Looking for one solid hour of television? See: last night’s Good Wife. Let’s jump right in so can cover it all.
We start with Lemond Bishop making a sandwich for his adorable son, talking about karate lessons and parties. Adorable Drug Dealer’s Son: cue conflicted heart pangs. And Domestic Fatherly Lemond is so charming! But when every one of the 2435 phones he has in the house start ringing at once, we know all is not well in paradise.
We’re then tossed right back to the straw poll where we left off last episode. Jackie’s still contemplating bugs in her drink; Maddie shows up and confirms that she and Alicia are still on for drinks later; Eli continues to flip his shit over the blogger who’s going to defame Peter. He calls Will to ask that he intimidate the blogger with a cease and desist order while a donkey merrily dances in the background.
Alicia is soon called to Lemond Bishop’s house with Diane; they’re met by another lawyer who works for a firm that covers Lemond’s drug business, while Lockhart & Gardner cover the legit ones. All the lawyer ladies exchange some competitive squabbles, to which Lemond laments at one point, “I’m surrounded by women.” Because women are the only people who are competitive, don’t cha know!
Back at the office, Kalinda is also called on to help, but is first distracted by Cary directing her into his office, where Sketchy Husband awaits. Phew, I was almost starting to miss him! No I wasn’t! They play an irritating game of pretending-not-to-know-each-other, but Cary isn’t so dumb. In fact, Cary wins as the Empathetic Keen Observer this week, clearly concerned about Kalinda at this point. He then also encourages Nathan Lane later on, who helps with some accounting work for Lemond’s case and turns giddy at being actually useful. This is probably the only feel-good storyline of the entire episode, really.
But back to the current moment, where Sketchy Husband is going on about whatever this truck business is he’s trying to get into, which continues to sound exceedingly non-interesting. Kalinda has vetted another dude to help him get into the game, a dude who happens to be black, and whom Sketchy Husband makes a few racist comments towards as well. You know, in case we still weren’t quite sure of his character. Like a sly, stinky fox, he tries to coerce Kalinda into saying that, with this business deal, she is approving of him putting down roots in Chicago. To which I want to punch him in the face. She says she just did her job; he can do whatever he wants. And then, as so often happens, she’s saved by a phone call from Alicia.
Sketchy Husband follows her into the hall, hearing the last bit of the conversation and then whining to her about her “lesbian girlfriend” again. He says “lesbian girlfriend” redundantly at least three times. Get over it, dude! She says that he’s an idiot, that it wasn’t even Lana on the phone, just work. He says that he doesn’t mind her working. Aw, thanks, bud! How considerate and progressive!
But then he says the one truthful thing he’s said all season, a moment of insight that made me feel weirdly triumphant even though the words were coming out of his stupid mouth: “Your voice on that phone was not work, Kalinda.”
Back at the Bishop household, Kalinda reveals that the Feds are indeed closing in on Lemond but are looking into his legit businesses this time, not the drugs. While he instructs the ladies to figure out what the hell is going on, he also tells Alicia that he wants her, specifically, to be there when the police arrive. He doesn’t want his son to be scared, and he doesn’t want “an accident to befall me” when they arrive. Diane interrupts to assure him that won’t happen. Excuse me, he says. I am a wanted black man. It will.
In straw poll headquarters–oh my God, the straw poll is still happening–the blog post has gone up, and Eli is still up in arms about it. Peter actually steps up as the Decent Human Being here, and is all, you sent a cease and desist? Dude, calm down and just back away, don’t even give it attention because it doesn’t deserve it. I’m on Peter’s side here, as this is exactly how I feel about Ann Coulter and generally any campaign ad ever. But Eli’s heart is made of politics and he knows he can’t not care.
Meanwhile, they’ve tracked down where the trouble for Lemond began, with business partner Dex, otherwise known as one of my favorite hoodlums from the Wire. Glad to know you’ve moved up in the game, Bodie. Lemond shares some more heart-tugging moments about his son with Alicia: none of the other parents will let their kids be friends with him because of, you know, his dad being a drug dealer thing. And then Kalinda spies a van down the street from the Bishop stronghold, which she figures out pretty quickly is the FBI, and Lana inside the van figures out pretty quickly that Kalinda has figured it out.
Then Alicia keeps Adorable Son company while the FBI ransack Daddy’s house. This is always a cheery scene. Alicia makes it better by telling Adorable Son that she got to see Michael Jordan win a national championship once, which automatically ups her cool points to about ten hundred million.
