The Good Wife Episode 6: Brand New Day
There are several plot threads spooling out in the wake of last week’s blowup….
Lockhart Gardner vs. Florrick Agos
Alicia’s client Heather Sorentino moves her case from Lockhart Gardner to Florrick Agos so that Alicia can keep representing her. Will and Diane obstruct the case by refusing to send their competitor the case files.
Will, like Alicia, seems invigorated by rather than despondent about their feud, but his energy has a manic tinge. At the end of “Hitting the Fan,” he told Kalinda that he planned to take Lockhart Gardner “all the way to the top;” “The Next Day” sees him plotting to pick off other firms’ top litigators and considering expansion to New York and Los Angeles. Given how close Lockhart Gardner came to bankruptcy last season, this seems ill-advised.
Throughout the episode, Will wears black—the color of fictional villainy. But just when the visual metaphor seems ready to drop under its own weight, the final scene presents him in all black sweats.
Not attire in which one would typically plot world domination.
Will even flashes a bit of stomach as he celebrates having torpedoed Florrick Agos’ attempt to find new office space. The moment’s comedy undercuts the grandiose speech Will has just delivered to Diane (“I’m taking this firm to the top, Diane…I’m going to rip through our opponents”). The writers imply that Will, unlike Alicia, does not fit comfortably into his self-appointed new role.
Diane
By inserting almost a full episode between Peter’s decision to drop Diane and the moment she finds out, the writers ratchet up that decision’s consequences for Diane. The only thing worse than being rejected is suspecting that you’ve been rejected and waiting for the axe to fall. As Diane pieces together what’s happened, we don’t just watch her lose the judgeship—we watch her lose hope.
Diane’ breakdown in the courthouse bathroom was the first time we’ve seen her cry, and her sobs were painful to watch because they felt appropriately Diane-like—harsh and quickly suppressed.
Grace’s Teenage Angst
Alicia freaks out when she sees Grace chatting with the male associates and drags her along on a meeting with McVeigh. Grace, clearly a little too fascinated by the guns in McVeigh’s lab, tells her mom she’d like to learn to shoot.
Every single subplot involving Alicia’s kids has bored me, and this is no exception. The stuff that happens to Grace and Zach—teen romance and breakups, attempts assert their identities through religion (Grace) or politics (Zach)—just isn’t that high stakes. Thus, their narratives are only interesting to the extent that they move forward the adult characters’ narratives. Season Three’s “Parenting Made Easy,” in which Grace decided to get baptized and Alicia panicked because her daughter seemed to have disappeared worked because the situation gave Kalinda a chance to (sort of) redeem herself with Alicia and forged an unexpected connection between Alicia and opposing council Louis Canning. But Grace’s coming to Jesus? Not interesting enough to warrant the number of episodes devoted to it.
Random musings:
Florrick Agos working out of Alicia’s living room is an (over) obvious metaphor for the unhealthy overlap between her personal and professional lives.
And about Will’s rebound hookup with the tattooed platinum blonde: if your one night stand tells you she wants a baby with you, says, “Just kidding!”, tracks you down at your office the next day (because that’s not stalkerish or anything), and then tells you she maybe really wants a baby with you after all—RUN AWAY.
