The Good Wife – Lockhart/Gardner goes pro bono

I loved this week’s new episode of The Good Wife, and for oh so many reasons. For perhaps the first time this season the show has found some direction, after floundering around for the first few weeks with no real purpose.

First to the case. Travis Dolan (Tim Peper) got caught in a convenience store in the course of an armed robbery and murder, and he turned into Lockhart/Gardner’s pro bono murder client. To start I was grateful that the case didn’t lead us down the “blacked out” path, which would have been really annoying. And I actually liked Cary this week … I think he and AUSA Imani Stonehouse (Nicole Beharie) could be all sorts of fun together. I mean, I’d enjoy their lovelorn story a lot more than some others we’ve previously seen on this show. Plus, she’s a better lawyer than most any other we’ve seen in a while, and that’s just based on a couple minutes of pure manipulation (the Honorable Francis Flamm, played by Harvey Fierstein, was great). And Imani might reasonably stick around for a while … I doubt Peter Florrick’s office is innocent of anything, let alone plea bargain biases (which generally tend to be pretty ubiquitous).

The best part of the case was the way the courtroom action was coordinated with Kalinda’s preliminary investigation. I’m sure it’s not the first time we’ve witnessed it — and no way will Eli get Kalinda full time, especially not after that display — but something about how it was staged and edited was awesome. I loved watching that.

Will’s story with Celeste (Lisa Edelstein) was kind of wonky. I’m glad that it looks like we’ve seen the last of her, but her entreaties to him were all based on things we never knew about him. For fifty episodes we had no reason to think he wasn’t living the life he always meant to, and conflicting notions to that were introduced very sloppily. Will’s dream job is to be the commissioner of Major League Baseball? First of all, huh? And why would he ever think himself qualified? “You know a lot about baseball?” So does the average fan with the MLB Package … what’s Celeste’s point?

I was very excited to see Romany Malco (Conrad on Weeds) as the head of Legal Aide, and I immediately hoped that we’d be seeing more of him in some capacity. In fact, as he kept talking I imagined some grand gesture on Diane’s part, thus practically guaranteeing that he’d be back. The grand music as she sat in thought seemed to indicate a moment as well … instead she simply walked into the boardroom and asked, “Do you need help?” Could she have done less? But, of course, it was really meant to crescendo with her telling Will that she wanted to bring Legal Aide in-house. Awesome! Not only should Malco be back, but we might get to see some pretty interesting cases. Plus, imagine the clients who’ll be hanging around outside Eli’s office waiting to be seen by Legal Aide!

And it was nice to see two recognizable faces in guest roles. I had Army Wive’s Sterling Brown good for the murder from the moment he first appeared, and I would have liked more of him, but I guess a guy’s got to take whatever he can get while his show’s on hiatus. And how about 30 Rock’s John Lutz as the attorney who’s all about the strippers? That Lutz!

Clacked by Aryeh S.
on Oct 18, 2011 @ 15:16 EST5EDT