The Good Wife: Loser Edit
April 5, 2015 10:08 PM - Season 6, Episode 18 - Subscribe

Alicia's sexay e-mails with Will are about to leak, and Eli and Josh fight that whole situation. Alicia and Peter drink wine together. Diane does a mock trial for her new conservative friend R.D. and ropes his gay nephew into playing the plaintiff. Kalinda's metadata fakeage is coming to light.

Disclaimer: I missed the first few minutes of the show due to crawling-ass traffic, AND I had a houseguest watching the show/interrupting me to ask what's going on while I attempted to take notes, so pardon if I missed something super crucial. Also, no awesome quote corner today, sigh.

Kalinda's A Brick And Drowning Softly: Wiley, otherwise known as That Investigator Who Brings His Dang Kids EVERYWHERE, is about to nail her ass for that faked metatdata. Finn offers to be Kalinda's lawyer for a dollar, and she tells him she faked it with LG's computer guy, changed her mind, then Diane used it off her computer without knowledge that it was fake. The computer guy lies and says he was just getting Kalinda out of parking tickets, but Wiley ain't falling for it and says she's going down even though he likes her, so she'd better come clean. Oh yeah, and he has to get to the puppet show at the library.

Mock Gay Trial: Diane's new conservative buddy RD hires her to somehow assist him in a case he's funding-- a wedding planner in Pocatello, ID rejected a gay couple. After Diane jumps in, he claims he won't fund it after all and Diane essentially says good, because you'd lose. Then he funds it after all, which she hears about in the car and hits the brakes hard. He still recruits her for a mock trial involving the actual wedding planner, but since they can't get a hold of the plaintiffs for whatever reason, Diane will need to find a substitute. Go for the jugular, Diane! he says. So she does, recruiting RD's beloved gay nephew for the job. This ticks RD off, and Diane is all "hey, you asked me to go for the jugular, and he wanted to do it."

The gays win the mock trial, for the record, but RD will still be funding it because he appreciates people who aren't political flip-floppers. He thinks all Democrats were against gay marriage and are now for it because it's politically expedient. RD and Diane debate the impersonality vs. personal aspects of law--what would happen if someone personal was on every case?

The Sexay E-mails: Alicia's e-mails have been leaked and passed along to Petra, some nemesis of Alicia's for the last three years that I just can't recall right now. We see a lot of her editing an interview with Alicia to look as bad as possible. Eli and Josh do their best to fight this release, eventually just having Alicia do an interview with the world's dumbest news anchor saying that it was just a flirtation, and Eli does an interview somewhere else, and Peter is interviewed by Petra saying he can't technically verify an affair, he can only say what his wife told him, and aren't you always after Alicia anyway, this seems fishy....

There is a scene when Peter comes over and he and Alicia drink the sacred wine and Alicia almost enjoys the experience, though she gets grumbly when Peter gets that horny look in his eye and likens him to an 18-year-old, always looking where he can stick it. Anyway, Peter tells her to control the narrative, and says he still loves her and he hasn't been as bad of a guy as she wanted. She admits that's true.

So for the minute, I guess this scandal is negated...only to be replaced by Petra's new story of VOTER FRAUD WITH THE MACHINES converting Prady votes to Florrick votes. Folks, she may not become state's attorney yet! Fingers crossed, y'all!
posted by jenfullmoon (17 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 


To clarify the RD storyline, originally Diane was brought in to evaluate a discrimination case brought by a gay couple against a baker in California who refused to sell a wedding cake to them. After Diane shot that down and admitted a (hypothetical) case involving a gay couple and a wedding planner would have a better chance of winning, RD decided to abandon the baker's case and fund the defense of an (actual) case involving a gay couple and a wedding planner, this time in Idaho.

It's nice RD isn't a complete cartoon villain, and they gave him a good though not wholly accurate line about Democrats flip-flopping on gay marriage for political expedience.

On the other hand, where the hell did the voter fraud story come from?
posted by cardboard at 5:52 AM on April 6, 2015 [2 favorites]


So the question for me is, how are they going to (can they?) use the metadata thing to write Kalinda out of the show but still keep Diane out of trouble?
posted by bardophile at 6:05 AM on April 6, 2015


I don't get the "I was never as bad as you wanted me to be" Peter line. What does that even mean?

It was hilarious that Peter was hoping for one for the road, as he clearly was. I started laughing over it even before Alicia put it into words.

Kalinda would fall on her sword for Diane, but it seems like it wouldn't do any good. I don't know how the writers are going to pull that iron out of the fire. Even Elsbeth might not be able to finesse that one. Which reminds me, we need more Elsbeth. It's been awhile.

