The Good Wife: Season seven, episode three: Cooked

If looks could kill (campaigns) … seriously though, there’s no way Peter would have approved this fiasco

I’m watching season seven at UK pace via More4. No spoilers in the comments please!

This was a absolute stonker of an episode that was surely close to a full house in Good Wife Bingo (something that probably doesn’t yet exist – I will invent it if necessary). It had everything: a cracking central case, scheming, double-crossing, corruption, romance, a friendship blip and not just one but both of the show’s formidable grandmothers.

I never thought I’d find myself worrying about Jackie having her heart broken, but the beauty of this show is that there are no true villains, only flawed humans. Things seem to be moving a bit too fast and bit too conveniently with Howard Lyman, who in the space of one episode manages to prove his worth to Lockhart, Agos and Lee, poison the well between Alicia and Diane and bag himself a lady friend. When she mentioned her own mother’s cruelty I felt a pang of understanding for her infuriating refusal to accept any faults with her son.

Meanwhile, Ruth makes a huge and utterly implausible mis-step by getting Alicia and Veronica to appear together on a live TV cooking show, where they predictably fail to maintain any veneer of mother-daughter chumminess. I confess I’ve lost track slightly of Alicia’s stance regarding Peter’s campaign. Is she trying to sabotage him? Is Eli? Or does Eli just want the campaign to wobble so he can get his old job back? I have a suspicion we won’t hear about LasagneGate again.

Anyway, the campaign politics were much less interesting than the case Alicia managed to draw out of the bar attorney hat: a chatterbox chemist who says he’s made a drug that has all the selling points of GMB, but without the health risks. Lucca’s assigned to defend the guy who was acting as his dealer so she and Alicia team up – hooray! Except then are pitted again each other – uh oh. And then have a falling out because things get very complicated indeed. Naturally, Grace the Great has developed at least half a dozen new investigative skills since we last saw her – despite her mother having recently hired a twinkly-eyed chap to do that sort of stuff – to the point where she can unravel a two-year FBI investigation.

I knew the judge wouldn’t prove himself corrupt because he’s already shown himself to be grumpy, rude and unlikeable (see: “no true villains, only flawed humans” principle), but I didn’t see the final twist coming. If I was being picky I might say the writers are making way too much use of the device that ended season six – Who’s at the door? Haha, not who you expected! – but the second instance of it made me go “Ooooh” so I’m going to left them away with it just this one last time.

Notes

Diane’s looking for a new mentee after last week’s feminism fail, but gets an embarrassing knock-back instead. Poor Diane’s lost her whisky-drinking buddy, her protege and now her dignity.