Archive

“The Good Wife” recap (5.17): A Material World

Two episodes after the Holy-Crap-Will-Gardner tragedy that is slowly but surely sinking in, The Good Wife this week slowly begins to merge back into a regular law rhythm. There’s even an episodic trial storyline, a divorce-custody case. But really, the details of this case are totally inconsequential, as the true driving force continues to shine through the grief and strength of the women of Chicago: Alicia Florrick, Diane Lockhart, and Kalinda Sharma.

This week begins with Alicia and Diane in one of the best Alicia and Diane scenes of all time. It’s just a bummer that it happens to be after Will Gardner’s funeral. They share some laughs over martinis about the strangeness that they just experienced: The Wind Beneath My Wings? At Will Gardner’s funeral? What? They wonder whether it was Will’s family who never really knew him at all, or if it was them.

“We were like the two mistresses at the Irish funeral,” Diane notes drily. A beat later, she adds, “Oh, I’m sorry. I meant that metaphorically.” Haha, Diane Lockhart! This is amazing. They toast to Will. And then they keep drinking.

This is the Diane and Alicia of our hearts, drunk but still elegant, honest and warm and human. Diane reveals that her father used to be a sloppy drunk and that she’s a disappointment to her mother. Alicia says that her mother thinks that she’s a prude and should have more sex. Parents, am I right? And then Alicia talks about how much she admired Diane when she first came to Lockhart Gardner, how she wanted to be her. Haven’t we all, Alicia. Haven’t we all.

Then Diane’s phone rings; it’s David Lee, which Diane announces with a hilarious, amazing mocking expression. Diane Lockhart’s David Lee face is my new reaction face for everything.

“Ooh, let me pick it up,” Alicia says, “It’ll terrify him.” Ha! Poking fun of David Lee! This scene is literally the best. Diane and Alicia are getting along so well in their grief-induced bonding, in fact, that they mention they should merge their firms! They even shake on it, like they are semi-serious! Good grief. I mean, as much as I would love a female-run firm led by Diane and Alicia, it took us so long to get to the point where we are. Can we just stop merger talk already?

The next day, the divorce-custody case is set to start at the LG offices, with Cary representing the wife and David Lee representing the husband, and they are all ready to be nasty and lawyerly and testosterone filled until Diane and Alicia both walk in, much to the confusion of the men. “Oh, you poor grief-stricken women, we thought you were taking time off?” The men ask. The women say, “I’m fine. And stop asking me if I’m okay.” When David Lee disagrees with Diane about the case and condescendingly attributes it to her clearly addled lady mind, she offers him a piece of advice, taking her glasses off as she does so, which means you know she’s serious. “Whenever you’re tempted to bring up Will’s death and credit my behavior to it, resist.” That is one damn solid piece of advice, David Lee. I assume you will not heed it. But I welcome this looming Diane v. David Lee war, because there is no way David Lee can win it. At least, I think so. Right? Right?!

I only start to doubt this fact because when David Lee starts to walk away, out of the depths of hell Damian emerges like a ghost. And guess what? He just happened to be at a bar the other night where he heard Diane and Alicia talking about merging their firms, which he happily informs David Lee of. Siiiigh. I thought we were done with this Damian dude! What the hell!

Over at Florrick Agos, Jeffrey’s father has come in for a consultation, because it seems delusion and denial run high in all members of this family. They’re claiming that it wasn’t Jeffrey’s fault that Will Gardner is dead. It’s the wrongful prosecution by the state that drove him to insanity that’s to blame. The father has gone to the State Attorney about it, and has been told that “heads will roll.” Alicia overhears all this, and something changes in her. Her “I’m fine; stop asking me if I’m okay” please turn from annoyed to angry. She tells Cary that if they take Jeffrey’s father on as a client, she’ll quit.

And then she calls Finn Polmar. She lets him know that the SA is looking for a scapegoat, and that scapegoat might be him. She likes Finn Polmar. He helped Will when he was dying. I think I like Finn Polmar too. He’s grateful for her concern, but doesn’t believe her, because the SA is a good friend. But then he talks to his good friend. And then he starts to believe she was right. As a general rule, you should probably always believe Alicia Florrick.

Speaking of backstabbing, over at Lockhart Gardner, Kalinda decides to let Diane know that Damian and David Lee have it out for her, that they’re aiming for a vote to remove her as managing partner. Instead of the steely cage that Alicia has crawled into, Diane has fallen into a “Shit, Well, Whatever” type of mood. She looks over, once again, at Will’s empty office, and realizes that she’s alone here, that the pariahs of LG are going to keep going after her until there’s nothing left. Seeing this uncharacteristic hopelessness, Kalinda, bless her sweet dark soul, says, “Let me see what I can do.” When Diane looks at her with a combination of surprise and confusion, Kalinda repeats: “Let me see what I can do for you.”

Diane also asks Kalinda to go to Will’s apartment and collect a box of his work things that his family has packed up. When she brings it back to the office and unpacks it, we see that it includes a somewhat odd collection of things that are considered “work stuff,” like baby photos and bowling pins and a Georgetown sweatshirt. But I ain’t mad, because Josh Charles was apparently the cutest kid ever.

Kalinda also comes upon an old picture of him and her together, looking youthful and happy. She looks at it for a while. She slides it into her beloved orange notebook. Sweet, dear Kalinda. I want to hug you, even though I know hugging is not really what you need.

