The Good Wife, Season 4, Episode 6, The Art of War TV Recap

Hallelujah! Nick’s gone (for this episode anyway) and Kalinda is back on savvy investigator track in “Don’t Haze Me, Bro,” which alternates between a tricky court case and Eli’s attempt to kill that story about Peter’s alleged affair with a campaign worker.

The hour begins with very clever close ups of a patient getting released from the hospital. Yep, it’s Jackie–healing from her stroke and more interfering than ever. Good son Peter picks her up from the hospital (she’ll live with him during recovery—yikes!) to deliver her to a campaign event.

Meanwhile, Alicia coolly responds to reporter Mandy Post’s questions regarding her purported “open marriage” and the above mentioned affair,new release movies to dvd. “I could kiss you,” Eli tells her later. “That would give them something to write about,” she says.

In court, Diane and Alicia have a big case going on—potentially worth $6 million.? Trey Lawson, a freshman water polo player at Chicago Polytech, was hazed by a teammate, who bullied and drowned him.? The killer, Wayne Crockett, is serving eight years, but Trey’s parents are bringing civil suit against the university. “This case is about the university turning a blind eye toward a vicious student ritual,” Diane argues.

At the office, Will wistfully tours the now-abandoned 27th floor, a symbol of the firm’s economic failure. “We’ll get it back,” Diane tells him. Unlike all the other firms that started when Lockhart, Gardner did, “We’re still standing.”

Jackie, in trademark headband, brooch and Ladies Lunch pink jacket, stands addressing a group of retirees—with all the wrong words. For reasons of her own, she brings up women who accuse her son, suggesting that this is the natural byproduct of his great good looks. When an aide informs Eli, he screams, “Stop her!” Over the phone, he tells Jackie to cease the speech and drive back; she hangs up on him.

When his $500,000 settlement is refused, the university’s defense attorney tries another tactic, suggesting that Trey was the victim of a hate crime—because he was gay. If that were true, it would be an event the school could not have anticipated. To counteract this, Diane asks Kalinda to find proof that Trey was not gay.

Ms. Lockhart is annoyed enough, between the change of defense tactics and losing the 27th floor, when Clarke approaches her about sharing an office with Will. Not going to happen, she tells him. “I’m trying to save you from yourself,” he protests.

Simultaneously, Eli is telling Jackie to back off (ha! like anybody can tell Jackie what to do): “Your schedule has changed…until you behave, you’ll be speaking at the Regional Senior Center of Greater Martin Grove.”

But now big bucks donor Maddie Hayward (Maura Tierney) corners Eli, worried that “another shoe is about to drop…I agreed to contribute dependent on Peter keeping his pants up.”

At the firm, Clarke compliments Cary and urges him to “come to me when you need to,” that is, be pretty much an in-house spy.

Diane and Alicia call student Beth Alexander to the stand to question her about her relationship with Trey. She testifies that she had sex with him and that he was not gay: “Trey was from a religious family. He never slept with men.”

So what, argues the defense—did people think he was gay? That could cause a hate crime. To get to the heart of what the killer did or did not think, Diane asks Kalinda to interview him in prison.

Eli asks Alicia, who is having drinks with Maddie that night, to tell the donor that Peter did not have an affair. Why can’t he tell her? “She knows I lie for a living,” he says (great line!). “If you tell her, she’ll believe you.” But Alicia says she’ll only do it if Maddie brings it up.

They are interrupted by Clarke,top tv shows on dvd, who wants to know what Alicia thinks of Cary. “I like him a lot,” she says. Next thing you know, Clarke has shoved Agos’ desk into her office; the two will now share space. “Welcome,” she says, amused.

At the hotel where Peter had the alleged tryst with the campaign worker, Kalinda finds out that Eli, who had been in the room next to Peter’s, had not requested that the adjoining doors be opened, so there goes that argument. She does learn, though, that Peter’s room was on a concierge floor, which could not be accessed without a key. The campaign worker’s room was on a lower floor—did she have a 15th floor key? (Kalinda, incidentally, looks really pretty in this episode—perhaps actress Archie Panjabi is as relieved as we are that she has no scenes with her character’s smarmy ex.)

Alicia and Maddie are at a bar getting drunk—go Alicia! It’s about time! When another round arrives, on the house, there’s some dialogue about the perks of being a billionaire: “They give rich people free things,” Maddie says. “Poor people have to pay for everything and I’m given stuff I can buy a hundred of.”

