In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.
A rape case that failed in the criminal court comes back up when the victim sues a perpetrator in civil court, with the understanding that any proceeds will go to rape prevention causes. The woman involved tweets her claim during this civil trial -- Will Gardner vs. Cary's horrible father -- violating a gag order and getting herself thrown in jail for the duration for contempt. Will becomes obsessed with getting the girl out from behind bars, showing such conviction -- and such admiration for the girl's steadfast dedication to doing the right thing -- that it stirs up a complicated mess of feelings in our regretful Alicia. She spends the episode wandering around and being horny and trying to figure out if breaking up with him was the right call...
While also getting stuck in a four-way fight for the future of the firm. In a meeting with Dylan "Bitcoins" Stack, Alicia notices the fourth-year associate cabal (of which she was, until making partner, a ringleader) having secret meetings, and puts Robyn Burdine on Cary's trail. Eventually, he admits they're planning to leave at the end of the season, but once again invites her to join him as, quote, "The new Will and Diane." Kalinda has to put her foot down once Robyn's investigation causes Cary to bitch out on her, and starts doing some investigating of her own: Turns out Robyn's claim to have shot her brother is part of the official record (twist!) but also not actually true (double-twist!) and, presumably to keep her close while she unknots the unknowable mystery that is Robyn Burdine, advises the firm to keep her on.
Meanwhile, the equity partners have discovered that, on Peter's future endorsement, the Illinois Supreme Court is vetting her for the bench. What they don't know is that the "partner" the Chief Justice is so concerned about is not actually Kurt McVeigh (who has accepted her proposal of marriage!), but Will Gardner himself. Chief Justice Whatever is no stranger to the Lifeguard system, and tells her in no uncertain terms that he'll be the reason she loses the appointment. However, she can't talk to Will about any of this, partly because it's too weird but mostly because she's already in hot water with him for denying Mr. Bitcoins his class-action business because it doesn't suit her optics as a nominee.
Alicia is perturbed when Zach and Grace start receiving anonymous (and it turns out, Anonymous) footage that affects the case: Do-gooder anarchists have no problem hacking cell video, pictures, and eventually doxxing both major defendants in the original case. Even after Mr. Bitcoins admits that he is involved with Anonymous, Alicia has trouble grasping the central premise, and then so does the show: A bunch of Fawkes masks nearly force a mistrial with their antics, but then -- since this is the whole point of Anonymous -- doesn't question the final piece of evidence that breaks the accuser loose from jail: an illegally obtained confession that Kalinda uploads to the internet on her own time. I don't think she's been Anonymous the whole time -- wouldn't shock me, I just don't believe it -- but, seeing it's the only way to Kalinder the situation, she goes for it and it's beautiful.
In the end, the wild revolutionary style of Bitcoins and Anonymous rub Alicia the wrong way, and complicates the situation with Cary and Will to some pretty intense levels. While she believes in and loves the rule of law, both Cary and Bitcoins openly engage her in conversations about the power of idealism and the mitigating facts of justice: Cary hates the top-heavy management at L/G almost as much as being denied the reins, Bitcoins is disgusted by the "realism vs. idealism" decisions she's been making all season and Will himself is pretty much uninterested in the person she's quickly becoming. So now the question of the season becomes, as it has before, a question of balance.
Alicia's tried to be the Good Wife, the Strong Woman, the Exasperated Anarchist, the Labor Revolutionary, and has been shut down every time: The episode ends with Alicia, wearing all black, standing behind the bulletproof glass as Will embraces the free and just accuser, staring out past the bars. What do you turn into when you can't figure out what else you need to be? This season's last-act renaissance has built the answer into the cake, but we've only got three episodes left for Alicia to figure it out. If you'd asked me even last week about the chances on "Florrick, Agos & Assoc." becoming a thing for Season Five, I would have put them very low indeed. But now? She's walking a knife's edge, and it's as touching to watch as it is thrilling to contemplate.
Week: Peter's request for a vows renewal -- which has Veronica and Owen (!) in the exact tizzy you'd surmise -- would mean a lot more if it didn't come two weeks before his (suddenly) projected loss in the polls. Of all the things Alicia's learned to be this season, I don't think she was expecting the major one to be her husband's October Surprise...
Want more? The full recap starts right below!LAST NIGHT
Rainey Selwin, in a fit of pique, types out the truth -- "I don't care if they put me in jail. Todd Bratcher RAPED ME" -- and tweets it far and wide.
JUDGE PARKS PRESIDING
The Senior Party was at Todd's house, and Rainey went with a couple of friends; in the criminal trial Todd pled down and now he's off at Princeton, so she's suing in civil court, proceeds to benefit rape victim advocacy. They're getting all of this on the table for the jury when Judge Parks gets a note about the tweet, and hurriedly sends the jury out.
Parks: "The only thing I have told you guys is that I didn't want this case to be tried in the press, so you have to understand that my gag order is very important to me."
Will: "Let me talk to Rainey before you start yelling..."
Parks: "This was you, right, this 'tweet'? Which goes against the gag order?"
Will: "Rainey, literally anything, if your sister posted it, even just pleading the Fifth..."
Parks: "Stop telling her what to say."
Will: "My client insists on her Fifth Amend..."
Rainey: "He raped me, so I tweeted that. Deal with it."
Parks: "Enjoy jail for the rest of this episode."
Will: "These young people today, they don't think of tweeting as publicizing..."
Parks: "Uh, no. Sorry."
So she's either dumb for violating a gag order or dumb because "tweeting isn't publicizing," but either way Rainey Selwin's being kind of dumb. If you didn't want to do this trial right, why did you press charges? Is it just that the whole thing is about shaming Todd -- which is a great reason, don't get me wrong -- so whatever happens, it's a good thing if it's public? His plea bargain was the just outcome, shitty as that is, so wherever this civil trial goes, it's about rightfully dragging him through the mud because that justice wasn't actually justice.
I guess that makes sense, given the storyline itself and the way it unfolds, but it's not a great look for Rainey Selwin considering that's the first thing she does when we meet her is work against her own interests and then tossed in jail for the entire episode, recapitulating the basic shitty fact that sexual assaults pretty much immediately stop being about the person, if they ever were in the first place, as everybody takes ownership of what happened and talking loudly about her interests and making it all about them, even if she's sitting right there in the room. Rape is the Godwin's Law of gender, it's the most extreme thing you can think of, and we've got a lot of ways of talking around and about it without ever looking directly at it, but as a topic it does give everybody permission to act out.
