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This week’s The Good Fight was almost a stand-alone episode that didn’t really much on the season-long ‘Kill All Lawyers’ arc — although that does hang over every episode one way or another — and Lucca’s pregnancy only got passing attention (it’s actually added to her workload due to Colin’s political aspirations), and Liz was nowhere to be found (presumably she’s off prepping with the DNC). This episode really focused on one case, but it was a linchpin for everything else going on.
The case finds Adrian, Diane and Julius in court representing a cop who was shot in the line of duty. But it’s not as simple as that — the cop is African-American, he was working undercover, and he was shot by another cop who is a known racist, which led to his paralyzation. The defendant, Rashid Clarkson (Mark Tallman), was also unarmed and ballistics tests, performed by Diane’s husband Kurt, determined that Clarkson was laying on the ground at the time he was shot, confirming the defense’s case that the shooting was racially motivated. And to make sure the jury understood exactly what happened, they were taken to the crime scene where Kurt walked them through the incident step by step.
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The prosecution led by Solomon Waltzer (Alan Alda), someone Diane and company are very familiar with and almost in awe of (and I’m shocked that Alda is not reprising a character from The Good Wife and hasn’t gone up against Diane in the past that we’ve seen), is uncharacteristically quiet during the show and tell session with Waltzer asking one question of Kurt — has he ever been charged with perjury? Kurt denies the charge but it seems Waltzer asked the question simply to plant a seed of doubt into the minds of the jurors.
This led to really the most fascinating and timely part of the episode. The show is famous for inserting references into episodes that seem as if it was filmed just last week — and I have no idea what the shooting schedule is for the series — but when the perjury questions arose along with some other charges that included Rashid being accused of running a dog fighting ring in his back yard which was reported by a neighbor (he lives in the country and has no neighbors), it came down to Marissa, with a little help from Maia, discovering what was happening — microtargeting, the same process that the Russians used to get fake news stories during the campaign into the mainstream. Looking at the profile breakdowns on each juror, Marissa created a fake Facebook profile, and voila, the news stories started popping up in the feed.
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And not just about dog fighting. The claim about Kurt’s perjury charge was there, as were other stories relating to Adrian and Diane, most notably that Kurt had cheated on her. Knowing Kurt was going to take the stand, Adrian didn’t want Diane there to be the focus of the jury when the issue came up — and Waltzer, though claiming to be quite ignorant of Facebook and ‘fake news’, made to sure make it a point to bring up these issues that a paralegal had allegedly brought to his attention (said paralegal has conveniently been let go from his firm). Diane assures Adrian that she can remain emotionless and then … the prosecution brings in a different ballistics expert — Holly Westfall (Megan Hilty, reprising her The Good Wife role), the woman Kurt had the affair with. With Waltzer dragging out all of her dirty laundry, such as where exactly Kurt gave her insight into how to manipulate a jury to get the desired outcome (like taking them to the scene of the crime), Diane managed to maintain her composure but it wasn’t easy.
But back to the fake news stuff. The articles appearing on Facebook were created on a site that allowed people to write these article anonymously, and the defense team assumed they were coming from Waltzer even though he claimed to be a ‘Luddite’ when it came to all this technology (and Alda gave a terrific performance appearing a bit doddering on the surface but always thinking one step ahead deep down inside). So Jay concocted a fake story about Waltzer which hit social media and the defense raised the claim in court. The subtle look of surprise on Waltzer’s face when he heard the story and realized they were now playing him was priceless. Needless to say, the judge was not amused by what was turning into a soap opera. But the defense did not want to move for a mistrial because the jury had been tainted by their own Facebook feeds because another jury would face the same issue.
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And then things got even more complicated when Jay met with a friend in prison. The guy had been caught with drugs and his normal sentence would have been three years. But he was also found with a gun which upped his time served to fifteen years … but he has always maintained the gun was planted. And who was the arresting cop? Daniel Whitehead, the same cop who shot Rashid Clarkson. Jay felt that the case currently playing out in court could help his friend Craig, and he convinced Lucca and Maia to hear him out to see what they could do. They really didn’t think it was proper for them to get involved, but after meeting with him and learning his girlfriend was pregnant at the time of his sentencing touch a nerve with Lucca and they decided they would do what they could.
And then things got even more complicated when a report was uncovered showing a series of stolen guns and the sequential serial numbers, but the third gun in the series was not on the police report, and that happened to be the gun that was found in Craig’s possession. But the officer’s name on the report was not Whitehead, it was Clarkson. This really complicated the shooting case because now Adrian knows his client lied to him about not knowing Whitehead. In fact, he gave the gun to Whitehead who was known to use ‘drop guns’ to plant on perps. But as the team assembled to confront him, Lucca and Maia realized they could not be in the room to hear all this due to attorney/client privilege. And it also screwed up their case with Craig, forcing them to withdraw but doing what they could to find him a new lawyer (I really expected Elsbeth Tascioni to pop up). But if Clarkson and Whitehead did know each other, why did Whitehead shoot his fellow officer? Clarkson assumed that Whitehead felt he may flip on him and report him to the department for planting evidence. The case ended up being settled but while this made the firm richer, it didn’t help Jay’s friend and he let Adrian know just how he felt. In fact, he was so heated that he quit the firm.
We can’t forget that in the midst of all this, Diane was still dealing with her friend Tully (Tim Matheson), who was facing the court (led by Something Rotten star Rob McClure in a delightful The Good Fight debut) for his destruction of property charges. Diane and Judge Trig Mullaney had a great back and forth with the prosecuting attorney accusing Diane of just making up words (and it certainly seemed that she was) to confuse the new judge on his first day on the bench. It’s going to be fun to see the two spar again once Mullaney gets a little experience under his belt (and McClure promises this isn’t the last we’ve seen of him).
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While Kurt wants to get back together with Diane, she’s still sleeping with Tully and dealing with the fallout from the testimony of Holly. But then one morning she finds a pistol in Tully’s bag, fully loaded, and becomes concerned about his ‘jokes’ relating to assassinating the president, not something he should say in court or to his lawyer even in jest. Later at her office, both Kurt and Tully arrive but Kurt is actually there to see Maia (to show her and Lucca the information about the gun serial numbers) and Tully is with Diane. Kurt watches them from the lobby, perhaps suspicious of the relationship (and seeing the two men side by side in the elevator, it’s clear Diane has ‘a type’). But after all that’s happened, especially the gun incident and his ‘jokes,’ Diane breaks it off with him. It’s unclear right now how she feels about Kurt but she ends her day showing up at a bar. Which just happens to be the place where the bartender who gave her the drugs to microdose works. She offered to pay him for more, but he said it was free for friends. Asking if she was a friend, he gave her a new bottle and a word of advice — find more than one source.
With only five episodes left, the biggest question that hangs over the episode is just how far Diane will spiral before she hits rock bottom.
One little sidebar: There is a moment with Kurt and Tully in the elevator where Tully asks Kurt if he knows him. In reality, Tim Matheson and Gary Cole are long-time friends. When Matheson worked on the series Heart of Dixie, they needed someone to play Rachel Bilson’s talked about but never seen father. Matheson got on the horn to Cole and snagged him for the role. The two had previously worked together on A Very Brady Sequel and The West Wing, so the line was a bit of a wink to the actors’ relationship. A tip of the hat to the writers for that!
What did you think of this episode? Give us your thoughts in the comments section below.
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