In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.
We start with... No, hold up. We start with this.
We start the episode itself with Eli's spit-take from last year's final episode, Marilyn Garbanza admitting that her child's father is named Peter. Eli hustles her from place to place at the F/A holiday party trying to get the real story, but in the end it's so bizarre and funny that all he really does is piss her off. After Kalinda tracks down Marilyn's high school boyfriend, it's finally revealed that the father of the child is none other than Peter Bogdanovich, as in The Last Picture Show. Because it's Marilyn, who gets more charming and strange each week, this is hilarious and not just bizarre and dumb, like it sounds. (And yes, he is wearing a cravat when we meet him. Not that you had to ask.)
Less funny is the coinciding (and hour-ending) revelation of a newspaper's proof of the ballot-box hijinx from last year's finale, which threatens to bring down not just the Governor but practically everyone on the show. I kind of forgot that whole thing happened, so I was almost as shocked as Eli, who walks out of the episode like he's headed into a zombie attack. (I can't even see Will going that far, although he was the only person who knew about it, right?)
Good old Kalinda, when she's not creepin' around the edges of Marilyn's confusing life -- specifically to protect Alicia, which Eli somehow knew was the only way to get her involved -- she's nailing that hot cop lady, whose friendship with the minorly threatening Damian Doyle is still fairly troubling for Kalinda. Nothing hugely new happens there, but it's nice to see different sides of Kalinda and this "desperate to actually connect with people, against her every instinct" is a particularly compelling one. There's also something about this lady that commands my sympathy, but who knows how long that'll last.
Diane is still pissed about Damian's hiring, of course, but only leads a charge against Will once he decides to open a branch in LA to go with the NY branch he's also opening. Because the case of the week has Will going out of his mind anyway, that stuff was pretty harrowing, but luckily it ends on an up note: She pours him a scotch, tells him she wants them back on the same page, and then agrees that he's owed the chance to try and lead LG to these greater heights, considering she had only just come back to the fold when Alicia abruptly left: She was the one that walked away, leaving him to carry the firm, and now he'll be damned if she won't let him use his Alicia rage powers to do just that.
Cary, on the other side, has some great scenes with the case of the week, which pits Alicia against F. Murray Abraham's LA attorney Burl Preston over a fairly uncomplicated case about music rights. (A phenomenal) Matthew Lillard's hipster guitar YouTube cover of a rap song was in turn covered by essentially Glee, leading us into a thicket of "transformative works" and satire in copyright law that means we get to hear three irritating versions of an irritating song for about 85% of the entire episode.
Preston shows up at LG looking for Alicia, and by the time he's done Will has hitched himself to the wagon, hoping to "get" Alicia by facing her in court, but after a wondrous pep talk from Mr. Agos, Alicia flips the script on him, getting twice as dirty as her former lover in the process: By the time she shows up in court wearing the same dress as the first time he quote "banged" her, just to get in his head, it seems pretty clear she's cruising for a breakdown of her own, just under the degree and sheer quantity of his bullshit.
While a certain amount of sexy love-hate is enjoyable, this left-turn into outright hatefulness is only as satisfying as it ends up being because it arises from such a basic-level irritation at Will's drama queen antics. "You need to get over it," she says, as an afterthought, and then spends the rest of the episode trying to force him to do just that. The fact that F/A (presumably) wins the case only proves her point. Robyn Burdine does some magic, Matthew Lillard hands out liberal amounts of hugs, and Alicia's sitting pretty... For exactly as long as it takes her to find out about this ballot-box thing, which makes week's Springsteen-inflected episode (the last one until March) look like a pretty intense powder keg.
What do you think? It was an interesting case, and Alicia getting nasty about things was kind of exciting, but it seemed like a lot of pieces getting moved around otherwise. I hate, always, the scheduling of this show -- When does it even come on? Nobody knows -- but this month-long break is going to be tough, especially if things go as horribly week as it seems they might. Do you think Will is the anonymous leak? Do you think Eli will go insane or change in some way as a result of the DNC's grody vote tampering? Do you feel cheated by the pregnancy fake-out going to such a weird place? Do you wish Kalinda had better taste in ladies or do we still like this one? Do you still believe Marilyn Garbanza is pregnant with Wendy Scott-Carr's demon baby? Because I still kind of do.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!PREVIOUSLY
Florrick/Agos was feeling just big enough for their britches that they threw a big holiday party in their squalorrific office spaces, inviting everybody from drug kingpins to Donna Brazile to the new Illinois Governor and his very pregnant Ethics Commandant, Marilyn Garbanza, who bears within her the fruit of a dark new age: Three months in, she knows it's a boy and she knows the name will be ... Peter!
NOW
Eli spits everywhere! And then drags that lady right out of the pleasant conversation she's having with Veronica Loy, and into a small alcove to yell at her about getting knocked up.
Marilyn: "Even though I see phantom ethics violations everywhere, I'm oddly unable to understand why being the hot ethics manager of a philandering public official, and naming my baby after him, would cause anyone to spit-take."
Eli: "Are you serious that you don't understand my issue here? After I got you fired once for being hot already?"
Marilyn: "Sometimes it's just a coincidence! Is a thing someone might say that I would call bullshit on, and yet hear myself currently saying."
Eli: "Fine, who is the father?"
Marilyn: "It is a secret."
It's cheap and dumb to a certain extent, so I will tell you right now that the father of her child is famed director Peter Bogdanovich, who made The Last Picture Show, which is the best movie of all time. However, the cheap-and-dumbness of this (already overused) thing ends up elided in the last minute of the episode into a larger issue from half a season ago, so it's actually a red herring in service of major plot developments, which means however bad it tastes it's still contributing to your nutrition, so to speak. Good thing Marilyn Garbanza is already a known quantity of wackiness (and wackness) or I would feel personally wronged, but as things stand I don't mind the fact that this storyline cannot manage to put its arms through the arm-holes of the jacket it's wearing.
