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Zach is, of course, an early voter -- so he's there to see some ballot-stuffing, which quickly turns into another of those True Believer moments of his that reflect so well on his upbringing. With about 24 hours to go until the polls close for real, Alicia and Will take the suspicious votes to Judge Abernathy's court, where they're met by Patti Nyholm, who randomly is doing legal work for Kresteva's campaign.
After some seriously hilarious, brilliantly edited courtroom scenes, we learn that like 90% of the dubious votes were actually for Peter Florrick, which means everybody flips sides and starts arguing the opposite way. Jordan Karahalios shows up in the camp of a third-party candidate, but once they figure out how specious his reasons are -- and that he's now saying stuffing ballots was an idea of Eli Gold's, it looks worse and worse. Eventually Zach puts that one to bed as well, but by the time the polls open nobody in the Florrick campaign actually believes Peter's going to win, which they all frankly seem to find a relaxing prospect.
Kalinda finds evidence that one dirty DNC guy Jim Moody was actually the one that pulled the whole scam, and -- to spare Alicia's feelings -- Will takes this info straight to Peter. The candidate spins some crap about how he doesn't want to be responsible for deciding whether or not to sink his own campaign, and in the end Will decides to sit on it, and Peter wins the day. (Also of interest, his stress about Jackie's weird gigolo comes to a head when separately, and deliciously, they both tell him to suck it and leave them alone to do their weird stuff in peace.) (Also also of interest, an exhausted Alicia finds herself at one point watching Hostel III with Eli Gold and enjoying herself immensely.)
Meanwhile Will and Alicia have a conversation about their whole deal -- set to Joan Osborne's "Lumina," which is like the most romantic song of all time -- and eventually kiss, which Diane interrupts (to I'm guessing her eternal disgust), and by the end of the episode you're pretty sure Alicia is just going to straight-up leave Peter, which honestly would be fine at this point. What she does instead is a fabulous mashup of various other finales and major scenes from the show, the most callbacks I think I've ever seen at once, and then just kind of lets the whole thing slide, because actually her biggest internal dilemma has nothing to do with boys right now.
The fourth-years want a fancy office whose rent means leaving Kalinda out, or going back on their original ask -- and they all make fun of Cary for having sex with her and thinking he can be objective about her, when that's not something he could ever do even before they slept together -- so he asks her to consider a lower starting salary. The one thing you must never do to Kalinda.
The office space they're looking at, as it turns out, belongs to Colin Sweeney, and he approaches with a rent-for-services barter that would solve their Kalinda problem, but once Cary admits Alicia's not coming with, he goes all poleaxed and eventually pulls it together enough to call and beg Alicia to join the new firm. Alicia takes this as a poach of her personal clients by Cary, and yells at him in a way that makes him both sad and mystified, because he is great and hasn't done anything shitty in like two seasons.
When Cary approaches Robyn Burdine, it's not entirely with the intention of dicking Kalinda around, but it pisses her off enough that she burns the bridge and asserts her loyalty to Will and L/G... While in the episode's final shot, Matthew Ashbaugh (aww) backing her up in spirit, Alicia does the opposite: Florrick, Agos & Associates is go.
The first half especially was really tremendous fun, and it's always cool when you think Alicia's gonna zig and she zags -- especially when she gives the impression, which I got tonight, that she knows damn well how much corruption and stuff she's been ignoring all along -- but I was really disappointed in Peter this week. I mean, even for Peter he was pretty sleazy, which the end result was just really that he made Eli look cooler, which has been a missing element this season. All in all, it was a really fun ride that I barely remember what happened, which is when the show is the most enjoyable. It was nice to see Patti, and of course Jordan Karahalios, and to know they're still out there in the show's universe, being all tiny and wonderful.
Great end to what became a great season. But one wonders: With Alicia and Cary gone, and Diane a Supreme, doesn't that mean Will and Kalinda will start season as the leaders of pretty much a complete pack of assholes? And will Alicia ever be able to make it through a single conversation with Robyn without looking like she wants to deck her? And what other paying clients is she bringing with her, since they're going to be doing Colin's strange sex murders for free from now on? And will we get to see Alicia and Cary have tons of those neat scotch-glass conversations Diane and Will always do so well, as they worry about their firm and whatever? Because that would be awesome.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!You're sitting at an intersection, in the dead of night. No buildings around, a country four-way stop with a light. It is red. And there are no cars coming. It's a clear night, you can see all the way around you, and there's nobody there. Nobody's watching, nobody cares what you do. Are you going to run that light?
And when you do, how's it going to feel?
PREVIOUSLY
Alicia's spent the season slowly opening her eyes to the inevitable shortcuts and truth-bending to which Diane and Will's monster baby necessarily tends, but has yet to see the firebrand ways of Cary (or Mr. Bitcoin) as a viable option. But when an administrative uprising lead to a "split the revolution" reward for the ringleaders, her recent -- already incredibly compromised -- promotion took on a new, dirtier cast. As usual, her ideas about herself as a mother took precedent, and she gave in to the pressure of learning to be management, despite her misgivings.
Meanwhile, Peter's race to the Illinois Governor's seat has been fraught with its own ethical dilemmas, as Eli and Jordan played various demographics off one another until nobody could tell who the good guy was. At the end of the day, once Alicia squared away the women's vote with a personal attack on the Republican candidate -- and several hopscotching steps toward reconciliation with her questionable husband, some financial and others casually sexual -- Peter was closer than ever to winning... But, given our history with Jim Moody and other DNC heavies, that still may not be enough.
