The Good Wife: Season seven, episode nineteen: Landing

Leaving aside the terrible ending, this episode was miles better than most of those we’ve been served up recently. Peter was finally arrested, so we at least now know the charges (albeit they still relate to something we don’t care about), and there was a pretty satisfying conclusion to the NSA side plot.

I’m aware that some fans hate the show’s periodic visits to the dreary cubicles where intelligence-gathering goofballs follow real life as if it’s soap opera in between emailing each other goat videos, but I’ve always enjoyed them. They’ve been a nice touch in a show that generally strives for seriousness and realism and who knows? Maybe that’s really what the workplace is like.

I confess I couldn’t really remember details of the circumstances that led to our chum Dellinger, a self-confessed third-rate Edward Snowden, fleeing the country, but in the end it didn’t really matter because since then he’d done something much less ambiguous and much more serious. Of course Alicia completely failed to grasp the moral complexity of the situation, focusing instead on the fact that a chap she was pals with lost his job unfairly. Aye hen, because no-one ever lost a job unfairly because of your husband’s behaviour, have they?

I can almost – almost! – now forgive her preposterously loose-lipped approach to that top secret terror panel she was roped in by Homeland Security earlier in the series, because it served a purpose when Dellinger dipped a toe back into the USA then found him hauled before a Justice of the Peace in a Canadian Airport. I enjoyed the “bing bong” interruptions over the airport tannoy system, and if the JP seemed over-the-top in her self-righteous condemnation of the American government for snooping on its own citizens, it was worth it for the brilliant mirrored scene where Canada’s snooper-in-chief asked another set of phone-tapping nerds what their latest referral was “aboot”.

Political asylum was a decent outcome for Dellinger. Shame his missed his mum’s funeral though 😦

Alicia leapt into full-blown Stand By Your Man mode to minimise harsh press about Peter’s arrest, successfully communicating the agreed line that a witch hunt was in operation. But what I simply don’t understand is why this still matters to her. At the start of season one her fortune and those of her children were tied up with Peter’s, so it made sense that she gritted her teeth through the personal humiliation. But now? She has her own career, the kids have flown the nest (people keep alluding to Grace still being around, but we’ve not seen her for weeks), and she and Peter live completely separate lives. She seems shocked that the prosecution have a strong case against Peter – is it actually hard for her to believe he’s corrupt, or just hard for her to believe he’ll be held to account for his corruption?

The last hurrah for Diane’s husband Kurt was a non-event, and as for the world’s worst cliffhanger – UGH. When Jason first appeared on the scene, his inscrutability was a big part of his charm. But who the hell gives someone like that a key to their apartment (or let him keep the key he had when it doubled as an office) without even a cursory chat about their intentions? Who spends countless days and nights with someone, has a wobble over them kissing someone else, plans a divorce from her husband and all the while has absolutely no idea who he is or what’s going on in his head? I honestly do not care whether he replies “Me too” or “Nah, I’m out”. She’s an idiot. The probably deserve each other.