TV

“The Good Wife” recap (5.18 & 5.19): The Sweeney House of Horrors

First, dear Good Wife readers, my apologies for not writing a recap for last week’s episode. I was on vacation and my schedule was jam packed to the gills. Having finally caught up on both episodes, the bad thing is that there’s not much Kalinda screen time these two weeks. Particularly in this week’s episode, she’s practically non-existent. The NSA spying storyline also wraps up, which actually makes me a little sad because the meta-ness of those NSA geeks gossiping about the lives of these characters was just so enjoyable. The geek who ends up bringing it all down is played by Zach Woods, also known as Gabe from The Office, and the look on his face when he first meets Alicia for the first time in the Florrick Agos elevator is priceless. He can’t even believe he’s meeting THE ALICIA FLORRICK. He flat out stares for a few seconds and then stumbles over his words, continuing to cast nervous glances her way, as if he can’t believe she’s real. We are all the NSA geek.

Also, one of the new NSA guys added on in last week’s episode was one of my favorite TV gays of all time, Marc St. James from Ugly Betty! But Governor Big had to step in and make the NSA leave him and his wife alone, ruining everything like usual. Bye, NSA geeks.

But there’s a lot of good stuff, too. Like Michael J. Fox joining Lockhart Gardner, making it officially Lockhart, Gardner, and Canning, which is a really long title but I guess not that crazy for a law firm. Will they just spray paint a C onto their stupid LG logo?

Okay, so Louis Canning isn’t always necessarily a good guy, and yeah, he’s only actually there because David Lee is trying to overpower Diane Lockhart. So those seem like bad things. But Kalinda’s hard throw of a baseball at his head when he antagonistically refers to himself as “the new Will” is the best Kalinda moment of both episodes.

And Diane Lockhart’s epic eye rolls and snarly unimpressed faces when he starts describing his neurological condition to the staff! You’re killin’ me, Smalls! She then interrupts him to ask David Lee, “Dear god, are we really going to put the Fox in Will’s position?” Michael J. Fox jokes! Good Wife writers, you are too much sometimes.

In the end, it seems like Louis Canning might not be such a horrible addition to the joint after all. Although it’s still too early to truly tell if he’s genuine, he doesn’t seem hell bent to kick out Diane at all, and he’s also done the firm a big favor by cutting off some of the out-of-reach expansions Will had been going bananas for, thank goodness. Kalinda and Diane approach him at the end of last week’s episode to say thanks, in a glorious side-by-side team, admitting that it’s hard to trust him because of his past track record.

He essentially tells them to chill out, leaving the office with this reassuring tagline: “I might be a scumbag, but hey, I’m your scumbag.”

Alicia continues to go through the long, messy, haphazard process of grief, but people being dicks really kickstarts her back into gear. Particularly, the current State Attorney, who is taking up the mantle of Being A Real Sleazeball Right Now. When last week’s episode began, Alicia still looked like this:

But after learning that she’d been wiretapped for months for no good reason, and then witnessing the State Attorney blatantly trying to scapegoat Finn Polmar into taking the fall for Will Gardner’s death, she gets pissed, and starts showing up. She even shouts “EXCUSE ME!” when the State Attorney tries to backtrack out of his sleaziness, and proceeds to tell him why he’s a piece of shit. Thankyouverymuch.

And at the beginning of this week’s episode, Alicia appears just too damn busy to sit down and be sad. She’s at Colin Sweeney’s house–ugh–to get his signature for some lucrative merger thing that will bring in Florrick Agos a lot of money, and while she’s following him around she’s also taking calls from Eli about pictures of her son with a bong appearing on Gawker–hahaha–and calls from Finn about State Attorney’s continued dickiness. She’s so busy trying to juggle a million things that she loses track of Sweeney for a second, and she still needs him to initial some things. And then suddenly he shows up again, all Sweeney-ish and swaggery and that weird combo of charming and creepy. He’s in a good mood because he’s engaged, again, to a different beautiful woman, Renata, played by the gorgeous Laura Benanti.

Alicia’s finally got her signatures and then suddenly there’s a scream and Renata sweeps down the stairs in hysterics, and we discover one of her friends hanging from a chandelier upstairs. There are a few things that are almost immediately clear: this wasn’t suicide, and Alicia is now a witness.

The rest of this episode–which, by the way, is directly by Josh Charles–is a twisty turny murder mystery that’s a completely engaging episodic tale, taking a brief step back from the intense character development we’ve had in the last few episodes. It does show, however, that as much as Alicia is trying to get back into the game, she’s still a little off. As a witness, she mixes up one African-American man for another in her testimony, an always awkward and offensive situation, even though she does confess to it immediately. She also constantly questions what she saw, playing it over doubtfully in her mind, especially that brief period when she lost sight of Sweeney. It seems obvious that she should report this period that he went missing, but she repeatedly doesn’t. Does she stand by him because he’s her client? Or does she stand by her story because she really believes he couldn’t have left her sight? I’m not completely sure. Moral lines are always blurred when it comes to Colin Sweeney.

Renata ends up being the one arrested for the murder, with Lockhart Gardner representing her and Finn Polmar prosecuting. Finn’s been thrown onto the case at the last minute, and then is accused by Mr. State Attorney of not doing a good enough job. He takes Finn into his office and attempts to fire him, but Finn suddenly takes up the advice Alicia has previously given him. It’s an election year, and Finn Polmar is now running for State Attorney. Which means the current State Attorney can’t fire him without appearing to snuff out a competitor. Which means, Alicia should always be your lawyer.

The Zach pot picture on Gawker also turns into a bit of a thing when some reporters track down good ol’ brother Owen and ask him his opinion. He pretty much says, unsurprisingly, good boy, Zach! Which is a nightmare, obviously, for Eli Gold, and also prompts a hilarious sit down with Zach and Alicia and Owen. While it’s slightly unclear in this episode whether Zach indeed smokes pot or not, he rather deftly swerves the conversation back around to Alicia, asking when she’s going to address other, more important family matters, such as the fact that she and Dad are carrying out a “Bill and Hillary” act.

When Owen presses Alicia on this, she explains that Zach’s observation was rather point on. And they have been carrying out their married-but-separate thing, slightly awkwardly but civilly. Owen is intrigued by this new possibility of Alicia being able to date freely, but when he presses it, it’s clearly too much for her, and he knows it. He hugs her before she runs away, tells her there’s no one else he loves more. She’s been doing so well, but come on, there is only one person she wants to date. She closes the door to her room and leans tearily against it, once again breaking our hearts without saying a word, and in less than five seconds.

And even though I’m still mad at Peter for the way he talked to her two weeks ago, there are still those moments when he uses his power to stand by her that make me almost like the guy. And one of those moments happen this episode when he throws his weight behind Finn Polmar’s campaign, much to Finn Polmar’s utter astonishment.

In the murder trial, Renata ends up getting off. She thanks Alicia outside of the courtroom afterwards. Alicia’s alibi helped preserve her future marriage to Colin Sweeney. They’re just so close, you know? There was only one thing that they hadn’t both experienced together: that feeling of watching the life drain from a woman’s face. Now that they’ve both lived through that, there’s nothing else separating their unity.

Renata says this calmly, peacefully, almost joyfully. Holy shit, she’s just as much of a psychopath as Sweeney is! This show always has such feel good endings. Stay far, far away from that house of horrors, y’all.

What were your thoughts on the last two episodes? There’s only three new episodes left of this season, which seems like a meager amount of time to actually give Kalinda a good storyline, but we’ll see what’s left in store. It also appears that Alicia might be going on a date next week? Too soon, you guys! Too soon.

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

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Back to top button