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“The Good Wife” recap (5.12): Double Trouble

This week’s Good Wife was chock full of Florrick Agos v. Lockhart Gardner shenanigans, as once again they end up in the same courtroom together, only this time, they’re on the same side. Well, sort of. There’s a couple on trial for drug smuggling, and while LG used to represent both of them, when FA split off they took the dude of the couple with them, while the lady remains with LG. Therefore, they ask the court to proceed with two trials for each of them, even though all the witnesses and evidence are the same and it will basically be a pain in the ass. But the judge, this week played by Victor Garber, is like no, no, we’ll do it all at once, because efficiency! We’ll just have a double jury: one for LG’s client, and one for FA’s.

But as the trial starts and Will and Diane start arguing ceaselessly with Alicia and Cary, even though they’re both technically supposed to be on the defense, and as way too many people are crowded into a little courtroom, it’s clear that this is going to be anything but efficient. The juries also bitch about who gets the good seats and who gets the good jury room, which seems petty and stupid, but have you ever been on a jury? People be cranky.

Anyway, I think this whole situation is supposed to be entertaining, but it ends up just stressing me out. There are a few good things about it, though. First, we get to see Diane Lockhart actually arguing in court again instead of just cowering in the Lockhart Gardner offices, in full force with her gorgeous glasses and chunky necklaces. Second, the prosecution was once again led by the great Geneva Pine, and seeing her eventually just lay back to shake her head and watch the circus on the other side of the room was the one thing that really did entertain me.

There are, however, some interesting things going on with Kalinda. We don’t see anymore of Detective Jenna in this episode, unfortunately, but we do see Kalinda approaching Cary outside of the courtroom, apologizing for how things ended between them. Cary, somewhat understandably, is short with her, and when he asks if there’s anything else, Kalinda responds, “Yeah. You’re being a douche.” Have we ever seen Kalinda say douche before? I don’t know if we have, but man, it is delightful!

This interaction also happens shortly after Will had just told Kalinda to get any dirt she can on the Florrick Agos defendant, so when she first approaches Cary, it seems like an obvious Kalinda sweet talk to get information. But when Cary walks away, there’s an indistinguishable look on her face, something approaching regret, but not having anything to do with the law.

Cary and Kalinda are next seen at the bar. This, of course, brings back pangs for Alicia and Kalinda scenes at the bar-RIP, Alicia and Kalinda bar scenes-but alas, any scene with Kalinda at the bar is welcome. Cary keeps up his cool and indifferent ‘tude towards her, even after she buys him a drink and says that she misses him. And then the bartender spills drinks all over Cary and he walks away to clean himself up, leaving his phone on the counter. And when a message pops up from Robyn about the Paisley Group, one of LG’s big clients, Kalinda obviously can’t help but look at it. But she puts the phone down without opening the full message, which makes it seem like maybe this is a genuine bar visit, and not just part of a job for Lockhart Gardner. But then, because she’s Kalinda and she can’t help it, she picks it back up and reads.

Kalinda swipes Cary’s screen to enter his messages, and let’s also talk about how Cary only has FOUR app icons on his home screen. Dude, Cary. Even really boring people have more than four apps on their phone. Anyway, the full message says something about how someone in the Paisley Group was arrested for prostitution and LG still doesn’t know and it’s a chance for Florrick Agos to steal them away.

We later see Kalinda and Will making a personal visit to the Paisley Group to make sure they’re still cool. Paisley Group guy says that they’re cool, but Will and Kalinda still aren’t sure, so they bring up that prostitution charge, assuring him they can help him out with it. To which Paisley Group guy looks confused, and then angry. That woman who’s supposedly a prostitute? Is his granddaughter. Who’s in a wheelchair with Hodgkin’s.

Ohhhhhh, man. Cary has played you GOOD. While Will is confused, Kalinda just smirks, a smirk that contains a little respect.

Later, Kalinda knocks on Cary’s door, and they share a laugh over Cary’s trickery. And then Kalinda, who is being surprisingly insistent, once again asks him out for a drink. Cary’s smiling, but he says that it’s not a good idea. Which it probably isn’t. He closes the door. And then a second later, opens it again and walks out. Because please. You made a valiant effort, Cary, but no one could resist those eyes. And those jackets. And those legs. Kalinda follows him out.

I have lots of Thoughts about this whole thing. It’s been so long since we saw Cary and Kalinda having any kind of relationship. We haven’t seen anything from Kalinda in that time that insinuated that she actually did miss him, so this does feel slightly out of the blue. That said, are we ever privy to anything Kalinda is actually feeling or thinking about? No. And while I was still uncertain for most of the episode whether or not she was being facetious, by the end, I began to think it was legit. Kalinda isn’t the type to beg; she would’ve given up if it wasn’t something she actually wanted.