Diane recruiting RD's nephew as an actor for the mock court was brilliant. She got RD right where it counts thereby, which is why he got so angry with her. I'm enjoying watching those two cross swords.

Marissa's going to be the kind of operator her father is in ten years. Meanwhile she needs to stop trying to feed Alicia.

Andrew Wiley, have you never heard of the concept of getting a babysitter?
posted by orange swan at 6:54 AM on April 6, 2015 [1 favorite]


I think Andrew Wiley uses his kids as a way of getting people's guards down.
posted by bardophile at 7:20 AM on April 6, 2015 [1 favorite]


I don't get the "I was never as bad as you wanted me to be" Peter line. What does that even mean?

If Peter were more evil, Alicia would have a justification for not liking him/would be able to care less about him.
posted by cardboard at 7:22 AM on April 6, 2015 [2 favorites]


Yeah, if he's a monster, St. Alicia can think even more of herself. It's sort of a loving your suffering because it defines you type thing. It was smart to call it out, and one of the best scenes the show has had in ages.
posted by yellowbinder at 8:53 AM on April 6, 2015 [1 favorite]


I don't know. I was surprised that Alicia agreed with the "I was never as bad as you wanted me to be" line. I just don't get that. If I wanted my spouse to change, I'd want them to be better, not worse!
posted by onlyconnect at 9:11 AM on April 6, 2015


This episode was great and felt much more like a return to form than some of the ones on the last half of the season. (Even a bad episode of The Good Wife is something I love, but this one worked better for me.)

The mock trial and the discussions that led up to it shouldn't have worked at all (especially the stuff at the beginning was more didactic than dramatic) but it was really great. I might have just been charmed by the silly "imaginary gays in different states" they kept cutting to when they gave examples because that was funny.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 12:53 PM on April 6, 2015 [2 favorites]


So the question for me is, how are they going to (can they?) use the metadata thing to write Kalinda out of the show but still keep Diane out of trouble?

I've been thinking about this. The best I can come up with is that Kalinda agrees to flip on Bishop to protect Alicia and in return for not pursuing the Metadata thing. And then Kalinda has to go into hiding or something.
posted by Justinian at 5:26 PM on April 6, 2015


It better be "go into hiding" and not "dies" or we're going to have a problem, show.
posted by Justinian at 5:27 PM on April 6, 2015


Andrew Wiley and the kids reminded me of Patti Nyholm's labor pains.

I was watching those scenes and thinking how is Finn going to get Kalinda out of this mess and it wasn't until I came here that I remembered: he won't. This is the end of Kalinda.

Peter's really going gray, I just noticed. Is another rapprochement in the air? Or did Peter have one of his minions rig the machines to ensure her victory but now it's backfired, the election will be voided, she'll be angry with him again and go back to the law firm and take up with Finn.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 7:29 PM on April 6, 2015


It better be "go into hiding" and not "dies" or we're going to have a problem, show.

Agreed wholeheartedly.
posted by bardophile at 10:21 PM on April 6, 2015


In my mind, the election storyline is set up to maximize interpersonal drama in a few episodes: it makes Alicia the SA when it comes time to prosecute Kalinda/Diane, with Finn to be Kalinda's defense attorney, and probably Cary to be Diane's.
posted by cardboard at 9:05 AM on April 7, 2015


Mo Rocca as the dumb newsman was priceless!
posted by matildaben at 1:13 PM on April 8, 2015 [1 favorite]


I don't get the "I was never as bad as you wanted me to be" Peter line. What does that even mean?

If Peter were more evil, Alicia would have a justification for not liking him/would be able to care less about him.

Yeah, if he's a monster, St. Alicia can think even more of herself. It's sort of a loving your suffering because it defines you type thing. It was smart to call it out, and one of the best scenes the show has had in ages.


I do see what he meant by that line now, but I still think my response would be a big, "FUCK YOU PETER. What I really wanted was for you to be a faithful husband. How dare you accuse me of playing the self-righteousness card after what you did to me and our kids!"
posted by orange swan at 2:12 PM on April 8, 2015


Alicia and Peter were interesting in this episode; I also laughed at his so obvious let's-do-it face. For me the most striking moment was the interview he gave to Petra (I love Lily Rabe), which was a reminder that when Alicia and Peter do work together, they are extremely powerful. I'm curious if we'll see more of that moving forward.

I liked Diane's storyline a lot in this episode, but I long for the days of everyone fighting under one roof. Speaking of which, poor Kalinda's storyline feels so mangled to me; I miss the Alicia-Kalinda buddy-cop stories of the first few seasons, though I know we can never go back...
posted by Zephyrial at 11:38 AM on April 9, 2015 [1 favorite]


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