CLOVIS SEAFOOD
Alicia's disheartened to hear about Rainey's imprisonment, and promises to circle back once she's had her meeting with Dylan "Bitcoins" Stack about some class action thing he's cooking up -- but not until they've discussed the actual point of this week's episode.
Stack: "Everything okay?"
Alicia: "A client is... Idealistic."
Stack: "Is that a bad thing?"
Alicia: "No! Just it complicates things. Reality isn't idealistic, and when the two of them run into each other, only one of those tends to gets hurt."
Stack: "Maybe it'll be reality this time."
Alicia: "Based on everything that has ever happened that I personally know of, I'm thinking no."
Stack wants to put up a class action suit about prosecutorial overcharging, in the wake of Aaron Swartz's suicide. They hound you and they hound you, for lobbyist-type reasons, and it results in real death. A good cause; a cause that looks reality-versus-idealism in the face: "I'll run it by my partners, but they're not always into causes for causes' sake..."
Stack produces large rubber-banded amounts of cash, right there at the table -- my friend Karen was like "Not even our drug dealer client acts this much like a drug dealer!" -- and Alicia's horrified, covering it up with her napkin, but the point is valid: Causes aren't just for cause's sake, when you have Dylan Stack amounts of cash, which is the other side of the Swartz coin: It was supposed to be about competing ideologies, but the bad guys behind SOPA and PIPA had the money to make it about more than that.
In the dining room over, Alicia spots the fourth years, still under ringmaster Cary's control, still having their secret angry meetings, and wonders how she's supposed to play that one. There are a lot of things happening today!
CHAMBERS
Will explains that the anger that fueled the tweet was new: Rainey found out about Princeton that morning, and it brought the whole thing back out, and she flipped. The defense points out that, thanks to the plea, Bratcher's not actually a rapist, and that this Princeton defense of Rainey's actions is another example of bringing things into the case that are not actually in evidence.
Judge: "If the defendant had written a tweet insisting that Rainey was lying, I would be equally angry, and he'd be behind bars. This gag order is, and was, content-neutral."
The irony, then, becomes an apology: Not to Bratcher, of course, because the question of his innocence is moot, but an apology to the court for messing everything up. They take it back to Rainey, who shows once again that she knows exactly what is going on, because the thing about people younger than Alicia and Will understand natively that everything is media and everything is public opinion, even when it's not: "So let's say this goes against me. Then what's out there is not Todd Bratcher is a rapist, what's out there is I'm sorry for calling Todd Bratcher a rapist."
L/G: "Sure, but the gag order is only as long as this trial, you can do whatever you want afterwards. This is you getting in your own way."
Rainey: "Yeah, but now it hinges on this apology, and I can't do that. Jail is scary, but it's splitting hairs to say this would be anything other, effectively, than apologizing for calling somebody what they are."
Alicia: "You seem awfully involved in this."
Will: "We don't spend a lot of time with clients who are willing to follow through on their determination like her. I admire this. So we have to win."
It's an interesting note on the story structure: Will and idealism have never really been a thing, he has an easy idealism just like Diane but his story isn't ever really about that. His idealism is about protecting other people's idealism, so they don't have to know about or see the ugly truths about the world. It's one of the reasons he was able to so quickly fall back in love with her four years ago: She'd held onto that part of him, his heart, and the whole time she was out of the legal game she was able to stay innocent too. But now St. Alicia is getting dirtier -- getting more like him -- all the time, and so there's an unspoken connection being made, in both their heads, between their sad broken relationship, and the older unsullied versions of themselves, and this inviolate, strong girl.
LOCKHART
Moody comes to continue vetting Diane for the Supreme Court seat, with Kalinda standing by as his counterpart, and -- with Peter somehow three points behind, with two episodes to go -- the tone is all very heightened.
Moody: "Kurt McVeigh? You've worked with him? He's a ballistics expert? Your occasional lover?"
Kalinda & Diane: "Lol."
Moody: "I know, but what is the right word?"
Diane: "I guess lover is correct, but you're a dork."
Moody: "So but he is a rampant secessionist?"
Diane: "No, what he said was that he wouldn't stand in their way. My liberal friends say that about the Republic of Texas all the time, it doesn't mean anything..."
Moody: "This isn't about me, this is about optics. I could give a shit. I mean, even his name..."
Diane: "The writers named him that seasons ago, it's hilarious that we're talking about this now. But also, our President's middle name is Hussein. I don't think my fiancé's weird last name is..."
Kalinda & Moody: "Hold up, what?"
Diane: "Oh, did I not mention that?"
Moody: "I gotta go. We'll talk about this after my stroke."
WITH CARY
Cary: "Alicia, we gotta do these secret strolls more often, I feel like a superspy!"
Alicia: "Remember how we were going to leave L/G and start a firm?"
Cary: "Vaguely?"
Alicia: "So are you still doing that?"
Cary: "No way! That would get me fired, equity partner."
Alicia: "I saw you, with our little one-time cabal. I know you're doing something."
Cary: "I'm not plotting. I was angry, we all were, about losing our partnerships. But I mean, I chilled out. The firm will make good on their promises, I know that."
Alicia: "Okay. Hey, are you lying to me right now?"
Cary: "Pretty much. But we're still good, so don't worry about it."
BACK HOME
Grace is wondering aloud if they're going to have to move for the fourth time in four seasons, and go live in Springfield, and what that's gonna be like, when Zach gets a weird crazy text from an Anonymous source: A video of Bratcher and other guys joking around about the rape with a sex doll, tossing her back and forth and reenacting certain parts of what is turning out to be a sadder and sicker event all the time. He's still watching it when Alicia comes home, and -- after frankly way too long -- realizes she's watching a reenactment of a rape with her teen children, and shuts the whole moment down.
Grace: "Wait, you're working on this case?"
Alicia: "Ugh, yes. I didn't tell you guys, obviously, but yes."
Grace: "Well, then this is good."
