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We open where we were last week, as Diane -- nauseated -- immediately runs to Will's office to tell him what she's done. But what we thought was just a general disavowal turns out to be a lot grosser: She fessed up about the embezzlement that lay at the heart of his near-disbarment last year and her part in it. Which is fine for her -- a mea culpa at worst -- but wrecks not only Will but the very name of Lockhart/Gardner itself, when you consider that's both name partners that let this lie for ten years.
By the time Will storms out, setting Kalinda on Diane's ass, Diane's got the message from Eli that none of it was necessary, but of course within hours reporter Mandy Post's fact-checking calls have put every high-level client on high alert, meaning that what was meant to be a simple disavowal has struck at the integrity of every lawyer still working in the firm. Which is, of course, when David Lee shines: Both he and Will Gardner come across fairly beautifully, as they respond to this with seemingly rational damage control plans that involve various meetings in various abandoned offices and eventually a series of severance packages that Diane rejects and rejects, in a sort of desperate attempt to squat in her own office.
Alicia -- who is pinpointed, as the only person to abstain from Diane's ouster vote, the tiebreaker partner -- can barely think about any of this, conflicted as she is about her own place in the firm and each partner's life. Will offers her the chance to be the second managing partner, which gives her pause, until Cary notes that abandoning Florrick Agos for a hot job is the exact same thing Diane's doing, in her turn. Of course, the difference is that everybody knew and knows about Diane's change of venue, while Alicia -- a more sainted saint than Diane ever wanted to be -- hasn't told anybody. By the end of it, she's so cornered that she tells Cary it's time to leave immediately. As is, the end of the week.
But you and I both know we're still two weeks from what they're calling the Red Wedding, so she's got drama to tide her over: An intensely parallel surrogate-mother case that calls all kinds of abortion rights into question and will probably make the recap one thousand pages long (tricky when you're a gay dude who barely has the right to type that word at all), and her discovery of the Grace Hotness storyline that may well undo us all. Not to undersell, I mean it's a great storyline about a surrogate who decides not to terminate a bad pregnancy despite the wishes of the parents (who include Janel Moloney, being super awesome and intense and great, which if you don't know I won't bother explaining why that is a big deal, except nobody reading this doesn't.)
In other news, ethical circumstances have conspired such that Marilyn Garbanza of the Smoky Eye is invited back into the Governor's Office, with "unfettered" access to each and every one of Peter's appointments and employment decisions. Surprise, a million conflicts of interest -- including a situation with Florrick Agos's bedamned office space -- put her right in Peter's sights, where neither Eli nor Peter want her, because she is hot and because Melissa George has never been on a show where it didn't end in horror, which is why we love her.
It's even more foundation-rocking than you might think, to see Lockhart and Gardner at each other's throats this way -- even if everybody ends up looking pretty rational and respectable by the end. But it's hard not to empathize with Alicia's impossible situation there, plus her actual case which is super fucking intense... And then there's Ms. Sharma, whom I've been incorrectly assuming was aware of the plan and Alicia's involvement: Instead we get a more abject, sad replay of Alicia learning that Kalinda isn't coming to the new firm, when Robyn Burdine accidentally tells Kalinda about Alicia's plans to leave -- which rattles Kalinda a shitload more than she will ever, ever show.
All in all, a stunningly stressful hour -- which seems to be the show's mandate this year, and I couldn't be happier, because what's better than the best show on network than the best show on network blowing its own self to hell, if you trust them to do it well, which we do -- that manages to parallel a legal-quandary forced abortion storyline with the idea of Will and Diane calling quits on their primal relationship... And putting Alicia, horrified, at the center of both. A taut episode that gives you everything we love about this show, if you've been paying attention, and plenty to stress about even if you haven't.
Week: Mommy and Daddy still fighting, which is revolting to watch, but possibly interrupted by inconvenient in-fighting about firm misconduct. Diane shoots a gun. I'm looking forward to it, and all, but the week after seems like when the shit is going down. Or Alicia drops the hanky and we all move on to the new firm and all we are is best friends and Cary is there and Alicia is there and Kalinda is there and Carey even is there being adorable and there are so many hugs and you can barely see the smoke rising from what was once Lockhart/Gardner, Howard Lyman's idiotic smoke rising to the sky. But somehow I think it'll just be one more in a series of the beautiful, horrible bloodbaths that seem so far (or, I would say, hopefully) to define this season. Because the only thing better than watching the best show on CBS is watching it redefine itself so fearlessly.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!PREVIOUSLY
I guess we're just doing Previouslies now. Good. This show should treat itself like what it is, especially now that it's more what it is than it maybe has ever been. So previously, Peter and Eli "promoted" a hot ethical officer out of range of Peter's junk, and Grace is now a famously hot political tween among the creeps of the internet. Meanwhile, Alicia and Cary were stuck on exactly when to make their move to start a new firm -- but now that Eli's helped Diane disastrously mismanage her own exit, every option is back in play. We ended on a "Gift Of The Magi" situation in which Eli told Diane to screw Will over in an interview with muckrakin' Mandy Post, and later fixed the problem... milliseconds after she'd already done so.
