‘The Good Wife’ recap: ‘Taxed’

I want to live in Diane’s impeccably dressed world. Then Peter Gallagher shows up – I missed the character’s name because The Good Wife gets mumbly sometimes, but I’m assuming he was playing a character and not playing himself (although I like the idea of Peter Gallagher taking his eyebrows for long walks up and down the corridors of Chicago municipal buildings). On tonight’s episode, Alicia (Julianna Margulies) clashes with a bond court judge when she agrees to support a client’s plea of innocence in a shoplifting case.

Jason’s back story is revealed after Alicia gets a woman named Mya Sachs as a client in bond court. Welcome to bond court, where they care more about being “speedy” than they do about being “fair”. So losing a case also means losing an $135 – which is a lot for a few of them. She heard another attorney’s client’s plea and took up her shoplifting case. With that in mind, Jason heads to the store, where he indeed watches another black woman get arrested for doing nothing.

Crouse was disbarred 6 years ago for punching a judge, so his testimony isn’t exactly helping her case. Yes, it’s different. But I was prepared to feel like producers were forcing Alicia and Jason on us, but it is not forced. Somehow, that only increases the sexual tension between these two.

After looking over video security footage from the store, Alicia and Jason discover that Maia’s mom, who gave her the sweater as a gift, actually stole it. Alicia presents this evidence to her client, but Maia decides to accept the plea because she can’t stand to see her mother go through the bad bond court system. Press release number 2: Jason is going to employ aggressive investigative tactics when he assists Alicia and Lucca with a student loan case. She also doesn´t care about getting her job back at Lockhart/Gardner even though, as Cary pointed out, she doesn´t make much money (not that she truly needs it). Alicia doesn’t take offense when Lucca blurts out her thoughts over drinks, and instead asks if Lucca would like to be her new partner.

Cartermatt said that it’s a good thing that the show will provide Christine Baranski (Diane Lockhart) the opportunity to show off her acting wares once again.

We get started by meeting Alexa Banner (Celeste Arias) in a video filmed after her death, where she explains her decision to end her life through physician-assisted suicide after her suffering from a brain tumor proved too great.

Alicia takes on the case of a young woman who is adamant that he did not shoplift from an expensive boutique. With Diane’s rival legal eagle Louis Canning (Michael J. Fox), representing the doctors who helped Alexa end her life, Diane is asked by Ethan Carver (Peter Gallagher), who works for her firm’s big client, conservative political powerhouse Reese Dipple, to argue the anti-euthanasia side. Diane argues that she is pro-euthanasia. The debate had no stakes; it felt like it would’ve been more at home on an Aaron Sorkin drama. But as Irving puts it, “Who knows the advocate’s case better than the devil?” Despite derailing all of Canning’s shameless courtroom manipulations, Diane ultimately loses the case. Diane argues with him over it, but at the end of the day, the only promise she can get out of him is that this won’t be a Trojan horse, created to sneak in before people know what’s happening; this will be about this case alone, not all cases. Meanwhile, Eli overhears Cary lobbying Alicia to lobby Peter to kill a bill legalizing physician-assisted suicide – to pave her way back to Lockhart-Agos with roses.

Eli meets with Grace and Jackie separately and suggests that they express their opinions on the bill to Peter. Ruth tries to keep the Florrick family away from Peter, which only strengthens their resolve to go around her and speak to him.

After Peter lays into her for not handling the situation better, Ruth regroups and shows us why Peter and Eli were so eager to hire her in the first place. In no time at all, she manages to turn Jackie and Grace into allies, much to Eli’s dismay. Her win over Eli this week seems too fleeting – and her knowledge that she was under attack too late in the game – for me to think of her as a credible threat to Eli’s future.