Both of the Florrick kids are young enough that they don't see the whole picture, but it's a nice little button on things that Grace is Grace-y enough that she says the obvious. Usually it's a bit annoying, but because of the Stack angle on the whole thing -- that this brush with Anonymous is a perfect entrée into thinking about the Alicia we have now, what she's given up, what she's gotten in return -- Grace as a viewpoint is actually more valid than ever: Yeah, this is a good thing. Which makes it a bad thing.
TRIAL
There's a lot of semantics and grandstanding between the lawyers about exactly what this video is and why it matters, lots of rhetoric impeding the actual discussion at issue, which is -- even after it's been authenticated by one of the boys -- where it came from and how computers work and whatever. The defense maintains that the person whose phone it is from (one of the main co-defendants in the original trial) erased the sex doll video because it was tacky, not because it was evidence, but that either way this could only have been produced illegally. They keep using the word "anonymous" which is of course the word you would use, but it's a neat little literary trick where Anonymous is hiding in plain sight, disguised as this word.
PARTNERS
David Lee: "It is time for me to bitch about the fourth-years again. They're all taking their vacation days."
Will: "Well, that is the in the tantrum playbook. Don't negotiate with terrorists."
David Lee: "Fuck it, I just want to fire one of them. Cary Agos, for lots of valid reasons, and also because he is the ringleader."
Alicia: "...No. I was the ringleader."
She's sort of horrified with herself, but the fact that it only took a beat and a half before she fessed up, that's class act all the way. It takes just enough seconds that you have time to wonder how she'd produce this information on any other day, without Rainey Selwin in the back of her head, reminding us what truth looks like.
Diane: "So, setting that aside until I have a reason to freak out on you about it, would you say these are more scare tactics, or..."
Alicia: "Honestly, I'd say it's a coincidence."
David Lee: "Fourth-years don't take vacation days..."
Alicia: "Well, first of all that's because they want to show effort in the hopes that it will be rewarded, and you've made it clear that no amount of effort is going to be rewarded. But in the absence of a tasteful way to point that out, I'll just say it's been an exhausting bankruptcy all around."
L/G: "Are they still pissed at us or not?"
Alicia: "Dumb question with an obvious answer, so I will once again sidestep the issue by quoting Cary verbatim on the subject. The fourth-years know that the partners will honor their agreements. Which is, by the way, an incredibly subtle but devastating threat, which I am happy to make, because this whole partnership thing is fucking me over worse than any of the rest of you guys, and effectively worse than the fourth-years themselves."
The partners know enough to know they should be feeling crummy about this, but have no choice in practice but to overlook the entire thing, whatever stupid fourth-years, and the last order of business is "guarded approval" for the Stack class action. I wish this weren't just a toss-off idea -- and maybe it isn't, but this week it is -- because that's exactly the kind of shit this show is currently about: The way treating companies like people, protecting them from the future, giving them shelter from the world's and society's best interests, is exactly the fight that defines us, as a culture, right now.
And the higher Alicia climbs in L/G, the more clearly you can see how a corporation ends up making those decisions, which become monstrous only ever in aggregate: Nobody is a villain in their own movie, no single individual decision made to serve your company is destructive in and of itself. A need to protect your IP, for example, becomes a mandate to define the infrastructure of the Digital Frontier for future generations, becomes a lobby of people who don't understand the internet or how information can be freely duplicated in a way a loaf of bread cannot and thus can't be sold like loaves of bread, becomes bought legislation written up and sold to the highest bidder to product your financial interests and defend the world as you understand it against these young people who just want to destroy everything, becomes the motivation to set precedent cases and public opinion by pillorying educated activists whom you should actually be employing to explain these things to you but becomes a trumped-up fight about paranoia and privacy, becomes the decisions made by lawyers and the FBI guys who want to do their jobs well by following these new ill-formed laws as carefully as possible, becomes the death of one of our generation's smartest futurists. All you wanted to do was sell records, or DVDs or whatever, and at the end of that snowball you became a murderer.
OUTSIDE
Alicia: "Robyn Burdine, since Kalinda and I are -- you know -- and she and Cary are probably -- you know -- I need you to do something for me. Sneaky and subtle, and without getting your adorable quirk all over me because it really pisses me off, like, your whole personality is seemingly a checklist of things that make me want to slap you. Can you do this?"
Robyn Burdine: "Nope! I can't do that. But I can believe that I am trying to do that, which will have to be enough. Did you know that I'm up for review this week?"
Alicia: "No, because I don't care about you at all. Now, can you please, please look into some high-level shit for me? And tell nobody, not the partners, not even Kalinda."
Robyn Burdine: "Does this mean we're friends?"
Alicia: "I don't even know your name, man. If you asked me to say your name right now, I might not be able to come up with it."
Robyn Burdine: "It's Robyn Burdine!"
Alicia: "Right, right. Off you go."
Obviously the whole idealism v. reality fight has its roots here, too, but I like this whole thing better because it's my favorite kind of Alicia: Trying to get everybody out alive. The difference between this year's girl and earlier versions is that she's using back roads instead of just blithely telling everybody what's going on. Well, "blithe" is the wrong word because she barely talks, but you know what I mean. Now she's committing treason and betraying the proletariat at the same time, hoping they will somehow... Not cancel each other out, but assimilate and transcend, and everything will be okay. If she were only doing one, or the other, it would be gross. But since she's doing both -- in full view of everybody -- it really does work. A very Alicia Florrick solution.
TRIAL
Bratcher's on the stand being the same kind of cliché as they always are -- "The sad thing is, I like Rainey," which is like some law somewhere that all rapists have to say that on the stand at some point -- when Alicia notices Dylan Stack in the gallery, and checks in on him.
Alicia: "So you're here because?"
Dylan: "I wanted to see what idealism looks like."
Alicia: "Barf. But also, you're the Anonymous friend that texted my kid?"
Dylan: "No, that storyline wasn't about me until just now. I don't, um, text with your teenage son."
Alicia: "Because it could possibly prove helpful, or could have."
Dylan: "This Todd Bratcher kid seems like a real piece of shit."
Alicia: "Oh yeah, he is. He really is -- like, separate from this whole thing -- he is a piece-of-shit rapist. It's like one of the main things about him."