EARLY VOTING
Zach arrives the day before the election to vote, having just turned eighteen, and is greeted by the platonic ideal of Crazy Old Ladies, Estelle Parsons. After voting, some hot dude catches his eye dropping off an unsealed box of early votes, and -- being the son Peter and Alicia raised -- investigates.
Nana Joe: "That's so crazy that you have the last name Florrick! Trust me, I get it. My last name is Eisenhower."
Zach: "Cool. Listen, do we need to do something about the obvious vote tampering going on over here?"
Nana Joe: "I'm just a crazy old lady with no idea what you're talking about, which is exactly the only thing that ever freaks you out, when people in authority don't deserve it."
Zach: "I am patient to a fault, though, and will explain it."
Buckley: "I'm Mr. Buckley, polling monitor and bitchy flaccid martinet. Allow me to educate you on some laws I just made up about how you can't take pictures of vote tampering."
Zach: "I'm Zach Florrick, civics champion and goddamn super hero, and I'd like to educate you on suck it."
When your Bible is the Constitution, when your church is the courtroom, you understand those things are sanctified by what we bring to them. That's what Anonymous reminds us of: These things have power because we give it to them, and that is beautiful. That's the hush, that's faith in something bigger than yourself. You keep your voice down, you keep your head down. You watch out for other cars. It's easy to see when other people break that law; you know profanity when you see it.
ELECTION NIGHT PREP
The polling is still pretty much even, which makes all of this much more intense, and everybody also has their own stuff going on. Peter and Jackie are communicating with each other through Eli, because it regards her gigolo Cristian, so they can't talk about it directly: Jackie wants him on the dais with the family, which frankly is one of the more insane demands she's ever made if you think about it, while Peter would like Cristian deported, maybe into space.
When they get the call from Alicia about Zach's discovery, it's pretty great how everybody just assumes that he is right and so, clearly, this is a voter fraud move by Kresteva. She sends them the picture of the ripped seal on the box and suggests Will handle, it since Diane's off at some dinner, but Eli shuts that whole thing way down.
Eli: "First of all, why do I have to keep you from throwing your boyfriend directly at your husband like every single week? And plus, Diane has good reason to rock this."
Alicia: "...Right. For a second I forgot we're all just looking out for ourselves. Got it."
Eli, quietly: "Psst. Kresteva is stealing the election."
Moody: "Okay. Instead of worrying about that, I'm going to steal it back. I have a plan."
Eli: "You already have a plan?"
Moody: "I already have eleven plans. This one involves crashing a septic truck I already have planted in the field at Kresteva's biggest polling place."
Eli: "Sometimes even I am surprised at how horrible you -- I, we -- are. It's nice to know I have that in me."
[SPOILER], AGOS & ASSOC
Cary: "Does real estate regularly give people boners?"
Agent: "You'd be surprised. It costs a bajillion million dollars, okay?"
Cary: "That is a little steep."
4th-Years: "We can swing it, if you don't stick to your deal with Kalinda that apparently you made with Kalinda."
Cary: "I see what you're saying, but clearly you have never seen this show if you think having Kalinda around is optional. Tell me, do you want to lose every case? Or do you want to win every case? Let the last four seasons of this show guide your answer."
4th-Years: "What if somebody else could do that?"
Cary: "Um, they can't. Also, I want Kalinda around all the time. But mostly, the first one. I gotta go deal with something from our actual job, bye."
JUDGE ABERNATHY PRESIDING
It is after dark, with a little under 24 hours to go until the race is called. Abernathy, the adorbz Vampire King of Mississippi, is the on-call election magistrate. As Diane is explaining the situation -- using her favorite word and mine, "provenance," no less than sixty-four times to describe the Zach votes -- the Kresteva representative is replaced by no less an august personage than Patti Nyholm and her hundred progeny.
Transcriptist Judy: (Yawns.)
Abernathy: (Bitches cutely at her for yawning.)
Patti: (Arrives covered in children and chock-full of bullshit, as usual.)
Abernathy: (Bitches cutely at her for existing.)
Patti's billion babies interrupting ever so softly, L/G questions Zach.
Zach: "I saw an unsealed box of votes being carried in and placed in the corner, and took a cell phone picture. See the ripped seal?"
Alicia: "Good job, Zach! You're the best thing I ever did. Now this bitch is about to climb right up your colon, okay, and I want you to just be honest and tell the truth, no matter how horrible she is, or how she somehow knows exactly which buttons to push to piss you off."
Patti: "So, Zach Florrick, what did your mommy just say to you?"
Zach: "She whispered to just be honest. And so I shall."
Patti: "Do you usually lie on the stand? In addition to getting arrested for obstruction of justice and pulled over by the cops?"
Alicia: "Objection! Patti Nyholm is being the worst."
Everybody: "Sustained."
The love in Alicia's eyes as Zach calmly and respectfully -- but firmly -- reroutes every attempt to pull him off track by reasserting the honest truth in a way that disarms whatever hidden needles she's put in her way of speaking, well, I can only imagine I was making the same face.
Zach: "The arrest was for recording a police officer."
Patti: "So you do this exact same thing like all the time, pretty much? Little Breitbart Drudgey-Wudgey, are we? Little bit of an Assange in training?"
