“The Good Fight” Episode 110 Recap: Say Goodnight, America

So here we are. Like everyone on The Good Fight, we have survived the first three months of the Trump administration battered, bruised, bloodied, but here. Sure, we’re all more tired, more scared, more confused, more pissed than we were this time last year. But, still, we’re here*.

*Disclaimer: By the time this published Donald J. Trump may have eaten another beautiful slice of chocolate cake and decide to start World War III, in which case apologies for my mistake.

I know you said I don’t die, but can I check the script to be sure? I’m a gay lady, you can never be too certain.

Maia Rindell, a bright young lawyer at the start of her career with a lovely girlfriend whose primary role seems to be delivering her drinks and bad familial news, is sitting in Adrian Boseman’s office. She takes a deep, centering breath. We’ve come full circle as the opening strains of our queer artist Erin McKeown’s “You Were Right About Everything” again plays. Which reminds me, man, do I have to download this song.

It’s the same song that played as Maia was about to take her bar exam and as Diane toured her villa in Provence. It’s the same song that should probably have been Hillary Clinton’s campaign theme. But enough about wildly prophetic music you can tap your toe to.

Maia is getting her first biannual progress report as an associate. Adrian and the horrendously underused Barbara tell us what we already know. She is smart and she has a habit of over-apologizing (Sorry, does that make sense? Sorry, I mean, she says sorry too much. Sorry, what were we talking about? Sorry.) But, mostly, she has a problem with boldness. At this point I kind of wanted her to rip off her workplace-appropriate attire and reveal her full Wildling costume underneath, then shoot her personnel file out of their hands with an arrow and say, “You know nothing, Reddick, Boseman & Kolstad!”

Instead she is tasked with following a partner for 24-hours and not taking no for an answer. They then give her two weeks, behind her back, to improve.

It’s also Lucca’s review time and, trust me, boldness is not her problem. Then they tell us what we already know. She kicks ass and they better put her on the partner track and get her office away from the slamming men’s room if they want to keep her.

Yes, all men’s room doors are annoying.

Maia and Lucca share a moment on the couch. Sorry, not sorry. They chat about their reviews and whether Jane Lynch is really going to arrest her. Gosh, I like their dynamic. Here’s hoping for more of that in season two. And, of course, more of Amy who I presume will be there when Lucca drops by for dinner later that night, as invited.

Marissa, who is getting really good at this investigator thing despite there being no job opening at the firm given Jay’s very secure employment, ushers in Diane’s new client. Oh, fuck wank bugger shitting arse head and hole. It’s Larry. It’s fucking Larry. We’ve successfully run him off Orange Is the New Black and he comes to ruin yet another show with perceptible lesbian content.

It’s Jason Biggs back as Dylan Stack, the bitcoin-creating lawyer from The Good Wife days. He has used the word “disrupt,” so already I dislike him. Also, he’s Larry Bloom. He claims he has been set up and the code to take down Chicago’s power grid magically appeared on his laptop this morning. He offers Diane & Co. a literal trash bag filled with money to help him get protection from cyberterrorism charges in exchange for diffusing the shutdown, which will happen at 7 p.m. sharp otherwise.

No, for the last time, you can’t sue Alex Vause for being sexy.

The partners send Lucca, the firm’s only lawyer with a strong connection (ahem) to the DOJ to initiate talks. Larry (what, he’ll always be Larry) has given them a flashdrive with the code. Lucca brings it to Colin, along with one of his T-shirts he left behind. Honey, don’t you know all abandoned clothing is orphaned and officially up for adoption post breakup. Those are the rules; I don’t make them up.

Speaking of rules, you know how the IT folks at work are always yelling at you about bringing flashdrives in from home. Something, something about infecting the whole network something, something? Yeah. I guess sometimes your IT folks are right about some things.

Lucca gives Colin the flashdrive. Colin gives his boss the flashdrive. His boss plugs the flashdrive into his laptop. And his laptop gives the whole city the blackout bug. Really, this is all Assistant Attorney General Dincon’s fault for not listening to IT in the first place. Never stick something of unknown origins into your anything is a good rule of thumb for computers – and life.

Trump’s Special Committee on Women’s Affairs has arrived for its 2 o’clock meeting.

But instead, of course, Dincon blames the nearest woman. He and a bunch of white dudes in suits come storming into the firm to detain Lucca as a “material witness.” Now, I think it’s dumb to have a show this good hidden away on a brand new, incredibly limited streaming service. But getting to hear Lucca say, “I am just going to fuck you up” at Dincon as he takes her away is almost worth it.

Over on the energy-sucking Rindell Ponzi Scheme plot, Papa Rindell has been offered a take-it-or-get-life-in-prison deal of 35 years by Dincon. He makes a call to a shady character who arrives and receives a shady satchel full of cash. Apparently he is going to run, but then his lawyer tells him if he takes the deal they won’t prosecute Maia. Decisions, decisions. But nothing that can’t be figured out over a nice family dinner, right?

Running, both figuratively and literally, is a theme for everyone on this chaotic day. Diane has run to the hospital to see her estranged(-ish) husband, Kurt, who has been in some sort of car accident. Which, as it turns out, was more like jumping a carjacker to save a baby from being kidnapped. So now he is Internet famous for something other than blinking or being named Daniel. All this life-risking hero stuff makes Diane think it might be time to knock that negative adjective (-ish and all) off the front of “husband.”

So now the firm has gone to court to get Lucca out of detention. They successfully argue for a temporary restraining order to get her released. But then Dincon turns around and charges her as a co-conspirator to cyberterrorism. See, this is what happens when men can’t just accept blame for their own mistakes. You plugged a foreign flashdrive that you knew contained a cyber threat into your laptop, dude. Arrest yourself for stupidity.

Wait, what do you mean you two have never received a rape threat on Twitter?

Diane and Adrian go back to talk with Larry, who professes his innocence. He says it was probably one of the guys he talks with on 4Chan, which only makes him seem even more Larry/less likeable.

The 4Chan trail leads them back to alt-right troll king Felix Staples. He has pulled a Milo and fallen out of favor for saying something about dead children and school shootings. His political opinions remain as awful as his sartorial choices. But he also swears he isn’t the hacker, so they make a deal. If he helps them, they’ll sue the people who have been cancelling his speaking contracts. Well, that’s fine. Historically deals with the devil have always worked out.

Adrian, with a newly emboldened Maia in tow, argues before the court’s most staunchly conservative judge that Dincon’s case is flimsy. On the stand as the government’s witness is Colin, who always looks like he hates his life more than anyone in the room. That is, when he isn’t looking like a guy who can’t wait to take healthcare away from millions of Americans.

Adrian storms back into the office yelling that Larry used them to get past the government’s firewall and infect the system. Duh. I mean it, duh. This show is always so well written, but as soon as I saw his smirky smirk I knew it was Larry. It’s always Larry.

Maia calls and they’ve started court again early so she has to handle the rebuttal witness. Adrian coaches her to get angry and focused. From the flare of her nostril and twitch of her face, we know all that pent-up Wildling spirit is ready to come out.

Look deep into my eyes and know that I mean it when I say the nothing which you know is even more than Jon Snow.

And then, boy, does it come out. Consistently, and no doubt by design, we have seen less of Maia’s legal abilities and more of her familial entanglements. Sure, we’ve seen glimpses of the intelligent young lawyer in there, but they’ve hung this anvil of the Ponzi scheme around her so she kept having to stoop to its level. But this display, it would make even Ygritte proud.

Victorious in court, Maia goes to have dinner with her family. Again, where is Amy? Also, does she plan on having two dinners because isn’t Lucca coming over later? Papa Rindell excuses himself to call his lawyer and say he is taking the deal and will self-surrender. But, you know, can you really trust a guy who was ready to abandon his dog?

Now, in one last twist we all saw coming, Felix is helping to ensnare the hacker. They’ve set up a meeting at a Chinese restaurant and Diane is there to witness. In walks – please, no drum roll, we all know already – Larry. You see Larry is a Bernie Bro trying to bring about a revolution. Oh course Larry is, of course. So, there you have it, the Alt-Left working with the Alt-Right to make America insufferable still.

The feds arrive to drag him off in handcuffs just as the lights go out. Back at Reddick, Boseman & Kolstad, Adrian is gazing upon a darkened city. Diane joins him and they muse about the grim, weird times we live in where so many are rooting for America to fail. Like a grand piece of machinery where something has come detached. Barbara, listening silently to them from outside the room, looks worried that her own connection to Adrian has become detached as well.

Sometimes, while alone in the darkness, I whisper, “Trust women,” and hope the cosmos finally listens.

It’s a lovely metaphor. And, truly, the clunk-clunk-clunk of our country’s current dysfunction is impossible to miss. But I think what’s wrong with America isn’t that our essential machinery has broken down. It’s that for too long too many people looked at others as just cogs and gears to serve their larger machines. But, that’s the thing about us humans; we are never just cogs or gears. We’re all whole machines. And how we work should only ever be our own decisions. So that clunk-clunk-clunk is indeed coming from the old machines. But it’s from those who demand others serve them grinding their own gears to dust to stop us from being finally free.

The Rindells are sharing a candlelit meal of pizza on paper plates. Wow, maybe they really are broke. Mama Rindell breaks the news that Henry has taken the 35-year plea deal to Maia. When she confronts him and says he should fight. But he confesses. He did it. Jax did it. Lenore did it. They all did it. They were all in on the scheme. He apologizes for disappointing her with tears in his eyes. Maia tells him, “You never could.” Oh, sweetie, give it five minutes.

Diane decides her hero husband deserves a second chance after all, and comes inside with him after driving him home. He promises to never hurt her again. Oh, so everyone is making crazy promises tonight? Got it.

Maia is back home, drinking wine alone by candlelight. Dammit, time to put Amy back on the milk cartons. There’s a knock on the door. Is it Amy? No, it’s Lucca. I’m not let down – because, come on, it’s still Lucca. But do better with Amy and Maia’s relationship, show. Do a lot better.

Lucca says it looks like a “soft porn movie in here” and it’s like naughty angels are singing. Amy’s absence gets explained away as “she’s on her way home.” They toast to a crazy day and crazy last three months. Maia then says she thinks the next three months will be “boring” because the universe demands balance.

Oh, Maia, you beautiful, naive, sophisticated newborn baby.

Sometimes, while alone in the darkness, I think, “Who really killed Jenny?”