IMMEDIATELY THEREAFTER
Diane looks small, still, in those huge chains; before she even gets the call that it was all horribly for naught, she stares at Will through the glass walls of the house they built and is ashamed of herself. But because she is Diane, she straightens her back and walks directly to him.
Will: "My life is taken up with client maintenance these days. Why's everybody so unhappy?"
Diane: "Different petty reasons, usually, but in a very short while, just one big one."
Will: "Did David Lee slap another infant?"
Diane: "I just talked to Mandy Post at the Law Advocate. About, um, you."
Will: "Me specifically what? I got a lot of skeletons."
Diane: "Remember ten years ago when you embezzled $45,000 to cover your gambling debts? And I helped you cover it up for over a decade? Is that ringing any bells?"
His heart breaks. It's a very different silence than usual: His intense thinking frown is something else. He leaves without a word, and she drifts out back into the office.
Diane: "I boned, you bro. I mean, the second I finished talking about it I realized I must have been temporarily insane, but the Chief Justice had me rattled, and I... Anyway, it's probably the worst thing I've ever done. I have scorched the fields and poisoned the well, all on my own."
Secretary: "Ms. Lockhart? Eli Gold just called and said don't worry about the interview, he figured something else out for you to do."
PHOTO OP
Eli watches as Alicia perches in Peter's office, cameras snapping and snapping while Peter answers some kind of aggressive questions in his charming, quick way.
Reporter: "So the most ethical Illinois Governor in history, you say? Pretty high bar, considering they all go to jail."
Peter: "So funny! But see, I've already been to jail. So fuck that."
Reporter: "Hey, why don't you guys make out for the cameras?"
Alicia: "Hey, why don't you shut the hell up?"
Reporter: "Are you guys still living in separate apartments?"
Alicia: "We have residences here and in Springfield, just like every other politician, and another apartment in the city proper, since we both work here."
Anne: "So you both stay there and sleep together and are happily married there?"
Eli: "Get some class."
Anne: "Fine. You guys are renewing your vows in Hawaii, right? That's a terrible sign..."
Alicia: "And who the eff might have told you that?"
Eli: "The issues, Anne. Talk about the issues."
Anne: "Are you handpicking your Ethics Commission and that's why you fired the brilliant and super-ethical Marilyn Garbanza?"
Eli: "The issues, Anne. Stop talking about the issues."
Alicia takes a call from the brilliant Janel Moloney, who has grown up into quite a lovely woman. It's one of those cases where they drop you into it well behind Alicia, but your first guess is usually your best guess. This Kathy Isenstadt is the biological mother in a surrogacy that Alicia wrote the contract for, with a young lady named Tara. Kathy's scared to death on the phone, but Alicia isn't alarmed until Kathy says, "We're at Dr. Tuft's office, and Tara's headed over here now. I think she'll need you."
Out in the foyer, bored with waiting for the interview, Alicia doesn't even recognize Grace in the Veronica dress she's wearing. Even Eli is like, "When did you get a daughter?"
JOGGING
Will's in his all-black workout gear, running his feelings to death, when Mandy Post calls, class as ever.
Mandy: "Mr. Gardner this is Mandy Post, fact-checking an article?"
Will: "Sure, my day couldn't get worse. Hope you had fun talking to her."
Mandy: "So listen, have you stolen any more money from any clients?"
Will: "Uh, what?"
Mandy: "You know, since that $45,000 you took ten years ago."
Will: "Oh no! I have to call you back. Pencil me in for I just threw my motherfucking phone in the lake o'clock."
Will: "Kalinda, can you to look into Diane's recent cases?"
Kalinda: "You mean like do they exist, or....?"
Will: "Lapses, complaints. Dommages."
Kalinda: "What is going on, dude."
Will: "Diane gave an interview that screws us -- specifically everybody except Diane -- and I'm going to have to ask her to step away."
Kalinda: "So you are planning to get nasty? Because if you start digging on this, it's going to get nasty. Take it from one who knows."
Will: "It's already nasty. If I were anybody but Will Gardner I would be throwing up right now, and crying, but instead I am looking at ways to limit the damage to the firm. Just do it. Immediately."
DR TUFT
We meet Tara, with Alicia, outside the doctor's office: A college student, white, apparently affluent; wearing a hoodie and eating Red Vines. Even when Alicia tells her that the Isenstadts are there, she doesn't seem too interested, just in a hurry to get to class. But Alicia knows, she heard it. And the longer the conversation goes, the sicker she looks.