Alicia: "Eli! Marilyn. Why are you in this nook and not at my party, where I've been drinking?"
Marilyn: "I frankly have no idea!"
Alicia: "I gotta pay the band before I get too drunk to remember to pay the band. Where are they?"
Eli: "Just somewhere else that is not this casual nook where we're just chatting in a casual way."
THE BAND
Jonathan Coulton is a novelty singer, which is not my bag at all, but he did a cover of "Baby Got Back" that contributed greatly to the YouTube scourge of white people doing indie-folk covers of rap songs, which is what a white person who doesn't consider himself a racist does when he's feeling just a little blind to his situation. "Isn't it funny that you and I are different from black people?" goes the joke, and it's a hearty one, and it is to guitar boys what that fruity awful Bessie Smith voice is to boring girls with nothing else going on. (PS, do not mention this to white people who don't like to consider their privilege, because they will wolf out on you, and you are not doing it for valid reasons anyway.) Now it's everywhere and not just rap songs, and not just straight white guys, so it's a little less creepy, but still creepy.
It's like, the eternal discussion of Girls goes around and around the central concept that it's in some way autobiographical, because Lena Dunham is incapable of telling a story about an asshole that is a girl, played by her, and therefore she does not also think that the girls of Girls are assholes. It's less a joke about a woman poking fun, and more of a scathing documentary of why women suck. But any Judd Apatow movie, those people are assholes and Apatow's in on the joke: He is a man, writing about men, and therefore capable of being ironic about men. Women don't exist deeply enough to be a part of that conversation, so hating Girls is a fun thing for men to do, and that's the conversation we get to have, because men are the ones talking.
"Baby Got Back" is -- actually, can I ask all the black people reading this to leave the room for a second? This is a white people conversation. Thanks.
"Baby Got Back" is not funny on its own merits, because as we all know, black people -- actually, can I ask all the women reading this to leave the room for a second? Homos too. This is strictly a man conversation. No offense. Thanks.
As we all know, black men really like big butts. So when a black man sings about butts, he's just doing something we already know they are constantly doing. So what's funny about it is, when a white guy sings about the big butts he is being ironic, because he's not black (and may or may not be into big butts, that's not the point of the joke). If you had a rap cover of a Weezer song, let's say, it would not be that hilarious, because white men are always ironic and nobody else ever is. We are just what we are, all the time. A rap cover of a Weezer song would just be mean.
Anyway, in this case the very funny joke by a white man for the delight of other white men got picked up by Glee, a show that is literally about sucking the originality out of life until it is a pre-Oz Kansas world, and the show did Coulton's re-arrangement, and he sued them for doing that without talking to him about it, making it a head-to-head of whose lack of originality was more original. As much as this show is about ripping things from the headlines, this episode is like, literally a play-by-play of that occasion. It's more deeply considered, being this show and all, but mostly the backbone of the episode is isometric to the real-life situation.
In this episode, the part of Coulton will be played by a shockingly charismatic Matthew "Rowby" Lillard, his silent partner is played by Broadway dreamboat Christopher "Marshall" Fitzgerald, and the song itself is called "Thicky Trick," which manages to be about both butts and also "ratchet," which is not something we're going to be talking about but does make this episode even more on-point than usual, ratchet being just the latest way for us to pull this bullshit on each other with some fashion of plausible deniability.
Alicia: "Your music was infectious! Here is your money in the form of a check."
Rowby: "Give it to Marshall and also can I ask a lawyer question?"
Cary: "This is a party, bro. Also, we are millionaire-type lawyers."
Rowby: "Well, hang on because this is maybe a millionaire-type problem."
F/A: "We are just tipsy enough to give you the time of day. Proceed."
He plays them the original YouTube video, which takes place at a bowling alley, and then the Glee ("Drama Camp") version, and they are identical. In both cases, a joke about a joke made by a black guy reverses the polarity of the joke, making it a joke about black guys.
Alicia: "This is a Rebel Kane song to begin with, though."
Rowby: "You are a down lady! How did you know that, about the butts?"
Alicia: "My husband knew him in prison. Were you not aware that my husband is a friend to the community? I have Donna Brazile and Lemond Bishop at my party! The two kinds of black people."
Hair shop, don't be late / Waitin' on her Section 8
Sometimes Shorty make me sick / But she ain't nothing but a tricky trick
Cary: "Charming. So let me guess, you covered this song and didn't get the rights?"
Marshall: "We got a compulsory license for the cover song. Our manager Murray did, anyway."
Rowby: "You can see them! Singing our song! That little gay fella. Same song!"
Cary: "Same song, two covers. Not getting it."
Rowby: "No but it's like, how they covered it. White people singing black stuff."
Alicia: "I mean, are you really suggesting you want to sue Fox for this shit? Do you know how much money a TV network can throw at you? You'll die. They'll straight-up kill you."
Cary: "And yet I feel like you're about..."
Alicia: "It's David and Goliath!"
Cary: "That makes it sound even more like you're going to..."
Rowby: "I'm talking about $2.3M here. This song's been the top-selling iTune for two months."
Cary: "No further questions."
LG
F. Murray Abraham, Burl Preston, is an LA lawyer we haven't seen in a while. He shows up at LG looking to rumble with Alicia, who no longer works there, and the receptionist again runs away with her headset still on her head, clotheslining herself like always. But this is a tricky trick, because the partners are having a big fight about Will Gardner's megalomania.
Diane: "You are opening a branch in LA suddenly? Without consulting anybody?"
Will: "I consulted with Damian! We were in a bar! It's LA! Magical!"
Diane: "You are like a cancer that has exceeded its Hayflick Limit. You are out of control."
Will: "I can do everything! I don't have to focus on just one thing!"