There’s another knock at the door and Maia thinks Amy has forgotten her keys again. And that’s what it was. Amy comes in and together the trio polishes off that bottle of red and opens another one. They start talking about college experiences. Lucca confesses she had a brief fling with a female law professor. They open another bottle of wine. They talk about the nature of monogamy. And then the three of them decide they are all consenting adults willing to explore things in an open and trusting way with full acknowledgment of each other’s agency. So they put that soft porn movie lighting to exquisite use.

OK, this is happening, but only if we find a better ship name than Mucca.

Kidding. It’s Dincon who tells Maia her asshole dad has fled and she is under arrest. In Trump’s America there can be no boring. Only endless WTFery and an inevitable fade to black.

“The Good Fight” Episode 109 Recap: Guilty Non-Pleasures

Life is weird, isn’t it? I mean, think about it, human existence is a trip. And it just gets weirder as we get older. And that goes for the world as well. Sharing similar existential waiting room chit-chat are Maia and Lucca. Oh, did I mention what waiting room they’re waiting in? Yeah, it’s the FBI. The world, man. It’s a trip.

If you look very closely, you can tell the exact moment each day someone remembers that Donald Trump is president.

Maia is there to talk with federal agent Madeline Starkey about the Rindell Ponzi Scheme. And, wouldn’t you know it, our wily investigator is played by none other than our very own Jane Lynch. She is more Joyce Wischnia than Sue Sylvester here, with just a touch of that folksy lesbian purebred dog owner pragmatism from Christy Cummings thrown in for good measure.

Agent Starkey starts them off with a joke about NSA spying on her emails, because nothing makes an American citizen feel more at ease than the reminder of our federal government’s seemingly limitless ability to track even our most minute activities at any second of any day. Makes me feel safe. You know, like a warm blanket is slowly choking the individual liberty out of me to protect me from the beyond infinitesimal chance foreign-born terrorists will come into my home and murder me in my sleep.

Lucca reminds Agent Starkey that Maia is there under the terms of the “proffer” from the U.S. Attorney’s office, and cannot be prosecuted for any truthful thing she says. That sounds great. But, like the poor birds that keep flying directly into the office windows would attest if they weren’t dead, not everything that looks like clear, open skies in fact is clear, open skies.

Who misses wearing tracksuits to work? This gal.

Back at the Reddick, Boseman & Kolstad law offices, Adrian asks Diane to join him on the way to meet their latest police brutality client. So I guess he won out in the power struggle with Reddick? He has been tipped off that a well-known dirty cop, Officer Throeau, was the arresting officer in the case. Adrian and Diane are both excited about the prospect of finally kicking him off the force, until they come face-to-face with the victim.

Because he is not the young black man waiting in the holding pen. It’s the rich white guy who is whining about blood on his Egyptian cotton tuxedo shirt instead. The Good Wife watchers will also know him as the very wealthy, very creepy former client of Lockhart/Gardner who may (or let’s face it probably did) kill his wife, Colin Sweeney.

I get that race-swapping of the police brutality victim here is supposed to point out the absurdity of the reverse racism and All Lives Matter set. But I think that message gets muted for all of us who weren’t already TGW watchers and instead need to Google “Colin Sweeney” just to to figure out what a pretty terrible human person he is in the first place. Granted, comparing himself to Rodney King certainly sets the scene. And then there’s Diane calling him “the devil.” But still, there is such a thing as a spin-off show dipping back too much into its original source material, I think.

You may now mark the “Catholic Schoolgirl Uniform” square on your Lesbian Character Traits bingo card.

At the FBI, Agent Starkey is trying to jog Maia’s memory about Sept. 15, 2008. That’s the day Lehman Brothers collapsed. Some people remember it as the day their family’s multi-million dollar investment fund began to illegally embezzle money, others as the day everyone’s 401K went into the toilet and they realized they’d have to work until they were 85. Potato, potato.

Maia’s memories are a jumble of her dad freaking out while watching the stock market crash, investors crying at their door and her Uncle Jax telling them to keep their money in the fund. Only problem is that it doesn’t jive with what Agent Starkey has found on Mama Rindell’s computer calendar. It says Maia was at the gynecologist, so she couldn’t have seen Jax there.

Maia is still insistent that she remembers Jax that day. So Agent Starkey goes into a folksy story about her own childhood memories of being a contestant on the Bozo show. But then years later photos proved it was her sister, not her, who was actually the one who did all those things. See! Memories can be faulty, she comforts, Maia. Also isn’t “meme” a horrible word destroying our world?

Please, we all know “bigly” is the worst new word in the world and the real enemy of a free and open society.

But Lucca isn’t fooled by Agent Starkey’s folksy, I’m-on-your-side act. She takes Maia aside to tell her just that, and to not protect her parents. Maia says she isn’t trying to, probably. Maybe.

Yes, for the last time, women are people. I know it’s shocking to you, I know.

The Devil Sweeney is now in court and being a fairly horrible entitled rich white person, as is expected. The judge in this case is Judge Don Linden (played by the actor who wasn’t Balki from Perfect Strangers). He really isn’t much of a factor in this case, but I do mention it because they make a big show of him struggling to get up to the judge’s bench in his wheelchair. I don’t know if this is some callback to his guest spot on The Good Wife before, but without reference it seems like a cheap joke made at a disabled person’s expense. And, uh, this show is better than that, right?

After their break, Lucca and Maia return to the place birds go to die. Seriously, show, I get the metaphor. Free as a bird, until – blam. Agent Starkey keeps probing Maia’s increasingly faulty seeming memory and then confronting her with the facts. Like, no, her mom wasn’t really worried about Maia’s reproductive heath when she scheduled all those gyno visits. She was using Maia as cover to have her affair with Jax. Little stuff like that, is all.

A flashback shows a teenage Maia walking out of the exam room and through the haze of memory seeing her mom and Uncle Jax kissing. Did she know all along? Agent Starkey says her mother and Jax have been having an affair since 2008. But to be fair, economic collapse is so romantic it often leads to love.

When they return from a lunch break, Agent Starkey offers them some See’s chocolates. She offers up some relatable story about her husband eating all the good ones out and leaving her with the coconuts. But, ah-ha! Now Lucca has her. Because anyone with eyes knows Jane Lynch is as gay as a window (though, again, preferably not the kind that lure birds to their death). Kidding! Not about the gay part, Jane Lynch is always gay. But Lucca knows because she Googled Agent Starkey during lunch and found out she isn’t married.

I would also like to note that, while possible, it’s rather unlikely Agent Starkey was enjoying a box of See’s because they’re a mostly West Coast brand. You guys get to watch Saturday Night Live while it’s actually live and we get In-N-Out, See’s and to never have to scrape ice off our windshields in the winter. It only seems fair, at least for us.

Get that Whitman’s Sampler trash out of my face. Milk Chocolate Bordeaux 4Lyfe!

Isn’t it great how Jane Lynch has become America’s go-to sharp elbowed actress? And how she can play it either way: disarming charm with stealth sharp elbows or unmasked rage with obvious sharp elbows. But, either way, boy are you gonna catch an elbow.

Agent Starkey shakes her head knowing that her “nice lady” ruse is up. From here on out it will just be a brass knuckles chess match between her and Lucca. God, isn’t it thrilling when smart women are allowed to show each other just how smart they are on screen without any thought or cares about male approval? So they cut the act and get straight to what she wants: Info on the Rindell Foundation.

As a person who has watched television before in your life, you realize this means a lot of trouble for Maia. The foreshadowing breadcrumbs have been leading to her on this because she was its figurehead. The foundation was actually given to her as an 18th birthday present with the appropriately white guilt assuaging fundraising mission of ending malaria in Africa. Maia remembers asking her dad how much money they’ve sent to Africa, and him deflecting. So that’s not great.

In their deal with the devil, Adrian and Diane have the dirty cop on the stand. He is claiming he was attacked, and has the bruises to “prove it.” Small problem though, those bruises perfectly match the mouth guard he used while sparring earlier in the same day as the arrest. Well, here’s an interesting chicken and egg question. Do you think this cop boxed and then sought someone to beat up because he had bruises to use as a cover up, or beat up someone and then realized his boxing bruises could be used as a cover up? Same outcome, either way, I guess.

And this is why you don’t buy discount vibrators off the Internet.

Now in Maia’s minds-eye, it is her 18th birthday. There’s a big party and the big gift is the paperwork for the Rindell Foundation. Sorry, scratch that. The big gift is Amy. They met at her 18th birthday party. Maia had a boyfriend and Amy was just starting law school at the time. But all books and boys were clearly forgotten. Ahem.

Hey, who among us hasn’t snuck away from our own lavish birthday party where multi-million dollar foundation deeds are being gifted to go make out amongst the valet parked cars – or whatever the poor person proximally is to that.

Dammit, if they’d been making out on a U-Haul I’d have had Bingo.

Cue Maia getting lost in two hours of day-dreaming about all the making out she did with Amy when they met. Join in, won’t you? It’s nice here. So many neck kisses.

Also, am I the only one who had a moment of panic when you found out it was uncle Jax who introduced them that Amy was part of some incredibly long-game con having to do with the Ponzi scheme? But only for a second. Just me then? OK, back to kissing.

And all I got for my 18th birthday was a new Walkman.

Maia snaps out of her smooch daydreams long enough to remember Diane gabbing casually with her parents about the Bernie Madoff scandal. She asks Lenore whether she thinks Bernie’s wife knew. Ah ain’t hypocrisy a hoot? Like isn’t it fun comparing anything the Trump does now with anything he tweeted within the last eight years? And by “fun,” of course I mean “maddeningly horrifying.”

As Lucca and Agent Starkey argue over the finer points of Maia’s interview, she remembers something else amid the haze of kissing. She signed those papers at her 18th birthday party. But, she didn’t actually turn 18 until three days later, the following Tuesday.

In celebration, Lucca takes one of the See’s chocolates with a smile. And then the women share a high-five on the way out. Whew, well at least all that Rindell business is behind us now, right? We can all just go eat chocolates in peace, right?

Raise your hand if you wish you were that lucky chocolate.

Speaking of cases that aren’t entirely closed yet, the Devil Sweeney’s case continues with surprise testimony from his date for the evening, who is from what I can gather an Israeli dominatrix of some sort. She swears he got out and hit the cop unprovoked. They figure out it’s because officials threatened her with deportation because she had drugs on her. Sheesh, it’s like people can’t go to school or church or court or chem-sex parties without ICE being all up in their grill. (But seriously, ICE is insane right now – so insane.)