Dylan: "Do you think the jury understands this about him?"
Alicia: "Not sure yet."
Will gets Bratcher to -- in the litany of denials -- deny that he ever "made fun" of Rainey's accusations, which the judge finally (after much of a muchness) allows opens up the videotape... But only the one part they got Bratcher to claim he never said, before his lawyer shuts it down, so it's like five seconds of the tape. But they're a fairly harrowing five seconds, like, his piece-of-shittiness is very apparent in this five seconds, and it further qualifies itself by the fact that the only reason he could have known the detail he's laughing about is either he read it in Rainey's deposition, or he actually did it, and he just claimed he never made fun of her deposition, which only leaves him option B. Which technically means they can impeach his statements about the situation the tape contradicts, but really means they got to show him being a piece of shit.
LOCKHART VETTING
Kalinda: "Are we done with the McVeigh stuff yet? This is so stupid."
Moody: "Actually, no. It's to the point where you need to go meet with Chief Justice Ryvlan, because he is like obsessed with this guy."
Diane: "I gotta go kiss the ring because my fiancé is a Teabagger? This is dumb, but not wholly unexpected."
Moody: "Oh, and you are totally not allowed to represent Dylan Stack anymore. Speaking of secessionists and revolutionaries."
Diane: "He's a dotcom zillionaire, not a... Bitcoin revolutionaries are not actual revolutionaries, they're just young and entitled and silly. It's not like anybody actually listens to Libertarians except other Libertarians, right? It's like that. Realpolitik versus Paul Ryan playing with charts and graphs. Dylan Stack supports the overthrow of government right up until it disrupts his Xbox LIVE subscription."
Moody: "Yeah but it's the zillionaire part that makes his dumb fantasy values relevant."
DOWNSTAIRS, I THINK
Robyn: "Alicia, it's that girl you barely know and yet weirdly hate. Listen, Cary Agos just bought twelve mil worth of malpractice insurance."
Alicia: "Are all the fourth-years involved, or..."
Kalinda: (Jumps out of the shadows.)
Robyn: "I have to go now. We can talk about those wigs I ordered later, sir."
Kalinda: "Who was that, your wig guy?"
Robyn: "My brother."
Kalinda: "The one you shot? Because it turns out that's actually not something you invented just to seduce that awesome douchebag, but an actual thing they told me at the Treasury."
Robyn: "No, another one. Hey, can you put a good word in at my review?"
Kalinda: "Yes, because I want to figure out your deal, and this means keeping you close. Also, you're a shitty liar."
Robyn: "I am an amazing liar!"
STACKOTEL
After Grace receives another Anonymous text -- this one a picture of Bratcher posing with a clearly incapacitated Rainey Selwin -- it's the file name ("idealism.jpg") that pisses Alicia off: The video was titled "reality.mov." She busts down Dylan Stack's hotel room door and reminds him that she was already very clear in her opinions on him sending illegally obtained rape trial evidence to her kids.
Dylan: "I didn't send this. Do you really not get how this works?"
Alicia: "I do actually understand Anonymous, because the show has really been trying to get its tech stuff right this year and it's been a beautiful experience. But idealism versus reality? And then it's just some random coincidence that..."
Dylan: "You told me to stay away from your kids. I didn't really need you to tell me that, but you did in fact underscore it. We both know what is going on here."
Alicia: "So you told some online superhacker trolls about this rape trial and our conversation about reality and idealism, and because they have no idea how the legal system actually works..."
Dylan: "Because, on the contrary, they understand how the loopholes and plea-bargains and Chinese Walls and hands-clean trade-offs work..."
Alicia: "But why would you do this? The hounds of war, especially in a media-sensitive case like this..."
Dylan: "It is an object lesson, for them, to help them grow into an understanding of the real. The cynicism that we are up against. And for you, you need help. You're losing."
Alicia: "Well first of all, you're being disingenuous. This isn't idealism, this is nihilism. There is a naïveté to your revolution that you don't even see, because you can throw money at things while you're destroying them and you don't ever have to live in the world you're burning down."
Dylan: "As if any of my hacker friends have ever known poverty either. This is white kids versus white kids just like every other movement in American history, and you know it."
Alicia: "Motivations don't matter. Intentions don't matter. The legal system works the way it does..."
Dylan: "It's cynical to say that it 'works' at all. Now who's being disingenuous."
Alicia: "You are not helping. You think you're helping but you're not helping."
Dylan: "Look. The cops can't hack for this stuff. Kids know how to delete evidence and the cops can't get to it and that means the kids are the ones hacking the original system. So my kids hack their hack and get the cops the info they could have gotten for themselves, before everybody got so clever. It's flipping it back right side up. For you, for your system of justice you love so much."
A judge will never see it that way, frankly Alicia can't even see it that way, because it makes their lives largely irrelevant and we're not ready to look at that yet. She's hot as hell, she has no reason to accept that most of what she's learned is continually becoming archaic. The efficiency of any system moving into the future can only be helped by these things -- exposing these changes and weaknesses -- but you have to do it in a way they understand, or else you're just being "honest" like poor Rainey Selwin, and thinking that's going to save you. Being right has never saved a person.
You can say that's cynical, but what you're talking about is ego: The immense pride of the activist, who claims to be helping the world but doesn't really care about helping the world so long as he can say he tried to save the world and is thus a better person than those that didn't, that didn't throw tantrums and rage against the machine. All season long, different conversations about this central fact, that there is no worse person on the planet than a Good Person.
If your politics ever make you feel like you might be "selling out," chances are you need to investigate and clarify for yourself exactly who you're trying to impress in the first place. You don't get a cookie for holding good-hearted views; you get a reputation based on your acts, on your behavior. Nobody cares what is going on inside your head, because they aren't in there with you. It's good to be both, essential to be both, really, but... It's like outsider art, it's called "outsider" for a reason: If your art is not for or about other people, if your identity as The Artist is more important than your social role of service to other people, then you're not actually communicating anything with your art except, "I am weird."
