Will, and Caitlin's ever-helpful fluency with things like the Internet, and the Kalinda situation still smarting, the future might be lining up in kind of an ugly way. If you think of it as Cary 2.0 rather than as a girl thing, any tension would make a lot more sense. Just because Bond is gone and Eli's having entire storylines to himself doesn't mean there isn't plenty of L/G infighting to be done, and "Will's past quasi-girlfriend" is going to be trumped by "David Lee's niece" every time if you let that fight come down.
Alicia doesn't care for Viola, who tried to poach her last time even after -- or in the midst of -- grossing her out, but she's willing to help set everything up on this latest Neil Gross thing since they know Viola likes her. Will wants back in on this case, which he only relinquished because he thought he was going to jail, and although Diane tells him to take like one second to enjoy himself, she eventually lets him jump back in.
Privately, Alicia congratulates Will on his non-indictment, and she chuckles about how the last time they saw Viola Walsh she tried to poach and/or mindfuck her. Which? Well, let's just say when she greets Viola and Neil Gross -- Viola's self-righteous hoodie-wearing dreamboat tech client played by John Benjamin Hickey -- Viola pretends not to remember her in any way. So there's that.
Gross: "I am so much more creative and vital than attorneys!"
Alicia: "Check out how creative I am in calling you an asshole, though."
Viola: "Are you guys having a party or something?"
Diane: "No, just ignore that party and focus on being grody."
Viola/Gross: "Done!"
Okay, I had to look this up to make sure I was clear on it, but in the "Great Wall" episode it was this exact thing: A case against Neil Gross's ChumHum for selling information about Chinese dissidents to the government that resulted in torture and vanishings, which it turned out was secretly just about L/G protecting the interests of Patrick "Sleuth.com" Edelstein, a rival tech genius. Alicia complained that they were being hypocrites, but Will explained that even if they were doing it for money, it was still good they were doing... which held up until we learned that Edelstein was no more interested in protecting his users from draconian measures than Gross was. So everybody was basically an asshole, up to and including Alicia, and bajillions of dollars changed hands.
CONFERENCE RM
Viola makes the rounds of the room, being vulpine and starchy with everybody -- including Caitlin -- one by one, and after some half-hearted bitchiness is shared equally among the participants, Will gets down to it.
The Gist: One of the things Gross's company makes is a decryption software called CoursePoint -- he quibbles that it's for data mining, which is hardly a better thing to call it -- which they sold to Syria, and the Syrian "electronic army" then used to track down protesters for detainment and torture and murder.
The Ask: For a class action on behalf of three American protesters' families, an award of $1M damages and $16M pain and suffering.
The Response: This is just another Gross v. Edelstein case where L/G is helping Sleuth take down its competitors using humanitarianism as a smokescreen.
Gross: "This is just one more attempt to embarrass me in order to make way for him. It's death by a thousand paper cuts!"
L/G: "Yes, we represent your chief competitor, but in this case we're representing the families of Mohammed Hazouri, Amy Newton, and Sara Fellner. No paper cuts here."
The Offer: $100 grand and a scholarship endowment for the causes the dead kids were championing, as well as a joint statement that ChumHum will be more careful about who they sell to.
Caitlin, going rogue: "THAT'S WHY YOU BROUGHT US IN HERE?!"
Alicia hustles her -- still shrugging her shoulders at Viola like she's suddenly started chewing on her own clothing -- the hell out of there and gives her a (tinily obnoxious) talking to.
Alicia: "I know you think you're being helpful, but please do not speak."
Caitlin: "Uh, Will told me to. He said do that no matter what their counter was."
Will, inside: Eloquent WTF shrug, like way did she ruin his play.
MEANWHILE
Kalinda, across the hall from the conference room, waves at Alicia -- I think -- because she's got something going on with Skype that bears on the case. Really, it's just a segue to her scene, which involves a very -- for Kalinda, an absurdly -- friendly conversation with a sympathetic Syrian, Samir. They joke around and she tries to signal to him that she is fully aware of the stresses of Samir, and worries about his safety, but she's also willing to laugh at his whistling-in-the-dark jokes about, for e.g., Barbara Walters' hair.