Because the news is bleak: An 85% likelihood of Patau Syndrome, a severe chromosomal abnormality that means major developmental disabilities and a short life. Tara points out he was kicking last night and horribly, Dr. Tuft assures her he will continue to do so. They've been called in to discuss their options -- it's still early enough to terminate -- and the parents fall all over themselves comforting Tara, assuring her they'll take care of everything, and all that stuff. The money, the details, all the things you don't want to talk about but you have to talk about.
Will: "I need you for an emergency committee meeting. We're short of a quorum."
Alicia: "I am very fucking busy right now. I am in a serious thing."
Will: "You'd be surprised. Come to the empty space on the 16th floor."
Alicia: "But it's about terminating a..."
Will: "-- So's this."
PETER
Eli: "I don't want to deal with this Ethics stuff."
Peter: "That is like, your theme song. If you were a cartoon character or..."
Eli: "I wish they'd just shut up about it!"
Peter: "You need to get Marilyn back."
Eli: "Fuck them! I'll salt the earth! No ethics will ever grow there again!"
Peter: "That's what it looked like you did. Get her back. I'd hate to think we fired her just because I'm going to have sex with her in about one minute."
16TH
Why do we even have office space on this floor? Does it belong to somebody else? Is it here for when ChumHum deserts Florrick Agos, and they have to come crawling back, and Gardner & Assoc. buys them out, and they have to live on this floor without even electricity, because they are just baby jerks? Because imagine David Lee's boot, on your human throat, forever?
Will: "Shh. We are here to talk about the exit package."
David Lee: "I would like to give her a fat lip, not a..."
Alicia: "What are we even talking about? What is going on?"
Will: "It's Diane. She's in big trouble. An interview that exposed the firm to criticism. I am leaving out certain verbs and nouns."
The Quorum takes a vote on it, negotiating a package rather than cutting her off, and then Lyman and David Lee nominate each other to the negotiating committee -- it's great, both sort of unrehearsed in the moment but also the natural, practiced way of things -- and then Will nominates Alicia.
Alicia: "Fuck that! Thanks, I mean, but no."
Will: "We needed somebody who voted against it, so you're the balance."
Alicia: "I was voting to not not kick her out without a severance. Wait, what was it... You know what, fuck it. Fine."
FLORRICK AGOS
Cary, in his sexy civvies he never gets to wear, is momentarily distracted by Grownup Gracie, who also attracts her mother's mystified eye as she walks through the living room, where the fourth-years are being served snacks by Mommy and voting on important things like fonts. Not that fonts aren't important, but it's a pointed segue.
Carey: "It's so cool to have a font. Hey listen, is Diane getting fired? Because we could steal her clients..."
Alicia: "Why's everybody looking at me? Eat these snacks and ignore me. And my daughter, for the record."
Carey: "Oh man, this again. Confidentiality and fiduciary duty and shit."
Alicia: "Yes, quite literally that is the shit I am talking about. Don't mess with me about it, please."
Carey: "I have to, though! Just sit down before I count to ten."
Alicia: "That would involve moving. You guys are really being jerks."
He counts to ten, and though she protests it doesn't mean anything, she doesn't move. Quite the specific-to-St. Alicia conundrum you've got there. I guess they're better off learning exactly what causes her to go TILT. So as they discuss the billables of Diane's sexiest clients, of course Kathy Isenstadt calls, because why go crazy one way when you can go all the ways: What did Alicia say, that Tara would pull a no-show at this point?
TARA'S DORM
Tara: "I don't want to do it, terminate the pregnancy."
Alicia: "The thing is, you're the surrogate? They're the parents? We wrote this contract specifically for shit like this?"
Tara: "Yeah, but he's kicking. It's a kind of kick that says he doesn't have a Syndrome."
Alicia: "Well, you're not a doctor. We should get another appointment with..."
Tara: "He will just think the same thing, based on his medical knowledge and shit."
Alicia: "He might 'feel' healthy, Tara, but he will be in pain when he's born, and then he will die. I mean..."
Tara: "I had a 10% chance of getting into DePaul, that's 5% less than this."
Alicia: "Honey, it's not your baby."
Tara: "And you're not my lawyer. They're the ones paying you."
Alicia: "To watch out for your interests, yes."
Tara: "Then start."
Alicia: "Fine, but at least put away the crazy eyes."
Which is tricky, maybe trickier for Alicia than somebody like me who has no womb, but ultimately it's true. On page 18 of her contract, it specifically mentions substantial signs of birth defect, for reasons we'll learn at a dramatic moment down the line. She's Tara's lawyer because that's how they wanted it to go. Already you can see how this will go, how bad it could possibly go: It's like one of those awful 1-L cases where the guy pays the guy to rape his wife by saying she's into it, and then who's the rapist? Except Alicia isn't in college, and feeling more mortifyingly judicial than she has in a long time because she's so overextended in every other aspect of her professional life.
CONFERENCE
Kathy: "You cannot possibly agree with this."
Alicia: "I'm doing the job. She knows her options."
Their Lawyer: "We talked about this. Specifically this, what if this happens..."
