Last week I was pretty disappointed with The Good Wife. In addition to being underwhelmed by the episode itself, I didn't love the developments that had finally come to pass in the continuing saga of the Lockhart Gardner Bond partnership. I've said before how much I like scenes between Will and Diane but, more to the point, I like it when it seems like it's Will and Diane against the world. I enjoy the way they work together and how they're very different but much the same. When one of this season's major plot points revolved around Diane bailing on the firm, I was really disappointed at the thought of an end to the opportunities to see Josh Charles and Christine Beranski lighting up the screen with their slightly antagonistic friendship chemistry (shut up, it's a thing!). I found this week's episode much more well-paced and interesting than last and many, many things happened that all fit together seamlessly.
For starters, we caught back up with Peter's campaign. It seems that Jackie (aka Grams) has been feeling left out of late and has decided to insert herself by calling an old friend and asking for his help fundraising for the campaign. Eli doesn't care for the new guy and wants to fire him but feels held hostage by Jackie. He goes to Alicia for help and Alicia tells him how it is, Jackie is a pain in the ass and a budinsky who will only listen to Peter. Eli, evil genius that he is, invites Jackie to join them for all meetings from now on which bugs Peter. Peter is all "I don't want my mommy here, make her go away" and Eli's like "hey, I've tried to keep her at arms length of the campaign but she can't be swayed by anyone but you so if you want her to leave you alone, tell her yourself." Peter nuts up but in a really ass-kissy way. Eli tosses New Guy out on his ass and New Guy promptly calls Jackie and whines at her to get him his job back but Jackie tells him that if it's what Eli wants, then it's for the best. Eli twirls his metaphorical mustache.
Will and Alicia are defending a WWII reenactment buff who stands accused of shoving his dad off a balcony to keep dad from writing him out of the will. Their client requests that they hire this incredibly weird snake oil salesman to read "micro expressions" and tell them how they're doing with the jury throughout the trial. The guy is a quack and Lockhart Gardner Bond are paying him $60,000 a day for his useless services. During a basketball game Will fouls the judge in the case pretty egregiously so the judge starts sticking it to them in the case. Cary beats the pants off of Will and Alicia and in preparation for an appeal Alicia asks the jury foreman why they voted to convict her client. They weren't swayed by the Scientologist landlord or the biased judge or the fact that the prosecution introduced a picture of the defendant dressed as a Nazi, they just thought he did it. So did I. And it was nice to see them lose a case for once.
Diane continues her plans for defection, asking Cary to join her at her new firm. He takes the week to think about it and in the meantime, she meets with Will who apologizes for flipping out on her last week and asks her to come back and they'll share all the clients and skip through the halls with daisies in their hair. She agrees.
Derrick apparently made Blake Kalinda's boss and he immediately goes about flexing his muscle which you know Kalinda isn't having. She asks Will for a $50,000 a year raise and he nearly chokes on his tongue. Then Kalinda tells Alicia that Blake has been investigating her and she unleashes some wrath on Blake then storms into Will's office all "what the fuck are you doing having that (incredibly attractive) son of a bitch investigate ME for?" Will doesn't know what the hell's going on and then it turns out that Blake was snooping into the backgrounds of everyone at Lockhart Gardner so Will tells Derrick that that shit is going to stop pronto and that Derrick is going to sign off on Kalinda's $50K raise and also that the only person Blake can boss around is himself. Derrick agrees in that really quiet, placid way that he has that is completely unnerving to me (that and how good looking he is).
Will and Diane have breakfast again and she's like, "didn't we already kiss and make up?" and he's like "yeah, but we were both lying so it doesn't count." Then he tells her that he's just discovered that while she thought he was plotting against her, what was really happening was that Derrick was plotting against them both and he thinks that what they should do is let Derrick think he's winning but secretly work together to crush him. This time they really do kiss and make up (except for the kissing part because, you know, awkward) and I had a giddy moment that nearly sent me into cardiac arrest. Then Will tells Kalinda that she's got everything she asked for as long as she keeps having his back and she totally does and, I swear, if I had confetti and a party hat, I'd have used both, that's how happy these developments make me.
Oh, once all that is settled, Diane meets back up with Cary who's ready to join her new firm until Diane tells him that she's not going to do that anymore but instead, he should come back to Lockhart Gardner. Cary replies with a snort of derision but then says he'd consider it if they offered him twice what Alicia's making and brought him in at some higher-in-rank position than Alicia holds. Cary has such a weird grudge against Alicia considering they've always worked well together and it isn't her fault that Diane and Will (mostly Diane) chose to keep her and not him. Whatever, I don't much care, I just want all my peeps back at LG working together like a big, happy, dysfunctional, firmly in the gray area of right and wrong family. (Also, it should be noted that Matt Czuchry is pretty nice to look at all the time but doubly so in his jogging clothes.)
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