Zach: "It happened in the season premiere and again in the finale. I wouldn't say that is a lot."
Patti: "Do you question authority a lot?"
Zach: "No. Only when it's wrong."
Oh, Zach Florrick! Zach shouldn't be afraid of his elders, his elders should be afraid of him. XOXO.
Buckley: "So I saw him taking pictures, and bitched impotently..."
Patti: "What was he taking a picture of?"
Buckley: "Certainly not unsecured ballots. I can't admit having fucked up my job that bad, and I'll willing to lie under oath that I ripped the seal myself, on accident."
Patti starts insinuating that Zach is a childish exaggerator again, and Diane -- who has joined us -- stands up as one with Alicia to object. Abernathy, describing this whole thing fairly accurately as "our little slumber party," begins walking around the room because of his sciatica, which is only cute because it's him, and because you know eventually the camera is going to end up whirling, trying to focus on like eleven people meandering around the room for various reasons while they try to be lawyers, because that's how the show works.
Diane: "Mr. Buckley, you're a registered Republican..."
Buckley: "Who loves elections and their sanctity, but yeah."
Diane: "Okay, sanctity. Your Honor, impound these votes until their provenance is determined, and we'll preserve that sanctity. If the box's contents don't mirror the greater sample -- which is about half and half -- then we'll know Kresteva tried to rig shit."
You're sitting in an intersection, waiting for the light to turn green. Another car comes up behind you, in the dead of night. Going a little too fast, swerving a little too much, and they blast right through. They can see nobody's coming; they can see they're safe. They can see how easy it would be, and so they do it. Are you more or less likely, in that moment, to follow suit?
L/G
Diane: "About the provenance of these votes, you need to look into their provenance."
Cary: "You heard her. Provenance, look into it."
Diane: "Also, the provenance of this poll monitor. We've had luck exposing people lately as rape apologists, but he could also have a mammy fetish. Get to it."
Cary: "Hey Kalinda, about your rock-solid no-negotiations ask..."
Kalinda: "-- Fuck you. Later."
Cary: "You have the chance to get in on the ground floor of something..."
Will: "Hello, all!"
All: "Hello!"
Will: "Carry on with whatever thing I don't notice is going on despite Kalinda basically using brightly colored flags to alert me what's going on."
Cary: "Anyway..."
Kalinda: "Don't sell me, Agos. Ten percent over my current salary within the year, and I get a five-percent profit share for the first three years. That's me on the ground floor. And I do mean five percent, as in, before overhead. Clean."
Things are easy when they're clean. Kalinda keeps it easy.
Cary: "You're killin' me, Sharma."
Kalinda: "It is kind of my thing. Don't pretend this is about anything other than me doing what I always do, which is makin' bank and covering my own ass. You don't know a thing about survival."
EXT ABERNATHY
Will: "Patti, like what are you even doing on this episode?"
Patti: "Surprise, Big Pharma prefers Kresteva. I don't know if you know this, but the GOP is just a stock car with various corporate stickers on it and no driver."
Will: "How many babies do you even have?"
Patti: "I have no idea. I can't count that high, can you?"
Nana Joe: "I'm Estelle Parsons."
Everybody: "I loved you in The Last Pic..."
Nana Joe: "Nope, that was Cloris. You remember me from Bonnie & Clyde, where I was like the Yeardley Smith from Billie Jean."
Everybody: "You're adorable. I love your beret!"
Nana Joe: "I took it off because I am in court, but I can..."
Everybody: "Put it on! Put it on! Oh my God, you are adorable!"
Nana Joe: "Well, Buckley's lying if he says he ripped that seal. The guys brought it in and the big demonstration of civil rights started about a hot minute later. He never left his office until he came out looking to cuff a younger, weaker person and got the surprise of his life."
Patti: "Now, you batty old bitch... Can I call you a batty old bitch?"
Nana Joe: "Call me Nana Joe! Or Dwight D. Eisenhower."
Patti: "Okay, you batty old bitch. I'm going to walk to the back of the court and..."
Diane: "Oh my God, this stunt was old back in like Perry Mason days."
Abernathy: "And yet it's still amazing, every time."
Patti wanders to the back of the court, while Abernathy slowly circles the proceedings, and everybody just feels kind of crazy and middle-of-the-nighty. They're sitting at an intersection, it's the middle of the night, and nobody is watching.
Patti: "Nana Joe, how many fingers am I holding up?"
Nana Joe: "I don't know, like three?"
Patti: "Two, sorry. Sorry, old bitch."
Diane: "How many fuckin' fingers am I holding up?"
Diane: "Nana Joe, was he that far away from you the whole time?"
Nana Joe: "No, he walked past me on the way out. Hot as hell for a bit player."
Diane: "This close?"
Nana Joe: "Closer. I could smell the SAG card in his thoughts. It was especially weird because -- thanks to what's about to happen -- he never even testifies or comes back into it."
Diane: "Whoa, this close?"
(They are standing nose to nose, they are Eskimo Kissing. Inuit. One more and she'll be looking out the back of Nana Joe's head.)
Diane: "Nana Joe, how many fingers am I holding up?"
Nana Joe: "Just one, pointed right at Patti. I can see it clear as day."
But then Abernathy interrupts because they have the ballot box! Its location but not its provenance has been determined.
Abernathy: "The good news is, we don't have to tabulate the votes, they've already been tallied."
Diane: "You mean we might actually get some sleep?"