Tara: "I know, Kathy! But I also know that I am psychic about this fetus."
Brian: "Alicia, we are paying you. Not this nutcase."
Alicia: "This is part of the agreement between all five of us, though."
Kathy: "Tara... You're hurting us."
Tara: "I know! But I am just a dumb weird kid."
Lawyer: "So but you did not suddenly also go crazy, right?"
Alicia: "It's not about whether I agree with her. I am doing the job."
Lawyer: "So it's in Tara's best interest to be the mother of a child with major defects."
Alicia: "Nobody said anything about her raising the child."
Lawyer: "This is their genetic material. They're the only ones with a choice here."
Alicia: "Regretfully we disagree. What are you gonna do, sue us to force her to get an abortion?"
Lawyer: "No, just for breach of contract. We're talking like half a million bucks my clients sunk into this venture. This numb-nuts, bankrupt."
Alicia: "Then I guess I have to really fight hard for this awful thing to happen."
Lawyer: "Nope, also nope. Because you are fired."
Alicia: "But they can't do that until the contract..."
Lawyer: "Is concluded? Yeah, that's your entire point here, isn't it?"
Alicia: "Then I guess I have to fight really hard for this awful thing to happen... For free."
Lawyer: "What in the fuck is wrong with you?"
Alicia: "Somehow it has become my ethical Waterloo."
DIANE'S OFC
Will: "You are super fired."
Diane: "This is my firm!"
Will: "Was."
Diane: "Then get the security guards!"
Will: "Not forcing you out publicly is a favor I am doing you. Even David Lee is trying to be classy about this, doesn't that tell you anything?"
Diane: "You want to end it this way?"
Will: "You already ended it. Now you go be a Judge, and we will continue to be lawyers. Coming back from the bad thing you have done to us that is déjà vu of the bad thing I did to us last time."
Alicia: "...It occurs to me that I should not have been in this scene. FML."
HOME
Jimmy Lawrence: "Is Grace there? This is a horny boy."
Alicia: "Go away, Jimmy Lawrence."
Alicia: "Who is Jimmy Lawrence and what is he to us?"
Zach: "Just some horny boy. You should probably be aware of this storyline where Grace is a sexual trophy."
He takes to the computer, where she stares at the sexiness rankings for a long time after he closes out his window of last week's goat video.
Zach: "It's not her fault, she's clearly weirded out by it, but that's why everybody is calling the house. Got it? Because I fucking hate it."
Alicia: "Of all the women under surveillance on this show about women under surveillance, she is the least prepared in any way."
GOV OFC
Marilyn: "So now your fake promotion to Transit Authority is also out? What kind of fucking goat rodeo is this?"
Eli: "We're reorganizing the ethics commission, giving it more power. Sending you to Springfield so you can be in the thick of it..."
Marilyn: "Your big plan to look more ethical is to move your ethical oversight out of town altogether?"
Peter: "A new governorship means new strategies, Marilyn."
Marilyn: "No, this is bullshit. Do you have a separate commission just to think up ways to creep me out more?"
Peter: "Fine, you keep those gams here in town and..."
Marilyn: "And I get unfettered access. The opposite of being shipped out of town."
Eli: "Are we on the same page yet that you automatically know I'm lying when I say okay?"
TARA
Tara: "They hate me, don't they?"
Alicia: "I mean, I kinda hate you so I would imagine they do more. But also, they want what's best for you. They have really adopted you in a certain way."
Tara: "Well, I refuse to consider the repercussions of my actions. I'm a kid, my frontal lobe isn't fully developed yet so I don't understand consequences."
Alicia: "You have a trust for $120K coming up when you're 21. Do you realize that they have that now? They can take that?"
David Lee: "Now I am here to insert myself into this situation."
Alicia: "But David Lee, you are a monster!"
David Lee: "Yeah, but I'm also the head of Family Law and this is my fucking dream case."
Tara: "This man smells like matches."
David Lee: "Sulfur and brimstone. Now, tell me more about your courage and how life is a precious commodity. Even if that life is short and brutal and goes nowhere and is only an extension of your own selfishness."
LATER
David Lee: "Kalinda, what if you were pregnant with Terri Schiavo, how would you research that? Actually, never mind. You're a traitor, I forgot."
Kalinda: "Oh my God I'm really not. My loyalty is to Will and his money. What do you need?"
David Lee: "Ironically, I'll be taking my business to Robyn Burdine. An unknown quantity who could be a double agent and is for sure going to Florrick Agos. Sometimes my pettiness actually does interfere with my instincts."
TARA
Is due in 12 weeks, which is relevant because termination laws are based on viability of the fetus, and so if the baby is (technically) viable we're past the window, and thus there is no case. You can't sue for breach of contract if there is no breach of contract, and as of now there hasn't been, and if she's not allowed to do it then there never will be.
David Lee: "Uh, redirect. Why was the amnio performed so late in the second trimester?"
Doctor: "The first one was in April."