Hay tracks down a potential witness via the dash cam footage. But he turns out to be a Florida billionaire real estate developer sent up to Chicago by that other Florida Man in the White House to vet potential ambassadors. So that Devil Sweeney won’t allow them to question him and blow his shot at an ambassadorship (not to mention waste the $1 million he donated to Trump’s campaign PAC). The partners all bust out laughing at that the prospect because, really, at this point it’s really one of the best coping mechanisms available to us. That and donating to the ACLU.

Maia and Lucca return to Agent Starkey’s office to finish up. She is now drilling into the brass tacks of her case. When did Maia know about the Ponzi scheme. She says not until it was reported on the news. But was it earlier?

Cue flashbacks to her law school graduation in 2016. Her happy parents and Amy’s somewhat less happy parents were both there. Amy and Maia were living together by then and it’s unclear whether their less than thrilled faces were because of the gay or because they hadn’t been allowed to invest in the Rindell Fund.

Agent Starkey zeros in on Amy’s parents wanting to join the fund. Maia says she told her they needed to have a minimum investment of $200,000, which they didn’t have. But then did Maia ask her dad to make an exception for them, as Amy had requested? And therein, my friends, lies the rubby rub rub.

Maia is riddled with Catholic/plain-old guilt about her knowledge of the Ponzi scheme. She’s unclear on why she waived Amy’s parents off the fund. And why she never asked her dad to make an exception. And why she lied to Amy about asking. Why why why?

I swear, honey, I’m going to make “Blonde Bestie” the new “Gal Pal,” you watch.

Lucca knows they’re in trouble and Maia is ready to “admit you killed Biggie.” Did that reference just come out of insane left field? Sorry, maybe I was daydreaming about neck kisses, too.

On the police brutality case, Adrian and Diane finally figure out how to get soon-to-be ambassador Sweeney off without bringing Hess to the stand. And then they remember the young black man who was in the holding pen with him, who was also there for a trumped up charge. They put him on the stand and case closed. Now it’s time for a celebratory $6 million lawsuit. Except Sweeney promptly drops the suit because now he wants to be ambassador to the Vatican. Poor misunderstood white billionaires are the real victims, America. Remember that.

If you look very closely, you also can tell the exact moment each day someone remembers what a good president Hillary would have been.

So now Lucca and Maia are back at Agent Starkey’s office for the final day of questioning. She is here to answer why she never recommended Amy’s parents invest in the fund. She tells her it’s because she didn’t want to mix family and finances. Agent Starkey doesn’t buy it. She likes Maia, she thinks she’s smart, but she also thinks she committed a crime. So she will be recommending prosecution by the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Well, shit.

“The Good Fight” Episode 108 Recap: Hope v. Change

Have you ever wondered where the Reddick of Reddick, Boseman & Kolstad is? I have, each time I have to type “Reddick, Boseman & Kolstad.” And I always felt a little strange typing the name over and over without knowing who the person was. Well, not anymore. Because the Reddick of Reddick, Boseman & Kolstad is now very much here.

In fact he is enthralling the entire office with a speech about fearlessness and fighting injustice and opposing an “out of control president.” He is being played by none other than Louis Gossett Jr., who I almost didn’t recognize without his moustache.

If one more person tells me the Richard Gere with the gerbil story.

Everyone seems thrilled to have Carl Reddick leading the pep rally, except for Adrian. As the second name on the wall, he knows having the first name show up can only mean trouble. And, as if on cue, Reddick asks to talk with Adrian so he brings Barbara and Diane with him as backup. Diane is like, “Who me? Oh no – my name still isn’t on the wall yet even though I brought in that $86 million account from Mr. ChumHum, who now dislikes me for calling him out on his shitty intentions. You know what, it’s complicated.”

Reddick proceeds to lay into Adrian about losing the firm’s founding principles. Barbara says they’re still fighting the good fight, which – wait, is there a rule about saying the show’s name in the middle of dialogue like that? Diane excuses herself because part of checking your privilege is knowing when you should butt the hell out. In essence, Reddick vs. Boseman boils down to old-school purely noble intentions versus newer sensibilities with slightly less noble intentions but a whole boatload of money. I mean, I’ve had noble intentions before. But I’ve never had a boatload of money. So I say let’s let this thing play out and see who wins.

Just then Pastor Jeremiah, an alum Diane knows from The Good Wife, arrives asking them to help him evict a tenant at his halfway house. Um, do lawyers normally do that for people? Adrian wonders, too, but Diane says she’ll do it as a favor. She takes Jay and Maia with her because, again, I have no idea. But I like this combo, a lot.

We’re all just waiting for the crazy 3 a.m. Trump tweets to drop.

On the way Jay asked if they’re expecting trouble and Diane replies, “I don’t think so.” So of course, that’s exactly what they find. There is a rule about that; I looked it up. The little “favor” turns into our litigation of the week – or at least threat of litigation of the week. The tenant, named Paul Johnson, claims Pastor Jeremiah has been forcing him to have sex. That turns into an allegation that the pastor raped him when he was 17, which he will make public if he doesn’t get “money and a lot of it.”

All of this news is delivered by Paul’s chocolates stealing and Harvard-hating lawyer, Gabe Kovac (played by Fisher Stevens). Hey, remember when he wore brownface to play an Indian computer scientist in Short Circuit and Short Circuit 2? Good thing diverse representation in entertainment and whitewashing isn’t a problem anymore, right?

Anyway. He leaves after more bumbling threats and making a weird pass at Marissa while talking about eHarmony. Do they still not let queer people on that site? Or do have they kept that weird separate but totally not equal site for us? Diane deadpans a perfect, “Wow” afterward. I mean it, someone gif that for me.

So now Colin and Lucca are on their art gallery date. He had promised to go down on her in the bathroom to get her there. Yeah, that’s cool and all. But can we save like even one-tenth of the dirty talk on this show for Maia and Amy? Like it doesn’t even have to be super dirty talk, just more than her handing her girlfriend a drink and disappearing again.

Otherwise, you know, that whole thing where you ran prominent promos featuring these two women in bed and these two women in the shower together and these two women fending off a sex scandal would seem, what’s the word – baity, it would seem queerbaity.

When you spot Bette Porter across a crowded art gallery and know instantly you’re going to dump your boyfriend.

Just as I’m starting to get really bored by the whole Lucca/Colin sexy but scared of intimacy thing, who shows up but Colin’s mother, Francesca. She is played by Andrea Martin, who has made a career of late playing wacky family members. Colin makes introductions, but forgets Lucca’s last name. Oh, hellllll, no. You look uncomfortably like Paul Ryan and you can’t remember the full name of the goddess standing next to you? A curse on both your houses. Again, he’s wealthy, so I wanted to make sure I covered all my bases.

Colin’s mom is at the show with her new attorney, the Jimmy Cagney-looking rapping lawyer. And, in case you were wondering, he is still awful. He and Colin’s mom commiserate loudly in front of Lucca about “what Trump is doing.” Francesca then invites Lucca to his birthday party, which Colin had conspicuously not invited her to, or even mentioned. That’s two, two strikes for you buddy.

Back to the pastor’s case, the firm is deciding whether they will take it or not. Adrian argues with Reddick about its merits. Adrian doesn’t believe Pastor Jeremiah and certainly doesn’t want to be caught on the wrong side of another pastor sex scandal. But Reddick invokes some article that puts the firm’s leadership to a vote. In other words, let the politicking and power playing begin.

Diane goes to see Kovac, whose law office is above a cheap beauty salon with a neon sign, as you’d expect. He is disappointed Marissa isn’t there, but decides he’ll make do with Ygritte the Wildling. They are there to inform him, in between his rounds of Candy Crush, that they won’t be giving him any money. He mentions that they “keep sending out white lawyers,” which is both true and a weird thing to bring up. But then he hits them with some incriminating looking security footage of the pastor entering Paul’s room at night and leaving half an hour later. He embellishes what could be happening during that time with some truly disgusting sound effects.

Elle Woods, eat your heart out.

So now they’ve got the video evidence to confront the pastor with, which he explains away as giving him a drug test. Jay then discovers almost an hour of footage is missing from the surveillance video. I gotta tell ya, things look not great for the pastor. Also, this is an interesting episode because it questions our allegiances with sexual assault allegations.

This is, obviously, a fraught subject, but I would be remiss if I weren’t to mention how incredibly rare false reports are, particularly criminal reports. According to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, only between two to ten percent of reports are false. In contrast, an estimated 63 percent of sexual assaults are never even reported to police.

Right, so back on the investigation, Jay and Marissa are reviewing the surveillance video again when Marissa notices something. Paul is wearing a Fitbit. And, because they are part of the fitness program at the home, the data is readily available. So they check it and, wouldn’t you know, the pastor’s pulse went down during the time he was in the room with Paul. I mean, I know (consensual) sex can be relaxing and all – but not that relaxing.

Marissa’s discovery convinces Jay to sponsor her for a detective’s license. I’m not going to lie, I would watch the shit out of Jay & Marissa’s Special Detective Agency.

Hello, it’s me, the lesbian that time forgot.

Maia is reviewing the new findings with the group when Amy shows up. Yes, it’s Amy again. I swear to God, if she just hands Maia a rum and coke and leaves I’ll scream loud enough to wake all the Dead Lesbian Syndrome victims. Luckily, she isn’t there to deliver a beverage, unluckily she’s there to alert Maia to her dad’s possible impending suicide.

Maia had been avoiding him, but now when she calls no one picks up. So they rush off together. At the Rindell estate, Henry is getting neatly dressed while listening to “I’ll Fly Away.” He finally picks up and Mia pleads with him, but he hangs up on her without a word. She then calls her mom, and tells Amy to try Jax’s. This seems to puzzle Amy, which in turn puzzles me. Wouldn’t Maia have told her about her mother’s possible affair with her uncle long ago? Like, isn’t that what couples do?

When you ask Siri to play “Closer to Fine” and she says she can’t find it.

Meanwhile, Henry heads to the barn where he plans to hang himself with a garden hose. But then, as he goes to throw the rope over the rafters, he falls over the railing instead. Don’t worry, he lives.

When they finally get there they find his suicide note and him on the barn floor. He begs them to cover up his suicide attempt so his bail won’t be revoked. Maia obliges and cleans up the evidence before the ambulance arrives. Still, who checks the roof in a suit? Or is this a normal cover story for the rich?

