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Wow! What a gripping season finale of The Good Fight. I’m telling you, if you’re not watching — and I know a lot of you aren’t because it’s on ‘another pay service’ — you are missing the best drama on television (go ahead, click the link below for a free trial and see for yourself!). This week culminated in a convergence of storylines that have been building all season, starting with Lucca’s pregnancy and various attempts at destroying Riddick, Boseman & Lockhart. Not only that, but the episode proved once again how timely the writing is by even tossing in a Michael Cohen reference.
The episode had two main focuses this week, Lucca’s unexpected labor (two weeks early) and an FBI background check on Kurt … which was just a smokescreen for something more sinister. There was also a subplot with Adrian and Julius sitting on an anti-violence committee with three stooges. Lucca was supposed to be there but the early labor forced Julius to take her place. The committee also included the bumbling, Trump-appointed Judge Trig Mullaney (Rob McClure), conservative morning TV show host Ted Willoughby (Mo Rocca) and former Peter Florek supporter / jingle writer Neil Howard Sloan-Jacob (Christopher Sieber). Mullaney was introduced this season, but Willoughby and Sloan-Jacob made several appearances on The Good Wife.
Of course, Julius and Adrian are attempting to use a $10 million grant to start a buy-back program for illegal guns in the wake of the ‘Kill All Lawyers’ movement. The other three are more interested in coming up with videos and jingles with Sloan-Jacobs the one who seems to be the more easily swayed of the three to vote with Julius and Adrian. And then someone else is introduced into the mix, a gun lobbyist who wows the three with a video of a woman in a bikini shooting a gun and she even brought a gun for the men to fondle. Needless to say, the majority voted to spend the money on a program to train and arm lawyers (shades of the train and arm teachers campaigns that have sprung up recently) with none of the gang of four interested in writing the actual proposal. Adrian volunteers and Julius was baffled but … no one bothered to take minutes of the meeting so Adrian is free to write whatever he wants.
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Lucca’s unexpected labor threw a wrench in everyone’s works. Colin was in DC so Maia and Marissa took on the role of her coach until Colin’s mother Francesca (Andrea Martin) and Lucca’s parents arrived. Lucca’s labor gave everyone a chance to push the full limits of the streaming service by giving everyone a chance to use all the profanity they wanted … just so Lucca wasn’t the only one cursing out of the pain of the labor. It was pretty funny. Things got a little muddled when Lucca’s mother Deidre (Judith Light) and Francesca started butting heads (I think it was over the perceived racism of Francesca, who was confused by the appearance of Deidre, i.e. she isn’t black), but after giving birth to a healthy baby boy, Deidre left Lucca with some words of advice about Colin — is she happy to see his car parked on the street when she comes home at night? If not, then this is not a relationship for her. Lucca counters with she’s not happy to see anyone at home when she gets there but she’s supposed to be alone for the rest of her life. Mom says only until she does find that someone who makes her happy. Arriving home from the hospital with Colin and the baby, Lucca breaks out into a huge smile when she sees Maia and Marissa parked outside her apartment waiting to greet her and the baby. Seeing her two best friends made her ecstatic, and seemed to portend her fate with Colin. He wants her to move to DC with him, give it a shot for a year, but she’ll never be as happy there as she is in Chicago with the love and support of the people she really spends more time with than anyone else.
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The real meat of the episode focused on Diane. What seemed to be some innocent questioning by the FBI in regards to Kurt’s background check for his potential new job in Chicago snowballed into something much more sinister, and it appeared to be spearheaded by Patrick Basehart, who had been responsible for nearly getting Jay deported. But the background check seemed to be more about Diane and her relationship with Tully (Tim Matheson), specifically his ‘joking’ about wanting to assassinate the president. After retaining Liz as her lawyer (with a dollar borrowed from Liz, and I’m glad these two have ironed out their differences), it became clear the FBI was looking for something more than dirt on Kurt.
And they were right as Diane was dragged before a Grand Jury, set to testify right after Tully who, to Diane’s horror, waived his Fifth Amendment rights which meant Diane had to answer any questions that were posed to her about her relationship with Tully. But Basehart had some tricks up his sleeve, pulling out an audio recording from Diane’s apartment of the conversation she had with Tully about making threats of violence against the president to his attorney and commenting on the gun he had brought along with him. Diane thought Tully made the recording but he swore he didn’t. So who did?
Appearing before the Grand Jury a second time, Basehart played another recording, this time from the meeting with the DNC’s Ruth Eastman, when Diane said she was ‘thisclose’ to taking to the streets with her own gun. Now Diane is implicated in a conspiracy to assassinate the president (and this is almost certainly based on what Kathy Griffin went through after her infamous photo stunt), but where is Basehart getting these recordings? Liz went to Ruth to let her know that she was certain there was a mole within their organization leaking these recordings, and Ruth stunned her (and us) with the revelation that SHE gave the recordings to Basehart to get Diane out of the picture, feeling that her rage against Trump would work against them winning in 2018. Of course we know that Diane was in the midst of her microdosing at the time and was not really thinking clearly, and while her rage was real, it was totally out of character. Diane even claimed that she had taken her gun to the police to have it melted down. But learning that Ruth had basically betrayed Liz and the firm was a serious slap in the face and could jeopardize her position with the DNC’s legal team.
But this all seemed to hinge on Basehart, and an attempt to turn up dirt on him (courtesy of a former porn star turned director not named Stormy) only found that what appeared to be an affair turned out to be Basehart getting a young woman out of DC and away from the president. He was doing a good deed. But with her life on the line (literally since conspiracy to assassinate the president carries the death sentence), Diane is willing to play dirty, or least take a few notes from the president. With the information about Basehart and the young woman in their hands, Diane asks Adrian to feed Ted Willoughby the story that the two are having an affair. Sure enough on the next morning’s show (a play on Fox & Friends in which the hosts speak directly to the president), Willoughby reveals this information about Basehart’s affair and the hosts ‘suggest’ that Trump should fire him. And apparently he took the bait. With Basehart gone, that could let Diane off the hook, but the episode ends with a very ominous playback of Trump warning everyone that ‘the storm is coming.’ What that means between now and when the series returns next year is anyone’s guess.
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The Good Fight got off to a terrific start with its first season, even though it got a little bogged down in the serialization of the Rindell scandal, but season two was absolutely great, deftly weaving a season-long story arc throughout the thirteen episodes without making it obtrusive to the storytelling. The ‘Kill All Lawyers’ plot was always there but was not always the focus. There was also an underlying attempt to bring down Riddick, Boseman & Lockhart all season, but it was subtle and, as we learned this week, none of the things that happened were a coincidence.
The Good Fight has one of the best ensemble casts on television, a great writing team, great production and my favorite theme song (and opening credits) of any show on television right now. And Christine Baranski anchors it brilliantly. Yes, this is technically ‘her show’ as it is a spin-off of The Good Wife but her Diane Lockhart does not need to be front and center all the time. Her cast members get equal time to shine, especially Sarah Steele whose Marissa became a lot more than just Diane’s assistant this season (but with the Rindell scandal over, Rose Leslie’s Maia Rindell almost became invisible). The Good Fight is a great show that has become appointment television and I can’t wait to see what the next season has in store (especially as it will come after the 2018 mid-term election).
What did you think of this season as a whole? Give us your thoughts in the comments section below.
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