CBSPicture it: The Good Fight, The Good Wife spinoff on CBS All Access, doing a ripped-from-the-headlines episode about Law & Order: SVU's shelved ripped-from-the-headline episode. What a time to be alive.
The episode, "Stoppable: Requiem for an Airdate," featured Lucca (Cush Jumbo) bringing her TV writer-producer friend's case to the firm. He wrote an episode "one of those Chicago shows" that was a take on Donald Trump. Law & Order: SVU did an episode earlier this season that has since been shelved.
In The Good Fight, the writer put his episode online and faced legal action from the network to the tune of $12 million dollars. Lucca and Adrian (Delroy Lindo) argued the case against a passable Nancy Crozier (Mamie Gummer) stand-in. Seriously, that attorney was just Nancy Crozier, but not played by Mamie Gummer. Adrian looked at the case as a way to get into entertainment law in Chicago. The court battle ebbed and flowed with arguments of free speech until it came out in Lucca and Co.'s favor.
Meanwhile, Diane (Christine Baranski) brought Neil Gross (John Benjamin Hickey) and Chum Hum to the firm, with a caveat. Her capitol contribution would come out of the Chum Hum retainer and she'd be elevated to a name partner. You don't mess with Diane Lockhart. As Barbara (Erica Tazel) said, "She's going to be trouble."
Kurt (Gary Cole) also returned and gave Diane a gun, naturally, and asked for her help in giving a speech. One thing led to another and we got our first Diane Lockhart bedroom scene from The Good Fight. They got back together…but only in the bedroom.
By far the highlight of the episode was the triumphant return of Carrie Preston as Elsbeth Tascioni, now with offices in a pediatrician's office. It's been a while since she last saw Lucca, who came to hire her to protect the firm with Mike Kresteva's investigation, so naturally they caught up. How is Elsbeth?
"Good, now that I am out of the hospital," she said.
"Were you sick?" Lucca asked.
"No. Maybe. There was some disagreement about that," Elsbeth said.
And the Elsbeth hits kept coming, from having an Amazon Echo-like machine as her assistant to telling Mike Kresteva (Matthew Perry) that eating alone reminded her of being in school. After getting threatened by Mike—if she went after him professionally, he'd go after her personally—Elsbeth went to Mike's house and befriended his wife. It was truly a masterful move. Mike, an intolerable character, vs. Elsbeth, one of TV's best characters, will make for great TV.
Lucca found some time to get it on with Colin (Justin Bartha) and talk about her one friend, Alicia Florrick.
"I had a best friend," she said.
"Who?" he asked.
"A coworker," Lucca replied.
"He or a she?" Colin asked.
"She," Lucca said.
"Had? She's not a friend anymore?" he replied.
"I think she is. I don't make friends easily," Lucca said.
Aside from the pilot, this was by far The Good Fight's strongest episode yet.
Gasp count: Two.
Expletive count: Five f—ks, two sh—ts.
The Good Fight releases new episodes Sundays on CBS All Access.