Lucca and Colin have shown up at his birthday bash. Half the guests immediately start trying to commiserate with her about how bad Trump is. Then the other half expects her to be the definitive voice on all things concerning black people. And also to see if she knows Jay Z. Poor Lucca, it must be truly, truly awful to become the vessel for so much overcompensating white guilt and/or uninformed white obliviousness. Plus, you know at least half those people voted for Gary Johnson or Jill Stein anyway.

Yes, please, tell me more about how you loved Get Out.

Lucca excuses herself to get a well-earned drink, or twelve, when Mini Cagney shows up and starts asking about rap lyrics. The amount of self-control it must have taken to not smash that glass over his head is truly commendable. But then he starts blabbing about what great arm candy she makes for Colin now that he is going to run for senator. Then he calls Lucca a steppingstone to office, the hot black girlfriend. “It’s like de Blasio!” he chirps.

Now I don’t feel sorry for Lucca, I feel rage for Lucca. This is some Grade-A horribleness right there. She leaves the party in a rush, telling Colin it’s just lawyer stuff. She has called herself a Lyft, because they’re not Uber. (Though, side note, corporations should never, ever call themselves “woke.”)

At the hospital, Maia’s dad has been bandaged up and Lenore arrives, trailing Jax. Maia tells her she has to end it, but her mom continues to say it’s not what she thinks. But then Maia whips out her dad’s suicide note and reads her part of it, which I would say is pretty high on the emotionally devastating ammunition charts. This finally pushes her mom to tell Jax “It’s over,” if my lip reading is any good.

I’m sorry so sorry, luscious bouncing curls skipped a generation.

Diane goes back to Kovacs to present their FitBit evidence, a phrase I could never have imagined typing ten years ago. But he counters with a claim that Paul can identify a birthmark on the pastor’s penis. Easy to verify or disprove, right? Wrong. Pastor Jeremiah vehemently refuses to disrobe for the case. He fought too long for the dignity and respect his forbearers were denied. And he’s not wrong. So the partners advise him to settle.

But before they do they decide to dig into Kovac a little. They find a woman who had sued him for assault a few years ago. She can’t talk about the case, but does tell them his company made her sign it. You see, he was working for an alt-right cause. Come on, folks, just say it. He was working for racists.

So, now armed with this new information, they threaten Kovac back with disbarment for his clear conflict of interest. You see, the whole lawsuit was a sham being funded by the alt-right group to embarrass the good reverend. Kovac leaves in a hurry, followed by a trail of laughter. Admit it, it feels good to punch a Nazi, even if only symbolically.

Not laughing, or punching any Nazis, is Colin who is confronting Lucca about her ghosting him. She says she’s busy, they had their fun and now their relationship has run its course. He leaves confused. And then Lucca sits in her car and sobs silently. I don’t have anything funny to say here. I really, really don’t.

The vote has finally arrived. Jay’s secret headcount reveals Adrian is up by one. But then Julius Cain takes his seat. See, plenty of time to change his name to Brutus before he leaves the firm.

The vote tally is 12 Reddick, 11 Boseman. But Barbara pipes up that she hasn’t voted, and casts her ballot for the future with Adrian. So now it is tied. A disgruntled Reddick says that’s the problem with the world, “You think the fights are different. But you’re wrong. They’re exactly the same.” And, you know what, they’re both right. People need idealism and pragmatism to get things accomplished. Dreams take work. Success needs meaning.

“The Good Fight” Episode 107 Recap: A Grand Old Time

So let’s see. Where are we? Oh, yeah. Mike Kresteva’s ongoing quest to destroy Reddick, Boseman & Kolstad is ongoing. He has just taken the $800,000 bait about the firm taking a bridge. Colin tells Lucca then Lucca tells – not one of the partners first, as you might expect – but Maia. She sits down next to Maia and carefully, quietly tells her her father has betrayed her and is working with Kresteva. It’s such a nice moment. I mean, not the revelation; that’s awful. But the fact that Lucca knew enough to tell Maia first, to forgo rushing to tell her bosses and perhaps even protecting her own job that much more quickly. Yeah, that means a lot. I swear, this show and the ACLU are making me kinda love lawyers.

Lucca, consider your choices. The guy who looks like Paul Ryan or me, who looks like Ygritte the Wildling. This is not a hard choice.

Kresteva and an Eric Trump-like Assistant US Attorney are reminding the grand jury they don’t need to prove anything beyond a reasonable doubt. They just need the appearance of wrongdoing. So to get that Kresteva seizes Elsbeth!’s Aida/Alexa. See, I told you those things were creepy. And do they really record and save all of your conversations? I am going to have to Google this immediately. OMG, they do, kind of. But for the benefit of this show they do totally and can be played back like a cassette tape you recorded of Casey Kasem’s American Top 40 back in the day during grade school. Yes, I am willfully referencing things only olds will understand. Take that, whippersnappers.

Also, I love how Elsbeth! tries to purge all history before they take it but instead it gives her information on The Purge. Like of course she has a flaky automated voice assistant, of course. Anyway, the grand jury prosecutors listen to Aida/Alexa with Colin overseeing what is and isn’t privileged. Um, is that really how review of something like this would go? Like they can hear everything but if it is deemed privileged they super promise not to us it? And I don’t believe the law is settled on their admissibility in court yet, is it? Again, I am not a lawyer so what do I know.

This is what my family thinks being a blogger is like, except on an actual beach.

What I do know is Aida/Alexa blows their cover about the fake bribe. But this information does not dissuade Kresteva and company. Instead they go back to Papa Rindell and ask him to record his daughter again.

So he does, and shows up at Maia and Amy’s place unannounced. And, surprise surprise, who is there? Amy. AMY IS ALIVE! Take her off the side of all those milk cartons. Mystery solved. She hands Maia a drink when she comes in the door and then promptly leaves. No, wait, come back. Come back!

Surprise, bitch. I bet you thought you’d seen the last of me.

Look, I like this show, I really do. The writing is smart, the characters are just as smart and they all hate Trump with a fiery passion, which is really the only smart thing we can do right now. But the way they’ve handled Maia’s girlfriend and relationship is not smart. We were treated to wonderful, casual intimate moments between these two for the first two episodes. They’re in bed together, they’re in the shower together, they’re incensed over fake lesbian sex scandals together. They’re seen doing the things normal girlfriends do without being (mostly) obviously salacious. But then for the next five episodes Amy is nowhere to be seen. She has disappeared off the face of the show, with only a passing mention.

And, from a writing standpoint, this also makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Amy is also a lawyer. Amy is the one who encouraged Maia to get her own lawyer. Amy would be the one Maia turns to for emotional and professional advice, period. I mean, Maia is going through some major shit. Her parents may be betraying her. Her dad is probably a huge crook. Who would she turn to for support? I dunno, maybe the woman she shares a home and a bed and a life with? I mean, call me crazy, but isn’t that how loving relationships work?

Orange Is the New Black or The L Word rewatch tonight, honey?

Well, at least from her literal (I counted) one-minute of screen time we’re able to glean a few important things. One, Amy and Maia may have to move out of their cool loft because of money. Two, Amy no longer feels warm, huggy feelings toward Papa Rindell. And three, their drink of choice is rum and coke.

For the last time, we are more than just gal pals.

Maia and Papa Rindell have it out. He is somehow mad at her for lying to him. Because, you see, he was really snitching to protect her from prosecution. But at least he tells them Kresteva wants to destroy the firm, at any cost. They both put their recording devices on the table and turn them off to have some real talk. Dude, if I was Maia I would have patted dear old dad down. Trust no bitch.

So now all the partners, plus Lucca, get served. Adrian in cooking class, Barbara on a date, Lucca before going out to run off some sexual energy. So now the firm has to figure out how to defend themselves because grand juries always indict, unless of course it’s a case against a cop who has killed an unarmed black person. Then, for some strange reason, they basically never indict. Really makes you think.

Elsbeth! and the firm decide the best course of action is to play the so-called “race card.” And, to be honest, it’s both brilliant and true. When getting attacked for racist reasons, the best defense is their own racism. You see, it’s not about convincing a grand jury anymore. It is only about convincing Assistant Attorney General Wilbur Dincon it will make him look like a bad racist to continue with the grand jury investigation.

So that’s what they do. One, by one the partners faithfully remind the grand jury/Dincon that R, B & K is the largest African-American firm in the Midwest, one of the top 10 black firms in the country, a majority owned African-American firm. Dincon, of course, goes ballistic and orders the task force to go after them in a way that can’t be seen as racist. So they subpoena the firm’s three white employees instead.

Lean in? That’s your advice. Lean fucking in?

The good news is this episode is like a wonderful game of ping pong – like the Olympic kind where you can barely see the ball but know it’s there because of each countermove across the table. Elsbeth! and company hits back by subpoenaing Kresteva. Now the firm is suing him. I know! This episode has everything!

And so we’re gifted with another scene of Kresteva confronting Elsbeth! She’s getting ready to enjoy a fig newton bar when he barges in. She cheerily tells him he is being sued for “tortious interference with contractual relations.” In other words, he’s fucking with their business. Kresteva threatens and belittles her, which is always the bully’s fallback. And then he drops a Trump with a real, live “See you in court.” She chirps back, “Both courts!”

Man, part of me wants this ridiculous Kresteva business to never end because of all the delightful Elsbeth! business it brings.

Fine, turn down supplemental fiber at you and your colon’s own peril.

Because this episode is determined to give us everything we now have a conflict of interest brewing for Colin and Lucca. The Assistant A.G. orders him to defend Kresteva in the lawsuit, even though he is a prosecutor not a defense attorney. And then when Colin says he can’t because of the dating Lucca thing, he orders him to stop dating Lucca. Sally Yates this man ain’t.

So now they’re all before the Honorable Judge Gallo. I do not believe this sardonic fellow is a holdover from The Good Wife days, but I could be wrong (in which case I blame Google). Colin tries to get it dismissed. He can’t. Lucca asks to be put second chair (to bug Colin). She does. And away to the races we go.

Can I add I really like this judge? Cranky as hell, but fair and willing to do that two-finger whistle thing in open court. More of him and Judge Abernathy, please.

So now it is Marissa’s turn on the grand jury stand. She is great because she is universally kind of great. Like, wouldn’t you like to go get like 300 beers with her? She also helps to suss out that Kresteva is coming after Diane for the police brutality case that started this whole thing. Continuity, it seems like such a little thing but anyone who ever watched Glee can tell you it freaking matters.

