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Before finally replacing Will with clueless old decrepit Howard Lyman as name partner -- effectively cutting off the three-way coup permanently and riling everybody up into new hysterics -- Diane asks Alicia to take her place on a civilian review board investigating a cop shooting from several weeks ago. The rest of the guys are old white judges we've seen before, except for Matthew Perry's Mike Kresteva and Pastor Charles S. Dutton, who's there to fill the black quota the same way she's there to be a woman. It seems to be an open-and-shut review and investigation...
Until, of course, Alicia pulls her whole Alicia Florrick routine on it, decides that the policemen planted a gun on the victim, breaks a million unspoken rules, and hurts a bunch of bossy old white man egos, to the point where they bring in Cary and basically pin this on Peter: That he covered up the possibly planted gun under advice from Eli, not wanting to start even more racial tension right before he announces his bid for the governorship in a few weeks.
Sound likely, or at least possible? Alicia agrees, and in the end she recuses herself -- but not before Mike Kresteva announces himself as a new form of Colin Sweeney, putting her in these weird ethical jams, and making fun of her values while also cheering them on. Not what I expected out of a Matthew Perry guest role at all, but certainly intriguing. He has that Wendy Scott-Carr kind of Silent Hill menace going on. Not cuddly at all. It's great.
But that's not the end of Alicia's troubles, because this week -- a highly dynamic, smash-cutting collection of slicing scenes and strange dreamlike fugues -- it is all about Alicia's stress level. Step One: Tempt Diane's old Lifeguard fate -- piss off a bunch of judges and see how well things go for you. Even Diane is horrified by her zeal on this one, which Will finds darkly hilarious. (In fact, there are a few stressful times when you think they're going to fight, those two, but Will and Diane seem always to know how best to cool their jets with each other in a way where nobody loses.)
Step Two: Get sucked into the IRS situation with Kalinda, freak the fuck out on an invisible Star Chamber participant, who turns out to be that gorgeous FBI girl, whom Kalinda then sexually harrasses in front of her workmates, because I guess this is about that girl now? I don't know, is this the married one? Presumably. Which means all the happy feelings of this week, watching Alicia go nuts on people to protect Kalinda from their creepiness, will just get washed out again when she realizes this is another married person Kalinda fucked. Right?
And Step Three: After another open house, full of memories good and bad, Alicia thinks she's finally won the sellers over... And then they ask for more money, so then it's even more astonishing when -- as she tries to even find time to process that or be sad about it -- she suddenly learns she's the owner of the Highland Park house again.
Realizing that she's not the only Florrick who would've signed off, given the unending ass ache I'm sure Grace is being about it with everybody, Alicia tries to yell at Peter about it -- but he's hiding from her so she won't break confidentiality on the panel case, because that's exactly what she would do. When she finally tracks him down he has no idea what she's talking about, so we end the episode with Alicia heading to like a Nordstrom's salon to have an epic showdown with the only Florrick that really would have done something this smothering and manipulative: Jackie, of course. The Third and Most Frightful Florrick. Who ends the episode with a smirk of such arrogant nastiness that you don't even notice the fact that she's heading into battle mid-shampoo.
In two weeks: It's getting dreadful close to that time when a crazy politician's thoughts turn to the Illinois gubernatorial campaigns, which means several things. Vanessa will be back, Eli will be in the middle -- and possibly severing ties with Peter -- and Alicia (not to mention the newly dubbed Lockhart/Lyman) will be thrust once more into the spotlight. Which should be interesting, considering Mike Kresteva will be coming back ... for her very soul.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!PREVIOUSLY
Diane got Alicia a small raise and a large bonus after Canning's job offer came back around, and is even now juggling her two hottest suitors ever. Somebody reported Will to the Bar for doing exactly what he's doing, which Will ignored and kept doing it because when your partners include David Lee, Eli Gold and Julius Cain, that's just the price of doing business. Cary took the hit for Peter Florricks' quasi-accidental institutionalized racism, and her sweet meeting with him got her so pumped that Alicia pressure, Alicia's somewhat shapeless life at the moment, and everybody's jobs being in total flux all the time.
THE TWELVE (UNDOCUMENTED) LABORS OF KALINDA SHARMA
Kalinda: "I'm not sure how to answer..."
Alicia: "Look, I understand that we both say as little as possible, all the time. This show is practically The Artist even when we're feeling exuberant..."
