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Lockhart & Associates is brought into a wrongful death suit that eventually becomes a full-frontal fight against the very concept of hockey once it's revealed that that the plaintiff -- who accidentally snow-ski'd his wife to death -- had his head knocked in a million times beforehand. The case is not exactly fascinating, (although the judge's insane wig is kind of fascinating) but it does cause two surprising ripples:
Number one, Louis "Michael J." Canning shows up working for the hockey league -- and, just like Nancy Crozier two weeks ago, he never really plays his quirky card because he's become symbolic over time for a Deeper Thing About Alicia -- and Tammy shows up to cover the story for her sports journalism thing she does... that I guess is real.
In the wake of the Caitlin Thing, Alicia has no way of knowing how hard Diane went to bat for her raise, or how shitty the ongoing Will mutiny among David Lee, Julius and Eli ended up making it -- so she feels burned on two fronts, because the raise is fractional comparatively. So when Canning plays his usual Pied Piper flute (and brilliantly deflects all of her usual objections about being a turncoat), there's not a lot reason for her to stay loyal.
Also a problem for Lockhart & Associates: Some a-hole has told the Bar Disciplinary Board about how bad Will is at "not discussing the law" while he hangs out, totally discussing the law, all the time, in every scene of this show -- meaning there's a traitor in our midst, duh. Not that Diane cares, because she's all caught up in a love triangle of her own, between that Australian Freddy Krueger motherfucker who is back, and that sexy gun nut Tea Party birther from even further back. She doesn't want to hear about your mess, thank you very much... Which sucks for everybody, because the equity partners at her law firm are a bunch of fucking man-babies with no manners that are still fighting over Will's office, right in front of him.
As part of the proceedings, Alicia pays little Cary Agos a visit, which mystifies him that she even wants to see him even though he is looking particularly beautiful this week, but ultimately the point of that little meeting is to tell us, the viewer, that he's been demoted from the Deputy SA's position -- "self-inflicted wound," he says, never explaining how literal that is -- in pursuit of the higher ideals that Peter will eventually be beating out of him.
In the end, not a shitload goes down. Tammy sniffs out Alicia's involvement in her story and comes to yell at her about sleeping with Will -- always with everything in airquotes, like her whole life is this ironic story she's telling people, which I'm not convinced is why people hate her so damn much -- and then Alicia has to continue mooning over the Highland Park house and her life what once was, while poor Kalinda is doing the same thing... When Alicia tells her to slow down and stop wooing her all the time, Kalinda has to admit she's been stepping her shit up recently, and promises to calm down. It's sad, but also the quintessential, near-silent, all-subtext Alicia/Kalinda scene:
"I JUST LOVE YOU SO MUCH!"
"Girl, I know, but you have to calm down. I am not done torturing you yet."
"I KNOW, SORRY."
"It's okay. I know I'm a lot. Let's get back to doing our jobs."
EQUITY PARTNER MTG
Eli & David Lee: "Whine, bitch, moan! We want Will's office and his job and to be in the name of the firm!"
Will: "I am totally sitting right here."
Equity Partners: "We can't hear you! We are blinded by being crazy people!"
Diane: "Look. As the Wendy in this creepy little Lost Boys scenario, it's my job to call you jerks out. And what I'm here to yell at you about this time is, somebody went to the Bar and told them Will has been working on cases. Partially because I hate messes, but mostly because I know you dinks won't tell the truth, I'm not even going to ask who squealed. I'm just going to appeal to the total lie we're all telling that he's not doing that."
Will: "My morality is bendy enough and the scenes with Lionel have been torturous enough that I don't even think it's a lie."
David Lee: "Call me corrupt, but..."
Everybody: "You're corrupt!"
Diane: "The point is, I know you are a bunch of backstabbing vipers, and I am totally cool with that..."
Everybody: "Yay!"
Diane: "...But if you're going to stab each other's asses in the back, I need to be a part of it. Keep your hands where I can see 'em."
Everybody: "...Okay, fine."
Diane: "And if you bitches call a meeting about overruling me, I will take each and every one of you out starting with your nuts. order of business. Alicia Florrick wants a raise. I want to give her a ten percent bump..."
Everybody: "We are riled up!"
Will: "I agree with Diane."
Everybody: "And we all know why!"
Diane: "Don't be gross."
David Lee: "Isn't this just because of Peter? And the way she keeps dark demonic forces like Colin and Eli in check?"
Diane: "Mostly the former, but also... Have you ever seen this show? She wins every case. Even this season, with Kalinda as a non-factor, even with Will pretending not to advise her, even when she was waging a one-woman war against Caitlin for no reason, and her naive sense of ethics going down the tubes with every episode, she still won every case. Ergo, she is a good lawyer."