Which is what is beautiful, and scary, and wonderful and awful, about Anonymous: It's shifts by aggregate, like any other monster made of people, but that central thing of Ego is intentionally left out of the design, so the evolution doesn't ever have to stop moving forward, making it a new kind of thing we have never before had on Planet Earth. Ego still happens, you hear about certain people bragging too much and causing issues -- and, of course, it's still basically educated white guys who think that the hypothetical possibility of diversity is the same thing as actual diversity, which thought eventually creates the opposite of diversity because it means a well-intentioned entitlement to speak on everybody's behalf, which white guys already feel okay doing anyway -- but still, you never know what those folks are gonna do.
It's wonderfully and it is terribly made, and this story in particular lets those things float to their appropriate margins. I was expecting "These monsters don't know what they are unleashing!" from this show, I mean, I love this show but Anonymous is frigging hard to wrap your head around; instead, they manage to tell-by-showing a much more accurate picture: Not necessarily the things they say, but the way it all works out, seems a lot closer to a genuine exploration of these issues, the bleeding-edge future creature it is, and that was a lovely surprise.
TRIAL
Will: "Now that we know it exists, we don't need this iteration of that photo, we can subpoena the server Todd's cell sent the photo from. They are the same photo, literally the same thing, because it's not a loaf of bread, but the legal system hasn't caught up to that truth yet, so we actually can exploit that."
Alicia: "You're so smart! And handsome!"
Will: "Do you like being partner yet? Or are you secretly involved in a coup?"
Alicia: "Neither. But also kind of both."
BACK HOME
Grace has her knees drawn up on the windowseat when Alicia knocks on the door -- she forgot Grace's cell phone at the office, in all the Will/Alicia going on -- and you think she's crying, and then you realize she's praying. Which is always exciting, because God is the best and most interesting thing about Grace Florrick.
Grace: "Will already called to say you'd forgotten my phone, it's fine. I have a direct hotline to my only friend anyway."
Alicia: "Is that what you were doing? Praying? I thought you had a migraine."
Grace: "God was like, ready to go anyway. I got the distinct feeling He was about ready to wrap it up, but just being polite."
Alicia: "Can I ask what you pray for? Or does that invalidate the..."
Grace: "It's not like a birthday candle, I mean you don't pray for stuff so much as pray about it. Most people think you pray for a new bike or something, but those people generally were never going to get it to start with."
Alicia: "Do you pray for me?"
Grace: "Of course."
Alicia: "Because I'm going to Hell?"
Grace: "No, because I love you. My relationship with God is the main thing about my relationship with God. We don't really care how other people feel about it, or Him, because it's not about them."
Alicia: "You don't sound like any Christian I've ever met."
Grace: "Actually I'm just like most Christians you've ever met, it's just that we know to shut the fuck up about it, so you don't mentally label us that way."
Alicia: "I'm sorry, Grace. I wish I were a better mom. I was, but... Things are out of control..."
Grace: "Do you need me to pray for Lockhart/Gardner?"
Alicia: "This isn't really about anything that's going on outside my crazy, horny body. I broke up with Will because I couldn't handle juggling you kids and work and my complicated marriage and it's starting to look like maybe those things were just going to make me crazy anyway, so now I have the exact same problems as before but minus Will, which makes me crazier still, and then plus I just realized like three scenes ago that he's essentially not my boss anymore,which is a whole other dimension to our relationship that now no longer matters, but it doesn't seem like much of that would really impress God, so..."
Grace: "God says you're a great mom so don't sweat it."
God: "And dox Todd Bratcher. It's okay by Me, rapists are the goddamned worst."
Alicia: "I have to stop thinking about myself."
Grace: "Sometimes it's good to think about yourself."
Alicia: "Yes, and you have no idea how proud and relieved I am to hear you say that. But sometimes it's not, and right now it's not."
CHAMBERS
Defense: "This is a fishing expedition! Who knows how many rape selfies will be on that server?"
Judge: "Uh, this is clearly a very specific request, which makes it the opposite of an expedition."
Alicia: "That's the only gap in Bratcher's texting history; the assumption is that it's all been..."
Defense: "The cops already did this!"
Judge: "Then what's the problem? Subpoena granted, but stay within the scope."
Will: "Whew, right? Hey, are we really okay with Cary and the fourth-years?"
Alicia: "I guess. I mean, what's okay? Are we okay? Is that rapist over there okay? Who's to say what okay even means in this context?"
Will: "Comforting."
ANOTHER STROLL
Cary: "So much strolling together! People will say we are courting."
Alicia: "Malpractice insurance, Cary? Come on."
Cary: "Who told you!?"
Alicia: "I found out."
Cary: "Do the partners know?"
Alicia: "Baby, you're talkin' to a partner."
Cary: "No, I mean the real ones."
Alicia, glumly: "...No."
Alicia: "Who are you taking?"
Cary: "The other fourth-years, maybe you..."
Alicia: "No, I mean our clients."
Cary: "...Oh. Then yeah, I can't tell you that."
Alicia: "How long?"
Cary: "A month."
"I was comparing Lockhart/Gardner to a dozen other firms. It's top-heavy. Half the equity partners are soaking up profit participation without doing any real work. What does Howard Lyman contribute to L/G? I'm not being bitchy, I'm asking what the fuck he does all day. Do you know how much he makes a year? Four million dollars. For being an old white guy as his job. Look me in the eye and tell me you're satisfied with that."
Alicia: "Huh."
Cary: "When we were in law school we wanted to change the world. We wanted to always do right. And this season, how many times have you felt good about your wins? Hell, in the last four years how many times have we done unequivocal, unqualified right?"
Alicia: "When I say I'm going to think about it, it's going to sound like I'm placating you. And that's partly because I am, partly because I'm Alicia and I will be thinking about it because it's all I ever think about, but mostly it's going to sound that way because I'm distracted, because I just saw Guy Fawkes entering the courthouse and I got a sick feeling in my tummy."
So, Cary's saying, the old order is hoary with age and cobwebbed with old compromises and built on a foundation that is crumbling and obsolete: They've done so much to save the company that they've damned the company. No villains, just aggregates: Howard Lyman put in his time, nobody's saying he didn't. But the old beast moves slower and slower, it can't change course without each of those rich white guys making their uninformed decisions known, and in cases like this -- or even moreso, as you'll see, the Swartz class action -- any single employee of the company would agree that their lives, the corporation inside whose bones they live, are too big to fail. And when that becomes unbearable, you have to walk away.