Kalinda: "No, I mean I have an obligation to the people that pay me under the table to keep it there."
Alicia: "That's not a legal thing, though. As I'm sure you're aware, you're not a lawyer."
Kalinda: "Explain my storyline again?"
Gladly. The IRS, for some reason, has decided to be uppity about Kalinda's reported income. On the basis of one check for four grand, which comes from a dummy account, they've decided they want full accounting for all her freelance work over the last three tax periods (which is either three years, or less than a year depending on whether she's doing the smart thing as a freelancer and paying forward quarterly, but I'm guessing it's three years).
Alicia: "Okay, Mr. Cellophane, how about this other check, from a FRP Inc., for $2500. The memo just says Three days' unspecified and very likely shady Kalinda Stuff."
Kalinda: "That... Is for somebody you know. It's weird."
Alicia: "Bitch if you are talking about my husband I swear to God."
Kalinda: "Er, hang on."
Kalinda literally sprints up outta that piece, has a quick confab with Diane -- to which we are not privy -- and then returns, so quickly the papers haven't yet finished wafting to the floor, and looks brightly at Alicia as though maybe she were so very fast that Alicia didn't notice she'd left, Superman style.
Kalinda: "Let's say it was for Diane Lockhart. Let's say it was firearm training, for that time she thought she was going to get murdered and reversed her position on gun control, forcing her dog Justice to call her a champagne liberal. The worst, but also the only effective kind of liberal."
Alicia: "Okay, I'm writing this down in my notebook of things you may be lying about."
Kalinda: "Also, Diane wants to talk to you about your A plot this week."
Alicia: "Fine. But you realize we're going to have to play through this song and dance with each of your many giant sketchy checks? This isn't like you will be able to write off baseball bats and whore boots as a business expense and the whole thing goes away."
Kalinda: "Frankly I'm just happy to be talking to you. I'll gladly stretch this thing out until Bob Balaban and Donna Brazile somehow get involved."
Alicia: "The guest star involved in this mess is even more bizarre than that, but I appreciate your agenda."
DIANE
Needs to sit on a titular Blue Ribbon Panel, or IPRA, which she explains to [us] is an Independent Police Review Authority which investigates things like police shootings after IA is done? I think? It includes judges, preachers, and -- usually -- Diane as the token woman or Republican or whatever they need to convince themselves they're giving it their full attention.
Alicia: "Are you sure? I tend to go off half-cocked sometimes."
Diane: "Yeah, you're a firebrand. A real live wire. Uh, I think it'll be okay. Just submit to the institutionalized apathy, keep that pretty mouth shut, and remember to bring your vagina."
Alicia: "Done! Much like every other time you've given me a thoughtful gift that turned out to include surprise vipers and serpents, I have no idea how thoroughly this is going to bite us both in the ass, so I'm grateful and a bit chuffed. On that note, thanks for my raise and the bonus that I'll never know how many favors you called in to get me."
Diane: "I hope it helps you buy that house you obviously should not buy."
Alicia: "Listen, hubris doesn't hit my Word of the Day calendar until Friday."
THE IPRA
Is a total Boys' Club, of course. Several white judges -- including Dunaway and Winter, who were part of that whole "remember every judge that was ever on this show" debacle that ensured we'd never forget their connection to Will and/or reputations for moral rectitude -- and a Matthew Perry guy named Mike Kresteva who is just terrifying, and Charles S. Dutton as the, well...
Roc: "So, you're the Woman? I'm the Black."
Alicia: "That makes me nervous how you said that. Oh, and hell. Harvey Winter and Peter Dunaway. I just walked into the Star Chamber of male-run local politics. I can already see myself fucking this all kinds of up."
Mike: "Hey, I'm Mike. Don't let the fact that I'm pretty much adorable fool you. Anybody on this show that's adorable is guaranteed to be carrying a knife."
Men: "Congratulations on being handed this thankless duty! And on being married to the worst person alive!"
Alicia: "Hey, check a girl out in the very halls of power. I don't mind telling you, I'm a little intimidated."
Men: "We are so fuckin' glad you said that."