Will: "Damn. They are a bunch of lousy sons of bitches. What are you doing today?"
Diane: "Besides playing them off each other to keep you safe? I have to go to court."
Will: "But you don't have a case today..."
IT'S FOR THAT AUSTRALIAN PROCESS SERVER GUY
Dude: "Diane, please tell the court what happened the day you saw me put the hammer down on that somewhat cute guy in the lobby of your building. Leave out the spontaneous orgasm that threatened to knock you senseless."
Diane: "[Does the former; nearly does not do the latter.]"
Subpeonaed Guy: "You guys know each other!"
Diane: "Just barely."
Dude, verbatim: "Thank you, Ms. Lockhart. Your presence here in small-claims court is a breath of fresh air."
Opposing Counsel: "Objection!"
Judge: "Overruled. She is a delight."
DUVERNEY V SNOW PLAIN
Presiding: This crazy judge lady whose deal is misplacing her glasses and wearing a fucked up wig that nobody ever notices. The case is, this guy steered his snowmobile into a tree, killing his lady. It's very sad -- and even sadder because the wife was taping the whole thing with her camera phone. He's suing the company, Snow Plain, even though he doesn't believe in our litigious society usually.
Judge: "Both of you get up here. We saw in the video that he was trying to snowmobile for the purposes of fun, not for steering the thing into a tree. We're cutting straight to bench-supervised negotiation in chambers, because clearly the defense is going for a delay until the poor guy gives up. Which is gross. So you will marshal your settlement arguments and meet me in an hour."
DIANE
Dude: "You want to go to an art show or something?"
Diane: "You don't really like art that much?"
Dude: "No, remember how I was only there to subpeona you?"
DUVERNEY V SNOW PLAIN
Duverney: "Are you going to buy your old house if you get that raise?"
Alicia: "On the one hand, it would solve some probs. On the other hand, it's weird to go backwards."
Duverney: "I'd do anything to go backwards. You know, like on a snowmobile. Away from a tree."
God, I love the actor playing the opposing counsel. I almost watched Breaking Bad for him is how much I love David Costabile. I wish he was on every show every day.
Opposing: "Lockhart & Assoc. has a class action in the wings and this suit is just setting that up."
L/G: "Nope. Just this five mil."
Opposing: "Anyway, here's the first twist. Grant Duverney was a pro hockey player before his wife died, and we have evidence that his brain has been scrambled by that. So we're going for modified comparative negligence. If he contributed more than half of the factors in the accident, he can't sue us."
L/G & Judge: "That is the grossest thing I've ever heard."
Opposing: "We are lawyers."
Duverney's condition -- chronic traumatic encephalopathy, aka "hockey brain" -- needs to be evaluated by L/G's neurologist first. Seems he played 86 pro games, and the last one may have knocked his shit loose. Never played again, motor functions impaired.
Nobody: "Plus there's the fact that he played hockey in the first place. Very damning."
LOCKHART & ASSOC
Will: "Um, one thing that I forgot to write down in my notes is, just in case they bring up his hockey brain, we should..."
Alicia: "Are you sure you can tell me this?"
Will: "... Maybe I'm not even talking to you, maybe I'm just talking to myself. Anyway, you could bring hockey into it. The actual league. If professional hockey is responsible for his injuries, then he can collect regardless of that 50% they're claiming he's responsible for."
Alicia: "Seems like a rather baroque set of events that would lead to this strategy you say you already had ready to go."
Will: "That's what being a lawyer is like. Exploring every option. Then getting into a time machine and telling it to your younger self before he was disbarred, so that he can forget to write it down."
Alicia: "Okay, this is what we're doing. It doesn't matter if hockey pays up -- which they won't, because that means a million other suits come down from every other dumb hockey player -- because they have the money to bury it. Then we'll have three months to figure out the thing."
Diane: "We voted on your raise, and I can't tell you how much I was asking for because of our mentoring relationship. The downside is that there are eleven other third-years that we're not giving raises, so here's a much smaller bump in pay."
Alicia: "Thank God I'm Alicia Florrick, or my obvious disappointment would be even more thundering."
Will: "I'm not saying to spy, but if you happen to hear anything about who came after me..."
Kalinda: "Want to drink at work?"
Will: "Desperately, but I cannot. Go find a friend."
Kalinda: "Hey, Alicia! Want a beer?"
Alicia: "Are you kidding me? Did you not... Have you steered your snowmobile into something recently? Played any hockey?"