Within the corporate structure there's no clear parallel to the "hack their hack" thing from before, because nobody except the people on top of the heap are really hacking the system, and even if they knew they were doing it you can't hack them back without, like, embezzling or something. And we all have an emotional connection to Lockhart/Gardner, we're all happy to be in those halls and conference rooms, and we love both Lockhart and Gardner, and this would be indirectly hating them too, because that's how a snowball works.
But where all these Young Turk lines -- Selwin, Anonymous, Cary, Stack, Swartz -- converge is in the idea that any complex entity that feels threatened is not going to put its own body under the knife: It's going to come after the people that questioned it, that attacked it, that -- like poor Hayden Clarke, who tried to make it Zumba, who was cruelly punished again and again for trying to save its life through bootcamp calisthenics -- in one way or another made its paralysis and obsolescence impossible to ignore. Which, while vicious, doesn't really make it move more quickly so much as hit more forcefully. Otherwise it would just lay down and die, and we can't have that. Every single flake of snow is unique and valuable and good, and none of them can sincerely be expected to recognize the shape of the snowball they collectively are.
GARDNER
Diane's waiting in Will's office when he comes back, laughing about Grace's girly phone case, and then cuts to the chase: They need to drop the Dylan Stack class they "guardedly approved." She begs Will not to put too fine a point on it, or call it what it is, but she has no way of knowing how strongly he feels, this week, about this subject, so he draws her out and makes her explicitly acknowledge the lie, and then explicitly tell the lie, and it makes them both sick but this is how they have to do it: "Dylan Stack is not in keeping with our other clients, and we need to drop this case, because just as in cases we've changed our minds, it is in the firm's best interest to do so."
Which does two things: First of all, it makes Diane feel crappy which they both appreciate. Second of all, it reminds us that Will is feeling deserted by both of the women in his life, and that any Supreme Court connection is double hard for him because it means taking apart something he spent the better part of his life building. Turning it into some new shape. But it also sets up a later scene in which Will's hurt feelings are secondary to what Diane's actually being asked to do, which none of us know about yet. We still think this is a gentle breakup, that it'll be hard for Will and eventually he'll get over it and if you love something set it free. We are wrong.
HALLWAY FIGHT
Cary: "So you're talking to Alicia?"
Kalinda: "Not generally on this TV show, no."
Cary: "But she knows I'm leaving..."
Kalinda: "Dude I don't even know you're leaving, so no. New topic. The hell? You're leaving?"
Cary: "Don't talk to Alicia."
Kalinda: "Don't fucking tell me what to do, but how about this radical rewrite of your radical rewrite of reality. I believed you when you said you weren't leaving. So yeah, ironically, I didn't tell Alicia anything because there was nothing to tell. So you wanna rethink every fucking thing you just said to me?"
Moments later, Kalinda thinks about it for five seconds and realizes that obviously Robyn is investigating on Alicia's behalf, because Alicia is the only person in the correct position -- and with the correct character -- to try to fix this for everybody at once without ever getting her fingerprints on it. Anonymous.
SPEAKING OF
Dylan quietly interrupts Alicia during the testimony of the doctor that did Rainey's exam, to pass
Alicia: "Ugh. What is this now?"
Dylan: "Easy, lady. You said to leave your kids out of it and you couldn't use digital stuff, so here. A folder containing a near-hilarious amount of liberal dog whistles, like the guy went to Baylor for General Obstetrics, and while there he wrote an unpublished paper on how duck and therefore human vaginas -- you guessed it -- have ways of shutting that whole thing down."
Alicia smoothly introduces that shit real quick, and after another gloss on that situation -- the defense claiming that the expert's attitude toward rape has nothing to do with testimony on rape -- gets the guy thrown the hell out. Even then, he can't see over his ludicrous privilege:
Doctor: "I wrote that when I was very young! I was positing intellectual theories!"
Which, as long as there aren't any women in the room, that's okay. But the second women became people, "theorizing" about shit like whether rape even really exists stopped being okay. And for a lot of us, we still don't really notice that the world has changed outside our heads, so we get angry and hurt when it comes up: All of a sudden, you're calling this guy a jerk, just out of the blue, for reasons he still doesn't understand and in a way that seems and feels like a vicious attack. While outside his head, what's really going on is that the whole world just got a stark reminder of the men we accidentally left behind, and how they still have power, despite not really having a clue.
Of course, that small victory comes just as the judge takes note of two -- for now -- Fawkes masks, and throws a fit about it. Which fits nicely into the "determining power of extant structures" theme in this episode: They are being really disrespectful wearing hoodies and masks into a court of law... But only insofar as they recognize that authority.
A court of law is just a room in a building; it matters because we all agree that it matters, so while the judge is rightfully angry about them treating it so cavalierly, that's only from his angle. From their angle, they're just in a room that's no different from any other room, except today it happens to be a room where the legal system everybody holds in such great regard somehow managed to take a man who thinks "legitimate rape" is an okay topic to concentrate on, and call him an expert.
Lockhart/Gardner is a family, it's a proud institution, it's a dream they built with their hands, it's a force for good, it's beaten the odds again and again... But it's also just a couple floors in a building surrounded by oil companies, or pharmaceutical companies, or lobbyists, or whatever. Its peers are not Legal Aid, its peers are other corporations that do not do good works, or even care about looking like they do. Honest companies, I mean; I don't think anybody would argue there's anything inherently wrong with any of this. Evil is not the absence of good, business is content-neutral, Diane's allowed to be over the moon that she got her second floor back.
But what Cary is saying, and feeling, is not only philosophically but generationally close to the Fawkes kids in a lot of ways, only the mask he's wearing looks a lot like the most beautiful human being that ever lived, and it says, "I refuse to spend my thirties accruing imaginary brownie points, and showing loyalty, to a company that doesn't honor its own brownie-point scrip and to which I feel no loyalty." It's not about hurting L/G, it's about who he wants to be. And you don't need to argue with that, either; this whole show is about a woman figuring out that exact same thing, with the exact same tools, which is why it's so interesting to see this other path.
