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I love when movies and TV shows take an event and then tell several stories from different angles within that event. The Good Fight did just that week with the latest episode, ‘Day 429’. The event is question is the arrangements for the grand unveiling of the new offices at Riddick, Boseman and Lockhart, and the party that followed. Except there’s one big problem — with the recent ‘Kill All Lawyers’ threats and the suspicious powder incident a week earlier, no one wants to chance coming to a party with a room full of lawyers. But that is just the event around which this week’s two stories revolve. The episode deftly gave us two separate cases but managed to weave them all together with attention to little things in the background, which were highlighted by a conversation Diane had with party guest Elsbeth Tascioni about everyone being the star of their own story and the background players in everyone else’s.
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Liz’s Case
The story started with a training class for what to do if the office found itself in an active shooter event. Marissa walks in and whispers something to Lucca but the focus of this story is new partner Liz Riddick, who was unable to attend the meeting as she was on her way to her son’s school after taking him to a doctor’s appointment. There she learned her son’s favorite teacher had just been fired but there was no reason given. Of course the teacher was appealing the decision, so Liz jumped on the case because he has been the only teacher to be able to hold her son’s attention (he’s got ADHD).
The school’s representative Nancy Crozier, played by guest Mamie Gummer (reprising her The Good Wife role), seemed to have a solid case against the teacher, something to do with algorithms, but Liz felt she had some experts in her corner with Tom and Jerry (returnees Corey Cott and Zachary Booth) who knew a few things about algorithms but couldn’t help much when it was found that 90% of the algorithms came from state testing. Liz knew Diane had sparred with Crozier in the past and asked for some information on how to go against her. Diane was less than forthcoming at first, still smarting from Liz taking a personal conversation to Adrian, but decided to tell her that Crozier was easily rattled by objections. And the tactic worked for a bit, giving them time to gather more evidence and information.
One of the key pieces of the case was the principal’s former experience at a Catholic school in which she was forced to fire a teacher she had learned was gay. Turns out this teacher is gay too, but neither his race nor his sexuality were in question so it was back to square one until Liz thought about a test her son had taken. The previous year, he had done very well on a state mandated test with a teacher he didn’t like, but he had only had an average score with the teacher he liked, which seemed odd to both of them. Looking at the two tests from all the students it was discovered that many of the answers had been erased and changed. Not unusual, said the teacher, it just meant that the students were realizing their answers were wrong. But then why were there no erasures on the current year’s tests? An expert on erasers (!) found that the type of eraser used was not available for the students, so the teacher had changed the answers and that revealed that the low test scores are what sealed the fired teacher’s fate. The other teacher changed the answers to save her job. Liz won the case, but in the meantime the teacher was offered another, better paying job at a private school, an offer he couldn’t refuse … even though he had told Liz how important public schools were. So she won, but her son still lost his teacher.
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The second story started out as the first, but this time we hear was Marissa has to say — two FBI officers are here to see her. Turns out they are questioning her about her brother whom she has not seen for several years but she gets Jay on the case of tracking him down. And what luck, he happens to be back in Chicago. After sorting through some serious sibling rivalry (Lucca was always their parents’ favorite, sending her to law school but not her brother), a little issue of identity and cash theft, and a short stint in the military that ended with an arrest for selling marijuana, Dominic reveals he’s being sued by the government because of a website he’s created to help inmates with their legal issues even though he’s not a lawyer — but he was an inmate and he knows how hard it is to get representation when you’re in the Big House.
Lucca looks at the site and is impressed but since she’s being deposed to testify against her brother, she hires Elsbeth as his representation. As always, she’s a bit kooky but she manages to shoot holes in the government’s case. But the prosecutor Carter Schmidt (played by Christian Borle) impressed upon Elsbeth and Lucca that websites like this will put them all out of business. Elsbeth points out that WebMD does not promote itself as a replacement for a real doctor as Dominic’s site does about a lawyer. But Schmidt runs into Adrian who tells him about the case which concerns him greatly. The one way to resolve the whole issue of real legal representation and advice is for the firm to buy the website and cover Dominic’s fees for $50,000. Asking if Boseman is committed to continuing to help the inmates, he flatly states the site will be shut down after the purchase. Lucca says he’ll never agree to that but a request for and an agreement upon a $100,000 fee changes his mind. Case closed.
But back to that party, we now see things from Lucca’s and Dominic’s side of the room, with Diane and Elsbeth in the background, and Dominic notices Lucca isn’t drinking and she’s carrying herself a little differently. Can it be? Yes, bombshell of the week, Lucca is pregnant! And yes, it’s Colin’s and no he doesn’t know and no, Lucca doesn’t plan to tell him. Dominic says that’s harsh, but she’s said it would be more harsh to tell him since they’re no longer together. But something tells me he’ll figure it out sooner or later.
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Back on the other side of the room, Diane chats up the bartender (Tim Matheson … this was a star-packed episode) who had asked what she and Elsbeth had been talking about when she pointed at him (the discussion about background players in other people’s stories). He complimented her on her laugh but he said he had a laugh that frightens people. She tells him a joke to hear the laugh: What do you call 20 skydiving lawyers? Skeet. He laughed but it wasn’t that scary. In fact it was so not scary that Diane decided to go home with the guy, even after her husband had called and tried to have a discussion about ending their separation. The internet reception was terrible though (a running, unexplained theme this week), so the call was not completed and Kurt decided to surprise Diane back in Chicago. Marissa saw him waiting and sent Diane a text to alert her, but to act surprised. She got to the office before Kurt returned, visibly upset so she didn’t really seem surprised to see him. He asked why she was upset and she said if she told him he’d never want to see her again. But he pressed and she finally admitted … that she had scheduled some work that day and couldn’t leave. He was okay with that and said he’d see her later and … he was done with the separation. He wants to move back in with her. Oh … awkward.
‘Day 429’ was a fun episode that was clever without being cloying. I loved all the attention to detail, closely watching the action in the background of each story as thing happened in tandem. It was very well done and one of my favorite episode of the series thus far.
What did you think of this episode? Give us your thoughts in the comments section below.
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