They call a vote, and Damian babysits sleepy stupid Howard Lyman into voting with Will, but ultimately Diane -- with that Bonus Dick backing her up -- moves for a two-month delay on soliciting new clients. Ten to twelve, she wins, and Will stomps his little feet, and just then gets to run out of the room to talk to Burl Preston instead of bursting into angry little-boy tears like he was about to.
Preston: "Wait, she just... Left?"
Will: "I know. I'm still shocked myself."
Preston: "And she still hates me, I guess. I guess this Fox thing is about me."
Will: "We could easily make it about me. Let me help you fight her."
Preston: "But see, I hate you."
Will: "I hate you too! But the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and Alicia is my number one enemy right now. It's why I have to take over the world, which means making friends with you, to build infrastructure in LA. And also because I'm obsessed with challenging her."
Preston: "I didn't notice your crazy eyes until just now. You got it."
GOV OFC
Eli: "Kalinda Sharma! Oh my God, hi! Hi!"
Kalinda: "Eli. What's up? Why have you brought me into the territories of my enemy."
Eli: "It is for a secret thing I need you to do!"
Kalinda: "No."
Eli: "But it's for Alicia! Kind of."
Kalinda: "Then I'm in."
She demands $500 an hour to investigate this pregnancy, but that's just a gloss on the fact that we all know -- everybody except Eli, probably, knows -- that he had her at "Alicia." So now she will be confirming that Alicia's husband did not have a baby with a monster-lady, in order to be close to Alicia in some fashion neither of them will ever understand.
AKA, exactly the same thing Will is doing.
BOWLING ALLEY
Manager Murray: "Can I get you a milkshake?"
F/A: "No, just your paperwork. Why did you get a compulsory license from Rebel Kane, but not a derivative copyright?"
Murray: "Two reasons. One, I don't know what that is. Two, I didn't know you had to get two things. How many things total should I have gotten?"
F/A: "Just these two, don't worry. The compulsory rights are to cover the song, the derivative rights protect your changes to the song."
Murray: "We get 0.004 cents whenever it gets played on Spotify. Timely mention of that."
It is decided that they will visit Rebel Kane, who likes to do botany in his greenhouse with his thicky wages, because how surprising that a joke rapper would also love orchids.
REBEL KANE
Rowby: "So we only got one kind of copyright and now we need the other one."
Alicia: "I believe you know my husband? Peter Florrick, the Governor of Illinois?"
Rebel Kane: "I voted for him! Or I would, except felony. I was a struggling artist once, too, and will give you a derivative copyright. How much is that usually?"
Alicia: "Like five grand."
Rebel Kane: "Name your song after me, and I will give it to you for free."
Alicia: "Money needs to change hands. Even just like five dollars."
Rebel Kane: "Then give me five dollars! I need orchid money!"
Alicia: "You are awesome."
Everybody giggles at how well things are going; it's a fairly charming scene.
F/A
Preston: "...This place is a shithole."
Will: "Hey, don't talk bad about my... I mean, okay. I mean yeah, what a craphole."
Alicia: "What in the fuck are you doing here?"
Will: "Helping my good friend Burl Preston. What are you doing here, besides fending off rats."
Cary escorts Preston to what we're calling a conference room that is actually just a medieval torture chamber that used to be a t-shirt factory, and Alicia hangs back, walking with Will. Just in front of him, so he can't see her face, which isn't doing much anyway. Sort of thinky, sing-songy irritation. What she says is matter-of-fact, and beautiful, and if you know Alicia at all you can tell she's being more of a lawyer right now than a woman, even though she's talking about boy/girl things.
Alicia: "You should ... get over it."
Will: "Get over what?"
Alicia: "Me."
He loves it, and tries to start a fight about how this is just a coincidence so she can say it's not a coincidence and they can throw down and be flirty and mad at each other, but she cuts that whole idea dead and just doubles her pace because that is always her secret weapon: Going so cold so fast you'd think she has sudden amnesia. It's effective, but so devastating. Giving is taking, but so is not-giving also taking.
F/A asks for half of the profits to date and half moving forward, but Preston and Gardner switcheroos, asking for $800k and punitive damages for Rowby stealing the show's song. What's this now?
Alicia: "Rowby, settle. It's negotiations."
Preston: "No, this is the exclusive derivative copyright Rebel Kane gave the studio when they filmed it. Because they, unlike Murray, knew what they were doing. You'll get your five bucks back, don't worry, but you need to pay the Glee studio whenever you sing the song, and also take down that bowling alley video immediately."
Cary: "Alicia, we're bone. We can't make money on this."
Alicia: "Actually we can. Why? Because fuck Will Gardner, that's why."
Cary: "No but like how."
Alicia: "I'll figure it out, buddy. But this is happening."
DEBRIEF
Will and Damian Doyle are such bros that Damian likes to just lounge around on his office couch like some kind of Kalinda housecat, readin' magazines and listening to conversations and basically being his girlfriend slash thug.
Will: "Alicia will play it David and Goliath, because that's what she knows, and because that's what serves her ego. Luckily, Judge Marx goes by the law..."
Damian: "What's the deal with Kalinda?"
Will: "She's pretty awesome but sometimes the show doesn't know what to do with her, and then she generally is the pits."
Damian: "Because why is she following me?"
Will: "Because Diane's jealous of you for being my new work wife. And also because she can smell a rat, and you're clearly some kind of scum. But mostly the first thing."
Damian: "And we don't have the class to even pretend we're not teaming up against her. So basically it's like if you and Derrick Bond were squash and life partners."
Will: "It's okay, we'll talk it out if she rumbles up something on you. Is there anything I should know about?"
Damian: "No. PS, yes."
JUDGE MARX PRESIDING
F/A is asking for a declaratory judgment of non-infringement: Because their client doesn't have the money to bleed the network dry, we have to fall back on the thirteen months between Rowby's cover and the show's cover, regardless of the documentation that's been produced.