As though he could somehow sense Kalinda indulging in her annual smile, Eli calls.
Eli, without prelude: "Did you talk to Stacie Hall?"
Kalinda: "It is not a good time."
Eli: "No, this episode takes place immediately after the last one, so I just found out that Amy Sedaris is running my ex-wife's Congressional campaign and I need to scream and scream..."
Kalinda: "-- I am talking to Syria, I don't have time for your bin Laden-fucking crazy wife talk right now. Click."
PARTY GIRL HQ
Vanessa: "Oh, hell. Why are you here at my door, screaming into your phone?"
Eli: "WHY!?"
Vanessa: "Why. What."
Eli: "Why did my lunatic demon ex hire my insane kobold girlfriend to run her State Senate campaign?"
Vanessa: "Why does my hysterical leprechaun ex-husband care?"
Eli: "It is a sex game! Or politics in some way! She's trying to upset me!"
Vanessa, and true that: "My mistake. I thought my campaign was about me, but of course it's about you. Actually, I went for her, not the other way around."
Eli: "So it IS about me! You went after my competitor. Who has already poached three of my clients anyway!"
Vanessa: "Listen carefully. You turned me down, so I went to another strategist of your caliber. Why are you like this?"
Eli: "BECAUSE THIS IS WHAT I AM LIKE!"
But because he's Eli, he can't just drop the mic on it -- he has to glance around her campaign HQ and make some quick suggestions. Like, her materials are eco-green, which is a bad call for anybody because that's not a real platform so it just makes you seem like a health food or skin care product, and her pictures make her look harsh, and she needs more golden light -- which the ex-Mrs. Gold says Stacie already ruled out, as a color -- and whatever. He can't help himself. It helps you remember why we want him on the show at all. He yells advice at her like he's calling her a bitch, and she just laughs him off and shoves him out the door. But it's Eli, there is no ignoring him once he's in your head.
SYRIA CLASS
Viola: "Your objective in this episode is twofold. One, you have to prove he knew he was selling to Syria, which is going to be hard anyway, and two, that he knew it was going to be used to capture and kill protestors."
Samir: "I have an invoice that proves the middleman you'll be looking for later."
Kalinda, with a thumbs-up to Will: "Thanks. I'll call you later."
Samir: "No, you won't. You'll send me an email with three question marks and I will call you."
Kalinda: "Right. I keep forgetting how you live in a constant state of probably dying."
Will: "That Kalinda thumb you didn't notice means you can go fuck yourselves. We have secret stuff."
Viola: "Okay, well that was our last offer. Peace."
Diane & Alicia: "That offer was way too low."
Caitlin: "Tell me more!"
Diane & Alicia: "They're daring us to take it to court. They have secret stuff too."
LIONEL APPEARS
Will: "Richard Gilmore, I thought ignoring your calls was a pretty good sign I didn't feel like talking to you."
Lionel: "Actually, Will, I am here to tell you something important. Thanks for ignoring me, I came in person."
The lights suddenly don't work in the office they hide in, and Will shrugs and smiles.
Will: "Things seem to be falling apart here! What's the emergency?"
Lionel: "Things are kind of falling apart, here. You know how I'm on the Bar's Attorney Compliance and Disciplinary Board? Well, even though I'm sworn to confidentiality, I thought I should tell you that an anonymous person tipped us off to the fact that you took $45K from a client's account..."
Will: "And put it back! And this was fifteen years ago!"
Lionel: "...There's no statute of limitations. We're doing to start looking at disbarring you tomorrow, FYI. Please don't tell anybody I came to see you and tell you this or I will never get to play golf with those guys again."
Will fugues out and throws whatever is nearby, then sits quietly as the oldies music plays for him outside.