The universal face of horror when the front-facing camera opens up.

Marissa also notices someone waiting to go into the grand jury room. It’s none other than our Trump-supporting law partner Andrew Hart. I immediately worry about Julius Cain flipping on the firm. I mean, his name is Julius Cain. The only way it could be more obvious is if his name was Brutus Cain. But, no, Hart is just there because he is poaching clients off of Reddick, Boseman & Kolstad.

Lucca is doing a great job of distracting Colin and sucking on pens. But there aren’t enough pens in the world to get past the shitstorm that gets churned up when the firm’s litigation financiers get called in to the grand jury. Our swearing-adverse tech bros promptly point them in Diane’s direction, again on that same police brutality case. Diane knows she could be sunk because the help she gave Adrian could be considered “disbarrable.” They decide to use a “mere puffery” defense, which I do not fully understand but pretty much sounds like everything that comes out of Donald Trump’s mouth that isn’t already an outright lie.

How many licks to get to the center of a legal drama?

It doesn’t exactly work, because Kresteva and company smell blood in the water and circle Diane like sharks. And then Marissa and Jay discover what the mysterious nine-digit code behind all those names on the Schtup List really mean. They’re IRS employee company codes. And one in question stands out – Diane’s old law firm. And, of course, Kresteva brings it up in court.

After her grilling Diane goes in to see Adrian and tender her resignation. She knows she will be indicted, and doesn’t want to take the firm down with it. Henry Rindell takes the stand tomorrow and will surely sink her. But Adrian gives his best Braveheart speech, except without the blue facepaint or a penchant for calling women sugar tits when inebriated. He says they both have to fight him, so they might as well fight him together.

Here’s the thing about this show. The title is everything. Sure, at first it seemed like just a clever conceit for a spinoff to The Good Wife. But this show isn’t really a drama built around characters. It’s a drama built around fights. And, when it is at its best, it does just that. This is not to say the characters do not matter, not in the least. They are important and integral, but they truly work best when their fight comes together. And these fights, while bloodless, are as intricate and choreographed as any Game of Thrones battle scene.

Admit it, you ship it.

Having overheard all this, Amy meets with her father sans recording devices. She confronts him about testifying before the grand jury. He, again, says he is doing it for her – and, let’s not kid ourselves, him. He is keeping Maia and her mom out of jail. And in his alternative-facts mind putting the blame on Diane for the fund is a good fight because it means he’ll get out in 10 years and be able to hold Maia’s future babies.

But then Maia drops the hammer. If he testifies, if she ever has any kids he’ll never see them. Of course, she doesn’t mention that this is only because they’ll be with Amy and we never see Amy. So there’s that. Papa Rindell looks shocked and then tries to leave her with a kiss to the head. But she and Amy are united on the no kissing a backstabbing dealmaker front.

Back on the lawsuit front Elsbeth! has one final witness to call. And, boy, is it a doozy. She calls Henry Rindell. Maia is nervous and Diane tells her she wishes she could tell her it gets easier. But that’s the thing about fights, they never get easier.

So Elsbeth! has Papa Rindell on the stand and has but one question to ask him. And that is – drum roll please – what did Mike Kresteva offer him in exchange for his testimony. Now it is Daddy Dearest’s turn to look at Maia with disbelief. Yeah, dude. She flipped you. She flipped you real good.

Aida I do believe I failed you. Aida I know I’ve let you down.

Well now that Papa Rindell’s sweetheart 10-year plea deal (instead of the decidedly less sweet life without parole) is public, a shit tsunami hits A.A.G. Dincon. And, poof, the grand jury is dead and Kresteva gets shitcanned. But, like any man who gets vanquished by a woman he considers far inferior to him, he just can’t pass up the chance to taunt his foe once more. He goes to visit Elsbeth! one more time to fuck with her paper shredding and give her her Aida/Alexa back. He also drops the completely unveiled threat that this isn’t over.

They say it’s never good to gloat. It is unseemly for the winners to take a victory lap, and for the most part I agree. But what is entirely seemly is for winners to show their gratitude to everyone on the field. And, in victory, Diane does just that.

She walks over to Maia and tells her she owes her a thank you. She could have protected herself, but instead she protected her. In any fight, loyal warriors are the most important ally. And, you’d better believe Diane won’t forget Maia’s sacrifice anytime soon.

Dearest, you seek resolution because you are young.

Maia then makes us all jealous by going out to get those aforementioned 300 beers with Marissa. Well, they did earn it. Bottoms up, Reddick, Boseman & Kolstad.

“The Good Fight” Episode 106 Recap: Bad Troll Rising

The great thing about watching The Good Fight is it hates Donald Trump as much as you hate Donald Trump. The bad thing about watching The Good Fight is it doesn’t give you much of an escape from the other things you hate. But, at least it puts up a pretty good fight against them in the process.

This week’s ripped-from-the-headlines case is about alt-right internet trolls in general and Milo Yiannopoulos in particular. If you have ever experienced any online harassment (and if you are a woman or a LGBTQ person or a person of color or possibly just breathing you probably have), this episode will feel uncomfortably close to home.

Right, so we open on an alt-right misogynistic horror show spouting his alt-right misogynistic horrors directly into the camera. I’ll spare you the details, but it might be best to wrap your screen in bubble wrap for this episode. You might not be able to resist the urge to punch it. Hard.

Guys, it’s a proven fact that big pile = bad government, little pile = good government. That’s just science.

Neil Gross, a.k.a. Mr. ChumHum, has slapped the transcript of a “problematic” post onto the conference table of the Reddick, Boseman & Kolstad (and maybe soon Florrick) partners. He has brought along another 4,758 more. What? That’s all? Your moderators suck. He has called his new Midwest law firm together because of the scourge of sexist, racist posts on his sites. So he needs them to create a Terms of Service for him for his Facebook-like site ChummyFriends and Reddit clone Scabbit. Wow, really went all-out there on those names, writers. Really dug deep.

To welcome his new law firm and celebrate their first task he has gifts for everyone. It’s ChumHum T-shirts with “Team Reddick, Boseman & Kolsted” on them. Yes, of course, he has managed to spell the one female partner’s name wrong. Already you can see where this is going.

But, hey, the guy is bringing in $86 million a year. Who cares if, again, the one female partner’s name is misspelled. Don’t get so emotional, sweetie. Geez, thank God we don’t have a woman president. Could you imagine? Think of the things she’d tweet at 3 a.m. and the world leaders’ hands she’d refuse to shake? Really dodged a bullet there. Really did.

*teeth pop out from clenching them so hard*

Anyway. Gross proceeds to be effusively horrible in that way that only rich, cis, supposedly progressive white dude can be about how great he feels having hired an (almost) all-black law firm to represent him. He even says, and this is verbatim, “I look at all your faces (overly earnest sigh) and I see hope (then taps chest in an overly earnest way).”

If you punched the screen just now, I will allow it.

Another thing Barbara and Adrian have noticed is Gross only makes eye contact with Diane. So not only is he a self-congratulatory weasel who somehow still doesn’t have a ToS for his wildly successful sites, he’s a hypocritical one at that. This is all so surprising.

He needs a new ToS not just because all these sexist, racist, anti-Semitic, threatening and just horrible posts are bad and should be eliminated, but because Disney is threatening to pull their advertising. Money, it’s always about money. Oh, and he needs it by 5 p.m. today. How is it possible his sites don’t have ToS already? They’ve been around at the very least since 2011, when Diane’s firm sued them the first time.

Men whose childhoods were most definitely ruined by female Ghostbusters.

The lawyers decide to split the piles of hate into subgroups of hate. They argue about what is a threat and what is political speech. Who cares if they’re saying you should be chopped up into little pieces, it’s politics not personal. They seem genuinely befuddled by the “rape” category. Oh, kittens, have you ever been on the internet? That’s its bread and nonconsensual butter.

There’s a lot of parsing of language. Like “I want to rape you” is fine, but “I’m going to rape you” is not. OK, here’s a thought experience: I want these sites to protect women, POC, LGBT people, religious minorities and other vulnerable communities from hate. I’m going to leave them if I they don’t. There. Parse that.

Maia has entered the room and her righteous indignation sensor goes off as she hears the discussion. If you’ll remember, she has more than a little experience with people saying they want to rape and dismember her. She reads one of the messages she has received to drive home the point.

But Julius Cain (seriously, how amazing is that name for the firm’s lone Trump voter) says they need to be “fair” and not “censor based on sensitivities.” You know, because if a woman is upset someone says they want to rape her it’s because of her sensitivity. Not because the person who said it is a horrible person who does not deserve access to the privately held means to disseminate that horrible message.

Look, we printed out all this internet for a reason. Someone do the Google and figure out why.

Diane pipes up that Gross can censor whatever or whomever he wants to censor because he owns the sites. This is the whole and entire point, people. ChumHum is not the government censoring a person. This is not a First Amendment issue, period. None of this sort of online speech is a First Amendment issue, as much as people want to wail and gnash their teeth that it is.

The First Amendment clearly states, “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech.” Congress, period. And that means the government cannot censor people. But Facebook is not the government. Twitter is not the government. Reddit is not the government. YouTube is not the government

The other side of this, of course, is that freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequence. I love the dumbasses who post something patently offensive on their personal social media only to be incensed when they later get fired from their private jobs. You have the freedom to say what you want without getting arrested, for the most part. You do not have the freedom to say what you want without other serious repercussions.

Right. I may or may not have some deeply held feelings about the First Amendment. I better stop now, otherwise I’m tempted to dig up my J-Law books from college and form a discussion group. (p.s. If you knew that J-Law is not the star of the Hunger Games franchise we really need to have lunch).

You can’t unsee it now. You just can’t.

Someone who can’t wait for lunch is Colin. He’s all hot and horny, in an appropriate consensual way, for Lucca and her panties. You know, someone said in the comments the other day that he looks like Paul Ryan and now I can’t unsee it and it’s making me start to dislike him. I keep thinking he’s coming to take away old people’s health care and poor kids’ school lunches. But the way he argues with his boss about Kresteva’s Reddick, Boseman & Kolstad case makes me like him a little more again.