Abernathy: "The bad news is, they are 91.29% for Florrick."
Everybody sort of breathes and listens to their own breathing while they wait for the inevitable, and then shoom everybody's screaming the exact opposite of what they were just saying. It's so balls-out that everyone involved, including Abernathy, is just kind of punchy about it.
FERN BAR!
4th-Years: "We don't want to give Kalinda five percent of anything..."
Cary: "But it's incentive, since she's profit-sharing!"
4th-Year: "How is this not exactly what L/G did to us? Big promises followed by a yacht-fucking."
Cary: "They were committing to promises they couldn't back up..."
4th-Years: "This is because you slept with her that time."
Cary: "Maybe. But maybe not! But yes."
An oily fog pours across the fern-bar carpeting as Colin Sweeney suddenly transforms from a roiling mass of snakes into a sex-murderer, and sends them a round of drinks.
Cary: "What are you doing here?"
Colin: "Wishing you well! And asking to come along."
Cary: "Are you a spy? Do you spy on my dreams?"
Colin: "No, I own the building you were looking at today. And I just love this little rebellion of yours, it's like Les Mis."
Cary: "What do you want, foul demon?"
Colin: "Twenty percent off your rent, in exchange for two years of free legal work. I am planning on committing thousands of sex murders."
Cary: "Well, maybe. But Colin, Alicia's not coming with us."
He says this tenderly, because he knows that Colin is her client but also because she's the only person he would probably never sex murder, and really this whole thing is about staying with her. Colin's bullshit act drops for like one second and he looks hurt, terrified, angry, sad, abandoned... And then gets back on the horse.
ABERNATHY
Will: "Patti Nyholm is being such a hypocrite!"
Patti: "For doing literally the same thing you are doing?"
Abernathy: "I know. Even for you, Will, this is an odd tactic."
Will: "Also she is so rude!"
CAMPAIGN
Eli: "Of 30,843 ballots, Peter, 28,158 were for you. Don't say out loud that it's fraud..."
Peter: "I sure hope they don't get thrown out! Unless Will is helping argue the case, and then I will just act out like usual."
Eli: "Shut up and deal with it. We need every vote."
Peter: "I am too busy perseverating on my mother's gigolo to worry about it."
Moody: "I'm not! What awful things can I do to circumvent and supplement the awful things I've already done?"
Eli: "Good deal, I'll go get you some money."
Peter: "Oh, and Moody? Can you maybe get Cristian deported to space, or murdered?"
Moody: "Sure, that's in my job description."
ABERNATHY
Lots of quick, clever cuts between the various strategies and witnesses: Buckley's a Republican, but not so blindly that he supported Romney; Nana Joe found the vote defrauder to be "suspicious," but also she's being treated for Alzheimers... It gets ugly and funny real fast.
Nana Joe: "I'm not showing symptoms..."
Will: "Oh really? What's your husband's birthday? NO CHEATING."
Nana Joe: "This sucks. You are being way too Will Gardner right now."
Will: "If you don't know that thing -- and by extension, don't really care about your husband or your marriage -- then how could you..."
Nana Joe starts flaming out in a massive way, begging to go home and crying hysterically, and my favorite -- and the most horrendous -- line of the episode happens.
Nana Joe: "Can I please just go home?"
Will: "Do you even remember the address?"
When Patti objects, you can see Will -- or even Josh Charles -- giggle his way through that charming pretense-at-innocence thing he does, and it's so freakin' great.
Patti: "So Zach, you were just being a good citizen when you took pictures of the cop who pulled you over? And this cop was later fired? You were instrumental in getting a crooked cop off the streets?"
Zach: "I wouldn't put it that way, and I didn't even know that."
Patti: "I'm sure your mommy's very proud of you. Do you know the penalty for perjury?"
Abernathy: "I think we all know this kid is more knowledgeable of the law and his rights than anyone in this room, so take it down a notch."
Patti: "Fine. You still say they came in off the street, who am I to disagree? Thanks for being honest, Zach. Despite what I'm sure is enormous pressure on you otherwise."
Needless to say, Alicia's shade has been wonderful throughout -- and especially of course regarding Zach -- but this last one just about sends her into the deep end. She practically expresses an emotion, which is of course always suspenseful. Will takes him , which Alicia's grateful for, but his skillful wordplay impresses (and relieves) Zach just as much.
Will: "So you were there for like ten minutes, did you see what happened before you got there or after you left? Or where the dudes came from, or their names or social security numbers?"
Zach: "Truly I do not know these things."
Will: "It's not lying to acknowledge the limits of your own testimony..."
Zach: (You can actually see him fall a little bit in love with Will when he says this.)
Will: "And you have no personal way of knowing the provenance of the ballots or how the seal got ripped."
Zach: "Whew. No, I do not. This by-the-book out-clause feeling, Mother, is this something you feel every day?"
Alicia: "Go get 'em, baby. It's not lying if you say it right!"
And then all of a sudden Abernathy suspends the whole thing, because there's a Federal Judge hearing a case that supersedes this one: An injunction on the ballot as a whole, requested by a third-party candidate we've never heard of.
OUTSIDE
Everybody's scrambling into cars -- half of this episode is just people bolting for the door -- and Grace gets very, very weird about making sure Alicia doesn't ride over there with Will. It's sad and teenagery and sweet and very Grace. It is also, of course, the right call.