So they run through the facts in a bored, study-hall fashion, and you get the gist pretty quickly: They're a secondary review, but it's in their best interest to do the minimum amount of work on any one case, since to question the authorities who already signed off would affect not only their relationships with, say, the Commish, but also their intertwined business, political and personal interests. Diane says this much more clearly later, but the scenario is that if Alicia does anything to piss off, say, Judge Dunaway, that's going to upset his take on any and all Lockhart & Question Mark cases for as long as it takes to buy back his favor. Et cetera, but also true of every person there with regard to every other person there. Sort of a nightmarish checks and balances situation, which is why over time the tradition here has worn itself down to token members, token questions, and going lengths to prove they're not simply rubber stampers.
Right? So then imagine Alicia Florrick walks into that shit and presumes that everybody is on the up and up like she is, and you can see how she's the quietest, most polite grenade imaginable, being tossed into a room, in a way that nobody would question until about a minute after the fact. If you look at the seasons of Buffy as an upward ramp of politics -- first vamps, then boyfriend, then the Mayor, then the Government, then God, etc. -- we've reached the part where you learn that old white guys have their own thing going on: They're playing on an entirely different chessboard, and don't really have time to care about your mess. Our confrontations with Alicia's problems -- speaking Truth to Power and assuming everybody's got honor, specifically -- have just hit been raised to a new level. And just as hard work is rewarded with hard work, her spiral up includes raising and raising the stakes, asking the same questions again at higher and higher levels. I'm more convinced than ever that we're heading back toward the world of politics, when you connect the dots that way.
Some undercover cops were at the Addison station of the El when they were held up by a two-time felon. Another guy came running at them, convinced that they were mugging the fellow -- since they were in civvies, obviously -- and they shot him. For one thing, a gun was found on the Good Samaritan (as Alicia will call him), and for another thing they sure did warn him several times that they were cops, but apparently he didn't hear them doing that. So it was regrettable, but he was guilty of being black and trying to do the right thing, so IA let the cops off.
While the engine is running -- and the parts are moving fast enough that she doesn't see it happening because she's too busy being a nerd and actually studying the facts of the case as though this is a law job, not an administrative one -- a few things become clear: She's hyperfocused on one thing in particular, that will end up being key to the case; Matthew Perry sees her doing this and knows he's going to have to shut her down; and putting Alicia in the middle of a room of Good Old Boys was a huge fucking mistake this week.
Throughout the episode, they roll-call on each witness in a sort of questioning round-robin: Each panel member has five minutes to ask everybody involved whatever they want; again and again, they simply pass the ball down the line. This first time, Alicia's about to speak, when the collective Male Gaze pins her to her chair and she clams up -- and that's how you know what is going to happen in this episode, because the narrative clarifies itself real fast: This story is structured as a trial for Alicia's voice, and every successive roll-call is about furthering that voice's volume, and her outrage at being silenced, until the grenade finally goes off. And it will.
Everybody's saying this is the best episode of the season, and I think that's a major reason why: It lays bare the essence of the show at its most basic level, justifying and reiterating a lot of the soft-feminism stuff we've been talking about as An Actual Thing That Actually Happens; it makes literal the cronyism metaphor that usually Peter's stories are about, when it's not basketball, and then invites Alicia to play the game; and it shows what happens when Alicia's silence -- a series regular, possibly the main character of the show -- finally explodes.
Or maybe it's just the fact that she's talking to Kalinda again. I can buy that too.
EQUITY PARTNER MEETING
Oh good. Another opportunity for David Lee and Eli Gold to act like fucking babies. This part moves fast, so I'll just run through it. Diane calls the motions -- to remove Will from the firm's name and replace it with David Lee's -- as a single vote, which of course fails because, as David Lee points out, those two things independently aren't nearly as scary as they are together, and nobody wants to be the person who actually voted "replace Will with David Lee," whereas if they'd done it separately, they all could have gamed in between, which is his favorite part anyway.
Julius Cain agrees, and then Eli ropes him into a whole other fight about how Will Gardner shouldn't be profit-sharing while he's not practicing law, which is I guess connected in the sense that Will's "I'm in the office as a business partner, nothing more" is a huge lie, but is also pretty clearly a feint, to attack him in a way that seems related to, and of a piece with, the conversation -- but is actually neither.
