Everyone's in Trouble On The Good Wife

Emails, voting fraud, metadata hacks and more put everyone in hot water on the hit CBS drama

By Chris Harnick Apr 06, 2015 2:00 AMTags
The Good WifeJeff Neumann/CBS

Okay, so you've seen this episode of The Good Wife, right? You are probably feeling this way about each character:
Kalinda: NO!!
Diane: Flawless.
Alicia: Girl, you in trouble.
Peter: Ugh.
Eli: You're in trouble with Alicia!
Sister Mary Eunice: You go girl, even if you're taking down Saint Alicia.

The Good Wife, oh The Good Wife!

I am here to help you get through what happened in this wonderfully topical episode—Diane (Christine Baranski) took on religious freedom and defended gay marriage rights!—that also saw Alicia's (Julianna Margulies) affair with Will (Josh Charles) come to light and Kalinda (Archie Panjabi) get caught.

Alicia agreed to do a sitdown interview with Petra (American Horror Story's Lily Rabe) that was supposed to be a puff piece. But the hackers from last week are still not fans of Florrick/Agos and Lockhart and released a bunch of sexy (or not so sexy, depending on who you ask) emails to Petra in retaliation, giving her quite the juicy scoop on how Alicia "slept her way to the top." Once Alicia learned Petra had the emails, she worked with Eli (Alan Cumming) and Josh (David Krumholtz) to try and quash and spin and do everything in their power to not let this be a scandal. That involved lying about what her relationship with Will really was. That didn't sit well with Alicia, but after a mature conversation with Peter (Chris Noth), that changed.

"You have to control the narrative," Peter told her. "To keep me from looking like the slutty wife?" Alicia asked. She was surprised that they could calmly discuss Will, her affair and everything that's at stake and she summarized it must be because they came through "the other side" of "anger, jealousy and disgust." But don't think what Peter was thinking! The two aren't about to go romp around in the sheets.

"And I loved you. I still love you," Peter said. "I don't know, Peter. Love is a word that is so exhausted. I wish it meant something for me," she said.

Alicia has changed so much since the show began and it's been such a wonderful journey to watch.

CBS

With the help of guest star Mo Rocca and THR's Kim Masters, Alicia deflated Petra's story. But in a move that would make AHS: Coven's Fiona Goode proud, Petra pulled out another scandal: Voting fraud! An election official said there were reports that votes for Frank Prady (David Hyde Pierce) registered for Alicia Florrick in some wards. "Oh, we are all in trouble," Eli said. And he means everybody! Including Diane and Kalinda because…

"One more thing, Kalinda: You're caught." Yep, you know you gasped. I gasped. Kalinda's been caught! Andrew Wiley—the man that broke up Alicia and Kalinda by revealing she was Leela—returned to investigate the metadata tampering that helped get Cary out of jail. Kalinda hired Finn (Matthew Goode) as her lawyer after she learned Diane could go to prison or be disbarred for presenting the faked evidence in court. Kalinda, what are we going to do with you?! If Kalinda leaves a big mess for Diane, well, I guess it'll be okay because Christine Baranski will have meaty material to sink her teeth into.

Jeff Neumann/CBS

On the topic of Christine Baranski, she has been having a renaissance of sorts as Diane, right? Her performance has always been great, but these last few episodes with Gary Cole and Oliver Platt it has been exceptionally great. Platt, Diane's new big fish Republican client, called her in to discuss gay marriage and religious freedom. Once she stopped being the good lawyer and really got into the topic, Diane was on fire, arguing in favor of gay rights (obviously).

RD presented Diane with a few scenarios, the first about a baker refusing to make a wedding cake for a gay couple. She swatted down all of his think-tank's arguments and suggested he'd have better luck with a wedding planner refusing a gay couple because of religious beliefs. What does she hear on the radio? RD is helping a wedding planner in a case after the wedding planner refused a gay couple. Diane will not be played. RD staged a mock trial and Diane owned him and his right-wing pals. But there was friction when she hired RD's gay nephew to play one of the plaintiffs. This didn't sit well with RD—at first—but Diane wanted to show him how his actions (including backing cases like this) impact the rights of others, but he was unswayed. Has Diane met her match? No matter the outcome, the story was insanely timely and gave Baranski so much to do. Success!

Gasp count: 2

Some other things:

"You want some crackers?" Marissa has moved on from milk, cookies and chips to crackers.

"People don't like when you tear down their heroes," Petra's producer.
"Are you kidding? That's what hey live for," Petra.

Diane is the Patron Saint of Gay Marriage and it's amazing. One of her arguments: "That's insane. Selling someone something they don't want is the same as refusing them service altogether…a vegetarian couple walks into a market and you refuse to sell them vegetables. In fact you'll sell them anything but vegetables. You're affectively denying them service. A gay couple wants to buy a wedding cake and you refuse to sell them a wedding cake."

Did you recognize Looking's Frankie J. Alvarez without his big beard?

The Good Wife airs Sundays, 9 p.m. on CBS.