And while I prefer Kalinda with a lady for obvious reasons, I like Cary. I feel like Cary understands Kalinda, as much as Kalinda can be understood, and respects her. It also doesn’t feel out of character to me for her to be with Detective Jenna last week and Cary this week. She doesn’t set down roots easily, and I’m not sure if even the saplings of roots were spreading for Jenna. I think it’s actually refreshing, in a way, to see her desires evenly divided between men and women within each season. Bisexual representation for the fucking win. Or, okay, I know Kalinda has never actually identified as bisexual, so, lack of boxes, lack of labels for the fucking win. Either way, I’m grateful that for the last few episodes, Kalinda has consistently had some type of meaningful storyline. It’ll be interesting to see where the rest of the season-or even just next week-takes her.

Meanwhile, back in the trial, nothing much exciting is happening other than the judge is finally getting fed up with the ridiculousness of LG and FA, as are we all. But Alicia, who seems increasingly strung out on her last limb, boldly asks for a meeting in judge’s chambers right after the judge has finished yelling at her for being argumentative. You see, the day before, both she and Will had seen two jury members-one from his jury, and one from hers-conferring in the hall, a clear no no. Alicia had decided to not bring it up earlier, because both LG and FA had finally decided to work together. There was even one glorious moment of Alicia and Diane talking to each other in the courtroom without animosity. I miss them being a team so much. So Alicia hesitatingly decided to let the jury thing go. But now that it seemed she was running out of chances to win this case, she brings it up. The judge asks Will if it’s true, if the jury members were talking in the hall. And then Will-UGH, WILL-says no. He never saw such a thing.

This lie is so shocking to Alicia that she stumbles, but when Will says surely Alicia will be able to corroborate this accusation, there’s nothing she can do. It was only the two of them who saw it. “I, I must have been mistaken,” she says quietly. I know this is all leading up to Alicia and Will making passionate love at some point in the near future, but this is about the last straw for me. He’s done dirty things against Alicia this season, a lot of them, but they were normally dirty in a sleazy but legal way. Outright lying to a judge? Girl, bye.

Robyn also does some badass sleuthing for Florrick Agos this episode, which she’s getting better and better at. Now, I’m not saying that she’s anywhere near Kalinda status or anything, but, she’s getting warmer. Florrick Agos better be thanking their lucky pennies that she’s with them, is all I’m saying. Also, will we ever get to see Robyn making out with somebody? I want to see her making out with somebody.

In the end, even with Robyn’s help, there are still two juries for this trial, and different juries can process things differently, which is, of course, why juries are so weird and problematic at the same time that they’re essential to our system. The couple on trial, by the way, are a pretty young woman and a geeky older professor who are clearly in love, even though much of the prosecution is based on the assumption that, of course, a pretty young woman could never love a geeky old professor. In any case, it seems clear that they’re both guilty, because they both had a whole lotta cocaine with them when they returned from Brazil to the US. But anyhoo, the pretty young woman’s jury-Lockhart Gardner’s-comes back with a non-guilty verdict. The geeky professor’s jury? Not so much. He gets four years in jail. They kiss sincerely before the cops drag him away.

The other heartbeat of this episode was Governor Big’s possible downfall, delivered in the form of a grainy video of one of Eli’s cohorts delivering a stuffed ballot box of Governor Big votes on election night. Marilyn is in warrior princess mode over this, interviewing everyone involved. And poor Marilyn: no one is really that happy to talk to her. The last person she talks to is Will, who had brought the video to Peter on election night, a video that Peter refused to watch. Yet Will refuses to tell her anything of substance because of “attorney client privilege.”

This prompts Marilyn to do some angry, sexy walking down the hallway to Peter’s office, the same hallway that Alicia had previously done some angry, sexy walking down when she emotionally yelled at Peter to “FIX THIS” because a federal investigation would bring Zach into the mix again, since he helped discover that fixed ballot box back in the day. There were some parts of this episode that bored me a little, but man, there certainly was a lot of angry, sexy hallway walking.

Anyway, Peter and Will share some Angry Man Words, where Will essentially insinuates that he will tell Marilyn whatever the hell he wants, even if it’s not true, because he thinks Peter is a big fart face who deserves to go down. It’s also insinuated, although I can’t tell for sure, that Will is the one who sent the video to the papers, starting this whole uproar in the first place. Although instead of using Alicia as his reason this time, he uses Diane’s rescinded Supreme Court seat. Which is a smooth one. Oh, Will, you angry, angry little man.

Because of Will’s lack of full testimony, Marilyn’s final report on whether Peter committed ethics violations is “inconclusive,” which causes Eli to go into a rage, throwing the pages of the report into the air in the final scene. Which isn’t quite as good as an Eli-spitting-out-his-drink final scene, but is still good. Also, angry Marilyn = hot damn.

Another big part of this episode was that Bruce Springsteen‘s new single “High Hopes” was incorporated into almost all of it, and while normally clear cross-promotional things can weird me out, I love Bruce and I love the song and I think it actually gave a lot of the scenes an extra kick. The Boss and The Good Wife go together very well.

What do you think will happen with Peter’s election night video-will it turn into a scandal or fizzle out? And what do you think of Kalinda and Cary? Will it turn into anything, or we will never hear about it again?

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