Kalinda: "No, I've just tried every other way to get you back, including saving your daughter from Jesus, and playing into you Caitlin paranoia, and nothing's worked. So I thought a full-on assault might confuse you, and then if I just pretend we're friends and nothing ever happened, maybe that would make it easier on you to forgive me without all the weirdness and self-doubt."
Alicia: "It's not going to work. I like you again, and we can work together, but that's it. Is that okay?"
Kalinda: "How weird would it be if I just snapped and suddenly hated you right now? And then you could spend the rest of the season chasing me for once?"
Alicia: "That would probably work, come to think of it. But you'd never do that."
Kalinda: "No. I guess I'll wander off somewhere else -- double-fisting beers while dressed like cyberpunk assassin Aeon Flux -- in this prestigious law firm where we both work."
DUVERNEY V SNOW PLAIN V APHL
Louis Canning: "Your Honor, sorry I have a disease. I'm here for the All Professional Hockey League. In a stunning turn of events signaling future twists and turns, the APHL is excited to be a part of this case that exposes them as a purveyor of penny-dreadful violence among the mulleted underclass."
There's a video of the last fight, the one that got Duverney all messed up. Will's got a buddy at Northwestern who specializes in hockey brain, of course, so he's going to testify how the team doctors mishandled him back in the day. When I think of a hockey doctor, I think of, like, a jug with XXX on it and a stethoscope made out of twigs and hair and things constantly getting popped back into place without benefit of anesthetic drugs except maybe like ether or a donkey punch. Basically Hart Of Dixie.
FLORRICK
Alicia: "Well, they fucked me on my raise, so I'm not going to buy that house. Also, because you are the grossest real estate agent on TV. You make that bitch on American Horror Story look like Mother Goose and it's exhausting dealing with you."
Marina: "I am not done yet! You will rue the day you ever thought of me as a professional."
AHH! TAMMY!
Tammy: "Will, I'm here to interview you about the hockey thing, because I'm a sports journalist or something."
Will: "Well, I can't talk about a lot of stuff because of my six-month hiatus from the practice of law."
Tammy: "Never let it be said that my spontaneous charming personality doesn't hide a passive-aggressive judgmental streak and the kind of hypocritical selfishness that makes me whine whenever you do the things I say are your prerogative. For I am Tammy!"
Will: "You need to talk to Julius Cain and another lawyer at this firm, since I have to keep pretending I'm not involved in this case."
Tammy: "Is the other lawyer Alicia Florrick? And did you sleep together after I dumped you and went to London? And am I going to make an unholy, unfair stink about this? The answers to all these questions are yes. I'm Tammy!"
NON-DEPUTY ASST STATE'S ATTY
Cary: "The guy who broke Duverney and ended his career, Cameron Raker, ended up suspended for the season -- but the Once & Future State's Attorney at the time, Peter Florrick, didn't care to pursue the matter further. Originally we were looking into it as a premeditated hit. That the whole thing was the team coming after Duverney at any cost, because hockey players are the total grossest."
Alicia: "How did Kalinda get you to let her see the investigations on this stuff? Did she bend over your desk, or like lean back against the door, or do a side bend and slowly straighten up like yoga, or what?"
Cary: "Alicia, I probably like you more than anybody else on this entire show does at this point. Please just ask me for things. And also, how come you're here and not her?"
Alicia: "Cary, I probably like you more than I do anybody else on this entire show at this point. I asked to come because I wanted to see you. I heard things were weird."
Cary: "Yeah, I got demoted from Deputy SA. Self-inflicted wound."
Alicia: "Characteristically, I won't even inquire further, because that sounds like a painful subject. But I will ask if you are safe."
Cary: "I am not. And thank you."
Alicia: "Hey, let's cheer you up. Want to have a competition to see who is prettier?"
Cary: "It's a motherfucking walk-off!"
They both win. Everybody wins, really. It was kind of a tie to start with.
RAKER TESTIMONY
Alicia: "So you're the team's enforcer?"
Canning: "That's not a hockey position, she's just trying to bias you."
Judge: "How so?"
Alicia: "Well, an enforcer is someone on a hockey team who responds to supposedly dirty plays from the opposing team by attacking aggressively..."
Canning: "Uh, objection to that."
Alicia: "Do you want me to explain the bias or not?"
Everybody: "Good one."
Judge: "Move on. Trust me when I say I get it."
Alicia: "Did your coach ever tell you to knock people's brains in?"
Raker: "He asked me to check offenders who crossed the line."
Alicia: "Like, 'take them out'? Yes, I know the lingo."