His boss argues it’s great because if they stomp them then a) Chicago saves on police brutality cases and b) other firms will be scared to sue them for police brutality. Hey, here’s a thought, stop hiring police who act brutally. Cut back on that and you’ll also save Chicago a lot of money, eh? Well, at least he gives Colin the completely powerless position of “Oversight Head” of the case.

Maia, who hasn’t gotten much of a storyline recently beyond getting badgered by her parents, gets an unexpected visit from Uncle Jax. She tries to brush him off, but he warns her that her dad will call her soon and ask for a private meeting. And, wouldn’t you know it, her father has been badgering her to come visit. He said, of course, it was because he missed her and not because he was wearing a wire.

So Julius thinks this whole thing is an exercise in shutting down conservative speech. The firm’s women – Diane, Maia, Lucca, Marissa – all take turns giving him the metaphorical snarl lip – sometimes also the non-metaphorical snarl lip. But then Lucca has the brilliant idea to play kick the can, and create an appeals process by which a panel will decide, after a user has created a certain number of harassing/threatening posts, if they will remain banned.

When you’re about to drop a fire tweet, but want to make sure everyone in the office has Twitter open first.

Tada! Problem solved. Now she can go have sex/dinner with Colin. Please tell him that trickle-down economics is a myth and anyone who dreams of cutting Medicare while doing keg stands is a goddamn sociopath.

We then cut to the show’s Milo clone finishing up his next unconscionable opus. But when he presses submit he gets a temporary suspension notice. When he notices the new appeals process his eyes glisten with glee.

Maia goes to see Elsbeth! because this show loves us and wants us to be happy. Also because Maia is troubled by her current familial/legal predicament. Elsbeth! wisely tells her – while they’re seated in beach chairs and loudly serenaded by her Alexa named Aida, naturally – to feed her dad false information and record it. She makes up a client named Travis Leopold and a story about them doing some illegal dealings for him and receiving an $800,000 gift in return.

So the happy troll from earlier is now in front of the partners all nattily dressed ready for his appeal. He is Felix Staples (played by John Cameron Mitchell of Hedwig and the Angry Inch fame), a self-styled hatemongering raconteur hero of the alt-right. I like how this show has literally spelled out the definitions of terms like “SJW,” “cucks” and “dox” to the grandparents who have somehow figured out how to subscribe to CBS All Access.

He promptly asks them who they voted for in the last election and rattles off how much they all donated to Hillary. (Also, Barbara totally wins with a whopping $23,000 to Hilldawg, so I expect
“Fight Song”to play everywhere she walks.) Part of his appeal is it’s all OK because he is funny. And then in another part him bringing in a gay sex worker to fellate him in front of the panel while he sings “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” So, in other words, it is the fucked-up farcical circus we all expected.

The perfect CPAC Grindr date.

Before he leaves Felix “apologizes” to Diane for the terrible things people on the interwebs are about to say about her firm, says she reminds him of his mom and also that she should smile more. See, now that bubble wrap is really coming in handy.

And, wouldn’t you know it, the harassment tsunami begins. But, it seems, the trolls are on to the firm’s formula. They are all posting under 13 posts, and adding legal disclaimers to their rape threats. So someone has leaked their discussions over the ToS. Adrian sends the firm’s investigator, Jay (not Kalinda) to check it out. But because he knows the alt-righters won’t talk to him for obvious reasons he brings along Marissa.

So now Maia goes to see her parents, without Amy. Guys, I’m really starting to worry. Where is Amy? I don’t even think we’ve gotten a mention of her in this episode. Should we check for shallow graves around their apartment? Sometimes intense personal stress makes people snap, OK? I don’t know. I’m just very concerned. I’m tempted to post a search party sign-up sheet.

Maia smartly turns on her iPhone recorder. But then she goes inside and, look, it’s a party. No one could possibly conduct undercover, illicit conversations at a party? So then Maia unsmartly turns off her iPhone recorder. This is one of those unexpected moments you’re glad for the bubble wrap because you instinctively slapped your screen upside the monitor. Papa Rindell talks about Bora Bora and then presses Maia about how her work is going while they’re alone.

Thankfully, Maia goes back to being smart and represses her iPhone recorder. Hey, wanna hear about this guy I know named Travis Leopold?

I’m sorry, Amy is gone. This is your girlfriend now.

The next day Maia is back with Elsbeth! who is very happy/fake sad about her family subterfuge. She also gives Maia her Aida to cuddle. Would it be wrong if I said one of my new life goals is to eat ice cream and listen to Roberta Flack with Elsbeth!?

After Marissa goes to visit an alt-righter desperate for any female attention, he spills the beans that Felix has the transcripts of the firm’s ToS discussions. So they have a leak. The obvious culprit, at least in Adrian’s mind, is Julius. So he directs Jay to check him out. Hey, remember when that pro-Trump partner at that new law firm gave Julius his card? What font did he use for the lettering again, oh yeah, Foreshadow.

Felix is now back for this third day. I realize this is fiction and suspension of disbelief is required. But there is no way in Hell or whatever afterlife or non-afterlife you believe in an appeals process like this would take three days. The billable hours alone for having so many law firm partners sit in together for one case would be astronomical. I mean, we’re talking almost Disney ad account astronomical here. And wouldn’t that defy the whole point of this charade?

Felix brings up the left-wing attacks he has received in his defense. Let me just say that “the other side does it, too” is a terrible defense for either side so let’s all just try to be decent human beings for a change. Before the racist asshole (hey, their words, not mine – I’m being a decent human being-ish) leaves, he drops a little nugget into Diane’s ear. He asks why Neil Gross would hire an all-black law firm to head his censorship committee.

So now Elsbeth! and her 500 brightly colored Vera Bradley bags (I know, that’s redundant) are at the office. She tells them about her ploy. They’re concerned, in equal parts perhaps because of her love of Vera Bradley and her crazy plan to catch Kresteva in a lie. But if they do, they will be able to use Papa Rindell’s betrayal to their favor.

Please, like you don’t get just as excited when there are free cookies in the break room.

Jay and Marissa, whose chemistry is growing on me, go undercover to pump Felix’s realtor boyfriend for information. He swears their politics are totally different and Felix isn’t like that in private. Oh, good, just a hatemonger for the fame then. Even better. He shows them the IP address for the leaked transcripts which they trace back to … wait for it … ChumHum. Oh great, so they’ve been set up.

So just when the plot has thickened nicely, the alt-right charmers have come up with a new, fun way to circumvent the ToS. They’ve turned Neil Gross’ name into a racial slur to get around the ToS. Everything is horrible and the dolphins should go ahead and take over.

Before we can get into those repercussions, Julius realizes he has been investigated as the leaker. He rages at Adrian and Barbara about how loyal he was to them and then quits in a huff, only to call his fellow #MAGA lawyer about joining his firm immediately afterward. Um, my only big takeaway from this is that maybe Jay isn’t a great investigator because he apparently was so sloppy Julius realized the stuff on his desk had been moved. Kalinda would have never let this happen.

After learning he is the new n-word, Neil Gross snaps at Diane and tells her to “make it end” with Felix. And, again, the problem isn’t that Felix and his posts are despicable, it’s that he has a lot of followers and they’re all threatening to leave his services which would mean he would lose, you guessed it, money.

So now Felix is back for the last time in what I think is probably the best suit we’ve seen so far. Is this from the Laura Ashley Fire Island collection? And, just like that, he has been reinstated. This actually upsets Felix because his goal was never vindication, just attention. He tries to gloat to Diane, but online trolls and their crude instruments of oppression have nothing on a smart woman who knows her own strength. So she summarily dismisses him as “what we have to tolerate” for free speech.

Forget the partners, I want to know about this well-dressed lesbian lawyer in back.

So now Gross is recapping the firm’s work. No expulsions, except Felix’s which was ultimately reversed. He brings up the leak of the ToS discussion, and Diane calmly says it was from his company. And she calmly tells him the reason as well: they were going to be his scapegoats if the censoring campaign failed. He could point to the liberal, all-black law firm and say, “They did it.”

He doesn’t argue her points. But he does turn to Adrian and Barbara before leaving and ask them to talk over some international issues with them. They happily oblige, because this means now they have the in with Gross and his $86 million account instead of Diane. Money, guys. Money, money, money, money. The truth will set you free, but it might also make you broke.

So after unsuccessfully trying to make Colin jealous with her beefcake personal trainer boy toy and then going on a frisky ride to Colin’s country estate (oh yeah, Colin is loaded), Lucca gets a surprise visit from him in the office. He has come to warn him to stay out of the company’s finances because of their shady dealings with one Travis Leopold. Well now, seems the whole firm suddenly has daddy issues.

I am not going to lie, this was not been my favorite episode. I can’t tell if it is because the belabored explanations of alt-right terribleness, or because of some collective alt-right PTSD. Either way, yeah, I’m pretty sick of these assholes on my TV, my internet and my government.

“The Good Fight” Episode 105 Recap: The Return of Elsbeth!

Perhaps the best thing about recapping The Good Fight – besides getting to write about all these smart, complex women capable of crushing you with their knowledge of the penal code alone – is that this show hates Donald Trump. Like it really, really, really hates Donald Trump. And, as my slogan for the next four years goes, if you can’t say anything nice about Donald Trump, come sit next to me.

The partners of Reddick, Boseman & Kolstad are viewing an episode of something Law & Order-y online. Aw, high-priced lawyers, they’re just like us. They spend random Sunday afternoons eating Pringles and watching reruns of the seasons of Law & Order: SVU where Mariska has the really good hair. You know the seasons. Fine, maybe they aren’t covering themselves in chip dust. Instead they’re deciding whether they should take a case involving a TV writer who posted an anti-Trump episode of the series he works on to the internet. It was based on the child-rape lawsuit filed against our now 45th President of the United States, which was dropped just before the election. But wouldn’t you know it the network pulled the episode in question after he won/the apocalypse began. So now the network is suing the writer for a cool $12 million.

Hey, if Holland and Sarah can make May/December work, why can’t we?

Adrian lists all the reasons Trump is unacceptable as a human being, let alone a president as he argues his side. If I started to list them all, we’d be here for well into Kamala Harris’ second term as POTUS. Julius, the one person at the firm who voted for that Mango Mussolini, naturally argues against taking the writer’s case. Look, I know we’re supposed to feel empathy toward Trump voters. At least that’s what those six million think pieces about understanding white working class America keep telling me. And I know that we’ll need them to come back from the Orange Side in 2020 (not to mention 2018, local elections, etc. etc.). But, still, nah. Not today, Cheeto Satan voters, not today.