JUDGE VAMPIRE KING OF MISSISSIPPI PRESIDING
Judge Abernathy starts the day with a breathless and mighty yawp on behalf of Occupy Wall Street, which -- as is usually the case -- contains almost no information about what is actually going on there beyond the vague winds of change stuff that has managed to blur the point of the movement almost entirely across the board. Which is ironic considering the actual point -- that when unregulated, corporations can't be expected to do anything but buy legislation and politicians that will increase their profits, which denigrates the entire system in the best case and costs human lives and liberties at worst -- is exactly what this episode is about.
But whatever, it's CBS. The fact that there's a show on TV with a female lead over forty, whenever it feels like airing it at least, is already probably asking for too much.
FIRST WITNESS: JIMMY FELLNER
Alicia offers to take the first witness, once a clearly shaken Will enters the courtroom, but he's the one who demanded that he rejoin the case, so he tries to lose the sillies and get down to business.
Jonathan Groff was an American student at Al-Baath University in Homs, studying Arabic along with his sister. At some point during the uprising, sister Sara got the shit kicked out of her, and wanted to post the footage online. Instead, they got caught and taken into custody as protesters: Seems they'd been discussing possibly joining the protest on their phones a week , and Jimmy could tell -- from the computer they were using to repeat the transcripts of those calls -- that it was the ChumHum product, CoursePoint, that they'd used to get that info.
Long story short, Jimmy was let go because his passport stamp for Israel was faint enough that they overlooked it, but Sara's was very easily visible, so they kept her. That was the last time he saw her alive.
Will: "You were demonstrating peacefully?"
Jimmy: "Yes."
Will: "Like Occupy Wall Streeters, for example?"
Objection: Cheap!
Abernathy: "Yeah, cheap, but by objecting you're saying that I'm susceptible to it, making you both dicks."
Caitlin notices Alicia noticing that she has Viola's business card in her stuff, and hides it.
On cross, Jimmy demonstrates that he can tell the difference between one ChumHum product and another, because the logo changes colors depending. Walsh objects, but it makes sense. And even with his recent (but more under control) puffiness, Jonathan Groff is still a very compelling person.
...Hey! You guys, you know what I just noticed? Everybody in this episode is gay! They managed to find three of the exactly five* gay men that there are in Hollywood, and guest them all in the same episode. Neat! #occupygoodwife
Producer: "Okay, you can be on the best show on TV, but you have to come out of the closet."
Aspiring Guest Star: "Aw, man."
Producer: "I got Bomer on speed dial, brother. Tick tock."
STATE'S ATTY
Deputy SA Cary Agos: "Okay, no big deal but we're going to be making some changes..."
Forgotten ASA Geneva Pine: "Would this have anything to do with Dana's failed attempt to replace me by getting gross with Wendy Scott-Carr?"
Deputy SA Cary Agos: "It's not about like just one thing."
Forgotten ASA Geneva Pine: "Because some of us didn't have anything to do with that storyline, and are still awesome."
Besmirched ASA Dana Lodge: "Fuck off, you."
GARDNER
Will: Broods.
Diane: "Well done in court today, yeah?"
Will: "Yes. But on the other hand I'm going to be disbarred. Probably Wendy's doing. Last crummy shot."
Diane: "Well, fuck this."
Will: "I mean, I did it. So..."
Diane: "Pursuing this is weird and hypocritical..."
Will: "As Occupy Wall Street is attempting to point out, the people in judgment are not worried about hypocrisy. You can't cheat the banker in Monopoly, and you can't speak truth to power when the power's writing the rules."
Diane: "Mercy of the board, maybe?"
Will: "Mostly I'm just fucking tired."
It's so sad. She hurts for him. Maybe she will Batman some motherfuckers.
GOLD & ASSOC
Eli nods to Diane on her way out, and doesn't even notice the tiny little Rumpelstiltskin sitting on the couch in his office until she starts screaming.
Stacie Hall: "WHY? Why are you undercutting me with your wife?"