David Lee: "And there was spotting, right? Like might happen if you fucked up?"
Judge: "If the Plaintiffs aren't going to object, I'll do it for them. What's the relevance?"
Everybody: "Wait, what? Where's this going? We don't get it."
Lawyer: "You will."
ELEVATOR
Alicia: "So we're suing the hospital?"
David Lee: "Obviously I had a weird plan. This is to blame them, so everybody else can settle down."
Alicia: "And you want the child born?"
David Lee: "God no. But your client does, which..."
Alicia: "It means more to the suit, if the child's born."
David Lee: "Yeah, like five times more. $10M if she doesn't abort."
Alicia: "Would this not fall under shit we should tell her?"
David Lee: "She's following her reasoning in defiance of the facts already, how would it even help?"
QUORUM
Lyman, of course, has some weird vaudeville story about a time he got a girl pregnant and sent her to Canada about it. Some other dude who is a Republican that says he isn't one (a RNINO!) does a whole song and dance about giving equal time to anti-choice viewpoints because we're on CBS. David Lee is surprisingly progressive, Alicia keeps her mouth shut, and the other lady partner says a cliché that also happens to be the point: "If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament."
Now, I don't have a lot of opinions about it -- whatever you're doing, just be fully aware of what you're doing -- but I do think that (annoying, overworked) statement strikes at the heart of the matter from a direction it's hard for people to get to: The fact is that arguing the details of abortion is a privilege. When you get suckered into negotiating over how many weeks, or within what boundaries, or what are the circumstances -- or when you bring up fetuses at all -- you're already past the point where women are people. You've already lost the fight, when the terms of the fight become how much of a human being women are, or who is more of a human being, or how much of a human being you're allowed to be.
And I think a lot of even the nuttiest pro-choice rhetoric in this country operates from that perspective, because it's one of those basic human rights things that needs to get fought way at the other end from where it starts: That demonstrating women are human beings -- and that there's nothing scary about that -- means attacking on wage disparity, reproductive rights, and so on. Gay marriage, to me, is less important as a fundamental right and more important as a fundamental sign of being a person, which is why negotiating the hows and whys of gay marriage are depressing, because the hows and whys mean we're already in a space where it's not necessarily true that I am a person.
If I'm a human being in Vermont but not Georgia, I'm still not a human being. If a woman is a human being when she pops her morning birth control, she's a human being when she makes the choice to terminate a pregnancy at 20 weeks. The feelings of the pregnancy itself aren't a factor -- that's just using emotional violence to win the fight, to shut down the conversation before it goes anyway, because you can't look at the actualities of denying a person their own agency, their ownership of their body.
Imagine sitting somebody down because you love them, they're doing something they shouldn't be doing -- drinking too much, or being mean to their spouse -- what's the first thing they're gonna do? "Well, you got drunk on Friday!" Yeah, but we're not talking about that, we're talking about a specific topic. Feel free to interrogate me about my personal life at another time, I'd be a hypocrite to say no after this conversation, but this is the conversation we're having right now. You slip into that "I'm cornered so let's do something else" conversation so quickly and automatically you don't always see yourself doing it.
That's how "Women are people" becomes "Embryos are imaginary people who are more important than actual women." That's how "A woman owns her body just like real human beings do" becomes "Then you shouldn't have been such a whore." Emotional defensive attack, because the implications of what you're suggesting -- that women aren't people, that women aren't the owners of their bodies -- is tied so vitally, into so much of the way we do everything else, that it hurts intellectually to even consider.
I think in matters of privilege like this, you can't speak the truth utterly because they can't hear you -- just like Peter Florrick, asking Geneva endlessly to tell him he wasn't racist just because he doesn't hate black people, over and over, until he got that it wasn't about that. But in the end, negotiating the terms of a person's right to make decisions about her body is already losing the fight. You're moving deck chairs around on the Titanic; you're trying to get to a three-fifths compromise on personhood.
Which is the most brilliant thing about this episode, obviously, because that means Tara's on top here. We don't have to like it -- and the Isenstadts are free to use everything in their power to change her mind -- but this is one of those rare imaginative scenarios where the right to choose goes the other way. The horrible, stupid, jerk way. The right way.
David Lee: "So this is what we offered Jonas Stern when he exited in 2009."
Partners: "Fuck that, we had more money back then and our little feelings weren't hurt."
David Lee: "Relevant. He was a founding partner..."
Alicia: "As was Diane. There's no difference between her contrib..."
David Lee: "She's leaving, after pushing us once again into Nathan Lane's arms. Get it? She cast a damaging shadow on this firm knowing that she was leaving. It was a mea culpa that didn't exculpate anybody, and her hands are clean."
Alicia: "She's going to be a Supreme Court Judge. We shouldn't lifeguard that shit now, all of a sudden?"
Will: "That part's true. She also has our best clients, and we could earn some rancor there if we lowball her at the outset. Let's just be fair. You're talking about my wife."