JUST LIKE BUDDY HOLLY
Kalinda: "Thanks for meeting me at this hipster coffee shop where everything has glasses and a mustache because this show thinks hipsters are real and they all have glasses and a mustache and that either of us much less actual hipsters would be caught dead in a hipster coffee shop where the theme is glasses and a mustache."
Robyn Burdine: "I haven't ever been to a coffee shop before! I grew up in a redwood tree outside of Irvine California."
Kalinda: "Another lie among your many lies. Hey, so Alicia asked you to investigate Cary?"
Robyn: "Whaaa?"
Kalinda: "Come on."
Robyn: "Okay, well. Let's say 'a partner' comes to you and asks you to do some work, and part of the thing is that you can't tell anybody else."
Kalinda: "I see how you got there, I do. Here's what you need to understand about L/G, it is a seething mass of rats fucking each other to death. You know how I never talk out loud? This is in large part why. Do not promise people that, okay?"
Robyn: "I see, I get it."
Kalinda: "Now about your brother that you shot. You didn't actually shoot your brother. That whole thing is a lie."
Robyn: "Okay, fine. I made it up. I actually grew up in a suburb of Portland where nothing ever happens, and that is unacceptable to me, so I made up the brother."
Kalinda: "Well, I don't believe that for a hot minute either, but you've intrigued me enough that -- you would never understand this so I won't mention it -- but you actually just ensured my support in your performance review. I wanna see how far down this rabbit hole actually goes."
SUPREME COURT
The mean old world gives Diane a few minutes of extreme pleasure, as she giggles and hops around their Supreme Chambers, imagining herself in various seats, ruling on various things at the state level. The fact that she's happy is the first flag, because this show hates when she's happy, or really when anybody is.
Chief Justice: "Having fun?"
Diane: "Yeah. But it's sad about how I'm getting this job because somebody died."
Chief Justice: "Not as sad as it's about to be. You know how you've spent the last two weeks stressing out about Kurt McVeigh? That was actually just a miscommunication. The reason I'm fighting everybody on your appointment isn't that kind of 'partner,' it's about Will. You know how it's always about Will? It's about Will."
Diane: "Son of a bitch. Ain't that ironic. Ain't that just a glorious irony."
Chief Justice: "I mean, he was disbarred. That's the opposite of being a worthwhile judge."
Diane: "He was suspended, not disbarred, and..."
Chief Justice: (Hollers at her for a while, mostly by repeating the words "sophistry" and "scoundrel" in different sentences.)
"Ms. Lockhart. You have been striving all your life to understand the law -- to mold it to your will. You've had losses, you've had wins. Well, I am here to tell you that the law is a mountain. You've been climbing slowly, for decades, and we've been watching you climb. From the top, we've watched you. Now I can tell you you're here. You've arrived. This is the top. This room. That desk. And you can either stay, or slide back down."
Oh, man. The speech I've been wanting somebody to give her all season, and she finally gets it, and it just tastes like ashes. That's so incredible. I honestly couldn't see how they were going to fuck her on this one, even though obviously somebody was going to fuck her on this one, but this is just the worst: You made it home, now burn down the city you came here from. Ryvlan's final orders are pretty definite, considering all this: "You can't engage in this sophistry. Your partner is a scoundrel to be spurned, and not embraced."
There's a level on which she understands him, there's a level on which she honesty does not understand him, but when he asks if he's made himself clear, both sides are speaking when she says no. And then he thanks her for coming, and takes his leave.
TRIAL
The judge has to quash the server subpoena because the photo made it online, which Mr. Andrews the defense just finds so reprehensible, and Will and Alicia swear they don't know how that happened but that now the photo is online why do they even a subpoena anyway, which: It was clearly obtained illegally and whoever did it, it's exactly the kind of shit the gag order is meant to keep down... And that's when Anonymous stands up, flashmobbed in the back of the courtroom, chanting -- "Justice now, justice for Rainey Selwin" -- and fucking everything up for everybody. Which is good, but in this case a little more bad.
PARTNERS
David Lee, somehow, has connected the dots on Diane's upcoming appointment, and has decided to throw a massive fit about it. What nobody -- including Will and Alicia -- knows is what happened in Springfield just a minute ago, so while it looks Diane's being cagey in the onslaught, she's really just at a sensitive and vague moment in the process and honestly there's nothing to tell, or to say. Not that David Lee would be satisfied by anything, jealous little bitch that he is, and he immediately takes it to the nth level, saying she should step down as a managing partner and basically comparing her profit-sharing to highway robbery, considering she could be pulling up stakes in the two weeks.
It's real ugly, and real sad, but it's also kind of true. And what makes this episode, in a string of excellent episodes, is that now Diane is a Young Turk story, with a whole new viewpoint: At the top of one mountain, ready to leap, she can see it all at once, spread out below. How hard she fought to keep L/G alive and get her second floor back, how the Supreme Court is just another obsolete system that exists to keep itself in existence, and how there is no escaping the cage: Just bigger and bigger cages. And once you realize that, the only rational thing to do is pick your particular cage, and decorate it how you want it.
David Lee: "Diane, you need to be stepping back right now. How are we supposed to know whether you're doing for what's good for the court or for us?"
Diane: "Beyond my long-term dedication to being awesome? Uh, you don't."
David Lee: "Then step the hell back!"
Will: "Oh, shut up."
Cary: "Could you guys stop yelling for a second? I need Alicia and Will out in the hallway. Now. The Selwin judge is going to be calling any second."
And this is because Anonymous -- with an earnest lack of humor that rings quite true -- has put together a video with a sort of muddle narrative that calls out Judge Parks just in case he's thinking of not doing what they want, but is all on the way to doxxing Todd Bratcher and Jess Martin, their homes and home addresses: Basically everything the tweet wanted to do, and Parks never wanted to happen. I don't see how this goes anywhere but a mistrial, right?
STACK AGAIN
Dylan: "It's not me! It's Anonymous."
Alicia: "You are Anonymous."
Dylan: "A decentralized anarchist collective without any personal identifiers at all, with no set cell structure and no central mandate. Calling me Anonymous is not only incorrect -- and correct -- but more than that, it belies your understanding of how this works. Anonymous is everywhere, because that's the point of Anonymous."
Alicia: "Then how did they know about the photo we gave the judge?"