Oh, did I mention Will is fully sitting there while they are pulling this shit? Yeah. So he finally asks Diane for a sidebar and Eli objects to this because Eli -- c.v. Alicia's confusion between legal and administrative, above -- thinks this is some kind of courtroom, and Diane laughs at him. I like how they keep pointing up Eli's confusion about how things work here, both in the courtroom and in these ubiquitous meetings, because it's semi-realistic (A spin doctor/crisis manager wouldn't know Robert's Rules, maybe, but a campaign manager? Didn't British people invent Parliamentary Procedure? It's even in the name!) and because it's hilarious and because it gives Alan Cumming something to do. "Objection!" Heh. "Overruled! And this isn't court, also!"
Will: "How'm I looking?"
Diane: "You're letting them see you sweat. Never do that, fool."
Will: "Are they staring at us right now?"
Diane: "It is getting Shakespearian up in here."
Will: "Are they ever going to stop with this shit? I mean, as long as they're at each other's throats..."
Diane: "They already figured that out, lady. The whole infighting storyline was designed to last exactly this long."
IPRA - VICTIM'S SON'S TESTIMONY
So the guy's son (early 20's) was there when his dad got killed, but he kind of refuses to talk about it because it's very upsetting and it happened not so long ago. Oh, and horribly enough for a coincidental ripped from the headlines story, the shooter's name is Zimmerman. It's so weird when this show accidentally does that, which it regularly does, but this is just... Ugh. Normally I would go into a whole thing about IA and why these IPRA things are important, but it's just too much of a bummer this week. Although I have to say, Al Sharpton has almost perfected his transit of going so crazy that he comes out the other side looking more sane than anybody else, in a continually shortening orbit: His suggestion that white people start wearing hoodies more often, in protest, actually brought tears to my eyes.
Mike: "Pastor Roc, you're black. Make him behave."
Roc: "Son, the best way you can honor your dad is by answering these desultory, snotty questions about the time a second ago when your father was gunned to death for no reason right in front of you."
Kid: "Good point."
(Roll call; all pass...)
Alicia: "Robbie..."
(Male Gaze!)
Alicia: "Ahem. The officers told us there was an express train going by, and that's why your dad didn't hear them shouting they were cops..."
She drops easily into the rhythms of her best jury work, leading-without-leading, asking yes or no questions in a soft, firm voice, and nobody can withstand Alicia's soft-firm-voice voice, so he speaks up: There was a train stopped on a closer track that blocked out the express train's noise. They would have heard the explanation just fine, if it had happened. But it didn't.
For once, I'm not confused by the episode's case, because that's a tale as old as time: Too-fast reaction from a cop, jobs on the line (and up the line), you tell a little lie to make it go away, nobody inquires further because that's the price of safe streets.
So -- this episode is full of jumps in time, it's one of the hallmarks of this show that makes it so eminently watchable is that the music and the edits keep rushing you forward, but here there's also a persistent irony every time it happens in this episode, which is really gorgeous -- from the crying son breaking down about how nobody believes him about the train noise, headlong into everybody laughing as they wrap up for the day. Entrenched patriarchy has done its job for the day! Time for some scotch! Yikes.
Dunaway: "Mrs. Florrick? You can call me Pete when I'm out of the robes. Anyway, stop trying to impress the grownups and just follow our lead, okay? You don't need to reinvent the wheel."
Like he actually says that -- although fairness demands that I mention he structures it in terms of the new kid at the table, not in gendered terms. She draws him out, in a perfectly choreographed ballet of passive aggression, to make him say it. Every word of it. Her mouth is smiling, but her eyes are knives.
"What? Little old me tryin' to be clever? Surely you don't... Why, I'm just a girl from Michigan, I don't even know what wheels are. Please, explain that shit to me in detail, motherfucker."
It's been an enduring mystery of the show, how much percentage of any given speech act -- on the occasions she deigns to speak at all -- in Alicia's intent is actual innocence and how much is an act. I can imagine seeing this scene in the first season and being like, "Oh girl, he's pulling privilege on you, don't be stupid," but now it's like she's swallowed the tactic and made it her own. You could even draw a line here from Nancy Crozier to Caitlin -- as a sort of transcendent synthesis in the ongoing education of Alicia Florrick -- but either way: She knows damn well what she's doing. It's revelatory and revolutionary and it makes me want to rewatch the entire series without giving her the benefit of the doubt: How Alicia has reinvented the wheel of Third Wave feminism for herself, learned to inhabit the face she's always presented, finally with full accountability.
