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Let’s Talk About ‘The End of Football’:
- Charles Lester invites Carmen to a ‘Crypto Prom hosted by Ben-Baruch, so it’s more of a demand than in invitation.
- Diane’s Mind Trip treatment is going so well, aside from the floating, that Dr. Bettencourt suggests the next step is to stop ‘Doom Scrolling’ for 72 hours.
- Liz and Ri’Chard are trying a case that may involve the racist hiring practices of a football team, perhaps the entire league.
- Diane pressed Marissa into service to help keep her from seeing any news for the next three days, but Marissa may have taken things too far.
- Lester finds himself in a pickle from which only Carmen can assist, but helping Charles may put her in a pickle with Ben-Baruch.
- Diane has become obsessed with flowers, and she wonders why she doesn’t have any cases.
- An old friend appears to help Carmen with her Ben-Baruch problem.
This week’s episode of The Good Fight was one of the most ‘normal’, or straightforward, episodes we’ve seen in a while because it actually involved lawyers trying cases in court. Of course that doesn’t mean there was still some weirdness with the Diane storyline as she undergoes another session at Mind Trip and hallucinates, or not, a shirtless hunk slowly painting the wall next to her. And what about the plethora of flowers in Dr. Bettencourt’s office. Are they all really there? He doesn’t seem to want to address them when she asks who his florist is, so perhaps the only real flower in the room is the one on his desk. It’s pretty certain, though, that all the flowers she buys from the flower market are very real (since Carmen sees them too). Because Diane’s sessions are going so well, aside from the floating up to the ceiling in the office, Bettencourt tells her that the next step is to stop ‘doom scrolling’. To accomplish that, Diane enlists Marissa to disconnect her from email, social media and news alerts … even though protests are still raging in the streets. Marissa, however, took things a step further by telling the associates to not even talk to Diane about the news. So what will she do with her time?
Carmen may be able to help with that, whether she wants to or not. Carmen had been escorted by Charles Lester to a ‘Crypto Prom’ … everything old is new again when you put ‘crypto’ in front of it … hosted by Ben-Baruch. So it wasn’t so much as an invitation that she received than an order. As Charles tried to explain to her the joys of old-time radio programs like Jack Benny and Fibber McGee and Molly, she notices a man whom she is sure is an undercover police officer. Before she can get Ben-Baruch to safety, the police are upon them and Carmen does her best to keep them from arresting her client. But they surprise her when they arrest Lester for the murder of Ben-Baruch’s right hand man. No one saw that coming but it also puts Carmen in a bad situation — Lester wants her to represent him, but it’s a conflict of interest because she also works for Ben-Baruch. She gives Charles another recommendation, but he knows she was told not to represent him.
At the office, after encountering Diane with her armload of flowers, Carmen sees someone is waiting in her office, her old law professor Henry Callas who is prosecuting the case against Lester. He seems to be doing all he can to intimidate her, but she easily turns the table on him because she took extensive notes in his class and she puts him into place with one of his own quotes. He seems a little rattled and she can see it, but Diane can also see that Carmen is having a conflict, especially after an encounter with Ben-Baruch in her apartment (he somehow got in while she was sleeping). He wants her to represent Lester … so she can get him convicted and then get Ben-Baruch off. Lester is his lamb to the slaughter, so to speak, and Carmen isn’t sure what to do. Compounding the issue is that both men are clients of the firm. Diane’s solution — she’ll join Carmen at the table in court. Diane had wondered how she could argue a case in court if she was feeling no anger — sometimes she needs to be angry — but in her new Mind Trip emotional state, she seems to be having a wonderful time taking down Callas’ prosecution through humor. But he produces one piece of evidence that supports the theory that Lester is guilty: a video showing him exit a store in the vicinity of and shortly around the time of the murder.
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Carmen asks Jay to take a look at the video to see if it was a fake, and sure enough he concluded that the video used Deepfake technology to put Lester’s face on someone else’s body. And to demonstrate the fact in court, Jay replaced Lester’s head with Callas’. The proof that Lester’s head was a fake was that the shadow under his chin fell in the opposite direction of the shadows in the footage. With Ben-Baruch watching, and unhappy with the way things are going, he issues a warning to Carmen that she’d better hope things move to trial and not a dismissal. Carmen feigns helplessness, saying she didn’t know Diane was going to be joining her on the case. Going back to the table, she and Diane had a whispered conversation about the threat, but played it off as if they were having an argument for Ben-Baruch’s benefit. Still, he ordered his men to wait by her car, and not let her get in because she may have a gun. Their last option is to put Charles on the stand, and he denies any of the allegations against him. While he’s being questioned, an old ‘friend’ of Carmen’s enters the courtroom and approaches Ben-Baruch. It’s Oscar Rivi, and he strongly suggests that should anything happen to his attorney, it will adversely affect his business, which in turn will adversely affect Ben-Baruch’s business. Is that clear? Ben-Baruch tells his man to lay off of Carmen and Oscar leaves a happy man, even suggesting the two talk about doing business together. As the judge and Lester bond over their love of old-time radio shows, he comes to the conclusion that there is zero evidence to move Lester’s case to trial, so it’s a dismissal. Which means Ben-Baruch is still going to be on the hook for the murder.
We finally get to see Ri’Chard in action this week as he and Liz head a case about a Black football coach who was turned down for a position in favor of a White coach. Everything about the case smacks of racism, and the general manager’s behavior doesn’t help, especially after he verbally assaulted Jay who overheard him threatening the defendant with the suggestion that no one in the league would hire him after this. Jay also did some digging and suggested that Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, or CTE, be introduced into the case. The prosecution objects because head injuries have nothing to do with this case, but Jay’s information does show that the injuries are often tied to race. They put the team’s doctor on the stand and he confirms that at one time, there was the suggestion that the Black players were of a lower intelligence than the White players so they were more often not diagnosed with CTE. The practice is supposedly no longer in use but it made for a compelling argument … even if the judge, who keeps boasting of his football knowledge, thought they were talking about CRT, Critical Race Theory. Outside the courtroom, Liz approached by someone representing other Black players with the offer of a class action suit against the league. That may be their best option to win the case, but one of the team owners tells them no class action suit. They eventually come to realize that the suit is frivolous, the coach and the law firm are just being used to cast a bad light on the football to devalue its worth and the guy can buy the team. At first Ri’Chard suggests that once he buys the team he’ll hire the Black coach, but in the end it became clear he was going to hire a White coach.
Diane paid another visit to Mind Trip and De. Bettencourt suggested that she’s done so well she doesn’t need any more treatments. Diane suggests she may want more treatments, but he thought that would make them grow too close and dependent on each other. Suddenly a blast blows out the huge windown behind them, a plume of fire and smoke erupting in the city from the protests. They’re both okay, but all they can do now is stare at the smoke and say ‘wow’. But I still have to wonder … is any of this really happening?
What did you think of this episode? Give us your thoughts in the comments section below.
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