Alicia: "Uh, you're also talking about a bunch of clients I could take with me, if I were that kind of person. Which I might be, I don't know today. Shit."
TARA
Tara's fetus won't be viable until the third trimester, which in true Good Wife fashion is in 48 hours. Alicia heads off into the craziness of the viability argument -- as technology develops, we won't need women's bodies at all, and therefore all fetuses are viable, and therefore all abortions are evil -- in (I'd assume) an attempt to position the Isenstadts as unfeeling robot-masters using Tara as technology, and therefore a wobbly area surrounding Roe's decision on the third-trimester viability line that will only get more wobbly and foreshortened as we progress, but David Lee takes over.
Tuft: "Except in this case, where that baby isn't hypothetical and wouldn't survive now."
David Lee: "If I can intrude on this line of questioning that isn't going anywhere, isn't this really about your bad first amnio that caused this in the..."
Judge: "I'm gonna head you off at the pass. What you've given me is a dilemma, two doctors telling two stories. Solomon would advise... Yeesh, not going there. So to keep the defense from turning this into a malpractice suit, I'm erring on the side of keeping it contractual and therefore we fall back on Roe. You have 40 hours."
Alicia: "But our witnesses!"
Judge: "I think this is the first time on this show somebody has meant that instead of using it as a delaying tactic, but I still insist that you bring them in this afternoon."
DIANE
Will: "What do you mean, No."
"What I mean is, your storied skill as a litigator rests entirely on your ability to turn your passion on and off. The fact that you are being so classy and rational about this tells me you've turned off your heart, which scares me to death. When I get scared, I double down. These are two of our defining traits, brought into strict alignment, and therefore I have to demand more money. If you'd stayed mad at me, at least I'd know we were okay."
Alicia: "I can feel myself stealing your clients! I hate this! Give her whatever she wants!"
Will: "I have a ludicrous idea where you become the new managing partner in her place."
Alicia: "Even for this show, that's pushing it."
Will: "Good thing I have lost my fucking mind over this."
Alicia: "If anything was going to keep me here, it would be that, because the whole reason we're leaving is because of mismanagement among the entrenched partners. Becoming one of them would solve almost all of my reasons for leaving. I could save the world, starting with L/G."
TARA
Kathy: "The whole thing was about answering her questions and concerns, making her feel part of the process, making her feel valuable and loved."
Lawyer: "And did her representative Mrs. Florrick raise any concerns about coercive language at any point?"
L/G: "This one provision, under these circumstances. Not the contract as a whole."
Lawyer: "Now that Mrs. Florrick has defended herself against future malpractice suits, let's continue. This part about terminating at your discretion, that's not boilerplate?"
Kathy: "As it turns out, we're at the halfway point of this story and need to ratchet up the stakes, so I'll just go ahead and tell you that our first child died at six months of a congenital heart defect."
"I wish I were the one that were pregnant, but I'm not. But it's our child. Our choice. No one should be allowed to take that from us."
GOV OFC
Marilyn: "Alicia's new firm is in a building owned by an appointee to the Water board."
Eli: "So? How is that a conflict? We just found out about the new firm five minutes ago."
Marilyn: "It's not about intent, it's about perception. You of all people should know..."
Eli: "But I mean, this isn't optics. This is digging. Who's going to..."
Marilyn: "Twenty-five a square foot, in a neighborhood that's usually forty."
Eli: "Jesus. Okay, valid. But the lease is signed, what's Peter supposed to do?"
Marilyn: "Reconsider the guy's candidacy. And actually do it, Eli. Don't just brush me off. Be on my team, please. Ethical issues are never obvious, and they never go away. This whole show is a demonstration of that. And that's why I raise them, because I like Peter and want to see him succeed."
Eli: "You mean Mister Florrick? I'm the only one that gets to call him Peter."
TARA
L/G: "So you're pro-choice, except in this one instance."
Kathy: "It's my baby, though. I don't see a conflict."
L/G: "Your fetus, her body. If you believe it, you believe it no matter what."
"Yes, it's her body. But she agreed to subject her body to my needs as a mother. That's what this contract was. My choice, not hers."
L/G: "Your choice to drag this girl to a clinic and have the fetus forcibly removed from her body."
Everybody: "Ugh. I mean, yeah, but way to be a dick."
Judge: "Strike that from the record, and give me an hour to rule on the enforceability of the contract. Which by the way, is what this case is still about."
UNDER HIM
Cary: "So about this managing partnership, your thoughts?"
Alicia: "It's not a sure thing. And I have no idea if I would do that."
Cary: "Wrong answer. You're considering it? Without telling us?"
Alicia: "I mean like it just happened. I am under a huge deadline with this Tara thing."
Cary: "You are the Diane of this conversation. Do you not get that?"
Alicia: "You're getting it backwards. I'm not considering screwing you over on my way to something else, I'm reconsidering screwing them over, on my way to you."