It's also dark -- dark enough they kick to credits -- and of course it's the Alicia Florrick Equivalent to slapping him across the face with a glove, but in case you forget what this show's really about: She's positioned perfectly, with every word, to keep her eyes just past Dunaway's shoulder. To Mr. Masters' weeping son, still holding himself together.
THE HOUSE & THE HOUSE
It's a funny note on the way individual writers make their stamp on scripts that this one time Horrible Real Estate Agent Marina, who usually gets on my nerves, could be excused for acting like a bitch, but in this episode she is totally awesome and world-wise.
"Well, they turned you down again because you still don't have enough money. I told them you want to close quickly, but they want what they want. Here's my advice: I've been watching them, and the wife is in control. The historically best move here would be to write her a personal letter, handwritten, on [the grossest stationary you can find], making a plea for your sentimental attachment to the house. Moms, right?"
Alicia drives her car aimlessly, talking to herself about what the house means to her, but the problem is that it's two houses: The house where Grace and Zach were born, the house where she became a Good Wife, the house where she knew the greatest love and purpose imaginable, the house where her dreams were fulfilled... And the house where her life was systematically destroyed, where fifteen years of joy were tossed on the fire, and they took away one by one all the things that made up Alicia Florrick, until there was nothing left but silence and pain and keeping her family together, at any cost to her own spirit. What does the house mean to her? Everything, and nothing. Happiness, and sorrow. Light and dark.
It's still about Alicia, but it's an entirely separate narrative thread, because this isn't about finding her voice but about finding her breath: Marina is like a priest here, asking Alicia to put the broken halves of her life together in a new formation, to rise above light and darkness into something that transcends both. Most of the big things in our lives, of course, are about this, and it's the people who force us into these choices that hurt us and help us the most, but in this case it's marvelous how the two stories reflect on each other: The IPRA is about speaking truth to power, but this letter is about speaking truth to herself.
Alicia's got this thing where she can do hyperverbal legal stuff all day -- those aren't real words, not like these words, just codes and statutes and precedent -- and she's usually fearless when it comes down to feeling what she's feeling, as long as nobody finds out. But what Marina is doing -- what only Owen, it's worth noting, has ever forced her do; the only thing that will ever heal the wound with Kalinda -- is help her putting those two things together. She doesn't have enough money for the house, so now the price is much higher: Put into words the history and meaning of a painful and wonderful life.
And having come to an understanding of what she's meant to do, it's not very surprising -- for her or for us -- that her car, almost of its own accord, has driven her to the Addison Station of the elevated train. I've filled an entire internet up, writing about grace, about the coincidental rewards of introspective bravery, but when it happens in real life, this is what it looks like. Searching to give voice to a discordant harmony within herself proves out, so the world delivers her the scene of the crime: All these voices are hers. The rest is silence.
And silence is what she finds, when she heads up those stairs. You could hear a pin drop, in that silence. You could hear a man being killed in his final act of charity.
COFFEY TESTIMONY
They roll call down the line, and Dunaway gives her the stinkeye; he has no idea he's pushed her into caring with his advice to stop caring. She wouldn't rebel by asking questions for no reason, she's too graceful a woman for that, but this isn't about Dunaway anymore.
Alicia: "Just to clarify, there was an express train running that meant your due process in protocol wasn't overheard. Okay, fine. But what about the parked train that blocked it out?"
Officer: "Ummm."
Alicia: "Because I was there last night..."
Men: "MRS. FLORRICK!"
Alicia, delicately: "...Yes?"
EXECUTIVE SESSION
Cut to Dunaway haranguing her in a private meeting, yelling about all of this, and actually there's a fairly decent thread here among her captors, which is that it's not a legal case, so why play Kalinda? Mike's explanation makes a ton of sense, once he says it, to us and I think to Alicia too: That you could compare this to taking a bunch of jurors on a field trip to the scene of a crime. There's no chain of evidence, no duty of the court, just nosy jurors ignoring the facts of the case in favor of their own untrained shit.
Alicia: "When you say it like that... Sorry?"
Men: "-- Don't you fucking interrupt us when we're talking! How dare you? Sit still and drink your medicine! We call for censure!"
Alicia: "I can't help feeling a little intimidated right now."
Mike: "Everybody chill. Look, there's nothing in the official IPRA rules against it, that's true. And I like what you said about being in over your head, because it gives me a rock-hard erection when women admit their powerlessness. So we're not censuring you. But we are watching you."
