The Good Fight :: The End of Eli Gold

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Let’s Talk About ‘The End of Eli Gold’:  

• The episode starts with a rather ominous slide before heading right into the opening credits, an unusual move for a show that usually doesn’t run the titles until 10-15 minutes into the episode.
• Diane and Lyle have survived the blast, a car bomb meant to send a message, but Diane is now finding herself sexually attracted to the doctor.
• Eli Gold is on trial for a ‘Democratic Break-In’, accused of attempting to obtain tapes of The Apprentice to prove The Former Guy said the N-word.
• The prosecution also accuses Gold of putting daughter Marissa on his team so she can’t testify against him.
• Ri’Chard is making financially promises to the associates that Liz says they can’t honor, and she asks Jay to dig into his background.
• Diane tells Kurt about the treatments she’s been receiving for her anxiety but he doesn’t seem thrilled she’s relying on another form of medication to cope.
• Liz discovers what she believes are Ri’Chard’s ulterior motives for being at the firm, and he invited her to his home for dinner so they can hash out their differences … and skip a boring Democratic fundraiser.
• An incident at said fundraiser rocks Eli Gold’s world.

Wow, this was certainly a key episode for The Good Fight bidding farewell to two characters that have appeared on both the show and its predecessor, The Good Wife. This week was really focused on saying goodbye to Eli Gold, cutting Carmen completely out of the show this week (except for filling a seat at a fundraiser), giving Diane a minor plot, but finally digging a little deeper into Ri’Chard’s motivations. Let’s start at the smaller stories and work up to the (literal) big bang.

Diane

The last we saw of Diane and Dr. Bettancourt, they had just survived a blast that blew out the window in his office. Turns out it was a car bomb in a parking garage meant to send a message. Who planted it though is not yet known (of course, some immediately blamed Antifa). But Bettancourt’s calm demeanor impressed Diane, since he admitted he hasn’t had a need to take his own drug (yet), which also turned her on, to the point that she went home and had sexual fantasies about him while listening to his voice on a video. And then Kurt walked in thinking she was really missing him. He scratched her itch, to be sure, but a work call interrupted their rest and she began to fantasize about Lyle again while Kurt was on the phone. Diane was in attendance at the Democratic fundraiser, and was surprised to see the doctor there. He came over to say hi to her at the bar, and then another woman joined him. Diane immediately turned a bit frosty, and things got even worse when she went to the office for her next appointment and the woman was there. Diane now isn’t sure if she was Lyle’s date or just his associate accompanying him to the event, but she responded with a terse ‘No’ when asked if she wanted some cucumber water. Diane later admitted to Kurt that she’s been getting these treatments with PT 108 — perfectly safe, supervised and FDA approved — but he seems more disappointed that she’s seeking a new way to medicate herself. But he’s there for her after a shocking turn of events at the fundraiser, suggesting that their foundation remains strong. For now.

Liz & Ri’Chard

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Liz is a bit taken aback at an office meeting when Ri’Chard says he wants to make financial equity happen among the partners and associates. Liz tells him after the meeting that just because they’re owned by STR Laurie, they can’t afford the monetary benefits he’s proposing. The next time he has an idea about anything, he needs to run it by her first. But this only make her more suspicious of Ri’Chard, and she asks Jay to do some deep digging to see what his game is. The next day at the gym, Liz hears Ri’Chard’s podcast on NPR in which he takes cases from the firm and presents them as his own cases, changing the names to protect the clients but putting his name on the case as if he was the one who tried it. Liz has to confront him again about this, saying it’s putting the firm at risk. He simply can’t use their cases for his own gain, or they will lose clients. He believes the podcasts puts the firm in a better like and will attract clients, and he assures her he consulted with the lawyers on the cases before he made it all about him. Again Liz has to tell him that the firm is a ‘we’ not a ‘him’ and if he even wants to scratch his ass he has to consult her first. He agrees and then invites her to dinner at his home so she can better get to know him. She turns him down because it’s the same night as the Democratic fundraiser — the DNC has given them a ton of work — but he convinces her dinner with him will be less boring.