Eli: "Ex-wife! And get the hell out of my office! And don't ever show up places unannounced!"
Stacie: "I just wanted to bring you your sock from last night!"
It looks like an elf sock, or maybe like somebody dropped a house on your sister. A Helena Bonham Carter kind of sock.
Stacie: "And what's wrong with green?"
Eli: "I'm not going to explain campaign strategy to you..."
Stacie: "...Then stop undercutting me with your wife!"
Eli: "Ex-wife! And do a better job so you won't get undercut!"
Stacie: "Yeah, well, all your clients I've been poaching seem to think I'm doing fine."
Eli: "Um, this conversation is over."
As is her wont, Stacie now says something so gross I can't even repeat it, but suffice to say it's about continuing their physical relationship and relates to bodily fluids and ugh, finally he's just barely able to get her out the door. So she immediately interrupts Kalinda -- watching a news report on the ongoing atrocities -- to ask about how Kalinda figured out "she" was sleeping with bin Laden to begin with. Kalinda hustles her away from the ten attorneys that heard her say that, because how embarrassing that everybody keeps saying that.
EDELSTEIN MTG
Alicia: "Right, we're meeting with Patrick Edelstein again. Because obviously this whole thing is once again about protecting his interests at the expense of actual living and dying people."
Will: "Oh my God, Alicia. Not today."
Will: "The class has rejected the offer, so we're going to trial. I'd say about 50/50 chance of success, at the moment."
Edelstein: "Right. I need you to settle."
Alicia, silently: "Oh, for Pete's sake."
Edelstein: "What we don't want is Congress looking into foreign sales of decryption software."
Alicia, silently: "This is literally just like that other episode. Fuck me for hoping."
Will: "You don't think it would be cool to have Congress investigate Neil Gross?"
Edelstein: "No, just like last time our interests are aligned on this thing. Neither of us wants a circus."
Will: "There's this new thing called business ethics I've been learning about, and it leads me to remind you that we don't actually represent you in this case -- it's about the families of the dead protesters."
Edelstein: "What if I throw a fit?"
Will: "Sorry, no."
Alicia: "Are we going to get in trouble with this? He's a huge client."
Will: "Alicia, so be it. I'm burning this motherfucker down. #occupyLG."
ACDB
Yes, Diane has decided to Batman the disbarment board on their own turf. In case you wondered where she was heading with that machete in her purse.
Diane: "Lionel, nice to see you. I'd like to beat you about the head and neck on behalf of my partner, Will Gardner."
Lionel: "Oh dear."
AL-KHOURY TESTIMONY
Kassim Al-Khoury is a software wholesaler out of Dubai who has a little bit of a businessman crush on Neil Gross. (Or so he claims, although we'll find out on cross exactly why this tickles Walsh and Gross so much when he says it.) They met a while back at the tech trade show in Dubai commonly known as the Wiretapper's Ball, and he made some purchases: The middleman invoice that Samir sent Kalinda.
Alicia: "So this is where a lot of Western tech companies sell their spy shit to totalitarian governments, correct?"
Kassim: "Among lots of other things that happen, probably yes. I'm moderately sleazy, I'm not gonna lie."
Abernathy, weeping: "My eyes! Sorry, I got pepper-sprayed at Occupy during the lunch recess. Carry on."
Everybody: Laughs at Occupy pussies some more.
Alicia: "So you bought CoursePoint from Gross at the Wiretapper's Ball, and then sold it to Syrians?"
Kassim: "Yeah. ChumHum couldn't do it directly because of the trade embargo, due to Syria being awful."
Alicia: "But they knew about all this, that you were the middleman."
Kassim: "Yeah, I sent them the invoices, so..."
Viola: "But you also bear Gross a grudge, in that you sued him for nonpayment..."
Kassim: "No, we disagreed about Euro-to-dollar conversions and I didn't get paid..."
Viola: "Because Gross's company refuse to pay you precisely because you were selling spy software to Middle Eastern regimes, right?"