Alicia sends the kids to the hotel for the campaign stuff, and on the drive over, gets a call from Colin Sweeney, which is already infinity awkward because he's nuts and grody, but also since she's in the car with Will.
Alicia: "Colin Sweeney, it is 1 AM! You gotta nerve."
Colin: "Come on, sweetcheeks. It's Election Night, I expected you to answer drunk."
Alicia: "I'm not even thinking of that right now, I've got lawyering to do."
Colin: "Well, a couple things. First of all, I voted for your husband because I adore you. And second of all, you need to leave Lockhart/Gardner with Cary."
Alicia: "I gotta go, man."
Colin: "Because I am thinking of taking my $22M a year business over there. But let me tell you why..."
Alicia: "Nope. Click."
Colin: "It's because I am determined to stay your clie... Aw, she hung up. I hope she heard that last part, or else she is gonna take a chunk out of Cary's ass in a minute."
Will: "Did you just hang up on your biggest client, and one of ours?"
Alicia: "You know that fuckwad. He wasn't gonna stop with the heavy breathing."
FEDERAL JUDGE ANA GASTAYER PRESIDING
(IN MY OPINION)
The third-party candidate is an Albert O'Dell, and the person representing his interest in this injunction is none other than Jordan Karahalios, the most wonderful man in the universe. His point is that the early voting ballot misspells "O'Dell" as "Odell," which is a blatant stretch, but as Jordan points out, we're talking about Chicago, where Irish people come from.
Patti and the L/G team close ranks in a very loveable, automatic, unresentful way, but Patti doesn't quite understand Alicia's whispered prompting to add "in my opinion" to everything she says, because that's Gastayer's shtick. Which I would say is one of the more ludicrous ones, except I've been to the internet before and people are actually that stupid that they need this clarified for them. (For the record, Jordan immediately gets it.)
Jordan: "Turning the Irish O'Dell into the English Odell is basically racist anyway, and Illinois is 15 percent Irish, and they hate the English for reasons I don't need to explain tonight, but in my opinion this dumb typo actually does represent a factor in the voting process."
Patti: "You're the third-party candidate, retard. Why does it even matter at this point, or ever?"
Jordan: "Well, that's kind of my point. I'm not here just to present another obstacle in the storyline, I'm doing it without a clear allegiance to either main candidate. Once again, my practical efficacy is secondary to the fact that I represent the actual sanctity of the process. Until such time as I make it clear that I'm just doing this to fuck Eli Gold."
OUTSIDE
Robyn Burdine is full-on camped out asleep in the hallway of the federal building, adorable, and Cary's just sitting beside her playing on his phone because when you're that feral/low-maintenance people tend to get used to you real quick.
Will: "We got an apostrophe problem..."
Robyn Burdine: "Robyn Burdine is awake and functioning!"
Will: "Scare up something that'll sink Jordan's argument about the misprint."
Robyn runs off, Will runs off, and Alicia holds Cary back.
Alicia: "You little fucking punk. Do you want me to tattle to the partners?"
Cary: "Whoa, what's this now? Why do you keep thinking I'm Season One Cary?"
Alicia: "Colin Sweeney called..."
Cary: "I swear to God, Alicia, he just rolled up on us out of a fog, attended by wolves, coalescing out of the night. I didn't try to..."
Alicia: "He's my client, Cary! He proves my worth!"
Cary: "Which is why I would never, ever do that? Also because it wouldn't work, because he's like obsessed with you? Also because he is a sex murderer and we need to fill in our midlist before we start bringing in high-profile pervs?"
Alicia: "Just me bitching you out like this proves I'm thinking about all kinds of things that make me feel guilty. But I'm still gonna take it out on you!"
She pushes him down the marble steps, punctuating each snapped bone and surprised cry with a booming laughter.
Alicia: "You have reaped the motherfucking whirlwind!"
He lies in a pile of himself at the bottom of the stairs, desperate to apologize for having offended her, begging -- as she makes her way toward him, one step at a time, heels echoing in the night -- for a moment without pain. Anything, if only the savagery will stop. All he wanted to do was stay clean, and help her come back home.
Robyn Burdine: "Sorry to interrupt this ass-beating you guys, but I just solved the misprint thing in the time it took you to pull out the seams on your entire relationship. Turns out this 'Albert O'Dell' is actually Jewish and that's his fake name."
Cary: "And so it was a question of his provenance after all. Hey Robyn? Tell me what you think about Lockhart/Gardner."
Uh, you just got murdered because Alicia thought you were doing this to her. Do you really want Kalinda to find out you're jeepin'? Sometimes I don't even get you, Cary.
GASTAYER
Alicia: "Jordan sweetie, what's your candidate's name?"
Jordan: "Albert Seamus Flannery Shaughnessy O'Dell, why?"
Alicia: "Do you know who Albert Steinman is?"
Jordan: "Who's that?"
Alicia: "Same dude, man. He changed it. He has no Irish heritage."
Jordan: "No, he has a Jewish last name. That doesn't mean he's not Irish..."
Alicia: "-- Kinda like Odell, huh?"
Jordan: "Oh snap."
Everybody makes for the door when she dismisses the thing, and it's gotta be like three by now.
CAMPAIGN
Eli: "So how is old Jackie? I make it a point never to deal with her, you see."
Cristian: "She's good. She wants to go on a cruise. She watches TV commercials, but apparently not the news."
Eli: "And you'd be going along, of course..."