Will's thing, and it's both a very Will and a very clever thing, is to keep objecting to every single word she says, without pausing to breathe and making each one sound like a personal attack -- "it's unfortunate that Mrs. Florrick has to rely on emotion rather than logic" is a particularly harsh, genius one -- and eventually she's off her game. He nitpicks, he backtracks, he quibbles, he pisses her right the hell off. Eventually Preston is like, "You know that you are making the judge think you are a crazy person, right?" and Will just shakes his head: That's never the point, when he's in a trial, but it's also her big weakness.
Alicia Florrick chooses her words so carefully -- some might say it's her foremost quality -- that to attack her on that basic of a level is to tear her apart. As much as the episode is about "Will uses his knowledge of Alicia's style to disrupt her business" and everybody keeps saying, "Will, you're using your knowledge of Alicia's style against her!" and Will keeps saying, "Don't worry, I'm using my knowledge of Alicia's style" and no matter how on-the-nose it gets, the fact is that it's believable and overwhelming how it actually goes down.
I just want to picture the writer's meeting where they were like, "What's the number one thing Will could use against Alicia that could understandably cause her to go ballistic?" and the perfect, clear answer is this: Get between Alicia and her words, between Alicia and the truth -- don't let her speak that truth -- and she absolutely will go fucking insane. Because it's all she's ever had.
Eventually she whines to the Judge, which is the wrong move but she's literally so glitched by it that she's not even making sense anymore with Rowby's testimony, like they're just babbling at each other, and even the Judge is like, "Yeah, he's being a dick, let's let Cary try and see if Will does this to him." Then Rowby says this thing about how his dad died in August 2011, and he was sad the anniversary, and he thought it would be funny to see Rick Astley (hence the bowling alley) do a rap song. He's not very eloquent about it, because it's sort of WYSIWYG comedy: Either it's funny to you, or it isn't, so it's hard to explain. He tries, though.
AFTER
Alicia: "That motherfucker is doing this on purpose. My first time in court, I was so thrown by the objections because each one of them made me feel like a bad person. Like by doing something that could be objected to, St. Alicia was not doing her job properly, which felt to me -- as a woman who has been trained since birth to apologize for everything -- like actual arrows going into me. Every objection made me feel like, You are a bad person! Doing a bad job! And now he's working it..."
Cary: "Yeah, girl. He is. So pull it the fuck together."
Alicia: "...I forgot how great you are. Thank you. Good lookin' out, gorgeous."
Cary: "Wait, where are you going now?"
Alicia: "To change."
She's talking about her clothes. Also, she's not talking about her clothes: She will take off the suit she's wearing, but also the suit underneath that. Like Eustace the Dragon, pulling off her armor one layer at a time, because it's not working. She will bring a gun to a gunfight if a gun's required, and that means changing, all the way down. She was treating this like Goliath and David -- she's the giant, he's the sad little boy -- because it served her ego.
It got her off to feel sorry for Will and his little broken heart, and he's using it. One bloody valentine at a time, which gets him what he wants -- both to hurt her and to win the case -- but only takes out little chunks of her: He has redefined the field of play, he has united his heartbreak and his litigation style into a single unbeatable strategy, that scorches the earth and hits her in places she didn't even know were vulnerable. It served her ego, but now she needs to serve the client. And whether or not Will ever gets over her, playing into it is just giving in to him, and she can't afford that anymore. Time to change.
MURPHY TESTIMONY
There is no more vexing nor perfect symbol of the age, in our current cultural consciousness, than Ryan Murphy. He's old, rich and white; incredibly talented, very gay. And we have this thing on the left I recently heard described perfectly as "Calvinism without God" that leads people lacking in a certain kind of privilege into a grasping blindness of their own other privileges, into entitlement to speak for everyone, because it's all sinners and saints. He's gay, so he's a good guy, so it doesn't matter what outlandish -- sometimes horrible -- things he says on behalf of women, or people of color, because hey: He's one of the good ones.
But the thing is that we are all good ones. It's not about being a good person, it's about being aware that your life is unlike other people's lives. Black people may have it harder on average than white people, but that's not the problem here: The problem is that you will never have the right to speak for another person, regardless of how hard you have it. You're still speaking from a position of privilege, or else nobody would be listening. And what we're missing in this discourse is that essential fact: That being gay doesn't mean you get women, or black folks, or poor people, any better than anybody else, and certainly doesn't mean you get to speak on their behalf. The thing that white feminists call "intersectionality" when what they mean is, their right to tell black people what is up. The exact thing Peter needed Geneva Pine to explain to him for like half an hour.
If you have no malice in your heart, you are doing pretty good. But it's still the easiest trap in the world to fall into, because we are coming out of the time when the line was between good and evil, and into a time when the only line is in versus out. His stand-in here even says, beautifully, that he did the white-people cover alongside a rap version of a white-people song to show "how two cultures [need] each other" and "kids moving beyond the hate" -- two very good things to want and to talk about! But also two things dictated by the million other ways in which he's on top, and point directly toward the "I don't even see race" place that actual evil people use, like the phantom fantasy of "reverse racism," to justify their bullshit. (Or the "level" playing field that pretends a goofy white-guy cover of an already goofy rap song is the same thing as having some black kids rap a Weezer song, or the idiotic "level" playing field that gives rise to Men's Rights activists purely on the basis of our more destructive and naïve stabs at feminism.)
If you didn't have villains, you might just have compassion instead. If you didn't have the need to be more wounded than the person, or take a victim role to except yourself from being implicated in someone else's problems, you'd see how easy it is to get to where everybody can win. If you can get your head around the fact that actual racists are not invited to this conversation, and wouldn't get it anyway, you could stop alienating the people whose minds are actually ready for the download of what is really going on -- instead of being told explicitly that they are evil simply by existing, and therefore need to whine twice as loudly to be heard as clearly as usual.