Kassim: "No..."(Viola gets some exciting news.)
Viola: "...No further questions. Also, we want to bring Groff back."
Viola gets Jimmy to say, on the record, that he's suing because his sister is dead -- and in fact that's what the class is all about -- but then she produces pictures of Sara from three days ago. She's not dead! So therefore, the class action is moot? I guess so. I mean, I guess it calls into question both things she said the case was about, but there's still two dead kids and the fact that she's been a prisoner and beaten for who knows how long, right? "Because my sister is dead" and "because my sister got the hell kicked out of her and arrested thanks to you" isn't exactly apples and oranges. And of course, it's clearly rocked Groff's socks right off, so that's a major move in itself. Where is this going? And will Abernathy ever stop crying?
IL BAR
The Board: "Mr. Gardner, we're willing to hear calls for leniency, thanks to Batman."
Will: "Okay."
The Board: "We heard your firm is all about stepping up their pro bono efforts at the same time most firms are downsizing that stuff to save money, which impresses us. And apparently, according to Batman, this was all your idea?"
Will: "Um..."
The Board: "Because we are willing to end this right now with a six month suspension."
Will: "I'm not sure about..."
The Board: "No cases, no clients, no entering a courtroom except as a private citizen. Should you decline, we'll proceed to a disbarment hearing, which is irrevocable."
Will: "Uh, I will just shut up, okay?"
The Board: "Let us know tomorrow."
CLASS WARFARE
Groff wants to drop the suit, not because Sara's alive necessarily but because he doesn't want her endangered further. The other family members in the class try to talk sense to him, but he has flipped over to seeing it as it is, which -- at least for him -- is a play for damages and nothing more. It's a compelling point. Here's a better one: "If we walk away, this company goes about its business, and who's to say there's not another Amy or Sara in the future?"
Wrangling a class action seems like it always goes there, reminding people that it's not just about their personal stake -- both for good or ill -- but then, it makes sense that it would always go there. I'd imagine defending against a class action goes that way more often than not, right? Anyway, meantime they've got Kalinda trying to get more info on Sarah, and the class stays put because there's still two other families involved.
LOCKHART & GARDNER
Will: "So you Batmanned the Board, I take it. They offered six months suspension."
Diane: "Damn, that's all I got out of those bastards? I should have come at Rory's grandpa even harder."
Will: "They need a decision tomorrow."
Diane: "Fight it, Will. Six months away from the law will kill you."
...Huh. Not what I expected her to say. I guess she thinks he can beat it because it's such a bullshit investigation, and they were willing to come down so fast, but six months just doesn't seem like that long to me. Is she telling us something about Will, there? Like he might slip into a vice or something? He's got the rage stuff going, and we know he's got addictive tendencies, but "six months time off will kill you" seems pretty character-defining. Right? Is there some other implication I'm not catching?
AKA GAY GIRL IN DAMASCUS
The protest website where they found the pictures of Sara is called PINK DAMASCUS, so you already know exactly how this is going to go: A straight guy pretending to be a lesbian for some reason, I guess chronicling the protests by assuming the most different persona possible. Kalinda heads off to investigate, and Alicia keeps Caitlin back so she can be subtly nasty some more.
Alicia: "Caitlin, Viola approached you?"
Caitlin: "Yeah, and I obviously turned her down..."
Alicia: "Just so you know, they are doing this all the time. And you need to understand that it's a distraction technique, because they would never respect you or trust you if they poached you. You get me? This means nothing. You mean nothing."
Caitlin: "You're being really aggressive. Am I doing a good job?"
Alicia: "Oh yeah. You're doing fucking great."
Caitlin: "I don't understand your tone, but whatever. Guess it's on."