Cristian: "No thanks. I've had enough water in my life."
Eli: "Oh, because you swam here from Cuba?"
Cristian: "No, you idiot, because I was a lifeguard."
Eli: "I don't even know I'm doing it, I swear."
Eli passes him a check for twenty-five grand and tells him to get the fuck out of Dodge, courtesy of the candidate, mentioning various arrests and old debts, and after a little while, Cristian takes the check.
OUTSIDE IN THE RAIN
They're sitting at an intersection, outside the courthouse, while Abernathy takes another jaunt. Will and Alicia have stupidly cozied up in the back of a towncar, to nap. "Lumina" by Joan Osborne starts playing, which if you've never heard it, it's one of my favorite songs on earth. I put it in playlists to this day, I love it so much. Nobody is watching, nobody cares. The red light turns green, and then red again.
Eve took a train, Eve took a train / Went to see her man
Melting inside, melting away / Like butter in the pan
She watches him sleep, and he feels it. Eventually they settle back, looking up, through the roof, through the rain, all the way to the stars. The song is about innocence, about blameless sensuality in innocence; that without guilt and shame just touching another person is a beautiful experience that can't be quantified, and therefore shouldn't be.
It's about abandon, that thing we spend so much time thinking is so scary, a little apocalypse on the horizon -- a singularity on the other side of which is the unimaginable, but where we will no longer be ourselves -- and when you dive into it, when you are brave and let it happen, it's not scary at all. It's not oblivion, it's the opposite. You're not gone, you're more there than ever.
Alicia: "You broke up with Laura?"
Will: "Other way around."
Alicia: "That sucks. Are you still friends?"
Will: "I don't know. I'm not great at that one, clearly."
Eve took the fruit, Eve bit the fruit / Juice ran down her chin
Babies will put things in their mouths / Who've never heard of sin
You can see the moment when she decides to go ahead and push it just a little farther. We think sometimes that we're pressing a bruise, like it's about closure, but closure doesn't exist and we are very rarely actually doing that. She reaches out for oblivion, a little bit. She tests it, like butter in the pan. This week happened to be unseasonably hot, in Cook County.
Alicia: "I think she thinks I was ... getting between you two."
Will: "[Nothing, because what do you say to that? Congratulations, obviously you were/are?]"
Alicia: "That kiss, it opened something up. A door, and I don't know how to close it."
Will: "Agree."
Alicia: "But it's going to just end up like last time."
Will: "Alicia, what the fuck was last time?"
Eve had to ask, Eve had to ask / What is wrong with this?
Here is the place, now is the time
Alicia: "I don't know. But it'll be worse. Because I'll be doing it on purpose. And I'll have a husband, a real one this time. And I can't figure a way out of it."
Will: "So what do we do?"
Let's invent the kiss.
They're still kissing, still terrified, when Diane knocks on the window -- looking in, through a hole through their steam -- and hisses at them to get their gross asses inside for the trial. Will assures her that, after the case is over, they'll talk. "To hell with the bad timing," he says, they'll talk. Red, green, red.
The thing about passion is that it's sanctified, sure. Without guilt, or shame, you can't sin. Passion melts us like butter, and becomes the storm, and every time is like the first time, like a shock of new discovery, territory off any map. But that's only true -- only easy -- when there's no reason to be guilty. When it's clean.
Passion's only blameless when it exists without shame; only when it's shameless is passion sanctified.
ABERNATHY
Abernathy prods Transcription Judy awake, laughing, and Patti calls one last witness.
Abernathy: "Oh, not poor Nana Joe again! You're gonna kill that lady."
Patti: "No, it's Jordan Karahalios."
Alicia: "This motherfucker again?"
Patti: "So yeah, you got fired from Florrick Guber. You were there for..."
Jordan: "Three wonderful months. Left in March. But before that, on February 18, Eli called a close-door meeting on sweetening the pot."
Patti: "Dropping off a box of bonus votes."
Alicia: "Your Honor, do I object because he got fired, or because he is currently working for the third party?"
Abernathy: "Neither. I am a weird old hippie and I like Albert O'Dell because he's the third-party candidate and pointless vote-splitters are an important part of pretending the two-party system isn't a huge royal fuck-you to us all."
Jordan: "I objected strenuously, of course, because I am awesome. But I was overruled."
Abernathy: "It's like five, you guys. And while I agree on the sanctity of the voting booth..."
Alicia: "Oh, shit."
Abernathy: "That sanctity is not absolute. It needs our constant vigilance. It needs our confidence that the votes are in fact true. So those votes are out."
The right decision. The Alicia decision. A decision she would no longer make, even though it's easy and it's clean.
Will: "I'll start the appeal..."
Alicia: "I'll go tell Peter..."
Diane: "Sad to think you can lose an election in court these days."
Even sadder when you know it's right, though, huh?
THE SUITE
Alicia wakes, confused, to Eli watching torture porn on the hotel TV. She grins sleepily, and asks what time it is. T-minus fifteen minutes. A whole half-hour of sleep.
Eli: "You know why I love horror movies?"
Alicia: "It is too early for pedagogical metaphors, Eli."
Eli: "Oh, I know. I was just going to say it's because they're awesome."
She giggles and wakes up slowly, watching with him idly.
Alicia: "So we're going to lose, huh?"
Eli: "Peter's basically prepared."
Alicia, reaching out: "You ran a good campaign, Eli."