Raker: "Legally. Checking them legally."
Another video is introduced, where Duverney took out Raker's teammate Christian Lund in a kind of brutal way, followed by a postgame interview in which a hockey jihad is aggressively and openly put on Duverney's head, as a bounty.
Raker: "I don't recall that."
Alicia: "Really? Because you're standing right there, visible, when they're saying this."
Raker: "I don't remember. I'm just a hockey player."
Alicia: "Okay but he actually said, 'We are coming after you in February,' and the game you had with that team was in February, and then you gave Mr. Duverney permanent brain damage."
Raker: "I am a hockey player. I subsist on raw meat and live in a cage. Do you really think I follow your human calendars?"
Will's neuro buddy at Northwestern suddenly won't talk to them, or even pick up the phone, and runs away from Kalinda, and everything. he's been paid off. Now, if Canning did that, it's fraud, so even as Kalinda is talking to Will -- who continues doing the pee-pee dance of "I'm not saying what I'm saying" -- she's following the doctor to check it out. "Not," Will hastens to say on the phone, "At my urging."
FLORRICK & CANNING
Alicia: "Did you really buy off my neurologist?"
Canning: "You're not happy at Lockhart, are you? Because I'm looking at this, and you're second chair to Julius even though you're doing all the work."
Alicia: "He's an equity partner."
Canning: "Why aren't you?"
Alicia: "Look. I wasn't fucking around when I told Caitlin not to get poached. We treat the lawyers we steal like crap. They never measure up, their loyalty is always in question, and every time Diane sells off stock to buy magic liberal beans, they're the first out the door."
Canning: "That's because Lockhart treats everybody like family, like loyalty is this absolute good even though they're always backstabbing each other."
Alicia: "I am all about absolute goods, first of all, and secondly I'm kind of defined by loyalty. So that's not really a diss."
Canning: "At home that's all fine, but at work it's talent and professionalism that matter. That's why I don't hold a grudge. You come and work for me, you'll be judged on the value of your work and only your work."
Alicia: "Whoa, that's like word for word what I said to Caitlin. And yet still, you can fuck off."
TEAM DOC TESTIMONY
Dr. Rubich: "Apart from being a pro hockey player, which is already questionable, I didn't see too much wrong about his concussion after that game. I gave him a fifteen-minute exam..."
Alicia: "And three days later he was in the hospital and never played again. And you didn't say anything in his file about his head injury?"
Rubich: "Um, it's hockey."
Apparently one thing they do, to make it easier to figure out if somebody's concussed or really damaged, is take a baseline exam before you hit the ice so they have a simple control to test you when it's time-sensitive. You can already see where this is heading, if you know anything about pro sports you know that these things were designed to be cheated, but Alicia's building the case.
TV'S FRANK MICHAEL THOMAS/THE TRIUMPHANT RETURN OF KURT MCVEIGH
This character always makes my head hurt because it's a real-life politician who is also an actor who, on the show, is a lawyer who is also an actor, and I think both real and not real FMT has been on the same shows, and it's just this whole meta thing, but he's a funny old bird so that's as far as I wish to think about it. Kalinda follows the neurologist who froze us out to meet with, she thinks, Canning, but it ends up being this third recurring lawyer. She immediately calls Diane, who is too busy having a thousand boyfriends to deal with it, and is told to just call Alicia and Will about it, and do her usual Kalinda stuff. Like, hilariously verbatim, Diane just goes, "Um, just take some pictures and... Uh, yeah, just do what you normally do."
Meanwhile, Jack the Australian is forty minutes late when he calls to break their date again, so Diane does the obvious thing and immediately calls Kurt McVeigh instead. She gets voicemail, but this is Diane Lockhart we're talking about: She's not dickin' around with voicemail. Not tonight.
She drives the forty miles out to Kurt's house, and there's a hot young thing there too -- all these men with their little girl ladies! -- and Diane, for once, seems a bit speechless. But of course, it's not as it seems, so Kurt and the young thing invite her in for what promises to be an awkward little teatime.
Since Will isn't practicing law right now, he immediately runs to Mr. Thomas to practice some law. A briefly weird conversation later, we have our big twist: FMT is involving himself in this case and stealing neurologists not for Louis Canning, but because he's cooking up his own class action: Seven players with head injuries, altogether illustrating a pattern of the League's blithe mishandling of that stuff going back years. Will asks him to come along and turn this into one giant clusterfuck, but he can't do that because the reason Canning was so eager to involve himself in the Duvurney case is because it'll help him fight off the eventual class.
