The Good Wife "Dark Money" Review: The Things We Do for It

The Good Wife S06E13: "Dark Money"

Hello! Good to see you! It's been... wait, let me count... 49 days since the last new episode of The Good Wife. Good grief. While that's a shorter break than the show took last year, and certainly a more manageable one than, say, Once Upon a Time's (OUAT fans have been waiting over 70 days), it's still a bit unfamiliar to finally have The Good Wife back in front of us. A little part of me thought the show was gone for good after the debacle that was "The Debate"—an episode that I've soured on even more since it aired—so I was hoping the series would return in fighting shape.

While I'm not quite ready to say that "Dark Money" qualified as fighting shape—at least for The Good Wife—it was possibly the most straightforward and well-balanced episode the show has delivered in a long while. I don't want "straightforward" to sound like a backhanded compliment, especially since The Good Wife revels in toying with its audience, but it was very nice to see "Dark Money" divide itself neatly into three subplots, with all of them receiving what felt like the right amount time and space to tell their respective stories. It wasn't one of those episode where Alicia's campaign gobbled up all the oxygen, thus leaving the case of the week gasping for air. Even the Kalinda stuff, which is now falling very firmly into "Kalinda is on her show-within-the-show again" territory, was good! Perhaps the long break inspired me to forget some of the show's worst impulses, or perhaps I'm just glad to have it back. You'll have to let me know.

"Dark Money" revisited Alicia's ongoing ethical balancing act in her drive to win the election. This time, the tasks at hand were to stop homophobic robocalls devised by a supportive PAC and to poach major Democratic donor Guy Redmayne (Ed Asner, who's basically never not awesome, even when he's playing a scummy guy like Redmayne) out from under Prady. On the surface, there wasn't really anything bad about either of these goals; her desire to get Johnny and Josh to get the PAC to stop the robocalls was part of the "as clean as we can make it" approach that she and Prady agreed to in their backchannel talks, and, really, such tactics are pretty appalling anyway, so good on Alicia for wanting to end them. And while snaking Redmayne from Prady was shifty on principle, it also felt completely reasonable in the spirit of political gamesmanship. However, the reason I think the moral dilemma came into play and began to weigh on Alicia—and on viewers—had to do with how it all went down. If Redmayne had reached out to both candidates and settled on Alicia, or even if Johnny had found out about the meeting somehow, that would've been all fine and good to me. But using the backchannel—a supposedly safe space for them both—to her advantage was conniving, and a violation of the trust that Prady and Alicia had established. He didn't come out and ask whether Alicia had done it because she saw his cellphone's caller ID, but he knows, and I think that's part of what left Prady disappointed.

The other moral challenge addressed in "Dark Money" was a little less murky, at least for me. I can justify and even accept Alicia's actions even while seeing them for what they are, and I think that the episode did invite us to do that. What it more clearly wanted us to see, however, were the differences between how Prady and Alicia presented themselves to that pig Redmayne. Alicia did her best to play off his advances through both physical movement (recrossing her legs, standing up, etc.) and engaging in a verbal sparring match—"I've got the testicles of a 20-year-old." "Where? In your briefcase?" And sadly, the situation was probably par for the course for many a female political candidate seeking cash from donors, let alone women in general applying for jobs or just walking down the street. So, we saw Alicia struggle with being crassly and crudely sexually harassed while doing her best to avoid it and maintain her own agency, but when Redmayne launched into calling Prady a "fag" and a "fruitcake," Alicia didn't engage in the same evasive maneuvers to push back against Redmayne's attitudes. She'll righteously demand that the PAC halt its homophobic robocalls, but she won't really defend Prady from similar discriminatory attacks when there's money on the line. Six of one, half-dozen of another, am I right, Alicia?

That set-up alone would've allowed The Good Wife to continue its erosion of Alicia's morals and ethics, but "Dark Money" wanted to drive home just how much they've changed by showing us Prady's meeting with Redmayne as well. Prady didn't really defend Alicia as Redmayne launched into how much he'd like to make her moan "like a $5,000-a-night hooker," but he did refuse to join in the physical denigration before calling Redmayne disgusting and walking out. Based on what we've learned about Prady, and that scene in particular, I don't really believe he would've taken the money even if Redmayne had offered it to him. Of course, Prady didn't tell Alicia about Redmayne's chauvinistic rant, but given the way Redmayne revels in his disgustingness, he probably suspects that Alicia knows she's taken money from a jerkwad and doesn't seem to care. And that's the other explanation for why Prady is probably disappointed.