Diane pops into the bedlam and suggests “fair use” as their legal defense. Adrian likes it, but Barbara wants to know why they’re taking a case they can’t win. The answer is, duh, money. Adrian wants to expand into that pot of gold at the end of the Hollywood sign. At least the gold they send over to Chicago via their umpteen million shows based in the city.

Speaking of money, Barbara wants to know where Diane’s is. Her capital contribution has yet to materialize and the month grace period is over. Adrian passes the (in this case not metaphorical) buck and makes her to be bad cop. This proves once again women are the ones our society tasked with the most tireless, thankless work.

So as women get to the work of keeping our civilization humming, The Good Fight’s resident Trump stand-in strides back into the Reddick, Boseman & Kolstad offices. I appreciate how Matthew Perry has gone subtle with his homage. I mean, anyone can spray tan themselves to look like a rotting pumpkin. But it takes true commitment to go method with the neck wattle.

He has come to interrogate Maia with that FAKE NEWS! story. She tells him it’s not true. He says, but it has all these people quoted. She asks him if he called any of those people. He pulls out a dozen other “articles” aggregated on other sites about the same thing. See, now this is why aggregation is the devil. It’s just an echo chamber created for clicks with no regard for original reporting and/or facts.

While I could talk ad nauseam (or pretty close to as long as my Trump rant) about the current untenable state of the economics in online publishing, as a legal strategy this FAKE NEWS! strategy is severely stupid. Because the whole thing is too easy to disprove.

But, alas, Kresteva isn’t a total idiot. He’s a lying liar who lies, but not a total idiot. He segues from FAKE NEWS! to real news in a flash, asking Maia about her visits to her dad in prison. Oh, girl, I knew that was a bad idea. Also a bad idea? The whole business of her breaking into her possibly crooked uncle’s computer to retrieve the “The Schtup List” to help her possibly crooked father. Gosh, don’t you hate it when you possibly incriminate yourself in a possible criminal conspiracy?

Guys, seriously, who is a better TV lawyer? Me or Schwimmer with his Kardashian hair?

Diane sees Kresteva leaving and knows no good can come of this. But first she has to deal with her broke broke. Barbara says if they don’t get the contribution in a week they will make her “of counsel.” I don’t exactly know what that means, but I gather it is the law partner equivalent of a depantsing – deeply humiliating.

Before she leaves the office she drops a little advice on Barbara – the firm might need a lawyer. Oh, don’t worry, not from her. From Kresteva. Speaking of that guy, guess who shows up to see Papa Rindell in prison?

Diane is now desperate to raise some cash, so she calls about putting her apartment on the market. Her humbling call gets interrupted by a visitor; it’s her husband. He has come to ask her to help him with a talk he has to give. I get that he is a renowned ballistics expert and all, but is a gun ever a great present to give someone in the workplace?

So now it’s time for the TV lawsuit. Adrian says the network is trying to curry favor with the Trump administration. The writer is astounded that network executives “shit their pants over 3 a.m. drunk tweets.” The network attorney is offended by the use of profanity. Hey, is this like how conservative pundits got all offended when people repeated Trump’s “grab ‘em by the pussy” quote because of the language, instead of being offended that Trump actually bragged about grabbing women by the pussy? Yeah. It is.

There’s a rebuttal witness, some yelling about Princeton versus Yale. I even think Michelle Obama’s name gets dragged into this mess. But the judge ultimately calls it a loser case and that’s that, right? Come on, you’ve watched TV before. There’s like 35 minutes of this episode left. You know better.

The Reddick, Boseman & Kolstad partners are interviewing lawyers and their first interview is with some James Cagney-looking fellow who calls the law partners “my bros” and then raps at them. He. Raps. At. Them.

Oh, so your “All Lives Matter” T-shirt isn’t ironic then?

As she is leaving the disgusting debacle, Diane runs into Neil Gross – another The Good Wife holdover. He is the founder of Chumhum, the search engine you keep seeing on this show instead of Google. He seems impressed that Diane has joined an “all black firm” and then whispers that he isn’t happy with his own firm and wants to meet.

The firm is still lawyer-less, but Lucca has an unconventional idea. And, as the saying goes, if you need a lawyer, go to the dentist. Wait, that’s not right. Anyway there they find this episode’s third The Good Wife alumni guest star. Maybe they should have called this show Everyone But Alicia.

The lawyer/dental office denizen in question is Elsbeth Tascioni. A quick search of Chumhum tells me she is a very smart, very scattered lawyer. Adrian isn’t sure what to make of her and her recent release from the hospital where she was staying for disagreed upon reasons. But Lucca has remembered the advice Alicia gave her, which was, “When in trouble, hire Elsbeth.” Since Alicia has become the comedic Voldemort of this show, the mere mention of her name sends things haywire. In this case Elsbeth’s Alexa starts playing Alicia Keys music loudly.

Also, does anyone else think it’s creepy we’re purchasing these virtual assistants for our homes that essentially just listen to everything we say at all times? No, just me? Fine, but if Skynet starts selling one, do not buy it. Trust me on this.

So when you say repeal and replace, you mean repeal and redistribute the wealth to the wealthy. Got it.

She asks them to give her a day to find out what they don’t know they don’t know. Admit it, you kind of love her already. Sure, she is almost over the top kooky. But if watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer has taught me anything it’s this: Underestimate women at your own peril, monsters. Particularly the kind of women who are easy for society to underestimate.

Maia arrives at her parent’s place and her dad is there. You see, he is suddenly out on bail. She is so relieved, but we know better. We know this is all Kresteva and anything involving Kresteva is bad. I still can’t decide if her dad is bad yet. Or her mom. This isn’t exactly the kind of show you can just use the “the famous guest star did it” strategy on.

But it doesn’t sound good when her dad claims he “doesn’t know” why they decided to give him bail. Nor does it sound good that he is talking to the FBI tomorrow. Maia tries to warn him about her mom and Jax. But he reassures her in a way that leaves no one reassured. Mama Rindell says she and Amy should come to dinner tomorrow and for once I agree with something one of her parents’ said. Seriously, where is Amy? Three episodes in a row with no girlfriend? Any longer and I’m going to send out a search party.

With this kiss I crown thee Queen of the Gingers. Long may you reign.

While surfing Craigslist for apartments and daydreaming about her lost French villa, Diane decides to call her hubby again. The gunslinger arrives and she helps him with his speech over a couple of glasses of what I assume are a very nice red. Also, is drinking wine in the office normal at law firms? Is this why those billable hours are so expensive, cabernet allowances?

Kresteva is talking Papa Rindell’s cooperation and name giving while having a lunch alone lunch at a diner. But who should pop over the glass partition? Elsbeth! I feel like her name should always be said with an exclamation, don’t you? She slides over into his booth and starts chatting, casually dropping that she represents Reddick, Boseman & Kolstad. Kresteva responds with not-so-casual threats saying, “You go after me professionally, I’ll go after you personally.” Chandler Bing was never this mean. Sarcastic, yes. Mean, no.

Elsbeth! goes to see Maia at the firm afterward. They all rack their brains trying to figure out why he’d care about the Rindell Ponzi scheme. Oh, right, he doesn’t. All he cares about is the destruction of Reddick, Boseman & Kolstad and taking Maia down for criminal conspiracy would go a long way toward that goal. But he can’t do that unless Papa Rindell flips on his daughter. Better hope Maia always remembered to get her pops a nice card on Father’s Day.

When you’re still pissed they cancelled Go On.

So the Trump TV lawsuit is back in court. The network cut its ask to in half, but the firm counters with $0. Suddenly, the network attorney loves profanity. The team argues that the episode has no worth because it was never going to be aired. And they call a network executive to the stand who Lucca summarily humiliates while engaging in some light flirting with Colin. Afterward the network lawyer tells Adrian that embarrassing Hollywood honchos on the stand is a surefire way to make Hollywood enemies. So, goodbye, dollar signs. All of a sudden Adrian is less bullish on the case.

Mr. Chumhum comes to visit Diane, as promised. He is impressed by the “real African-American law firm” and seeing African-Americans “everywhere you look.” The racial politics of this are…weird. It’s all a little…uncomfortable. But then Marissa brings up the obvious. Everyone is black except them. Look, when there’s an elephant in the room there’s no use trying to hide it behind a couch.

But, good news, he is impressed by the firm for reasons other than just its racial makeup. In fact he is thinking of switching to them. He likes their fight in standing up to Trump and says they should do to him what Republicans did to Obama. Well, I mean I guess we could demand to see his birth certificate. But, really, I’d much rather see his taxes.

Kresteva is back on his cellphone talking about how Papa Rindell hasn’t given up Maia’s name yet – yet being the operative word. He arrives home, ready to relax after a busy day of witch hunting and personal assassination with his wife. But who is there becoming BFFs with her instead? Elsbeth! She has been drinking wine and eating ice cream and snooping through his study. An incredulous Kresteva walks her out and threatens to have her disbarred as a parting gift.

Oh, monsters, will you ever learn? She says she’d like a disbarment judge to hear him say, “You go after me professionally, I’ll go after you personally.” He says it’s a lie, he never said that. But, receipts, Elsbeth! has receipts. She pulls out a recording of him saying just that. He counters that it’s an illegal recording. She says it isn’t if it’s contradicting a lie. And BAM, he just got Elsbethed!

Never underestimate how deeply satisfying it is to see a woman vanquish a man who has underestimated her – on television or in real life.

Oh, nothing, just girl talk. You know, plotting how to smash the patriarchy and stuff.

So the Trump TV lawsuit is back in court. Adrian makes an impassioned speech about corporate media control and Tiananmen Square. The judge doesn’t entirely buy it, but then just as he is about to rule, “ding” goes Twitter. Our Rage Tweeter-in-Chief has commented on the case adding it is “time to look into who they hire to write.” Sad!

Lawsuit in the bag, Lucca goes off to her milkshake date with Colin. Flirting leads to kissing, kissing leads to shagging, shagging leads to confessing. Lucca says she doesn’t make friends easily because she is afraid of getting hurt. But she did have a friend, a female coworker. We won’t name her because we’ve already exhausted our one “Alicia” per episode. But the big takeaway from all of this is that Lucca doesn’t get hurt by boys. Ladies, start your femslash engines.