So right then, this episode doubles down because you see both sides -- and it's rare that an issue actually has two sides -- of this thing: If Ryan Murphy is not an asshole, and doing something inherently good, and if Jonathan Coulton is not an asshole, and doing something inherently sweet, then who is the asshole? Trick question, because there is no asshole. Just people on the same side of the issue, violently attacking each other -- to prove who is a better person -- because they speak the same language, unlike the actual bad guys who can't even hear you talking. A conversation that happens to be about two kinds of people -- bigots and minorities -- who are not allowed, by design, into that conversation.
Murphy: "The thing is that artists are sponges. We take in the same information from the zeitgeist, and transmute it into something new..."
Alicia has changed into a particular white suit we've seen a few times before: It's the one she was wearing the first time she and Will closed the deal, and I think it's the one she was wearing during his "Decision Tree" fantasy revenge scene, as well. Needless to say, this throws him off a million times harder than his gambit did hers, as she refuses to look up at him at the desk, adjusting her skirt, adjusting her décolletage, waiting effortlessly for him to finish Murphy's testimony. He goes down, of course, in flames, and it's beautiful.
F/A: "So you're saying the zeitgeist made you do it?"
Fox: "[One million objections, but not as a joke. Just as a spinning-out into crazy.]"
F/A: "My bad. So you're saying two artists are sometimes inspired by the same thing? Such as butts."
Murphy: "That is how culture develops and grows! Through butts."
F/A: "Okay right now, listen to these two songs. You hear a difference there?"
Murphy: "I don't need to. I see two artists with similar comic instincts, resulting in similar instrumentation. The only difference between them is, or needs to be, derivative copyright."
Preston realizes how ludicrous this sounds, with the proof onscreen, and demands a course correction. Alicia nearly high-fives herself.
COURTHOUSE
This verbatim thing happens. It's very funny and very satisfying, but sad at the end: When you see him grinding the gears, trying at least three times to get his litigator grin back, and failing every time. It's the saddest Will thing in a long time, to me: Just him staring after her, pasting on smile after smile, and all of them clattering to the floor.
Will: "You decided to change, huh?"
Alicia: "Yup. Into what I wore the night you banged me the first time."
Will: "That's ... pretty low of you."
Alicia: "I know. I wasn't so discriminating back then."
OB/GYN
Kalinda: "Hey, strange woman! I notice we both like eye makeup and being pregnant."
Marilyn: "How far along are you?"
Kalinda: "Ten weeks! That's why I don't seem pregnant. Wonder where my significant other got off to. Don't people usually bring a spouse, or..."
Marilyn: "Not me, I'm not married. I don't even know if this baby's famous father should be involved. Although I do see him every day..."
Kalinda: "You mean like at work, or...?"
Jenna is the name of that lady I can never remember her name, Kalinda's lovah who is also Damian's other BFF besides Will Gardner. She slides into the chair to them, having finally tracked Kalinda down through her ways of doing that, and with no idea that she is fucking with Kalinda's job. Or rather, she knows Kalinda's doing something weird and she thinks it's funny to fuck with her, because she doesn't know how this is about Alicia and therefore you should not fuck with her.
After Marilyn goes in and Kalinda runs out of the office, she yells at Jenna for awhile. Turns out Damian is still trying to use her to reverse-investigate Kalinda for investigating him, which is another thing the notoriously humorous Kalinda does not find funny. After a very tense fight during which Kalinda makes it clear you don't fuck with her job, Jenna -- who I do just love, for some reason -- sincerely apologizes, and Kalinda agrees to have dinner with her later. Still trying this whole "be a person" thing, in her inscrutable way. Or else doing her "sleeping with the enemy" thing where either she can trust Jenna or not, but either way she really doesn't, and either way wants to keep tabs on her. And because even Kalinda Sharma occasionally has to eat dinner.
COULTON CROSS
Preston gives Will no small amount of shit about keeping it together this time, and starts the cross-examination. It seems like a no-go from the top, though:
Preston: "Do you remember where you were the last week of July, 2012?"
Rowby: "Nope. Do you?"
Preston: "I mean, it was close to the anniversary of your..."
Rowby: "Do you remember where you were fifty-one weeks after your dad died? No, because that's crazy talk. Right?"
Preston: "Okay but did you know you were on the studio lot where they shoot Glee?"
Rowby: "Huh. Okay, sure. I was a session musician for a commercial, yeah."
Preston: "On the lot where Ryan Murphy makes his show. Which happens to share a kitchenette with the studio where you were doing that."
F/A objects that this is innuendo unless they can prove the song was being recorded that day -- which they can't, since Rowby is right about what happened -- but Will doesn't care about that: All he needs is to prove access, he says, which doesn't make a shitload of sense but does bring us back around to who has the derivative copyright. And that, true to his reputation, is all Judge Marx can consider: This paperwork exists to solve this problem, this exact problem, and Manager Murray dropped the ball. Everything else is just ideas about maybe.
Marx: "So here's the deal, and I'm sorry, but your YouTube song was an unauthorized derivative artwork, and isn't protected. And -- again, this sucks and I realize that -- you are in the bizarre situation of Ryan Murphy's theft being legal. They have the derivative copyright, you do not. Motion denied, bring on the awful Preston suit."
JENNA
Wants to talk about Katy Perry, for some reason, but Kalinda doesn't know what a Katy Perry is, so Jenna sings "Roar" into her butt for awhile -- it's sexier than it sounds -- and then takes a call from a mystery person who may or may not be her mother or Damian but for sure sets all of Kalinda's most Kalinda nerves alight.
ROWBY
Alicia: "We are not fucking letting them win."