Alicia's remaining moral pickle arrived in the form of Colin Sweeney, who reappeared with a defamation lawsuit against a television show titled Call It Murder, which had used the killing of Sweeney's first wife as the plot for an episode. "Dark Money" toned down the craziness between Colin and Renata (Laura Benanti) that we witnessed the last time we saw them together, with one exception: Dylan Baker pulled double duty as both Sweeney and Jerome Morris, the actor who played the Sweeney-inspired character on the television show. The result was just the right amount of meta-kookiness, and the episode was wonderfully aware of it, with Sweeney referring to Jerome as a "cartoon." It was all in good fun without letting the plot be eclipsed by the fun, which is something The Good Wife has struggled with in the past. Plus, we got to see everyone—EVEN ALICIA FOR A LITTLE BIT!—acting like lawyers again, and that was great.

The ins and outs of the case also brought back the issue of having to once again prove that Colin Sweeney didn't kill his first wife, just not in criminal court this time. This led to some nice overlap between Alicia compromising her ethics to get money out of Redmayne and the continued existence of Colin Sweeney not only serving as a reminder of how she got him acquitted for murder years ago, but challenging her to essentially do it again, this time by threatening a huge lawsuit for trademark defamation.

Alicia didn't manage to prove in civil court that Colin didn't kill his wife, but she did get him off the hook for a second time, and with the threat a different lawsuit. Not only were ethics useless in the face of lots of money, but justice was as well. So that's where Alicia found herself, realizing how much she's sacrificed to survive after Grace told her she was a good person. I'm not expecting Alicia to suddenly try to claw her way back to being her Season 1 self, but I will be curious to see what, if any, changes she makes in light of how much her current behavior is costing her.

Even though Cary is free from imprisonment, Kalinda is trapped in a cell of her own making after striking various—and ultimately unnecessary—agreements with Bishop. Like I said above, this puts Kalinda in that oh-so-familiar place of technically being a character on The Good Wife but having a plot that feels wholly separate from everyone else. However, there are a couple of upsides to that this season, in contrast to, well, every other time it's has happened. Unlike Blake or Damian, and to a lesser extent Nick, Kalinda's not sure of her footing with Bishop; in fact, she's scared of him. She calls him "sir," for Pete's sake. I've never heard Kalinda call anyone "sir" and actually sound like she means it. It makes for a far more interesting dynamic than The Good Wife's previous "Kalinda deals with shady guys" arcs.

The second upside is that Bishop isn't isolated from this season's larger events, so Kalinda's troubles can actually reasonably spill over into other storylines. Bishop running Alicia's PAC (a dime Sweeney almost dropped this week) and Kalinda and Cary's relationship will provide enough ways to pull Kalinda in so that she doesn't feel so segregated. And thank goodness for that; given that Archie Panjabi isn't long for The Good Wife, and that Mike Colter will soon be very busy as a Marvel superhero, I want them to feel like a part of the show in very real ways, instead of only appearing in great scenes in Bishop's lovely kitchen.

SIDEBAR

– If Alicia wins this campaign, I want Marissa to be her assistant in the State's Attorney's office. If Alicia doesn't win this campaign, I want Marissa to be her assistant at Florrick, Agos & Lockhart. Basically, I just want Marissa on hand to offer Alicia milk and cookies whenever necessary.

– "Use your little decoder ring and your West Wing tweets to tell the PAC to stop these homophobic robocalls." I like that Josh seemed surprised to know that Alicia understood that @tobyziegler44 was a West Wing reference.

– "Apologies, your honor. I did Inherit the Wind."

– "Yes, but Diane and Cary don't like me." "I don't like you, either." "Don't be silly."

– The Good Wife is now airing seven new episodes in a row, so at least that's something to celebrate!

What'd you think of "Dark Money"?