They break for lunch. Another session, another chance for Alicia to prod the bruise and pretend she doesn't know exactly what she's doing.
SHARMA & THE WARRIOR SAINT
The IRS guys are every bit as amazing looking as the Treasury guys, and every bit as brutally nerdy.
Alicia: "Okay, just tell us what you need."
IRS: "Everything we already told you we needed."
Alicia: "Okay because I gave you all that stuff."
IRS: "No, we need more specific shit."
Alicia: "Why?"
IRS: "Um, because we're talking about an incredibly shady Canadian immigrant with multiple identities and superpowers? Financial transparency being a sign of ethical responsibility? Who evades taxes is rich white guys, drug dealers, assassins and hookers. Which one of those is Kalinda Sharma? Maybe all, maybe just some."
Alicia: "Uh, she's not being accused of a crime at all. And that's not your department anyhow."
Kalinda rolls her eyes so expressively that they light on the computer behind the main guy, which is clearly teleconferencing in such a way that the person can see out, but we can't see the person. Hmm.
Alicia: "Okay like one weird check doesn't open her up to an entire fishing expedition, you gross creeps. We're outta here."
HALLWAY
Alicia: "The fuck was that? I am so pissed at the entrenched power structure today! Stop cockblocking me! Stop cockblocking my house offer! Stop cockblocking justice! I could take on motherfucking Antonin Scalia right now! I could physically fight him, swear to God!"
Kalinda: "You are on a tear, lady. You are chock full of beans. Oh, and PS there's totally something going on. The computer was spying on us."
Alicia: "I motherfucking hate computers!"
She turns on one heel, just pivots like an acrobat, and launches herself back into the office to scream at the blank computer about its bitchassedness. It is one of the most amazing things you've ever seen with your eyes in this lifetime, Alicia Florrick bucking at a black-screened computer like it just called her frat brother a fag. Which I guess it sort of did.
Alicia: "If you want something from me, you fucking come to my office! Stop using these poor dickless IRS dudes and just come at me, bro! I am in the mood! I dare you, shitslice!"
As the poor IRS dudes pick themselves up off the floor, Alicia power-walks out of there so hard the building shakes.
Kalinda: "Um. That was straight-up awesome."
Alicia: "God, I wish a motherfucker would."
DEAR GILDA
As you probably know, I lived in your house before you...
Alicia watched her children grow, she loved them more and more particularly. Bathtubs, rubber duckies and suds. She chased Grace through the halls, in her towel, shrieking with delight.
...I saw my daughter walk for first time. I saw...
Mobile TV vans have those curly towers on top; that's how you know they're broadcasting live feeds. The first thing you learn, when your life falls apart, is to watch for those towers. Consider this education, beginning. She turned on the TV, and there he was.
Grace was nearly a teenager, by then. Running through the house, in tears, that day. Alicia watched, silent; she wasn't chasing Grace anymore by then.
Alicia tries to shake it off, the two Graces running through the house, pursued by her parents. She reaches back for the warmth, to write the letter, but it's gone cold. The two houses are like magnets, driven apart inside her, and she can't bring them together.
Yet.
CAIN/GOLD
Eli: "Well, that was obviously a charade. They fought us on the money thing, then gave in to throw us a bone."
Cain: "Obvi."
Eli: "Right. Well, all three of us want Will's seat. And all three of us are awful. Leaving aside the part where fighting each other serves only Diane and Will, it's also a stalemate and I can't handle those."
Cain: "Duh, I already said this and told you I want your vote."
Eli: "No way. Let's flip a coin."
Cain: "Let me see that coin first. Okay, we're good."
Cut to Will, walking past, so we don't see the outcome.
GARDNER/LYMAN
Howard Lyman: "I'm a crazy old geezer! I'm like the baby Pokemon version of Stern. Remember him? Anyway, what cases are you working on for this law firm?"
Will: "You weird old bird, you know I'm not doing anything."
Lyman: "Oh, that's right. I momentarily forgot what century this is or why there's an orange in my pocket."
Will: "It's nice to have like one other friend who's just hanging around the firm being useless. Even one that mostly talks about buffalo nickels."
Lyman: "Actually I spend the day looking at porn in my office. Know any good porn sites?"
Will: "My life, it has become a macabre shadow."