It's fairly awesome. Diane's applied that kind of pressure before, when Alicia was in danger of not thinking realistically, but for some reason it skews a whole other way when Alicia does it. And frankly, it never occurred to me, that whole "they'll never trust you anyway" thing, so props to Alicia... but it does cast a different light on all the times -- Walsh, Canning -- that Alicia's trumpeted her own loyalty in the face of their demonic offers. Every time Canning started to woo her, it felt like maybe one day she'd jump that way if L/G got weird enough, but now it seems she's never even considered it -- not because it would be wrong, but because it wouldn't be prudent.
Maybe it's just something she's figured out along the way, but overall this flinty Alicia -- still a woman who chooses her words more carefully than anyone on the planet -- has the potential to be intimidating as hell. Again, Alicia v. Caitlin seems like one of the diciest propositions, even for this very risk-taking show, just because of the age thing and the subtle boyfriend vibes they keep sending... but I can't help thinking that, done right, it could do a lot for Alicia's character that has nothing to do with man/woman stuff at all. And, this being a show that excels in talking about people as people -- even when gender's in the room giving you the hairy eyeball, which is always is and always will be -- I must say it's pretty thrilling to consider.
GOLD & ASSOC
Stacie and Vanessa team up to yell at Eli for yelling at them about the bin Laden thing. His take is that since Kalinda found it out, eventually somebody else will find it out, so -- shocker! -- his strategy is to get in front of it and come clean about it. Yes, you heard it here first: Eli says disclosure ahead of the news cycle is the best way to spin. Of course, in three seasons it's been his only strategy, but the shit that he gets into just keeps getting more and more insane, to the point that even that one strategy over and over still seems fairly ballsy. And his backup reasoning -- to spin it as open-mindedness, to preempt any attention to it whatsoever as racism, to never forget our President's middle name -- is actually, oddly, pretty sound. So I guess everybody wins, this round: They giggle, charmed; we get to look at both Parker Posey and Amy Sedaris...
And then of course Stacie fucks it all up, because she can't help herself, and within seconds Vanessa has figured out they have slept or are still sleeping together.
Vanessa: "So who are you obsessed with? Her or me?"
Eli: "No one! I'm just helping! I don't like her hurting you!"
Vanessa: "Barf. Look, either stop 'caring,' or man up and get on board."
Which, seriously. A whole episode just to get there. I mean, that's how it had to go, and it didn't cut into the Syria stuff too much, but in another way it's like, Diane and Will are still the only relationship worth a damn now that Alicia's broken up with all her people, and that could be going quiet for six months, and then at the SA who knows how bad that's going to get, so in response we get the weirdest threesome of all time. Hope you like the idea of strange sexy goblins cavorting with Our Lady of the Nineties!
Could be worse, though. Could be Sevigny. At least I'm still in love with Parker Posey. Or hell, maybe they'll toss Elsbeth in there and just actually have some bizarre woodland glen Witch's Sabbat. Grace can find a whole new way to be annoying and Alicia can just roll her eyes all the way around.
DEPUTY STATE'S ATTY
Dana: "Exactly how bad is this going to get?"
Cary: "Real bad. I need you to take a step back from court, and do some child support enforcement. It's degrading, see, because women and children are useless."
Dana: "You need? Or Peter needs. Because you were right there with me on the bribery thing."
Cary: "The office of the State's Attorney needs."
Dana: "Oh, fuck you. You knew I was following Wendy's orders, and now I'm taking the public hit."
Cary: "Dana, I mean..."
Dana: "Did you think I was going to be cool with this? Sorry, have we met?"
Cary: "I promise it won't be for long."
Dana: "I am going to do something very bad, probably. Later."
PINK DAMASCUS
Samir's no help finding Pink Damascus or Sara, although maybe if Kalinda can zero in on a neighborhood he can help get closer, and then they can figure out what's going with Sara so Jimmy (will stop screwing with the class action) can be reunited with his sister. Samir drops out just long enough to scare the shit out of her -- there's screaming outside -- and then vanishes for good. Kalinda and Caitlin call up Edelstein, : Turns out Pink Damascus publishes under a Sleuth account, so he could help them track her down if he wanted. And since this whole thing about perception, Kalinda's actually able to spin it as him prioritizing company policy over the life of a 23-year-old girl...