Cary: "I have an idea but I don't want to lead you there, so I'm going to ask weird questions. Number one, this was a joke?"
Rowby: "Yeah, like because of Rick Astley and of butts."
Cary: "But why is that funny? This is about legal stuff, so let's be specific."
(Time passes in which Cary is unable to get Rowby to say the word "satire," so finally he says that word for him, and everybody jumps on board.)
Cary: "Like, because rap songs are usually aggressive and hard, and you wanted to make fun of the lyrics by ... singing them in a soft way."
Alicia starts laughing, even Marshall seems to get the drift, but still: Substitute "black" for "hard" and "white" for "soft" and it sounds a lot grosser. And if that sticks in your craw, just think about why. I don't much like it either, I'm not trying to hurt your feelings, I'm just saying: This is a conversation white people are having with each other, and it always is. Anyway, they bring it back to the judge.
LG: "Uh, no. It was a cover, not a satire."
Marx: "What does 'satire' get you, counselor?"
Cary: "Transformative artwork. You ruled on the derivative copyright, but made it clear from the bench that you thought it was theft. The issue was that Rowby didn't get contractual approval to create a new artwork..."
Alicia: "Which doesn't matter, because if it's satire it's protected that way..."
Rowby: "This is marvelous. Isn't this great, Marshall? The law."
Alicia: "So automatic copyright would apply the second he recorded it, making this theft a real theft."
Marx: "Nobody ever said black people aren't hilarious. I like this approach, see if it sticks."
LG
Damian strong-arms Bonus Dick into an ad hoc quorum -- calling him "Edelweiss" so he can remind us his name is "Edelman," but which I refuse to remember longer than this sentence, because he sucks -- to vote to lift the ban on new clients now that he is getting in good with these LA pricks. It's ugly, in a way Damian always threatens to be but rarely actually shows us:
Edelman: "I'm not voting to rip up the firm again, no."
Damian: "Yes. You owe Will for making you partner."
Edelman: "No, Diane made me partner."
Damian: "No. Will did. And he can unmake you are partner. By which I mean, I am threatening your life pretty blatantly."
David Lee's tire has suddenly gone flat, so he's out of the picture, and Diane quickly pieces together how bad Will and Damian are being: He's cooking the vote -- not unlike a certain Democratic National Committee did during the last Illinois Gubernatorial race, a thing only Peter and Will and possibly Zach Florrick know about -- and she is disgusted. She grabs three more partners and exits the room in a huff, and Will's so out of his mind he's like, laughing angrily and a little dementedly as she goes.
I never thought I'd say this, but I honestly wish his sisters would come back and save him before he pulls the entire bookcase over on himself. This is the most gambling addict behavior we've ever seen out of him, with the possible exception of the Cuddy times we don't talk about.
THE THIRD PETER
It's just a guy. A guy named Peter, who went to "high school" -- a paramilitary training camp in the hills, run by one Wendy Scott-Carr under a Black Site contract with the American CIA -- with Marilyn, and whose shared reunion was right around the time of conception of the mysterious Garbanza Bean. He's good-looking, so there's that, but mostly Kalinda just really wants it to be any other Peter. Her hopes are up; it's weird-looking on her. She's like how Carrie Mathison wants to fix 9/11 with a time machine, only instead of the usual one it's Kalinda's personal one.
Peter: "No, I am just some guy."
Kalinda: "Really? Because I'm pretty sure you knocked up Marilyn Garbanza."
Peter: "I wish! But no. I was totally planning to cheat on my wife with her, but then she peaced."
Kalinda: "Peaced? Oh no. Details."
Peter: "All I know is she had to go back to Springfield, for work she said. For Peter she said, and that she was staying at the Sheraton in Springfield, and... Holy shit, is this about the Governor?"
Kalinda: "No. Bye."
She doesn't even bother to vanish properly, just Charlie Browns off down the sidewalk with her shoulders particularly shrugged, wondering if she's permanently off her game now and can't even manage some secret courtly knightship on Alicia's behalf without some dumb Ethics lady fucking it all up.
MUSICOLOGISTS
Both teams on the Rowby case bring in a Musicologist to analyze the two tracks. They are ivory tower bitches to each other, bringing in professional slights and the narcissism of small differences, and it's all the more annoying for being so academe-realistic.
Bro: "The song's melodic line forces me to hear the lyrics in a new context, as misogynistic and nihilistic."
Chick: "The words haven't changed though, so it's not parody. I could steal your thriller novel, slap a romance cover on it, call it a joke about love."
Bro: "Or you could suck my musicology dick!"
Chick: "Like that's not exactly how you became Dean!"
And so on. The meanest burn -- relating as it does to postmodern retardedness and the retardedness of the show Glee, itself -- is when he screams about how she "believes karaoke is a 21st-century art." Which is a righteously mean thing to say, and manages to take down the entire stupid discipline of pop culture academia and Generation X's hilariously wrong-footed response to new media, all at the same time.
KANE TESTIMONY
Counsel: "Mr. Kane, what was the intent of your song?"
Kane: "To make money?"
Counsel: "Who is this woman in low-income housing who still has money for weaves?"
Kane: "Just like, an imaginary racist caricature?"
Counsel: "Are you debunking her existence, or attacking her directly?"
Kane: "Are you asking if this is satirical? Are you seriously asking me this fucking question?"
Counsel: "Yeah."
Kane: "You think that welfare queens and fat hoes are so unremarkably part of my everyday life that I would put pen to paper in order to express my frustration with them? The video for 'Baby Got Back' had the guy literally dancing on a giant butt. Did you just think that was common to the black experience in America? Giant butt-dancing?"
Counsel: "So is this not what being black is all about? Have we been lied to all this time?"
Kane: "No, you just sit around telling each other what being black is. And then we make fun of you. No man worthy of the word thinks of women this way."