He's sad, but happy for the comfort. They are sweet together, in the Hostel-punctuated morning silence.
Eli: "He's going to need you."
She knows. He catches her eye as she's standing: "He loves you."
She barely hears him; she's just given herself an idea. She whispers to Zach -- so tenderly, and he's so sweet when he wakes -- and takes him back to the courthouse.
ABERNATHY
Patti: "Well, this is bullshit. We're going on twelve hours with this."
Abernathy: "I think we can handle it."
Alicia: "You've worked in the Florrick campaign's IT for...?"
Zach: "Seven months. Which goes back to before Jordan started. So I was certainly there when this story about 18 Feb would have happened."
Alicia: "But you know his testimony to be false?"
Zach: "Yeah. Eli wasn't in charge then, Jordan had replaced him. So he couldn't have overruled him on the ballot-box stuffing idea, and therefore that whole deal was a lie."
It's not a lie if you say it right. Of course the real truth is that Eli was "replaced" at the behest of the DNC, but never stopped consulting -- except for that brief moment Hamish Linklater and then Wendy Scott-Carr came after him -- and it's exactly the kind of thing he'd suggest, and exactly the kind of thing Jordan would strenuously protest. But the paper trail works, and the votes will be counted. Zach just won the election.
L/G
Robyn Burdine: "Hey! Watcha doin'?"
Kalinda: "Watching a video on my laptop, obviously."
Robyn Burdine: "Can I ask you a hypothetical question?"
Kalinda: "No. Fuck off and go get some healthcare or something."
Robyn Burdine: "What if somebody tried to poach me from L/G? What do you think I should hypothetically do?"
Kalinda: "Are you fucking kidding me with this? How much are they offering you?"
Robyn Burdine: "Hypothetically? Twenty percent."
Kalinda: "Yeah, do it. Have a ball. Because you and Cary Agos can both go fuck yourselves."
GARDNER
Will's asleep on his couch when she comes in, more quiet and still and intense than we've seen her in a while. Eventually she smacks his whiny ass awake: It's a video from a nearby security cam, clearly showing Moody administrating the drop-off outside Zach's polling place. Will thinks fast.
Peter: "So, court went well last night?"
Will: "Your son's great. I need to talk to you right fucking now. Kalinda found something."
Peter: "And you're telling me because?"
Will: "I want to know what to do with it."
Peter: "You're the lawyer, you figure it out."
Will: "No, this one's on you. This is a client call."
Peter: "If you simply needed direction, you'd have asked Alicia."
Will: "I didn't want to hurt her with this."
Peter: "...You have handled this whole thing really poorly, Will."
Will: "Yeah, probably."
Peter: "She's my goddamn wife, Will."
Will: "Then hit me."
It's really great. Chris Noth is such a huge presence when he's in the scene -- and when he's not -- but he's also so useful to the plot that you forget Peter Florrick is a whole person out there in the world, even when we're not watching him. This scene is great because his mind moves almost too fast, and you end up connecting the dots on what he's saying as he's saying it: Not politician-talk, but just the actual preverbal thoughts forming as they come out of his mouth.
Will: "Okay, so this video shows the DNC stealing 30,000 decisive votes for you."
Peter: "Then I guess I just lost the election, huh? I'm not going to make this decision."
Will: "Really? Because then what do I do with this?"
Peter: "You make the call. I want this to be clean, so you do whatever you want. I won't care. Lose, win, you see how easy it is to make these decisions."
Which on the one hand, I kind of agree that he would be a better Governor -- first of all -- and that Will is being pretty passive-aggressive here. But on the other hand, Will is right and Peter is wrong and they just spent all night defending the thing Will is trying to get Peter to piss on. They are right to leave Alicia out of it, and they're doing this because they know what she'd do. And she'd force them to do it, too, even though she just got pretty blurry her own self, over the course of the night. But a question like this? Fairly easy, fairly clean.
And ultimately, you already know what Will is going to do, because it comes down to The Good, and he is, variably, insensate and well past worrying what damage that puts on his soul. The only thing I like better than saints like Alicia are people who are willing to be the bad guy. Nobody ever wants to be the bad guy, and most evil comes directly out of that fact: Nobody saying the truth or doing the hard thing, because they want to be loved more than they want to be true.
ABERNATHY
Abernathy: "I am officially too exhausted to even be quirky. Votes are counted."
Everybody cheers, with whatever life is left in them, and they all run off -- Patti, head hanging in defeat. And when Alicia thanks him and says, "It's a good thing!" Only Will could say -- and more importantly mean -- that she's right. He was already in the darkness, it's where he lives: This one, he's taking for the team. So that St. Alicia can keep breath in her body just a little bit longer. So she doesn't have to know which way she'd fall.
HOTEL
Eli: "You won by over a half-million votes! Silly pollsters."
Peter: "That is more than thirty thousand, so that part feels good, but Christ knows how many other schemes and scams and flimflams you and Jim Moody cooked up."
I don't know, though, how you could possibly have that many schemes and scams and flimflams. How many dropboxes and tipped-over septic trucks is that? At 30 a pop, that's... 167 separate schemes and scams and flimflams, which is kind of a lot even for Jim Moody. So really, Peter could have done the right thing and still won, which is the worst kind of irony (but this show's favorite kind). Luckily, the only person bearing that burden is the same one whose taint of lawlessness and corruption has been hanging over the firm, and everybody's lives, for the better part of two seasons. So, it all worked out.