IPRA: IA TESTIMONY
Investigator Forrest Burke: "So thanks for checking my work on this one. It's not a useless formality eating up my precious time or anything. And I mean that. I am a good egg who cares about justice, and thus will be risking my ass for Alicia later in the episode."
Mike starts the robot roll-call, and Judge Winter bitchily says they should just cut straight to Alicia.
Alicia: "Thanks! In good faith! Anyway, Mr. Burke, did you know the gun they found on the dead dude was used in another crime?"
Burke: "Yes. That's part of the evidence but the audience didn't know that, because it would give up the whole game too early."
Alicia: "So I checked into that, a jewelry robbery from a couple years ago, and turns out that it was Officer Zimmerman [shudder] who was on that scene..."
Dunaway: "Are you honestly suggesting this was a drop gun -- a phrase we're going to be using in this episode to mean a gun that was retrieved from a crime and used later as planted evidence -- that Zimmerman held onto for a couple years just in case?"
Alicia: "I'm getting there, yeah."
Mike: "Fuckin'... No, you're done. Five minutes are up."
Alicia: "I spent most of it arguing with Winter and Dunaway for the right to..."
Mike: "And yet. That was your choice. Let's move on."
Roc: "Uh, I'm going to give her my five minutes. This is interesting."
Men, Simply Aghast!: "See, this is why we hate tokenism! Give 'em an inch and they gang up on white men. It's anarchy!"
Alicia: "So anyway, is this the first time in history that such a 'drop gun' might have been used to muddy the waters?"
THE WOMAN THAT HATES MEN WHO HATE WOMEN THAT HATE HORNETS
Cut to Mike privately telling Alicia another thing that makes total sense, which is that -- in addition to the idea of Zimmerman keeping this gun a full two years, which is not really that remarkable if you think about it in terms of the probability you'll make at least one mistake at work, over the course of your lifetime -- what Alicia is actually working toward, here, is a race riot.
...Which, yeah. I see your point. What I don't understand is how that's a bad thing.
But then an even worse, truer, scarier bit, and one that would send me running for Lockhart & Question Mark the second he said it:
"You wanna kick the hornet's nest? Ask Diane what happens when you piss off judges like this. When you take people like this, and piss them off."
It was only on rewatch that I noticed how carefully Mike is treating her. He's saying the same things, in the same particular way, that Diane might use to warn her off. The way it's being performed, he comes off scary as shit, but because he's being so subtle about it I wonder if he won't turn out to be a good deal more okay than he's coming off here. It's the norm for this show -- Canning's not so bad, the more we get to know him; Eli is even more of a trainwreck now than when we hated him -- but the way the episode ends had me thinking he was a more iconic person, like Wendy Scott-Carr or Colin Sweeney (or Jackie Florrick): Somebody whose existence depends on their meaning to Alicia's shifting personal philosophy.
Now, though, I wonder. Because he's appealing to the real-world ratfuck ethos -- Alicia's blind spot, still -- in the same way Diane would, like bumpers on a bowling lane, to shut this down before it goes insane, and because he's signalling that he's not the enemy here. Maybe he's both. Maybe, as in real life, he's both. They certainly pulled the actor for both. I am very interested in this Mike Kresteva, actually, come to think of it. No idea where it's headed -- but the fact that he explicitly referenced the Lifeguard situation...
I know I bring it up a lot and I honestly don't know if that's just because it was such a hugely affecting storyline for me personally or whether we're meant to apply it to every situation, but it definitely would apply here anyway, even if he hadn't said it, because we're talking about back-scratching and ass-covering in the halls of power. That whole thing -- the perversion, the way it kicked Diane in the nuts and kept kicking -- still makes me feel sick to think about, because it was so true and so evil, in that institutionalized blame-spreading way where if everybody's part of the problem then nobody's part of the problem and then, swiftly, there is no problem, because conspiracies protect their own and conspiracies never look like conspiracies. Nobody ever says to himself, "I am a conspirator," in the same way that a random person in HR at Blackwater or McDonald's franchise owner thinks, "I am a murderer." It's not so much the injustice that bothers me as the fact that everybody walks away a little bit dirtier than they were before, but not dirty enough that you'd notice. Nobody wins or loses, just ... entropy. A little more ugly in a beautiful world.
DEAR GILDA
After a day like that, you need a glass of wine. Especially when you're being forced to write a book report on your life and why it fell apart and who you have become since then.