The Good Wife” Season 4 Episode 10 Recap”

Episode 10 Recap

Image

  • Photo Credit: CBS
  • “Are you serious? They cut my scenes again this week??”



Sometimes “The Good Wife” doesn’t do a proper mid-season finale and straggles on through the holidays, but this year it looks like (according to the last schedule I saw) that there’s been a clean break and the series will return at the first of January. I think this was the right choice to keep the show’s drama taught, and “Battle of the Proxies” left us with plenty to look forward to in 2013.

It seemed from the promos that “Battle of the Proxies” would focus on the ethical issue of trying a client who is known to be guilty and, beyond that, simultaneously working to convict an innocent man of the same crime. Strangely, that turned out to be more a footnote, with the courtroom circus in Minooka being the main focus (presided over by Stephen Root, a favorite of mine). It made the Case of the Week a lot more interesting, but the shrugging dismissal of the fact that two cases could be tried for the same crime at the same time (which I didn’t know was possible) and that “well it’s ok that we helped convict the innocent one on false information, we’ll just slip them a note for appeal!” was unsatisfactory.

There was plenty to unpack though in “Battle of the Proxies,” and much of it focused on a far more interesting and engaging Alicia (her character has really, really flourished without the Will and Peter baggage this year, proving the “Alicia/independence” pairing may indeed be the best one). Her unilaterally deciding to no longer support Nick at the firm without consulting the partners was something that Alicia would not have found the courage to do before. Her standing up to him was not necessarily new, but the way she did it without hesitation was a fierce move for her. Her protection of Kalinda, too (and dropping the information about the drugs like it was Known Information) and her kicking Nick to the curb partially on Kalinda’s behalf seemed to spur Kalinda herself into action.

Kalinda, one of the best/worst characters on the show (to quote an old rhyme, “and when she was good she was very good, and when she was bad she was horrid”) has a more clear arc now than ever before. No longer on the run, she seems to want to fight for normalcy with the roots she’s laid down, without meaning to perhaps, in Chicago. Where did that ultimate lead, though?