Cut to Kalinda making contact with Pink Damascus, a thirty-year-old guy in Kansas. (Kalinda supplies this last detail from the stuff in his house, and his total nervousness the second she brings it up.) It's easy enough to flip him, between that and the felony fraud charges she threatens him with. Whence? Who knows. She works for a law firm, and that's scary enough. Soon, she's got an IP address on the origin of the Sara photo, and she's taking that back to Samir. Everything's coming up Sharma! I hope something terrible doesn't happen to Samir, don't you?
ETHICS IN MOTION
Alicia drops by to prep for Gross's testimony, but Will's distracted and she can't figure out what's going on until he invites her in for a closed-door meeting. He explains the current Board situation quickly, and she's aghast.
Alicia: "Oh my God."
Will: "You know what, I am so beaten by this Wendy thing that I can't even muster horror at this point."
Alicia: "Well, fight it. You don't deserve that. Don't take the suspension, it's not fair."
Will: "It is totally fair, on the merits. I did a terrible thing, and these are the consequences."
Alicia: "Yeah, but it was fifteen years ago, and..."
Will: "Nope. Don't be the me. I'm trying too hard to be the you. Look. I did bad. This is an out. And on top of that, it's only an out because Diane lied and said I supported our Legal Aid and pro bono stuff..."
Alicia: "Which of course you do..."
Will: "No, girl. I fought that hard. Diane had to invoke a Partner Pinky Swear is how hard I fought that."
Will: "No, I did wrong and this is how I will atone. You just helped me decide."
Alicia: "Just like that?"
Will: "Just like that. Thanks."
Alicia: "Six months? Hell. I can't imagine that."
Will: "You gave it up for a decade."
She smiles, blushes; it is beautiful. A lovely little moment. She has changed, so much.
Diane, springing into action: "Okay, then we'll close out the Neil Gross case, I'll reassign your other cases to the partners, you can run it all down for me at the end of today, you can't come back into the office unless it's a business issue or you're handing off cases, I'll file the name change with the Bar right now, we'll call it Lockhart & Associates, where are your keys, here is a box for your shit, kiss on the cheek, see you in six."
Will: "You are a whirlwind of efficiency today."
Diane: "Look, you'll be back. There will be a place for you when you come back. I don't really want to linger over this because it is horrible, but I get where you're coming from and I'm just trying to be cool and not make it weirder."
Will: "It is working! You are awesome."
GROSS TESTIMONY
There's a lot of back-and-forth, of course, because he's the star witness. We revisit the Chinese thing with ChumHum, and show a pattern of lenience with torture regimes, and Viola manages to push the Occupy bruise again with Abernathy, and then the fatality: CoursePoint pings Gross's servers when it's used, meaning that no matter who made the purchase, ChumHum would have known every single time that the Syrian government was using their shit...
Which wouldn't matter, except L/G can show that Sara's being held -- thanks to Pink Damascus -- in the same place they're using the software. Walsh objects because it has nothing to do with anything, but Groff -- and Alicia -- are pretty moved. Especially considering that none of this -- none of it -- was discussed with Alicia or Caitlin beforehand. Or has to do with the merits of the case. It was a sudden shift in movement, a truth-to-power temper tantrum that does more for Will than a million basketball games. A Hail Mary.
FULL OF GRACE
Diane: "So you really came at him, huh? Neil Gross, the most powerful techie on the planet."
Will: "Yeah, fuck that guy! #occupychumhum!"
Diane: "This is that rage thing. I mean, it went well, but when you argue from passion it makes you look crazy."
Will: "You think I've forgotten about the case? Like I'm suddenly hell-bent on finding Sara?"
Diane: "Sweetie, it's your last five minutes at work. We both know exactly what you were doing."
We all do. And it's pretty great.