"Alicia. Staying is a mistake. You'll always be under Will. You finally have a chance to get out from under him? Take it. You think this partnership isn't under him, but it is. Why do you think he's offering it to you? He wants someone he can influence. Someone he knows."
He doesn't even know how the emergent structure in his language is helping him, because not even Alicia fully knows that Florrick Agos is about getting away from Will. Getting enough silence to consider her marriage and her family, in his absence. In the absence of his hot noise, his white hiss. He's like Matthew Ashbaugh's music: Cutting through the noise, so nobody can hear her thoughts.
TARA
Judge: "Okay, I gave it a half-hour and I've decided that women are people, and Tara has a body, and we can't contract around that. A provision empowering the Isenstadts to compel an abortion was always an affront to public policy."
Lawyer: "Fine, then we would like to bring up numerous other breaches of contract that have nothing to do with that one..."
L/G: "So you're just straight up extorting her now? Nice."
Tara: "Wait, they lost? But so then what is this about now?"
David Lee: "Scorching the earth and poisoning the wells."
HOME
A hottie in a motorcycle helmet appears at the door: Apparently he told Grace he'd swing by after dinner." Alicia gives him the once over and then -- awesomely -- invites him in for a beer. He's impressed, and immediately grateful, and she twists on a dime: "Are you fucking kidding me? She's 16 years old, I'm not gonna give you a beer and wait around for her to show up to get molested by you. Go to hell. Goodbye."
It's awesome. Coincidentally, because she can't do anything right this week, it's also the opposite of the right call, for reasons we'll discover shortly. But for now, all those Mama Bear feelings -- for Tara and Grace, for Cary Agos and Diane Lockhart -- have pushed her right over the brink, and that is beautiful.
CONF RM
Robyn: "Why doesn't David Lee trust you?"
Kalinda: "He thinks I'm doing what you're doing. Deserting."
Robyn: "Ah. Well, weird. Okay, can you help me prove Dr. Tufts has a DUI?"
Kalinda: "Yep. But I won't. Because you are the traitor. You're leaving."
Robyn: "You would help Alicia..."
Kalinda: "First of all, keep her name out of your mouth. Second of all, don't ever fucking ask me about that. And third of all, what is even the relevance?"
Robyn: "She's leaving you too?"
You can hear her heart stop.
Kalinda: "...She didn't say anything."
Robyn: "It's a secret!"
Kalinda: "Okay, um. Check with the clinic's medical rep. They know all the problems of the doctors."
Robyn: "Robyn Burdine! Thanks. But what changed?"
Kalinda: "Literally everything."
The camera pulls back, back on her, alone at the table, surrounded by glass.
PETER & MITCH
Peter: "Fine, Marilyn. Whom would you deem appropriate for the Water board?"
Marilyn: "The incumbent."
Peter: "He is a fucking idiot."
Marilyn: "I can't speak to that! But continuity, and no conflict... It's my job to prize those things."
Peter: "But what about who's best at the job? You're saying you'd hire someone second-rate just because they're possibly more ethical?"
Marilyn: "Conflict of interest is a matter of law, second-rateness a matter of opinion."
He gives her this flirty thing about Hemingway vs. Dan Brown, and how you can't choose Brown over Hemingway, and she thanks him for at least honestly listening to her, and it's a sexual abomination hanging over them like a cloud, waiting to pounce.
And not only because she is wearing her blazer over her shoulders like she was just rescued off an iceberg throughout the entire conversation. I don't have the strong feelings about Melissa George that some people do, but that almost made me hate Marilyn. Put your goddamn arms in your goddamn sleeves. Talking down to me about ethics while wearing your clothes like you don't know what clothes are? Fuck off, Marilyn Garbanza.
TARA
So I don't even want to dignify, but suffice to say that the Isenstadt lawyer has decided to drum up some fake story about Tara engaging in a M/M/F threesome with some dude and a guy they picked up in a bar. The creepy insinuation being that a DP is at least as damaging as a bad amnio, because it's deranged and the very essence of whoredom. Fuck one guy you're gross but in the safe zone, fuck two and you earn yourself a birth defect. Unfortunately, although it's clearly a lie, the judge buys it.
Outside, Peter -- flocked with bodyguards -- surprises Alicia with a hello, a sweet gesture (that is secretly all about his Marilyn boner) into which David Lee drops like a cannonball, climbing right up the Governor-Elect's ass just in time to hear Peter forcing the issue: He's booked a room in Hawaii for the vow renewal. A sign of desperation in any case, but in this particular case a desperation so pronounced that if Alicia knew even one aspect of the backstory here she'd drive her car into and over him.
Plus the fact that, more and more, it seems she has no intention of doing it. Or of postponing it forever, the same way we're never sure when Florrick Agos is going to happen. She's never been hesitant in particularly this way, although we know it's a huge part of who she is -- she's so deliberate she barely ever speaks, and this is the downside of that precision -- but now that everybody is demanding her now, now, now, it's starting to look almost pathological.