MCVEIGH
The young lady, when we rejoin this little threesome, turns out to be a barnburner of a conservative, caught mid-res in hammering out some silly-ass Fox News thing about Obamacare and socialist fascism. We discuss the 1% briefly, sidestep Citizen's United as usual, and then turn to whether or not the Supreme Court is a puppet of liberals or conservatives, whether or not Diane is a Highland Park champagne liberal, etc. It's succinct, is what it is.
Once the little lady runs out of steam, Diane confirms that she's Kurt's wingnut protégée, and he reiterates that he's more interested in arguing with Diane than having some teabagger parrot his insane views back to him. So, charming as ever, when he changes course to how come it's taken Diane a whole year to turn up at his door, breathless and horny, she finds herself choosing her words almost as carefully as Alicia Florrick might. Then: kissin'!
GRACE, AS USUAL, IS
The unwilling patsy for a bunch of bullshit. Seems Marina the horrible real estate agent has done an end-run around Alicia, coming after the kids once again, this time with a ten-percent discount on the old Highland Park house. Once again Alicia tries to explain to her daughter that she is a gullible idiot, and once again Grace -- like the gullible idiot she is -- explains in all seriousness that Marina was acting without a real agenda. Alicia gets that Grace headache she gets, but of course Grace is also her Achilles Heel because she's such a sweet and funny daughter, so the financial pressure mounts. Don't do it, Alicia! I know you love her, we all secretly love her, but you cannot allow Grace to make your decisions for you! That is the worst plan!
DUVERNEY TESTIMONY
Alicia: "So basically, they came after you because you checked Christian Lund in the game. You're much smaller than him, but he pissed you off and you took him down."
Duverney: "Don't give hockey players that much credit. I didn't do it out of honor, I did it because we are rabid beasts and I knew they'd come after one of our better players . That's what any of us would do."
Canning: "Look, we all know I have a disease called tardive dyskinesia..."
Everybody: "Yes, it's very sad. Or not sad. Burdens. Or not a burden, just like... It's intense that you have that going on."
Canning: "But one thing I've never done is cheat a medical exam for the purposes of continuing to practice my profession while injured. You, like all hockey players, cheated on your baseline test to make it look like your capacities were already somewhat diminished, for future use in proving that your diminished capabilities after injury weren't so terrible. Yes?"
Duverney: "...Yes."
Canning: "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard."
Duverney: "Me too, but we're talking about hockey. Everybody does it. We are all brain-damaged sons of bitches."
OUTSIDE
Will: "Kalinda, I have a plan that Jacob will never understand what is going on with it so he's not going to try. Can you upload a video or something? Not in connection with any law case, except obviously it is."
Canning: "Alicia, can you give me a ride? My disease!"
Alicia: "Well, I made the mistake of talking to my awful daughter, so now I want lots of money to buy her things she shouldn't even want."
Canning: "I can offer you telecommuting, down payment on that bad idea house, a raise, money for private school and college..."
Alicia: "I want all of those things, but I can't leave Lockhart & Assoc. Why are we even talking about this? What am I, some kind of chewing fucking rat in a rat stew?"
Canning, verbatim: "Alicia, this is how America works."
RINKFIGHTS!
Is a website that's basically like a betting pool about the fights themselves. A bloodsport-within-a-sport, where it's not the hockey score that counts but the fighting that happens inside the hockey game. It's kind of brilliant, actually. Even more brilliant -- I presume, since as I said I only half-understand what's ever going on at this point in a given episode -- is "Alicia's" plan to upload a recent fight to a YouTubey-ish website, about which the League is much more vigilant. Within two hours of Kalinda uploading the video -- ah, got it -- they'd sent a C&D letter... Something that the League hasn't done to Rinkfights in the eight years it's been running.
Alicia: "Is that because you encourage fans enthusiasm for fights?"
League: "No way! How insulting to the gentle art of hockey!"
Alicia: "Then how come you've never gone after them?"
League: "Well, for sure I will now. Thanks for the heads up?"
Alicia, verbatim: "And thank you! For that damaging testimony!"
Heh. Objection sustained, of course. The Judge kind of loves it. After court, FMT grabs Julius, Will and Alicia -- and suddenly offers to help them out.
TAMMY V ALICIA
Tammy: "The truth. Are you in bed with him."
Alicia: "So it's like that, huh. Okay, Tammy, I'll answer your fake question. We are not in bed with FMT."
Tammy: "You don't think you're going to damage the glory of ice hockey? AKA the Sport of Kings? I am putting up a false morality front to make a good story! I'm Tammy!"