Peter: "Where's Alicia? I gotta hug and kiss her!"
Mayor Bloomberg: "Will I do? I wanted to be on this show for some reason."
Eli: "Oh yeah? Do your granddaughters watch the show or something?"
Mayor Bloomberg: "Yeah, what could a teenager love more than a CBS show about a middle-aged married lawyer parsing ethical struggles. Even a crazy-hot one."
Patty Harris: "I'm here too. Where is Czuchry."
Peter: "[Sports reference.]"
Mayor Bloomberg: "[Appropriate response.]"
Jackie: "Peter! I just wanted to descend like a hallucinating angel of death and remind you that you owe me everything in this life."
Peter: "Sorry about Cristi..."
Cristian: "Congratulations, Mr. Florrick!"
Peter: "Sidebar?"
Peter: "The fuck are you doing here? Didn't you cash that check yesterday?"
Cristian: "I sure did."
Peter: "Well? Is this a language barrier thing? Because I'm pretty sure Eli would have explained the transaction..."
Cristian: "No, this is a fuck you thing. I'll take your money, and continue to be your mother's gigolo, and you won't do a damn thing about it. I don't want to leave her."
Peter: "It's not about what you want."
Cristian: "Um, or is it?"
L/G
Cary: "Ah! Oh, hey Kalinda."
Kalinda: "Peter won."
Cary: "I know. What's up?"
Kalinda: "Fuck you is what's up. You led me on with a proposal and then went to Robyn?"
Cary: "Kind of that is what I did, yes."
Kalinda: "Go to hell forever, Cary Agos. And have fun with whatever nauseatingly scary secrets Robyn Burdine is hiding. I hope you two are very unhappy, for the rest of your lives."
Cary: "Damn, girl! Come back! Oh. Ah, well. Win some, lose some. The important thing is, I finally tagged it. Just like Kalinda said."
CAMPAIGN
Peter: "Zach, great job winning me that election!"
Zach: "Whatever, it's fine."
Peter: "Jackie! Did you forget you just congratulated me? We need to talk about Cris..."
Jackie, sub rosa: "If you ever fuck with my life again I will end you. Got it?"
Peter: "Whoa..."
Jackie: "Congratulations, son!"
The whole time he's trying to get through the crowd to Alicia, who's in the suite's bedroom, and the whole time she's staring out into the crowd, imagining Will there.
Peter: "Alicia! We did it! First Lady of Illinois!"
FLOIL: "That's weird. That's awesome, but weird. I need to hit the head."
Peter: "Are you okay?"
FLOIL: "I'm fine, I just... It's been a bitch of a night, you know? I bent my ethics farther than ever, and they kind of twanged back on me in the eye, like a tape measure. Did you catch how I whored out our kid?"
Peter: "I know! Everything's comin' up Florrick!"
ENSUITE
She stares in the mirror for a while, pacing the luxurious areas -- this place is almost as big as her office! -- and then finally she breathes, sleep-deprived. But it's easy, once she dials. It's almost clean.
"Do you still want to talk? Meet me at my apartment. I'll... Get away. Right now."
She sneaks past Peter, still hanging out handshakes and giggling with excitement. A good man, a strong man. A man who keeps trying. She mirrors the finales, one by one, as she pulls through and out of the crowd, breathing heavy. She's not about to cry this time, or fall over, or fall apart. But she's shaking. It looks like passion. Like butter in the pan.
BACK HOME
She does so much. She pours a glass, a double glass. She waits, interminably. Laundry out, towels folded. The clock and the silence. She turns on Matthew Ashbaugh's music box, and listens to the Bach Concerto. "So they'd get bored."
All the voices in his head, all the people watching, judging: the Bach chased them off, reminded him he was alone. Clean. Nobody was watching, and nobody cared.
You're sitting at an intersection in the dead of night. The stars are clear as anything, you're so far from the city they're bright as the sun. Nobody's coming, nobody cares. Nobody's watching. The light has been red for so, so long.
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
The woman in the mirror looks different. It's not just the hair, there's something... She's gained something, or lost something. Both. She has done both. She is less clean. She is stronger and she is older, and so much wiser, but she's a little dinged up. A little less clean than the last time we sat here, in this mirror by the door, and waited for the knock.
But nothing is very clean, nothing is ever that way. You're sitting at an intersection, and the light isn't changing, and nobody cares, and nobody is watching. Waiting for ... what? A sign? What if the light's just broken, did you think of that? What if it never changes? Waiting for what, somebody else to march through the door first, so you can say you were just following behind? Waiting for what, exactly?
THE KNOCK
(Every crime's a Find-The-Lady, but most of all this one. They go around and around but when the knock comes at the door, you have to stop. It's time to look. Just tip it back and look underneath, and there you'll be. Where you always were.)
Alicia Florrick greets her guest, warmly, nervously. She's waited so long for this. In some ways, she knew it would happen this way. She would be able to hide from the voice as long as the Bach was playing; hide from the mirror as long as she didn't look that woman in the face. Until she looked, and saw love looking back. And passion. It isn't oblivion at all; it's the opposite. She hasn't felt like herself lately.
Are you going to run that light?
Alicia: "Thanks for doing this here."
Cary Agos: "What's on your mind?"
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Alicia: "I'm in."
Sit. Feast on your life.
And when you do, how's it going to feel?
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.