The Good Wife: Old Spice
October 27, 2014 9:11 AM - Season 6, Episode 6 - Subscribe

There's uncertainty around ownership of the lease to the Lockhart Gardner office space, and the usual suspects don't play fair. Alicia is pressured into talking about her faith in God by her campaign manager. Cary's in danger of going back to jail - will he be able to abide by his new bail restrictions? Elsbeth Tascioni provides a distraction for Josh Perotti when the case against J-Serve takes an unexpected turn.

No sign of Eli or the governor this week.
posted by desjardins (12 comments total)
 
Ughhh that rape joke was so distasteful (not that there is such a thing as a tasteful one). I wish Cary had turned and walked out, but I guess he was too inebriated and was enjoying the attention. Have we seen the woman before? He seemed to recognize her.

The Uber product placement was irritating on a much smaller scale. How many times can you say Uber in a sentence? Also... can someone more familiar with Chicago tell me if it's at all likely that you'd cross the Indiana state line while returning home from a bar in a (presumably) posh location? I was under the impression that the state line area was industrial and blue collar, and not where a hip young lawyer was likely to hang out or live.
posted by desjardins at 10:05 AM on October 27, 2014


I LOLed at the Illinois being a single-party consent state for recording conversations and that trapping the federal lawyer; ever since the state Supreme Court overturned the two-party consent law earlier this year, Illinois law journals have been FREAKING OUT about ALL THE HORRIBLE WAYS you could be trapped by the one-party consent rule, with hypotheticals involving bizarrely far-out behavior and questionable ethical actions. Very timely, as usual.

(I mean obviously it would be better if we had an actual LAW and not just a free-for-all created by the Supreme Court overturning the law without replacing it, but the fever pitch of hysteria about it has been amusing.)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 11:05 AM on October 27, 2014


Better than last week, thank you show for keeping Elspeth's wackiness in the real world. The street grate stuff was pretty delightful.

How do you think Alicia did in her religious interview? Her "I'm listening" was strong but the otherwise vague answers and constant microgrimaces didn't seem like they'd really play.

Conflicted about going back to LG offices. I know you have a great set, and the closing moments were strongly emotional but it seems a bit of an odd choice.
posted by yellowbinder at 12:59 PM on October 27, 2014


I don't know if it's that I don't feel well, but this episode just didn't gel for me.
posted by jeather at 4:24 PM on October 27, 2014


It was not a great way to do product placement though. "Use Uber instead of taxis so you can be tracked when you violate your bail conditions" is not a great takeaway for an advertisement.

Was the ASA destroying the evidence with her recording the conversation a callback to an earlier episode? I feel like they did that before when that dude was first introduced. I guess she was defending Will at the time?
posted by TwoWordReview at 4:50 PM on October 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


A little Elsbeth goes a long way, IMHO, and I could do without Josh entirely (ugh). And yes, she used the same tactic on him previously.

The Vulture commenters think Cary's behavior was rather out of character -- him normally being the careful sort -- and I tend to agree.

And really, taking on Howard as yet another partner just to get the old LG offices back? Why are they taking on so much expense when Alicia might win and have to leave the firm?
posted by pmurray63 at 7:34 PM on October 27, 2014


Conflicted about going back to LG offices. I know you have a great set, and the closing moments were strongly emotional but it seems a bit of an odd choice.

Yeah, I know. But they've been setting it up for a while. In the last season, even before Diane came on board Cary and Alicia were arguing about the problems of their open plan office, particularly the not-at-all-soundproof conference room.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 4:46 AM on October 28, 2014


I dunno, I kind of loved this episode! I laughed out loud a whole bunch of times, and only a couple of those times were because the show had lapsed into inadvertent hilarity (like the silent-but-meaningful stare-off between Alicia and Diane that closed out the episode -- and that was after I started crying when Alicia first sat down in Will's old office). I especially enjoyed how little facetime was given to men! The Bechdel test was passed with flying colors several times. A+.

How on earth did Kalinda ninja Cary out of the whole "whoops, accidentally went to Indiana" thing? The judge and DA gave all that lip service to applying the law evenly regardless of who breaks it and then just let him scoot out the door based on her word alone? *eyeroll*

can someone more familiar with Chicago tell me if it's at all likely that you'd cross the Indiana state line while returning home from a bar in a (presumably) posh location?

Not at all likely. Just no. I thought about this way too much after I watched the episode and I just can't see how this could have possibly happened. The area between Chicago and Indiana is mostly working class and sleepy mingled with swaths of farmland the further south you get, and just over the border you have the not-exactly-sprawling metropolises of Hammond and East Chicago, IN. Did the driver get lost? Assuming Cary doesn't live in, like, Lynwood, they wouldn't have any reason to even get onto eastbound 90 or 94 regardless of where they were travelling from. I get that they needed to find a way to make dude break his bail conditions SOMEHOW, but jamming it in there and using the Uber product placement as cover was unsubtle and unrealistic.

