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Wow, The Good Fight got into some real moral gray areas this week and I’m frankly surprised they went as far as they did. In addition, Roland Blum is causing more trouble and he hires an ‘assistant’ who isn’t exactly what he seems.
The secondary part of the episode centered on Blum and his attempts to weasel himself into Reddick, Boseman and Lockhart as an associate (he’s not foolish enough to press for named partner just yet). He’s not really endeared himself to any of the partners, most of whom just regard him as an annoyance to be ignored while Diane outright hates him and wants him gone. Knowing that the Board is dragging their feet on a vote, Blum pays a visit to Cynthia Cromley, the woman who first raised the issue of sexual impropriety with the senior Reddick, and is looking for all the other women who signed NDAs, perhaps to use that information as blackmail to garner his position with the firm. Boseman is not having it and nearly chokes Blum out in a scene that was frighteningly real. I have to hand it to Delroy Lindo, Michael Sheen and Sarah Steele for their authentic reactions to that moment. It felt real. And then they turned the tables on Blum. Adrian wants to go public with the information about Reddick before Blum does — and Liz is not on board with that — and then they serve him with a subpoena for suborning perjury from a witness. Adrian may have just started a war.
But Blum is the one who is really dragging his feet, having worked on the Second Nexus case for about two hours over the course of several weeks. So Diane asks Lucca, whose divorce case is off for a week, to ‘supervise’ Blum. She agrees and finds Blum has an assistant, someone whom several women in the office are whispering about, wondering if he did his own singing. Intrigued, Lucca asks them what they’re talking about and she learns the assistant is actually Gary Carr, an actor who was on Downton Abbey researching a new role as a lawyer. Lucca is a bit miffed since she’s trying to facilitate a real case worth millions of dollars only to find this assistant doesn’t know anything about the law and is getting dubious advice from Blum. But she also finds a spark between them and decides to look up a scene from the show … at which point the episode interjects one of those humorous animated segments explaining Carr’s role on Downton Abbey because they couldn’t get legal clearance to include an actual scene from the show in time include it in the episode. Clever! Even funnier is when Marissa recognizes him, but not from DA. She knows him from HBO’s The Deuce. So while Gary is getting recognized and approached by fans who want a picture or an autograph, Lucca is trying to show him the real mundane work of a lawyer (because what you see on TV isn’t real, which makes this whole section of the episode surreal and very meta) as the day ends with her nanny locking herself out of the apartment with the baby inside and Gary offering to drive her home (he has a driver outside the door). With baby no worse for the wear, they start to say goodbye but neither of them can ignore the attraction.
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The main part of the episode is actually pretty shocking in the places it’s willing to go. Liz and Diane are suprised at the office by Rachel, who is basically running their ‘Book Club’ now. She has a client who is alleging that when she voted in the last election, the machine flipped some of her all-Democrat votes to Republican, including her vote for president. And she has the video evidence to prove it. Diane and Liz are just taken aback that Rachel would show up like this without warning, posing some real moral quandries for them. But Rachel says they agreed no one talks about ‘Book Club’ so it wasn’t like she was going to give them a heads up. And besides, this case would be good for the firm if they can prove conclusively that the fix was in.
The reluctantly agree to take the case while Adrian is completely befuddled by their reactions to all that’s going on. The case takes an unusual turn when they learn the client isn’t suing the state for rigging the election, but the manufacturer of the voting machines. Seems the machines were deployed in majority Black voting districts and there are more reports that confirm something is happening with the votes. Rachel suggests that they subpoena the manufacturer to get the software and the architecture of the machine to see if there is something there that is causing the votes to flip, which the Defense fights but the judge ultimately allows the motion to move forward.
Diane and Liz bring a copy of the software to ‘Book Club’ where they learn the plan is to introduce a virus into the software that will flip a certain number of Republican votes to Democrat, but only in accordance with the percentage of votes that were flipped to Republican in the previous election. Diane is outraged that her resistance group wants to actually hack the voting machines while Liz is torn, explaining to Diane how Black people in this country have had to fight to vote and now they are being disenfranchised yet again. Where Diane sees this as stealing an election, Liz and most of the others say they are making a correction. It’s too much for Diane and she storms out after a majority vote gives the go ahead to infect the software.
But trouble arises at the firm when Jay discovers a hack that flipped vote … but from Democrat to Republican. So the machines were already infected to flip the election for the Republicans, and they believe this is enough proof to win the case. But putting Jay on the stand leads the Defense to question his possible bias relating back to his whole immigration status from Season 1, but worse, Adrian’s girlfriend Judge Hazelwood reveals that Judge Eno is on the take and will rule against them no matter what. Armed with this information, Adrian and Diane ambush the judge at lunch and try to press her to recuse herself. She denies the allegations and in court will not even let Adrian request her to formally recuse. Instead, she does exactly what Adrian was told she would do and rules against them saying there isn’t enough proof to their claim, even though they did prove the machines were hacked. But was the judge on the take — something that was never proven — or did Adrian and Diane ambushing her with the accusation cause her to rule this way in retaliation? This is certainly left up in the air.
The result of the ruling, however, enraged Diane — who still believes it was the result of the judge being paid off — and she storms back to ‘Book Club’ … now fully on board with rigging an election. This is probably one of the most shocking turn of events we’ve seen on The Good Fight that is sure to have a massive impact on the final three episodes of the season.
What did you think of this episode? Give us your thoughts in the comments section below.
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