Lana and Kalinda get to meet once again later at the office, but this meeting lacks the playful banter of before. Lana is All Business, as not only are Lockhart & Gardner unsealing the FBI’s warrant which she doesn’t want, but her apartment was broken into. The intruder didn’t take anything, just messed stuff up; a sign that Lana believes signifies Lemond’s men trying to intimidate her. But Kalinda and us both know the real story, and it’s a much worse one. And it may be the straw that begins to break Sketchy Husband’s back.
I know my shirt collar is alluringly open right now, but no joke I’m pissed.
Marching into her apartment with a purpose, shit finally starts to get real for Kalinda. Husband is waiting on the bed; Kalinda calls the cops and tells them an intruder is in her house. She doesn’t back down from his intimidation until the fateful moment when he pulls her mirror off the wall, revealing Kalinda’s hiding place for her mysterious, serious stash that we saw at the end of last season. Gulp. Even Kalinda has to hang up with the police for that. Goddamnit.
Husband then gives some sob story about how everything is her fault because she made him love her. He can’t love anybody else; he’s tried. She’s in his head. She’s in lots of our heads, Nick. It’s not an excuse to be a dick.
After she tries to tell him for the last time that she’s not the same person he fell in love with–although who the Kalinda was that he fell in love with is intriguing–she gets up to walk away, and then shit gets even realer. He says that he was in fact in Lana’s apartment, but only to protect Kalinda. Lana’s out for her, he says. He knows because Lana’s apartment was covered with pictures of her. Yeah. Lana’s apartment: full of pictures of Kalinda. While this could just be a kinky thing (please?), Sketchy Husband’s voice says otherwise. This clearly throws Kalinda off, and she turns around.
Alas, Lana was wrong: the intruder did take something. And this something disturbs Kalinda, and it disturbs me.
While I was expecting a picture of Kalinda with Lemond Bishop, it appears to be a picture of her and Eli, it looks like, at the Lockhart Gardner offices. This confuses me, but whatever it means, it means that Lana is indeed targeting Kalinda in a more specific way than previously known. As if Kalinda isn’t already dealing with enough crap. Why can’t the badass queers ever have nice things?
If our hearts were at all warmed by the fact that Sketchy Husband is genuinely concerned about her, even an inch, he then proceeds to tell her to stop thinking with her vagina and then begins to sexually assault her once again until she forces him to stop and leaves. So Sketchy Husband is officially starting business in Chicago and Lana may have been using Kalinda all along. Great. Just great.
If I was Kalinda, I’d go buy myself some serious pints of Ben & Jerry’s, but Kalinda doesn’t have a lot of time to dwell. She’s back on the Lemond case, and squeezes the time in her day to discover a dead body in the trunk of a car, no big deal. To be honest, I’m slightly confused about what exactly is happening here, but whatever it is, it’s all stacking up against Lemond Bishop, even if he wasn’t completely at fault: he’s still the kingpin. He asks Alicia to write up guardianship papers so his sister can take care of Adorable Son.
In straw poll news–Sweet Jesus, this thing is still going on–Peter has won by a landslide. But in WTF news, Maddie has become very chatty with Indira Starr after the blog post. The fact that she’s talking to Indira Starr at all leaves Eli feeling like this, which I agree with.
Maddie then calls Alicia at the end of the day to let her know that she’s decided to drop her support of Peter but hopes they can still be friends. Alicia’s like, yeah, sure, whatever, watching a drug dealer’s son giving his dad a last hug right now before the Feds drag him off, gotta go.
Maybe it’s just me, but Maddie’s decision here seems way too finicky. So you talk to one dumb chick who sold a fake story and you decide to pull your support that is apparently so meaningful? What is going on, here? There’s just something weird about it all. And indeed, in the preview for next week’s episode, we’re told of an “election shocker,” and a scene in which Peter says to Maddie, “You used my wife.” You used Alicia? You’re going down.
Finally, to sum up all the cheeriness of this episode, Lana and Kalinda meet yet again in that dark Lockhart Gardner hallway. Lana’s feeling a little cheerier, as her target is about to be arrested, but Kalinda’s sorta down because, you know, she’s thinking about how their whole relationship might have been a lie. When Lana sees the concern on Kalinda’s face, she’s all, hey. It’s work. Don’t let it get in the way.
Kalinda: Get in the way of what?
Lana: Of us.
Kalinda: But there is no us. There never was any us.
People may say Kalinda thinks with her vagina, but she doesn’t. She FEELS with her vagina, and you better not have violated those feels, FBI Agent! Curses. This was not how I wanted things to play out. This was such a good episode, yet full of so many devastating things for Kalinda. I don’t know what to feel!
What did you guys think? Is Lana the evil agent that Sketchy Husband says she is, or is this just another ploy in his game to get Kalinda back to his side? How do you feel about Lemond Bishop? And I’ll ask it again: what is up with Maddie?