She seems to agree as she shows up at his place and is greeted by several woman and way too many kids. One woman, who seems to be his wife, is keeping a watchful eye on the pair. While there is chaos in the house and some small talk at dinner, Liz doesn’t feel she’s really gotten to know Ri’Chard any better and prepares to leave. But an emergency alert puts the neighborhood in lockdown so she’s stuck, which gives her another chance to learn more about him. First of all, which one of those women was his wife? None of them. His wife had died. The one keeping an eye on them was his sister-in-law, one was his wife’s friend, one was his friend. Some of the kids were theirs, some were neighborhood friends. He decided to make his house a fun place to gather so that he’d never have to worry about his kids. Okay, so how did he end up at the Riddick firm and why is he there? He’s there for the money, the power, the opportunity to brand himself in the legal world. His first interview out of law school didn’t go so well. The head of the firm used a laser pointer to basically point out everything wrong with him, from his haircut to his cheap suit, saying no one would hire a person that looked like him. He didn’t get the job but he didn’t give up and here he his in his $10,000 suit drinking a $900 bottle of wine. Liz feels she knows him a little better now, but at the office the next day Jay brings her some information — Ri’Chard had been interviewed for a position at the firm by her father but he wasn’t hired. So the story he told her was about her father’s treatment of him, which now really makes her fear his true motivations for being at the firm.

Eli & Marissa

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Now we know what Eli Gold is on trial for — attempting a Democratic version of the Watergate break-in, this time at the offices of Mark Burnett Productions in an attempt to steal the tapes of The Apprentice to prove that The Former Guy did indeed use the N-word. Eli has, however, been advised to invoke his Fifth Amendment rights, not because he’s guilty but because he was advised to … the judge cut him off and asked the prosecutor if he would just accept that Gold was not going to answer his questions. No. He still wants to see Gold’s reactions, which prompted Eli to give a sarcastic reaction of surprise to one of the next questions. This is not going anywhere so the attention is turned to Marissa being on her father’s legal team so she can’t testify against him. This prompts a heated response from Marissa and the judge warns the prosecutor from making claims he cannot back up. As the judge is about to call a recess because there are no more witnesses, a man walks in and the prosecutor says there is a witness — Frank Landau, an associate of Gold’s who was in on the plan to conduct the break-in. Since this is new information, a recess is requested and granted, but now Marissa knows why her father needed her on his team.

Confronting him at the office, she understands now that some technology she assisted him with was a method of breaking into Burnett’s files, and she’s not happy that she was used, to the point that she’s threatening to pull herself off the team so she can testify against him. Eli tells her not to withdraw, that this is who they are, if she’s in trouble he helps her, if he’s in trouble she helps him. Theirs is a transactional relationship. Always has been, always will. She offers him a transaction then — she stays if she cross-examines Landau. No, she’s not first chair. Okay, then they don’t need her. Eli stops her and says he’ll talk to his lawyer. Back in court, the prosecution is questioning Landau who isn’t giving the answers the lawyer wants, asking the judge to instruct the man to answer his question. Marissa pipes up and says he did answer and he’s allowed to contextualize the answer to a question that is based on heresay at best. The judge agrees. Eli is impressed. The prosecutor asks if Marissa was ever in the room during discussions relating to the break-in, and Landau said she was not, but she was working as in investigator at the time and Eli said she may have some tricks of the trade to help them. The prosecutor asks for Marissa to be disqualified from serving a Eli’s lawyer so she can be put on the stand. The judge agrees to hear a motion the next day so they’d better have their arguments ready.

That night is the Democratic fundraiser with Landau acting as the Master of Ceremonies. Eli sees this as nothing but hypocrisy, and while Marissa is at the bar chatting with Diane, who introduces Lyle (he says they met on a trip, which makes Diane chuckle), he confronts Landau on his way to the men’s room. Marissa has to go break up what may be Eli murdering Landau, and they both have to warn Eli that any conversation they have at this point could very well end up in the courtroom. Landau makes his way into the rest room and Eli follows, yelling at Marissa to not follow him into the men’s room. At the urinals, Eli continues to hammer Landau about why he’s testifying against him. Was it because he prevented Landau from getting a job with the Biden administration? Eli said he did him a favor because the minute Biden tanked in the polls he would have been put out to pasture. Eli asks him if he thinks he’s that naive that he’ll be rewarded for giving up Eli. Before Landau can say much of anything else, a man enters the room and yells, ‘Die Eli Gold, you fucking Jew.’ The trigger is pulled and … Landau’s head explodes. The man had the wrong target, but the shooting has shaken up Eli and everyone else at the fundraiser. The incident led to a 20 block lockdown, which trapped Liz at Ri’Chard’s ten blocks from the event, and made a very stunned Eli consider admitting to the charges because he got Landau killed. She tells him to stay the course, this had nothing to do with the case, it was a hate crime against a Jew.