NEW POSITIONS
As Eli agrees to work -- under Stacie -- on Vanessa's campaign, Lockhart and Gardner pull Alicia in for some handoffs. First on the docket? Why, a complicated file involving Kalinda Sharma, of course.
To wit: "It's primarily a tax case. Kalinda has a variety of complications. Some business, some personal, several of which began before she joined the firm."
Alicia: "Uh, no. Get a tax lawyer. Get anybody. Anybody at all. Give her to Caitlin."
Will: "It's past what a tax lawyer can do, which is why I was handling it, and it's why we want you to take over."
Diane: "You and Kalinda should talk as soon as possible."
Uh, fuck yeah Alicia and Kalinda should talk as soon as possible. If by soon you mean so soon that it time-travels backwards to about a million episodes ago. If by soon you mean I might not have time to finish the portrait of the two of them talking to each other that I began cross-stitching at the beginning of the season. If by ASAP you mean before this show's title was officially changed to Alicia & Kalinda Should Really Talk As Soon As Possible.
I mean, I've admired the risk the show was taking since it started, and it's given us so many opportunities for Alicia to change and darken and harden and grow up, in such dramatic ways that everybody -- Will, the kids, Peter, even Cary -- are noticing, and I've even enjoyed the exquisite Will They/Won't They of waiting for it, but hmm, I think, yeah, I mean I guess it would be okay if they maybe had a conversation that lasted more than a second. I guess I would be okay with that.
LIVE FROM DAMASCUS
Samir was able to track Sara to an abandoned school in the Al-Sinaa district that's been turned into a prison camp, to make it harder to find people. Kalinda immediately engineers a bribe from L/G petty cash but Samir cuts out -- again, in a way that stops her heart -- as he's telling her which bank to send the money. Which is all fine and good for Sara, but what about the case? Well, in this moment -- and delighted to share it, in recompense for overstepping on the Sara side -- Will looks at the crashing Skype analogue and the frustration of losing Samir again, and figures out how they're going to win.
The ridiculously cute Dinesh Rekhi -- "Roger" to his customers -- works on the ChumHum help desk, assisting various users civilian and military with their use of creepy old CoursePoint. How many calls has he gotten since the Syrian uprising began in March 2011? Hundreds. And were any of those clients located in Syria? Yes, and were any of them possibly from the Syrian Ministry of the Interior? Maybe, who knows. We do, because when you call in, you have to say your license number.
Conclusion: Syria couldn't be arresting and torturing protesters without ChumHum helping them run their software. Done. Boom. Time to settle.
And not only that, but they've gotten Sara out of the school-prison, and smuggled her out to Germany, and would Jimmy like to talk to her? Yes, he would. Very much. Jimmy Fellner had a sister, a partner in crime, and when she died, he was all alone. Just drifting, on his own. And when she came back to life, so did he: Because he wasn't alone anymore. He wasn't abandoned.
All such good news. So clearly Samir is dead. Kalinda takes it pretty hard, as she apologizes to the survivors, and promises never to call there again, then switches over to the news. Talkalakh's in lockdown, with at least four dead already. Kalinda Sharma had a friend. A partner in crime. He didn't survive. It's not over; it's just over for tonight.
Diane watches Will turn out the lights for the last time -- things are falling apart here -- and, baseball bat over his shoulder, put back every file and book. Diane Lockhart had a brother; a partner in crime. It isn't over yet.
Alicia meets him at the elevator, smiling. Today he was her, and she was him. And tomorrow, his business will be hers. She'll stretch herself into the future, and find a way through pain into forgiveness. The atrocities will be far, far from her door for once. For a little while. Today was a win, even if isn't over.
"Follow Diane's lead, Alicia. You'll do fine." He says it like she's not the only thing Alicia's got left. Like she's not hearing that Whitesnake song again, playing over and over in her head, even as they say goodbye. Once she had a sister, and a husband, and a position in her firm. Once, Alicia Florrick had a friend.
And what will he do? Where will he go? It's not her business anymore. Not really.
And what will she do? Who will she be?
It's never really over.
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.
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