Dylan: "Considering they were the ones that sent it to you in the first place? I dunno. The court reporter would have been in chambers, right? How many people at your firm know anything about this case? And one of them could be..."
Alicia: "Real talk, Dylan. This all suits your purposes. Whether or not you're doing it, it's what you want. Obfuscation and paranoia and confusion, to help your cause."
Dylan: "Which is what."
Alicia: "Destroying in order to create."
Dylan is beautiful as he considers it; he'll accept that definition.
Dylan: "Yeah. But I didn't do the video. For one thing, I have a sense of humor..."
Alicia: "Oh, and we're not taking your class action."
Dylan: "Out of pique?"
Alicia: "Don't be silly. It's an entirely different personal grudge."
ROBYN REVIEW
Robyn Burdine: "I hope you know I've enjoyed these last four episodes just as much as Jacob has."
L/G: "Well. As long as you're enjoying yourself."
Robyn Burdine: "Oh no, I mean, also I've been very impactful and established organic rapport to better liaise."
L/G: "Can you fly on your own, Robyn? Ready to leave the Batcave?"
Robyn Burdine: "Sure, whatever you guys want. I'm just doin' Robyn."
L/G: "That bitch thirsty. She has an energy to her, though. An eagerness. Kalinda?"
Kalinda: "Yeah, she's good. Keep her on. At least until I figure her deal out."
MISTRIAL
As expected. But the shitty part -- I like this judge, but gimme a break -- is that her contempt citation still remains in effect. Which kind of proves Anonymous's point that Parks's courtroom deserves the respect that you give it, and why contempt is such a fascinating idea, like when you're playing pretend with a little kid and stop to answer your cell phone and she's like "DRAGONS DO NOT TALK ON CELL PHONES" and then you get the wet-noodle lashing. Like how dare you not play along with Judge Parks's little game where he pretends to be God. Not that it's dumb, you know how much of a reverence I hold personally toward the rule of law and the institutions we're talking about, but contempt is a funny one, because -- like with cop killing, or threatening the President -- the consequences have to be so very deterrent that you know to take it seriously.
L/G: "Your Honor, our client is still in jail, with possibly months before a new trial..."
Parks: "Then she shoulda thought of that. Also, this is mostly about me being pissed off at Anonymous."
He compares it mob rule, which I think is a bit much, although with the doxxing that's pretty much crossing the line, but I couldn't tell you how much is correct ire and how much is just his feelings getting hurt because he was -- you can't fault him on this -- he honestly was trying his best to conduct this trial the best way he could. Holding to the old laws that are still -- basically but not entirely -- relevant, while also closing the loops as fast as the future can open them up.
Which I suppose is another huge part of being a judge, once you're at the top of the mountain: Being able to see in both directions. Reaching out toward the future while still holding on to the parts of the past that are worth it. Hoping you can tell the difference; hoping you can take yourself enough out of the equation that it's your best self that comes in to work every day.
EXTERNAL AFFAIR
But occasionally those loops don't shut in time. Or the ego of the judge, or the terror of the court, or the tenor of history passing under our feet, conspires to make a new hack. A coincidental conspiracy to punish, say, a girl for telling the truth. The judge, she has his sympathies of course: But the beast will always protect itself. She is in jail as a symbol of what contempt looks like, even when it's done in the name of hacking a hack. And for some of that's not good enough.
Which is why Kalinda gets ahold of Todd Bratcher's original confession -- tossed out on a technicality; he was a "hair" shy of being able to confess without his parents present -- and, for a moment, she's Anonymous too.
Of all the people you could expect to burn, to create-through-destruction, to calmly and rationally call bullshit on a beast that won't lie down and won't die, but can't turn fast enough to meet the future anyway. "Hell, maybe she was the one doing it all along," the show wants you to say: "But I'll never know."
CHAMBERS
Andrews: "Your Honor, you've already declared a mistrial..."
Will: "-- But you're still the judge of record until..."
Andrews: "You can't let an ...anarchistic gang control..."
Will: "-- Now you're just being bitchy. Letting her out does nothing to you, nor to your client. You're arguing for keeping a rape victim in prison for no reason other than professional pride, which makes you the exact same as Baylor guy. She's not theoretical, she's an 18-year-old girl who is in there because a bunch of rich old dudes don't like hearing the truth. Your Honor, it's wrong to keep her locked up just for speaking the truth. If you need more insight into her mindset, I can play this confession again..."
When they let her out, it's like part of Will himself is coming home, or being set free. It's not corruption exactly that Diane brought into their house, it's just confusion. The complications of a world that is neither idealistic nor particularly fair. Separating himself from that and looking at it -- as a friend, as a partner, as a supporter -- is a very complicated issue. Separating himself from Alicia and looking at her -- as a friend, as a no-longer-boss, as a supporter -- is a very complicated issue. Feeling her staring at him, literally quaking with desire and shame, are very complicated. But you know what's not?
This girl in his arms, who burnt so brightly with the truth that she was willing to suffer forever, because there was no other way for her to survive. It is simple, and it is good.
It's how we change the world. But more importantly: It's why.
WEEK
Mamie Gummer! I love that girl, I love Nancy Crozier. I wonder if she's changed as much as Alicia, since it's been so long. I bet/hope not, though. This show loves its characters and its fabulous actors. Alicia helps some software programmers with a contract thing, which somehow is a favor to Veronica (?) and think Owen comes back, so they can team up on her for giving thought to renewing her wedding vows (don't do it, girl!) and quote, "Kalinda plays two sides of the firm against each other." Which is intriguing, because Cary kind of accidentally put her there without knowing it, but if it even occurs to you to wonder if she would pick Cary (anybody) over Alicia, that quickly becomes hilarious. She might flirt with the idea of going Turk full time, but come on. The story itself would change shape to make sure she doesn't have to. Only a couple episodes left of the season and I will be honest with you: I have no idea what the hell is going to happen. And there aren't that many shows a person could say that about, really.
JACOB CLIFTON is a freelance writer and critic based in Austin, Texas. He currently recaps The Good Wife, Bates Motel, and Defiance for TWoP. Jacob can be found online at jacobclifton.com, Twitter, and Facebook, as well as a regular column for Tor.com, Geek Love.