I have a cold, black heart, but I very much love Elsbeth's crush -- catching her huffing a bottle of Old Spice in court was a) supremely realistic, as someone who totally does stuff like that whenever she has a mad crush and b) completely fucking hilarious. And Josh leering at the mom and baby in the elevator because one of them was wearing baby lotion? I straight-up guffawed. The office sex scene squicked me out because I am a prude at heart but last night was the first time I actually heard "Call Me Maybe" and it's pretty dang catchy! The one-party recording thing was killer.

Grace annoys me SO MUCH, maybe even more than Zach -- it seems like she has to drop a truth bomb on her church group, right? It would be in line with her gentle-but-righteous Mother Teresa-like image, having to make a "well, actually" clarification after they all applauded her for bringing a stray lamb into the flock. I love that Alicia is an atheist and felt she telegraphed her discomfort pretty clearly during the Pastor Jeremiah interview. Lines of questioning like that must be so awkward for non-believers to have to endure.

As always, Eli's daughter Alicia's 'body woman' is 100% WHERE IT'S AT. Just completely the best. My favorite scene, paraphrased:
"It's not coffee, it's milk."
"Milk? Why?"
"Why not?"
posted by divined by radio at 6:56 AM on October 28, 2014 [1 favorite]


This week in fun Broadway casting: Grace's prayer group leader was Rory O'Malley, who played Elder McKinley ("Turn It Off!") from The Book of Mormon.
posted by roger ackroyd at 9:58 AM on October 28, 2014



I have a cold, black heart, but I very much love Elsbeth's crush -- catching her huffing a bottle of Old Spice in court was a) supremely realistic, as someone who totally does stuff like that whenever she has a mad crush and b) completely fucking hilarious.


I absolutely loved the Elspeth / Josh scenes. I've been hoping for them to get together ever since their amazing chemistry in Josh's first appearance. I hope the series ends with both of them moving to Portland together so he can go back to being the Mayor...

No Eli this episode, but his daughter was awesome. She should follow Alicia around at all times.

Was the ASA destroying the evidence with her recording the conversation a callback to an earlier episode? I feel like they did that before when that dude was first introduced. I guess she was defending Will at the time?

Yes! She handed Josh a page of evidence in Will's case and he threw it in the shredder and denied it existed. (It was a copy, so it didn't matter then.)

I think it was clear that Elspeth didn't even have evidence this time -- the document was forged, and wouldn't have held up in court, but the recording of Josh admitting destroying it was damning, and the forgery was shredded so there's no proof she did it.

Better than last week, thank you show for keeping Elspeth's wackiness in the real world. The street grate stuff was pretty delightful.

I actually loved the peeks inside Elspeth's brain. I keep saying "Here I am, a clown in your mind!" when I think about it.

The Vulture commenters think Cary's behavior was rather out of character -- him normally being the careful sort -- and I tend to agree.

In Season 1 he was called in during the weekend for an urgent case, interrupting a one-night stand with a random girl, and Alicia helped him cover up the fact that he was tripping on acid. He's been the careful sort since then, but I'd say the potential is certainly there, and he's in a bit of a dark place so it could be a bit harder to stay careful.
posted by mmoncur at 10:55 AM on October 28, 2014 [3 favorites]


The street grate stuff was pretty delightful.

I wish they'd had Elspeth wearing flats though - there's nothing OCD about avoiding walking on grates when you're wearing heels so as not to trip & fall (or to avoid re-enacting the iconic Marilyn Monroe scene if you're wearing a dress/skirt). I wish they'd picked something less practical for Josh to find so 'adorable.'

Loved the 'Call Me Maybe' sex scene though, I'm not sick of that ear worm yet, and it fit how teenage-crazy their attraction has been.
posted by oh yeah! at 5:12 PM on October 29, 2014 [2 favorites]


Pretty skippable episode unless you ship Tascoopioni.

This season's not quite adding up yet. I do hope Eli's daughter sticks around and lightens the mood.

I wonder where they're going with Cary's bail stuff. When the arrest happened, it seemed like they were going to have a the-system-is-out-of-control arc---the arrest was portrayed like a terrifying mugging; a lot of the motives were political; the practice of terrorizing suspects to get pleas seems pretty bad. Pre-trial Alice seemed tough, but moved to mercy by the whole thing, a lucky escape.

They went back to it this episode, but didn't really seem to move it forward. Alice wasn't being an agent of mercy any more, there wasn't any political motivation, just kind of: the system is brutal. It seems like they missed a chance to have a character say, "This is bullshit." That character could even have been Alicia! Hey, that would demonstrate she had the slightest desire to have the job she's running for.
posted by fleacircus at 2:35 PM on October 30, 2014


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