We soon witness that hugging is in fact not at all what Kalinda needs, or at least what she thinks she needs. She shows up at Cary’s door, knocks over his lamp, takes off his shirt, and positions herself on top of him, fast and dirty. There is no hugging involved. Yet when she attempts to get into a rhythm, all she can see is Will’s blank eyes, blood flying through the air. After a minute, she gets up uncertainly, looking confused and distraught, and leaves. She has not said a word the entire time. This might just be the most depressing Kalinda scene ever.

Don’t worry though, she keeps at this horrible game, arriving in Jenna’s apartment next. Let’s just look at some fun pictures from this moment and pretend it’s not grief sex, as nothing happy will follow it.

Back in the courthouse, Alicia has taken to grilling the husband who, at David Lee’s insistence, is now fighting for full custody of their chil. She’s being fiercely critical of his book, of the philosophy he teaches about materialism, the idea that we are all just collections of atoms and nothing else, that there is no free will or right or wrong, that when we die, we are simply gone. She’s arguing that believing in such a philosophy is not conducive to being a good father to a young child, but things begin to take an odd bent when Alicia brings up death, an odd bent that makes Diane watch her tenderly from the opposite bench, an odd bent that forces Alicia to finally break. She steps out of the courthouse, takes a few sharp, sobbing gasps of cold winter air.

And then she looks across the street and sees Jennifer.

Yeah, Jennifer, Grace’s old freestyle dancing tutor. Remember her? She’s a vision of shiny gold in the winter sun right now, and sure, it’s weird that she’s there, and that Alicia has a spontaneous heart-to-heart with her about her life, about whether she wants to be a lawyer or not. But this is one of my favorite moments of the episode. It’s weird for Alicia to have a heart-to-heart with a shiny gold street dancer who we haven’t seen in years, just like it’s weird that an unhinged young man can kill Will Gardner in cold blood out of nowhere in a courtroom. Life is weird. You just have to take what it gives you.

Jennifer invites her to dance as a balm to her problems, an idea I always personally endorse, but instead Alicia just says, almost robotically, “I think I’m going home now.” So she does. She drops her bag and her keys to the floor when she gets there, her coat, haphazard and uncaring, and collapses underneath the sheets of her bed. She does not get up for a long time. She does not answer her calls.

Diane, on the other hand, is starting to buck up a little, with the help of Kalinda. After sleeping with Jenna that night, Kalinda snuck into her files–which Jenna apparently keeps at home?–and found some dirt on Damian. The dirt was complicated and I don’t completely understand it, even after watching it a few times, but essentially Kalinda creates a pickle that Damian can’t get out of and tells him to get the hell out of her office and never show his face again, please and thank you. Let’s just hope that this is real this time.

This also knocks one vote off of David Lee’s Torch Diane Lockhart campaign, the sting of which causes him to tell Diane that she is “no Will Gardner” and that she’ll only hurt herself if she tries to be. To which Diane replies with an evilicious laugh that I don’t know if we’ve ever heard before: “Well then, fasten your seatbelts. We’re heading for a lot of hurt.”

Also related to hurt, we soon see Jenna squeaking her car around a corner outside, braking hard next to Kalinda on the sidewalk. She then steps out and slaps Kalinda square across the face. Damn. For what it’s worth, we can’t completely blame her. For what it’s worth, Kalinda looks surprisingly regretful.

But don’t worry! There’s even more hurt yet to come! Alicia has roused herself out of bed, helped by Finn Polmar coming over and once again attempting to show her that decent people can maybe still exist in the world, and she’s pouring herself some water when Peter stops by and decides to be the worst. She’s missed a political event of his she was supposed to be at, which he’s irrationally peeved about because he “doesn’t ask her to come to these things that often.” Haha! What? Bro, she goes to them all the time. He then tells her that the way she’s “dealing with” this whole Will dying thing? Well, she’s just going about it all wrong. Hoo boy! There is just nothing I like better than someone telling someone else how to grieve!

He then continues to belittle her pain by saying that she just lost “a friend”–not a child, not her husband. There’s no reason to get all bent out of shape, Alicia! Looking half-dead herself, smudged dark makeup around her eyes making her appear ready for a ’90s Marilyn Manson concert, she remarks that she lost her husband a long time ago. Oh, snap. This really pushes Peter’s “I Am Awful” buttons, so he decides to turn the asshole meter up a notch, informing Alicia that she’s mourning an over-idealized man who probably never cared for her at all. “You’re a bastard,” she says. He thunders back: “And you’re a selfish bitch. But we’re all that we’ve got.” Yayyy marriage!

After a moment of letting that really sink in, Alicia responds, “No. No, not anymore.” But don’t worry, she says. She won’t divorce him, because he’s too important to her professionally, just like she is for him. She’ll show up to political events when he needs her to. But they won’t see each other otherwise. He’s free to sleep with whoever he wants. Just leave her out of it.

As the final straw of him really not getting it–but who’s surprised, because he never has–he asks if this is because SHE wants to sleep with someone. And then she kicks him out of her house.

This fight was cruel and cold and awful. It was painfully real and also triumphant, because thank god, Alicia, finally. It was also five of the best minutes of TV I’ve ever seen.

The episode wraps up with David Lee still standing, not giving up on his wicked ways. He makes a call to Michael J. Fox. Asks how he feels about a merger. And Michael J. Fox says, why, that doesn’t sound too shabby at all.

Each week The Good Wife has been astounding me with excellence, and this week was no different. I’d like to see further development of Kalinda beyond her using her body to get what she wants, but I’m reserving the slight hope that her grieving process will get the same respect that Diane and Alicia’s has, eventually. I also miss Robyn and hope that she shows up again soon. What are your thoughts?

Lesbian Apparel and Accessories Gay All Day sweatshirt -- AE exclusive

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Back to top button