While that recess was going on, Kathy was (or was not) approached by Tara and asked for $100 grand to abort. Is that blackmail, or is it slander? Either way, the threesome thing clearly scared the shit out of her.
Alicia: "You've ruled my client has the right to decide on this abortion. There's nothing illegal about monetizing that right. I'm not saying this happened, I'm just saying it's no different from the Isenstadts using money against her the opposite way, which everybody seemed fine with."
Judge: "So it's either blackmail or a settlement offer, depending on whether Tara is a human being. Well, can I just say that I was wrong when I thought I hated this case as much as possible?"
To be honest, it seems equitable to me. Not just because they already went there, but because their entire mission always had to be leveraging her various opinions and needs against themselves, and she's just told them precisely how to do that. In fact, I'm shocked that the plaintiff would have a problem with it, considering how far into the ethical red they're willing to go for the same outcome. Maybe it really is just about scorched earth now.
HOME
Grace: "Nice job fucking up my relationship with Cam, the motorcycle helmet guy. Little protip for ya, though, he's my pastor. He's the head of Campus Faith, he was here to pick up some reading plans I volunteered to make because that's how I am."
Alicia: "He looked like sex on a stick, Grace. My bad. But can we talk about that website, please?"
Grace: "Zach sold me out!"
Alicia: "I asked him to explain what's going on with you. And I know you're not entirely after that whole ... thing ... but did you know guys are?"
Grace: "So? Why is my behavior contingent on how gross other people might be?"
Alicia: "You're borrowing my clothes, you're dressing weird..."
Grace: "You're my mom. I'm too old to care when you tell me I'm pretty. It's time for other people to tell me I'm pretty. You have got to understand this."
Alicia: "I don't not understand that, but I am sometimes confused and frightened by the modern world -- and other times, I am right about everything. It's a dilemma that can't be solved based purely on rationality, and I'm afraid my instincts are very off right now, so I have to fall back on precedent, even if it makes me sound like an old bitch. On the other hand, you should have seen how awesome I was going off on him. Oh, want a beer? Psych, motherfucker! It was fantastic."
TARA / DIANE
Tara: "I did not actually ask them for that money to get the abortion. I mean, I mentioned that specific amount in conversation off the record with them, but..."
(Robyn, whispering: "Dr. Tuft's DUI was a no-go, but I did find something else out...")
Judge: "Well, we're into the third trimester so none of this means anything so we're done."
But we're not done. This scene and the one, man they are icky together.
Kathy: "You're selfish, Tara. If you were adopting him that would be one thing, but you're just fucking us over and then walking away."
Will: "You're selfish, Diane. You're fucking us over and then walking away."
Tara: "Kathy, after the first sonogram you said, Do everything you can to protect my baby. That's this."
Kathy: "You're not protecting, you're owning. For no reason."
Diane: "This isn't about money, it's about me breaking your heart. I put my entire life into this place, and now I've got you ghouls shoving me out the door..."
Will: "It's not about hurt feelings. You are so appreciated. But it's time to go."
Diane: "We can't negotiate over appreciation. It has to be about money, because that's quantifiable."
Will: "You are already leaving. What is the difference if you do it now, or two weeks from now?"
Alicia: "Why the fuck am I ever part of these conversations?"
Tara: "I'm keeping him alive. That's the only way I know how to protect him."
Will: "The deal was we would do this until it wasn't fun anymore. It's no longer fun."
Diane: "Fine. Bump it up by 20 percent. I'll be home until you figure something out."
Tara: "Feel him kicking, Kathy. Just feel him."
Will: "She'll come around. They can't swear her in with this amount of conflict over her head. She could bring the whole thing down on her head and it wouldn't make sense. She'll be okay."
FLORRICK AGOS
Alicia: "He's got a 15 percent chance of keeping it alive. But I can't be a part of that anymore. We need to leave this week. Immediately."
Cary: "Are you sure about this?"
Alicia: "I'm sure about nothing. But I can't carry the entire body of equity partners on my back knowing that I'm holding onto something that's already gone."
Cary: "That would be very selfish."
WEEK
Diane with guns (and Kurt!), Elsbeth Tascioni (!) and Rita Wilson's Viola Walsh show up for a sexual harassment suit that may be related to Lyman running around without pants, and Eli clashes with Jackie over the usual. It's interesting though that the surrogacy case and the Diane/Will clash were the big things in a press release, which makes me wonder whether the tension is going to ratchet up, or down, or all those things are still going to be true, leading into the Red Wedding on 10/27...
JACOB CLIFTON is a freelance writer and critic based in Austin, Texas. He currently recaps The Good Wife, Homeland, Hostages, Ravenswood, and Masters Of Sex for TWoP. Jacob can be found online at jacobclifton.com, Twitter, and Facebook, as well as a regular column for Tor.com, Geek Love.