Alicia: "Whatever. Gross people have been being mean to each other since before Winter's Bone even came out in theaters. I'm not going to change that."
Tammy: "Some thing the violence is a safety valve, and without it, they would be even more violent. I am unendingly critical and have an answer for everything. I'm Tammy!"
Alicia: "That's exactly the stupid kind of thing a sports journalist would say. There's none of this violence in college hockey, or the Olympics, or the championships. It's all a big stupid fake bloodbath with real consequences, like The Wrestler but colder."
Tammy: "I see what you're saying. Hey, how long have you been fucking my boyfriend?"
Alicia: "Oh my God."
Tammy: "You know we were just on a break when I left him to go to London and have been a non-factor on this show since around the last time McVeigh appeared. Why wouldn't I take your legitimate affair with him, that has nothing to do with me, as personally and nastily as possible? I'm Tammy!"
Alicia: "It was nice talking to you. You should ask Julius about the case, and Will about your love life. To me, you should not talk any more."
IN BED
FMT: "Basically, I didn't expect you to rock this bad in court, or come up with this awesome idea about the entire sport of pro hockey as a loss leader for Selling the Violence. We will knock that little spaz over, and then I'll have more fuel to fight him when it's my turn. Therefore, you can have that neurologist back."
THREAT OF WEDD
In about five seconds, they scare the pants off Louis Canning. Turns out that, in addition to being a hockey-focused sports-medicine injury neurologist, Dr. Wedd's got a bone to pick with the AHPL going way back. In fact, it's such a specific axe he's grinding that it's almost like it was created for this particular circumstance: The League's history of disregarding best practice protocols -- as suggested by the good doctor -- for doing those baseline comparisons. He told the League on the record that they were endangering their players, they ignored him in writing... It's cute.
Alicia: "So you go talk to the League and finish this. Boom."
Canning: "Cool. Also, here's a job offer in a sealed envelope you have 24 hours to consider. Bam."
FISHING
Is what they're both doing, but it's also what Kurt wants to do with Diane: Take her on a day trip out to Horsetail Lake and kill some animals. But first, some sparklingly sexy repartee:
Diane: "Kurt, have we met?"
Kurt: "I'll do all the baiting..."
Diane: "Oh, would you have it any other way?"
I've never had a problem liking Diane -- Peter, even Will sometimes, but never her, not even on her worst day is she as bad as everybody else is -- but man, when she's got a man throwing her off and making her be awesome, she is the sexiest thing in the world.
So Kurt's talking about picnic baskets and whatever, and Jack calls Diane back again to apologize and ask her out for yet another dubious date, and somehow in the middle of being on the phone with both of them she decides to play the field -- accidentally (or not) notifying Jack that he's got competition in the process -- and sets her Jack date for Friday night, with the Kurt trip Saturday morning. I hope this storyline continues forever and Diane just keeps adding more and more men into her juggling act until she becomes President of the Whole Wide World.
WILL STARING @ WAR ROOM ACTIVITIES
Eli: "Weird to be on the outside looking in, huh? I feel that way about humans."
Will: "It's fun to watch lawyers. What do you want?"
Eli: "I wasn't the leak. I can tell you who I think it was..."
Will: "David Lee, duh. Your obsession with him verges on the sexual."
Eli: "That's just how I naturally act."
Will: "It goes both ways, actually. He was in here yesterday telling me it was you. You guys should just make out already."
Eli: "Or else this is just you playing us off each other to keep yourself safe."
Will: "With genius bastards like you constantly on my jock, how could I ever feel safe? Go away."
OH, ALICIA
Alicia: "Hey Diane? Since I have no idea how hardcore you went to bat for me -- and part of your perfection and professionalism is that I never will -- I'd like to take this opportunity to play you off Canning, who just offered me a job."
Diane: "So you're going there, huh? Goddamn it. I mean, I get it, and frankly I'm a little impressed, but you have no idea how uninterested I am right this second in playing this game with you."
Alicia: "I have to buy a house."
Diane: "I made you a first-year associate after fifteen years on the Mommy Track, you asshole."
Alicia: "I thought this was how America works!"
Diane: "Give me until the end of the week to figure something out?"
Alicia: "No! Or yes. Oh, shit. I don't know how to do this at all. I feel like I'm sending a text message or using Skype right now. I wish I could just walk backwards out of this room and make time go backwards and make you stop looking at me."
Diane: "Give me until the end of the week or so help me God, Alicia, you can clean out your desk right now. Go start an Etsy store with Caitlin D'Arcy or whatever you stupid moms do instead of excellence."
Alicia: "...I am certain this is my fault somehow."