Alicia, still puzzled as to why Maddie wants to be friends (“I’m not very interesting”), suddenly feels compelled to tell her that Peter did not take up with the campaign worker. “I wanted you to know what I’m going through,” she says. “I think we’ve convinced the magazine that the story’s false.” Maddie, a bit annoyed, asks if Eli put her up to this. Yes, Alicia says, but she wanted to tell her anyway—and we realize, again, how alone our heroine has been in handling all that has happened to her. She does need a friend. Let’s hope Maddie will be a true one.

Kalinda visits Trey’s killer in jail. Wayne has no desire to help—until she points out that, if it’s a hate crime, he could face another 20 years: “The school is saying you killed Trey because he was gay.” No, he says, Trey wasn’t gay, and though he won’t go to court, he will aid her case: He directs her to a childhood friend, Chad, who is gay, to testify that Wayne had no issues with this.

Now comes an odd bit where Jackie, reduced to stumping in the boondocks, has trouble getting through her speech because she sees bugs on the podium. While he is reviewing her performance on the campaign bus, Eli is interrupted by Peter, who wants him to involve Mom more.

Back in court, the relentless defense attorney cross-examines Wayne’s pal Chad: “Maybe he viewed you as a childhood friend, not a gay friend.” Then he follows up on Chad’s comment that Trey had “no game” with women—was he effeminate? “You could say that.”

Alicia protests to the judge that “you can’t commit a hate crime against a mannerism,” but the judge allows it, because perception could lead to hate. (There’s some peripheral stuff throughout the episode about the judge maybe being gay—he keeps bringing up his wife, even saying at one point that people might think he was gay, until they knew he had a wife.)

Eli tries to get Alicia to talk to Jackie, but she puts her foot down. She does, however, advise him to give Jackie something that will make her feel important. All this while Cary is trying to work with a client, about two feet away.

Calmly, Kalinda sits on a bench with Peter’s accuser, getting her to admit she had no concierge key (she doesn’t even know what this means) and that no one who had a key shared the elevator with her when she claims she went to Peter’s room.

Eli goes back to the magazine to convince them not to run the story—even though the reporter argues that the kid was probably confused and simply forgot about the key.

The endless court case now has a new variation: A black student testifies that Trey (also black, as is the killer) was a “jerk,” an “oreo”—and opens up the possibility that Wayne’s animosity had to do with rivalry between two fraternities. “Now it’s a black on black hate crime,” frustrated Alicia says in a meeting. But Cary points out, “This isn’t about a hate crime. It’s about liability.” The university would have known of the fraternities’ animosity toward each other; there had been previous fights between them. And when Diane puts the polo coach back on the stand, he testifies that no, he had never had two players from the rival frats together on the team before.

Diane wins the $6 million settlement—and, as Will points out, looks pretty darned pleased with herself when she gets back to the office. “We’re going to get our firm back,” she tells him. “Then we’re going to go after Louis Canning’s firm. Then we’re going to open up a branch in New York and DC.”

Will notes that it’s good to have nothing to lose: “Welcome to the lifeboat.”

Diane puts her fabulous legs up on the windowsill, breathing a sigh of relief/happiness.

But wait—we’ve got a cliffhanger about to come!

When reporter Mandy drops by a campaign rally, she tells Eli: “Two months I worked on that story. You managed to kill it with one conversation. Nice work!”

“It gives me no pleasure wasting my time to prove you wasted yours,” he says, reasonably.

In another corner, Jackie tells Alicia she’s sorry she doubted her: “Standing by Peter the way you are…” Then she tears up because she sees one of those bugs in her wine glass. (Apparently hallucinations can happen post-stroke. Which opens up all kinds of wacky paths for Jackie.)

Eli’s cell rings with an unknown caller, who turns out to be Jimmy V. “I run a political blog,” he says. “I’m about to publish a story saying a national magazine is sitting on a piece accusing Peter Florrick of sleeping with a campaign worker. I’d like to get a quote from the campaign.”

Quote or not, true or not, Jimmy V plans to post the story “in one hour.”

Can Eli get Peter out of this mess? Will Maddie pull her bucks? What more trouble can Jackie cause?

Nick, we don’t miss you at all.

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