Counsel: "Back up. Black men don't hate black women for existing? I've seen a commercial for a Tyler Perry movie, I think I know what's going on here."
Kane: "I know. It's hilarious, in a horrible way."
Counsel: "So we're saying that Coulton was satirizing something that is already satirized in your song? You weren't just reporting your life?"
Kane: "You dicks probably think Girls is a romantic comedy, too."
Counsel: "If black people and women become capable of irony, this whole thing's going straight to hell. This is like the Singularity right now. you'll be telling me gay people don't exist solely to care about straight people's love lives."
IL GOV
Eli: "Have you noticed that your bad news poker face and your good news poker face are the same face? As well as your other faces?"
Kalinda: "Marilyn was at a class reunion the afternoon of September 7, which yes, is basically her date of conception."
Eli: "Nice! That explains why she won't say who the... There was a Peter there?"
Kalinda: "Yep. But he was just some guy."
Eli: "Noooo...."
Kalinda: "She peaced, Eli. She peaced out, and headed to Springfield, to see a person named Peter. So you tell me where your boss was that day. Was he at the Springfield Sheraton? Because the digital security footage was gone when I got there."
Eli: "You mean like for blackmail?"
Kalinda: "Don't get in too deep, sweetie. Just figure it out. I gotta go."
Eli: "Please don't tell anyb..."
Kalinda: "Who the fuck would I tell? Bye, Eli."
F/A
Robyn: "You want me to comb the internet for mentions of that song as satire, or parody. You think that's a job for an investigator, because you think Google is sorcery and that it will take me all day to do this. That's what you're saying."
Alicia: "Yeah or you could use ChumHum. Or you could like Bing it. I know some things, I've been around the block a few times."
Robyn: "Internet troll consensus. For real?"
Alicia: "Anything I can spin into even just the illusion of consensus, yeah."
Robyn: "So um, this is a Hail Mary..."
Alicia: "I didn't put on my sex clothes just to lose this bitch, Robyn Burdine."
GARBANZA OFC
Marilyn is on her back on her office floor, because of course she is, it's her two favorite things: Being uncomfortable and acting weird. I find her more ravishing and more compelling each week, I really do. This is like her best scene ever, to me. Even though she's being a walking-talking bullshit machine in service to an errant plot, there's something about how annoyed and violated she is by Eli with this that I can somehow buy, even though on the on-paper level she's doing it solely to give him a storyline and bridge to the can of beans at the end. I just like Melissa George. People don't say that enough, you should say it if you feel it.
Marilyn: "Ugh, what."
Eli: "Is Peter Florrick the father?"
Marilyn: "Fuck you. No, and we already talked about this a hundred times."
Eli: "We have talked about it zero times, if you don't count you telling me you don't want to talk about it, which doesn't and shouldn't count."
Marilyn: "Then no, and I don't wanna talk about it."
Eli: "What if somebody has the surveillance videos from the Springfield Sheraton on September 7, 2013?"
Marilyn: "Oh, shit. But not for that reason."
Eli: "You are freaking me out! Who was it!?"
Marilyn: "Yes, the father. No, not Peter. Please stop ruining my relationship and life."
Eli: "I did this in an afternoon, using a Kalinda at half her usual. A reporter could do this too."
Marilyn: "A reporter would not, there's nothing to... Why are you checking up on me? I have already demonstrated my loyalty to the Governor, in a very short period, hundreds of times. And so yes, I gave up my privacy when I took the job. But the father didn't, and the baby didn't. You're questioning me on a level that makes sense to you, but is actually only destructive."
Eli: "You are ultimately putting this man's 'privacy' ahead of the office of Governor. If I am not putting you in an impossible situation, you are putting me in one."
Marilyn: "Get. The fuck. Out of this office."
LG
Damian: "You don't like Katy Perry?"
Kalinda: "Ugh. Hate you."
Damian: "We're friends! We tell each other things. Don't you have friends?"
Kalinda: "I had one. I let her the fuck down today. Stop mashing my buttons."
Damian: "Okay well. As your friend, she really does like you. Rise to this occasion."
Kalinda: "I must go now. To seek clarity in tequila."
As Robyn discovers a thing -- analogous to what happened in the Coulton case, although in his case he lost despite this thing -- which is a bowling-alley sound buried deep in the bass track of the Glee version that proves our point, Diane finds that she has had it with drama.
Diane: "Are we not friends? This week was ugly. The break between us is... It's a psychological one, not just business."
Will: "Which one do you want to talk about."
Diane: "Both. First, the loss of Alicia and the fourth-years has made us all crazy..."
Will: "I AM FINE."
Diane: "Sure, honey. We all are. And I know it makes sense that we charge ahead and not look back. But I honestly think there is a ... frantic quality here."
Will: "I agree there are things going on, psychologically. But this is just itself."
Diane: "But girl that is a lie."
Will: "Maybe but here's my plan. Help me by using me. I have devil fire in my belly. I want to hear the lamentations of the women, Diane. You be in charge of that. I'm determined, okay? You have always known I would one day become a beast. Activate that protocol and stop trying to smother me."
Diane: "Okay, but I'm allowed to be a little worried about you. Your new boyfriend is..."
Will: "Diane, you walked away. You left us at a time in your life when you were happy and didn't need us."
Diane: "And so you're what, like, punishing...?"
Will: "-- Nope. I'm just saying. You left, I stayed. My chain-gang necklaces were metaphorical, okay, but no less heavy. I freaked the fuck out. I contemplated life without you, tried to cram Alicia into that spot, lost her too."
Diane: "It is very sad when you say it like that."
Will: "...And now you're back. And I want you back. And I want everything, between us. But I didn't walk away, and I deserve a chance to lead."
Diane: "...Yep, you're right."
Will: "We're done arguing?"
Diane: "When you're right, you're right."
Will: "And you don't feel manipulated by that emotional appeal?"