This season particularly has been about watching Alicia learn, and learning means fucking up, but man. It is as unpleasant a surprise to watch her duff this shit as it feels to her when she does it. She simply does not understand ratfuck logic, and that horrified face she makes when she screws up is so amazing because: At least if it worked -- if for once it worked -- she'd have that victory to ameliorate the pain of changing shape. But because the show will not give her an inch, which is of course the best thing about the show, we get to see her swallow her foot over and over again. Play Caitlin off Nancy Crozier? Black eye of being a gender traitor! Try to blackmail Diane into a raise? Boom, kidney punch of she already tried, fool, and did the best she could, risked a serious blowup with the contentious equity partners, and you won't ever even know how ungrateful and dumb you look. Finally have no-fault, no-strings, totally okay sex with Will? Bam, your whole life falls apart anyway. It's amazing.
OTOH
The original attorney for the snowplow company that started this mess, my man Costabile, has been pressured offscreen into giving Lockhart & Associates the original $5M settlement without further ado. Just like that, it's over. I mean, not really, because now there's multiple class actions in play that'll still put Alicia and FMT up against Canning in the future, but it's a win. Sandwiched, of course, right between the two scenes about Alicia's finances and job.
EQUITY PARTNERS
David Lee, verbatim: "No! No no no no! No bonus!"
Case For: "She just won."
Case Against: "She just got handed a settlement without even walking into the courtroom."
Case For: "Which we wouldn't have gotten but for her performance..."
Case Against: "Uh, I think you mean Will's performance. I don't give a shit about the fact that our client won his settlement, I just want to fight about Alicia!"
Actually, it's interesting, because Eli and Julius are both very vocal in their support of keeping Alicia around. Julius because he only gets to be on the show when he's on one of her cases, and Eli because without her he wouldn't really have a reason to be at the firm. I mean, there are story reasons where it makes sense, and Julius also understands that devaluing her win is really devaluing his own today, but it's neat to hear so many of those blustery, whiny male voices these meetings always cacophonate into being in her support -- and Will staying quiet.
This, more than anything, seems to signal a shift in Alicia's fortunes, which I think is part of a greater wave of building up to the end of the season, when it seems like Alicia will actually end up with some independent power or capital she can use year. Doesn't it feel that way to you? That all this experimenting and loneliness and grey behavior might actually increase her value? And thus increase the stakes, so when she makes her mistakes they'll be even scarier? I just feel like that's the obvious way this needs to go. Not saying that's what this is about -- this is about Alicia's blackmail actually working the above-board way it's supposed to, about Diane actually being forced to think about Alicia's value, but still.
Equity Partners: "We all know what this is about and what all of our agendas are, so why keep going. Let's just vote."
Diane: "Actually? No. I'm invoking my managing partner prerogative. That means, Eli, that I can overrule you and act unilaterally under certain circumstances which, by keeping them vague, don't create extra show mythology. She's getting a bonus."
David Lee tries to get Eli to temporarily ally with him against this Diane-Julius-Will coup, but Eli knows which way the wind's going and besides, he wants Alicia to stay anyway.
Will, after: "You ... just stuck your neck out for a third-year associate."
Diane: "Your suspension has left us exposed. I stuck my neck out for the future of this firm."
Wow, on paper that looks super bitchy, but somehow the way she said it, it felt the opposite way. Like she was saying the truth but implying a truth behind it -- about her feelings for him, for Alicia -- that makes it a sort of lie. Or that Will was saying, "You really do like her," and Diane was saying, "Shut the fuck up about that, bro," because secretly she kind of does. I don't know yet, but I do know it was a sweet moment.
Which makes it kind of scary, because the idea of something biting Diane in the ass is painful enough, but when it's her compassion and generosity of spirit -- so often the ethical safety net for the firm, in such unexpected, karmically gracious ways -- the fact that she could conceivably get burned for it is very sad and scary. Anyway, she walks off giggling into her phone, flirty, throaty laughter, that confuses Will as much as it makes his day.
V CANNING
Alicia: "No, but thanks."
Canning: "You used me!"
Alicia: "This is America. Besides, buck up. This was a win for you too -- the settlement keeps the League clean."
There is a ton of "look at all this paper" in her delivery; Alicia pretending to fail to dissemble is still the funniest fucking thing in the world because she's actually a very good liar who can't lie to save her life, so any time she gets to look somebody in the eye and wink while lying to them is a total relief for everybody, because she's doing her Alicia thing while also doing the thing she's trying to do, while also being utterly adorable.