Back in court, Eli is still shaken but the judge hears the arguments and rules that Marissa must take the stand. She asks Liz for some advice, admitting that she did help her father but she didn’t know what she was helping him with. Liz says if she denies helping him in any way, she’d be perjuring herself and Liz could not advise her to do that. Marissa asks Liz if she ever looked at the file of information she had given her regarding the other women who had accused Liz’s father of sexual harassment. Liz didn’t know how that was pertinent to what Marissa is going through but she admitted that she had not. That seems to have struck something in Marissa. While her father waits for her downstairs, Diane notices he looks a bit lost and invites him into her office for a drink. They both get a laugh out of saying ‘Cheers’ at a time of such turmoil, between his case and the riots ongoing outside. Eli asks Diane if there ever were better times, and she says when she’s smack in the middle of ‘the time’ she thinks it’s the worst but five years later she looks back and thinks it was a pretty good time. Eli wonders how much he’s contributed to the current atmosphere, turning the opposition into the enemy and the enemy into psychopaths. She tells him he’s not the one who assaulted the Capital, but he asks how they get out of this. They shout so we shout louder? Diane says no but they shout beck because if they don’t, the other side will win and trash everything. Diane tells him to finish his drink, pull himself together, stand up and go out there and kick some ass because this country is worth fighting for and always will be. Their enemies want to put an end to voting. That would be the end of America and we can’t let that happen. Eli asks her where she finds her optimism, and she tells him in a hallucinogenic drug called PT-108. Maybe he should give it a try. She can set up an appointment for him. She needs Eli to fight the good fight, she needs to know there is someone out there who can quarterback the game because the politicians aren’t up to it. It has to be him, the person behind the scenes. She’ll even contribute to his bodyguards but he has to get back in the fight. Marissa interrupts them and says she’s feeling better now because she’s been listening and has made some decisions on things. Time to go to court.

Marissa is placed on the stand and questioned about her tech assistance for her father. Marissa is an expert with words, playing on the judge’s own age, noting how she’s helped her father send an email, or embed an image, or set up his texts which he still calls ‘Tweeters’. That makes the judge chuckle, saying he can relate. She’s helped him with Zoom calls, but she’ve never spied or hacked or helped him with this project called Pegasus, which she assures the court that he father still thought was just a mythological winged horse until now. The prosecutor then asks if that’s why then why did Frank Landau suspect she was involved in helping her father. Gold’s lawyer is about to object but she cuts him off and says he was about to object to the question that was based on speculation and that the judge would inevitably sustain the motion and tell her not to answer. She saus she would like to try to answer and the judge allows her to. She says Landau had seen her helping her father in the past with technology and obviously jumped to the wrong conclusions, and the prosecutor could hardly blame him since he was just following his own example. Ouch! Never put a lawyer on the stand. That was enough for the judge and the case is dismissed, but the last couple of days have certainly managed to bring the Golds together in a way they never were in the past. Eli tells her that incredibly, her mother had to talk him into having a kid. He’s glad she did. As Eli prepares to head back to DC, Marissa hugs him tightly, telling him not to get shot because she’d miss him. He says he’d miss her too. But she worried that this is the last time she’ll see him. As he gets into the SUV, he looks very distraught, as if he knows this is the last time she’ll see him. As he drives away, Marissa begins a prayer with the rioting crowd behind her yelling, ‘Jews will not replace us.’

Talk about a punch to the gut. Now we’re left to wonder what will happen to Eli. Originally the producers DID want him to be killed in the shooting but the writers all objected, and they they didn’t feel it was fair to bring him back in Episode 2 and kill him in Episode 4, which would then affect Marissa’s story for the rest of the season. How long would she mourn? So instead they left him emotionally shaken, and the look of distress on his face makes me fear that by the end of the series Marissa will find out that her father has died, either by another racist … or by his own hand. With six more episodes to go, there’s still a lot that could happen.

What did you think of this episode? Give us your thoughts in the comments section below.

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