Diane: "No. I know you're not asking for a pound of flesh. What you're asking for is decent, and even though it scares me, part of supporting you is keeping you human, and now you have said the right words for me to believe you will let me do that, so I have nothing more to bitch about. Frankly it's easier with this emotional infrastructure built into us, because it means I won't get my hands dirty when you go dark. Burn brightly."
F/A
Eli gets a call from a very intriguing reporter at the Tribune, Anne Stevens played by Talia Balsam who I just love. If you want a crazy story about some things, read her biography, it's insane. She's so cool. Anyway, she calls with a very serious story that she won't tell him what it is, but she summons him to the paper with just two words: "A video." The Sheraton footage? Ha, he wishes.
Robyn: "Everybody watch this video of this song a million times. Okay, look. Right here at 1:23 you hear a sound on the Swedish iTunes version, which is different from the show and US iTunes version, because it went up early for reasons of commerce."
Nobody: (Gets it, for like an hour.)
Rowby: "Oh, I hear it! I hear it, it's the bowling alley! We recorded it at Murray's work."
Robyn: "Yeah, and they re-recorded it after the fact, but not before this little bit got out. That theft was theft."
Rowby gives her a million little hugs, and there is an incredibly beautiful, adorable moment where Cary pats Marshall on his shoulder in a spontaneous expression of affection and Marshall responds by awkwardly almost-hugging him in a way that is hard to describe but the cutest thing. Everybody is so cute I can't believe it. I knew Matthew Lillard was a good egg after SLC Punk!, which is a movie you would like if you had seen it, but man he is unstoppable now. He really grew into his Lillardness in the most appealing way. I want to just spend a little time with this scene before we move on.
KALINDA
Gets pulled over by Jenna, having been tricked a million times into thinking she was being sincere only to have it bounce back on her, and so she's now avoiding her. With no choice but to be there in that moment with her, Kalinda comes -- for her -- fairly clean. Also, Jenna seems so guileless in this scene, in particular, that I realized I was getting attached to her. There's something very compelling to me about liars telling the truth, but especially when it's to other liars.
Kalinda: "I don't know if I like you."
Jenna: "You like me."
Kalinda: "Maybe, but I don't like your loose-lippin' with that Mob fella. He has it out for me, even if you do not."
Jenna: "You are honestly demanding that I choose between you? You, the Cat Who Walks On Her Own, are gonna pull that shit?"
Kalinda: "Nope, because that's how it sounded to me too, which is why I'm just avoiding you altogether."
Jenna: "I don't have many friends. I can't lose my friends. Lovers leave, friends come through. If you make me pick, I will pick him. But those are not our only options."
Kalinda: "Bleh. I'll think about it. Obviously."
ROWBY
We listen to the song yet one more hundred times, and everybody agrees that this is solid proof. Preston tries to bluff, Alicia calls out Will's ego, and Alicia tells Burl to get his hand out of the cookie jar and admit defeat. They leave, and everybody hands out even more hugs. A quantity of Davids, having whooped up on Goliath from a rat-stinking t-shirt factory somewhere north of hell. Today is their day, today they are champions.
Now, it's rare that Alicia is anything more than mildly amused at the end of an episode -- usually it's some kind of existential horror -- so you know whatever happens to close out the episode is going to be fucking brutal. And it is.
But still! Sweet hugs! Robyn Burdine! Rowby & Marshall, come back soon! For more hugs!
TRIBUNE
Eli: "Why do I feel like I'm about to be devoured?"
Anne: "Oh, Eli. You are hilarious. You know what else is hilarious? This anonymous tip we just got..."
Eli: "Reporters, you're all the same. Just comment on this tip, just the tip..."
Anne: "This one comes with video."
Eli: "Fine. Give it to me. I regret nothing."
Anne: "Okay because here is some video of the DNC stealing Peter's election."
Eli: "I have to go now, bye."
What? Who did that? Who had it? You want to say Will, because that's how I remember it happening -- that Will had the only option there -- but then doesn't that seem way too dark? Like, no-coming-back, die-at-end-of-season dark? I can't see that being the deal.
Therefore it must be Wendy Scott-Carr. My go-to. All roads lead to Wendy. All roads lead through a brambly darkness, up a hill to a graveyard, under a full moon, past a gargoyle that is coming to life, under a bridge where a troll lives, past a bunch of witches that all share one eyeball, down into a torch-lit underground passage, up through a basement of a haunted house, and then just two doors down you got: Wendy Scott-Carr. Bingo.
Eli makes it back to the office without barfing, and guess who's there? Marilyn Garbanza, still thinking she is the cause of his incoming myocardial infarction, wrapping herself around the babydaddy and his cravat, giggling romantically about how they're coming out with their relationship, and isn't that a load off Eli's shoulders, but he barely hears her because what is happening is so, so much worse than anything to which even Marilyn Garbanza could ever give birth.
WEEK
Victor Garber! Some kind of Bruce Springsteen tie-in that probably makes sense if you know who Bruce Springsteen is, because you are a hundred, because you watch CBS shows, but makes very little sense to me. Kalinda quote "tries to repair a damaged relationship," which you think is Jenna but long to be Alicia. And Will and Alicia once again lock horns, this time over a couple accused of smuggling drugs -- probably one's name will be "Felicia Schnorrick" and the other one's "Phil Schnardner" -- and there are multiple jury pools and whatever, we're maybe going to learn something about jurisprudence, its vagaries, etc. Oh, and possibly Cary gets a storyline? That would be nice. That would be real nice. Been missin' that kid something fierce.
JACOB CLIFTON is a freelance writer and critic based in Austin, Texas. He currently recaps The Good Wife, True Detective, The Blacklist, Ravenswood, and Pretty Little Liars for TWoP. Jacob can be found online at jacobclifton.com, Twitter, and Facebook.