Canning: "This is America. All I did was smoke out FMT's strategy for his future class action."
Alicia: "You used me!"
Canning: "This is America!"
Alicia: "I know, it's fine. I just wanted to yell a little bit."
Every time he shows up, she's a different woman. Every time he shows up, she sees him a little differently because she's a different woman. Every time he shows up, he likes who she is a little bit more. And that would horrify her, it does horrify her, but that's because she still hasn't figured out what kinds of change are good. The difference between growing up and growing twisted is still very mysterious to her, and half the time when people are doing something pragmatic her assumption is that they're gross.
I remember a year ago I got this amazing letter from a young lady who had read some things I had to say about bullying, and the letter was so beautiful and amazing, and so scary too, because she was this brilliant young girl with great values and a good family and all the things I wasn't born with, and she seemed to be in a really precarious situation, like, "On the one hand I trust that you know what you're talking about, but on the other hand I'm not sure how to use what you're saying." I can't say it broke my heart or whatever because that takes away her agency, and again, this is a girl with every tool and the brains to get there so it was more of a painful snapshot of one very recognizable part of growing up, surrounded with a shitload of hope.
And the thing I learned from the action of responding to the letter is that I had forgotten what a poisonous cancer "nice" can be. That we're socialized -- tortured -- into this borderline personality disorder, as a culture, that says everything is all good or all bad, and that if you're not nice you're a bitch, but then the definition of "nice" keeps expanding and expanding until it includes ever doing anything that someone else doesn't agree with, it includes having opinions, having a voice, it eventually includes knowing and trusting yourself. To be nice is to apologize for existing. And what I said -- actually, here's the thing, if I'm going to be obnoxiously quoting myself anyway -- is what I still have to keep reminding myself every day, which is that "nice" and "kind" are such different concepts that they may as well be opposites.
You think they're synonyms and you act like they're synonyms, but the truth is that one turns outward, into the world as a positive force, and one turns inward, as a self-injury. As a dampening of the light. And I still sometimes have to get this basic on myself when I'm making choices: Am I being Nice, or am I being Kind? Because I think I am a very kind person, a compassionate person, but I wouldn't -- and I don't think anyone who's ever met me would -- ever call me Nice.
And this is how I'm feeling about Alicia right now, this year, this week: She's still trying to figure out where Nice ends and Kind begins, and she's had forty years of people, men and the women who regurgitate their words, telling her there is no difference. If they sell you the idea that Nice is a virtue, they can intimidate you with the whole world; if you buy the idea that Nice is your virtue -- c.v. GCB, which honestly I love -- you can justify any cruelty you do. So whenever Alicia does anything, Kind or even just Neutral, there's still this inner voice going, "Was that nice? Am I still nice? Can I still think of myself as nice?"
To which voice I would very kindly reply: "Fuck off, Nice. This is my house. You weren't born here, you were put here by my enemies to make me stupid and weak. Come back when you've decided to help. Because I have decided to help."
V SHARMA
Which brings us to the end, and that question still ringing in her ears: Is she being nice, or is she being kind? If she's being nice, she'll "forgive" Kalinda and just resent her forever and they will never love each other again. But if she's being kind, she has to check in with herself and see where they're at, and then tell Kalinda. It's a small choice, but a very big one too. A very brave, very kind choice, presented verbatim.
Alicia: "The other day when you brought the beer, I wasn't..."
Kalinda: "It's all right. They were warm anyway..."
Alicia: "Look, I can't go back to the way it was before. There's just been too much... But . I'd like to try to make it work. It's just that everything... it has to be... on the table. I can't be the only one being forthcoming. I can't be the only one being honest. Can you ... do that?"
Alicia isn't asking her to be nice. They were never nice. They will never be nice. Nice between women is a mindkiller and the opposite of intimacy. Nice between women is what she's been demanding from Diane for three years now, and getting the kindest smackdown every time, because Diane doesn't do nice. See a bright light and the fastest way to darken it is the simplest linguistic trick: You simply call it "harsh" instead of "brilliant." You ask for nice instead of kind, and everything goes dark.
But if Caitlin taught us anything, it's that fear between women is a tool of the enemy, and that trust between women is possible, even -- especially -- women that aren't nice. And nobody is less nice -- and nobody is more kind -- than Kalinda Sharma. The woman Alicia thought she wanted to be, one day, if she could just figure out how to get the strength without the hardness that comes with it. Brilliance without harshness. The one she received grace and strength from, when she needed it most, is now asking her for those things in return. So Alicia asks herself if that's possible, and when she answers it's with God's honest truth:
As long as we are never, ever nice.
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.