Looks like everyone is feeling the post-coital glow this episode (except for Maia, dammit, I’m thisclose to putting Amy on the side of a milk carton). Lucca and Colin. Diane and her sorta-ex hubby Kurt. He asks her to move in with him. She’s like, nah, I can solve my own problems, but thanks for the sex.

And solve them she does. Once in the office she goes to see the partners. Mr. Chumhum saw they won the case and has decided to switch to them. Forget Hollywood money, this means at least $58 million a year. But, the deal has a small, itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny caveat. You see, Diane can’t recommend the firm if she is only “of counsel.” Adrian assures her it can all get worked out later. But Diane knows the upper hand when she has it. And, boy, does she have it. So what does she want?

Alicia who?

She wants her capital contribution to come from the Chumhum retainer. And she wants to be made a named partner. And, BAM, they just got Lockharted.

The Good Fight Episode 104 Recap: FAKE NEWS! Is Forever

Elevators are such an interesting and unnatural condition of humanity. You’re all stuffed in an extremely small box together and willingly allow heavy metal doors to lock us in with blind trust that we can all get along for the finite amount of time it takes to hurdle us up or down through space. And while doing so our goal, more often than not, is simply to stand as still as possible without contemplating our own mortality until the metal doors release us to our fates.

This was a long and winding way of saying as Maia makes her way up to the Reddick, Boseman & Kolstad law offices, two women break the cardinal elevator rule and speak with her, a stranger, out of the blue. Granted, Maia was also breaking the code and paging through her ill-gotten Schtup List. Elevators are not for work and/or the casual thumbing-through of sensitive/possibly life-changing information. One woman leans over and tells her to “try a water-bath canner” in a helpful tone. Another tells her that woman is crazy, and to just “reduce the sugar content,” with an equally obliging tone.

Jesus, what has the president tweeted now?

Don’t worry, we’re just as confused as Maia is in this moment. Not only have these women broken the sacred elevator code, but they’ve done it to talk crazypants gibberish. What do you think this is? The subway?

Lucca comes up to Maia to tell her about a new frozen embryo case they’ve picked up and offer generalized support from idle gossip. Now Maia is even more paranoid and by the time she gets to her desk and Marissa asks her about Twitter, she is full-blown paranoid.

You see, someone has set up a fake Twitter account in Maia’s name and is tweeting out terrible things about her sex life and also questions about how to properly can peaches. So, those elevator transgressors were actually just overly helpful home cooks.

Hey, but no problem, we can clear this up no problem. Twitter has a sterling record when it comes to dealing with harassment and responding to women being victimized in particular. Wait, scratch that, reverse it. So here comes this week’s Timely! Important! Subplot!

Diane is brought in to lead the frozen embryos case. The firm’s first (and best) client wants hers back. She sold them when she first came to the area, but now as an ovarian cancer survivor she wants them back as a second shot at motherhood. The contract she signed says her eggs should revert back to her after five years, and it has been eight. So that’s that, right? Please, it’s like you’ve never watched a TV drama before.

While in Barbara’s office, Diane notices someone go into Adrian’s office. I will never understand why so many businesses insist on making office walls of glass. You know people can see you at all times, yes? Anyway, the guy looks familiar. I don’t know why, but I suddenly feel like singing The Rembrandts. He is, indeed, Chandler Bing/Matthew Perry/Mike Kresteva. The Good Wife fans will remember him — from what I gather — not that fondly. Diane warns Adrian about him and says he is not to be trusted; she even mentions Alicia by name. If she says it two more times will Alicia appear in a black-and-white wide-striped suit with crazy hair?

If I tattooed “Listen To Women” on my forehead, would it help?

Kresteva has been appointed, and I want to get this right, as special counsel in charge of the Department of Justice Police Accountability in the 21st Century Task Force for Chicago. DOJPATCTF is seeking recommendations on how to curb police brutality in Chicago. Well, this seems promising enough. We know, thanks to a blistering pre-Jan. 20 Department of Justice report, that there’s a rampant problem with excessive force as well as other violations of civil rights. So let’s do something about this, right? Let’s task force this shit, right? Oh, kittens, sadly it’s now after Jan. 20th and The Good Fight exists in a world where that failed mail-order steak salesman is also the president.

Back to the Timely! Important! Subplot!, Maia’s Twitter impersonator responds to Marissa’s complimentary tweet with a speedy DM that says, “What do you look like? #WetlandSEX” So, right there you have your dead-to-rights proof whoever is tweeting as Maia is a dude. Because I don’t know a single woman – lesbian, straight, bi, trans, cis, queer, et al – whose first question to a stranger on Twitter is, “What do you look like?” Possibly, “What does your favorite fandom look like?” But not the former. And don’t get me started on #Wetlands. Come on, gay ladies are so much better at hashtags than that.

Marissa agrees to exchange photos with Fake Maia (from her stock photo stream, please, she’s no social media newbie), and Fake Maia sends some tasteful black-and-white nudes back. This makes Real Maia gasp because, holy shit, it’s really her. Look, Timely! Important! Subplot! Added another Timely! Important! Side-Subplot! So now she immediately knows who is behind Fake Maia.

Kresteva goes to see Diane and tells her he is on her side. Diane remains more than skeptical. But then he goes into a whole, “I’ve changed, I’m a new person” bit. Oh, and did we mention he has a dead son? Yeah, his son died of Leukemia. Terrible. (But, in all seriousness, cancer is terrible and not a joke and fuck fucking cancer).

Still – as any old reporter will tell you – trust, but verify. So Diane Googles (or ChumHums – I believe this is another inside The Good Wife joke which I don’t fully understand but appreciate) to make sure Kresteva is telling the truth. He is, at least about his son.

Back on the popsicle embryo case, the fertility clinic claims it doesn’t have a record of their client. They changed names (but not facilities or directors) two years ago. But after a little light legal threatening, the doc confesses they were given to Chicago Poly-Tech. And Poly-Tech used them for stem cell research and they’ve since been destroyed – at least 11 of them. The 12th embryo is marked “confidential” because it was transferred to a practicing doctor on staff who has already fertilized it for a couple seeking a child. Interspersed is a running joke about some old men who can’t hear. Admit it, jokes about old men who can’t hear are always comedy gold.

Definitive proof that the Future is Female.

Maia goes to confront Fake Maia, who turns out to be a real photographer and her really ex-boyfriend, Ted. He feigns innocence, but Maia knows better. Also, can we talk about how gross it is for dudes like Ted to take something done in trust with an intimate partner and use it for revenge? Because we certainly aren’t going to blame Maia for being part of a photo shoot of her own damn body with someone who she was in a consensual adult relationship with. Also, dude, there are laws against that in Illinois, and many other states.

He continues to deny his involvement, but then Marissa brings the muscle (and when mistaken for Maia’s girlfriend she says she’s “not gay, but I could be”). So he relents and confesses it is a Twitter bot. He programmed it two years ago after they broke up and now he says he can’t take it down. So much is wrong with that. First, she broke up with him four years ago so you just sat and stewed for two years? Second, why on earth can’t you kill it – you made it, you can destroy it. And third, “just ignore it” is the shittiest advice possible when it comes to harassment both online and in real life.

Maia calls him an asshole and slaps him for good measure. Yes, I know, violence is not the answer, but it can be momentarily very satisfying. Marissa is impressed and says, “My girlfriend is pretty tough.” I know I shouldn’t be, but I would totally be OK if those two started a platonic flirting thing in the office.

This is what happens when you give Jon Snow a camera.

As everyone converges back at the office, a process server pops up and hands them all a summons. They’re going before the grand jury courtesy of Kresteva. Hey, when women warn you about someone, please listen. Coretta Scott King, Elizabeth Warren, Sally Yates, Hillary Clinton. Listen. To. Women.

Because Lucca hasn’t been given nearly enough to do this episode, she gets proactive on their grand jury summons business. Colin, the handsome assistant U.S. attorney who likes extra peppers and onions on his burgers too, shows up at the pub that apparently every lawyer in Chicago goes to for lunch. Lucca has already arranged with Mike, the bartender/chef, to say there isn’t enough time to make him a burger. And, wouldn’t you know, Lucca already has a half to share primed and ready. I call this the new hamburger diplomacy.

They engage in some light-to-medium flirting, which includes Colin confessing he has been celibate for a year…from frozen custard milkshakes. And then they make a milkshake date, which is almost adorable. But ulterior motives aside, Lucca asks him to look into the grand jury summons and he says he will. I want him to be one of the good guys because he is growing on me, but mostly because of his forbidden love of milkshakes. I had a torrid affair with chocolate malts one summer. It ended badly.

Sexual Orientation: Cush Jumbo eating French fries.

All the big guns arrive in court for the frozen embryo case. Becky Ann Baker is back from The Good Wife as rival counsel. You may know her best as Hannah Horvath’s mom on Girls. The client anxiously waits to see what the father of her future child looks like. In walks a lady (hahaha, can’t be her – and queer moms grit their teeth a little and sigh at nature’s cruelty). Then in walks a nebbish little man with his wife. Lucca asks if she still wants to proceed with the case, and of course she does. Looks don’t matter, she isn’t some guy pretending to be a girl on Twitter.

While all this is happening Timely! Important! Subplot! with Timely! Important! Side-Subplot! Adds another layer. Yes, this episode has it all. Twitter harassment, revenge porn and now FAKE NEWS! Maia’s lawyer receives a breaking news alter saying Maia has been fired from the firm. She calls to check, and Maia checks with Adrian who is pretty sure he doesn’t even know her well enough to fire her. But, too late, another FAKE NEWS! alert is claiming she bought $350,000 in jewelry.

Please, her ex is an obvious amateur at this FAKE NEWS! business. Call me when he accuses the former president of illegally wiretapping Maia’s house. Then we’ll talk.

So now a very reluctant Diane is in front of the grand jury. Kresteva starts to question her. Yes, he met in her office yesterday. Yes, he asked for suggestions on how to address police brutality in Chicago. No, she never said the people of Cook County hated African-Americans and treated black lives carelessly. Wait, what? Whatwhatwhatwhat? I mean, I know she said he tends to lie. But this is just, what?

Diane storms out and back to her firm to warn them all they’re being railroaded by Kresteva. He isn’t going after police brutality. He is going after the law firm that has brought successful cases against the city for police brutality. Why go after the actual problem when you could go after one of the things fighting the problem? I think Kresteva is aiming too low with his new DOJPATCTF position. He sounds perfect to head the whole Department of Justice. And, who knows, there might be a vacancy soon. Call Kellyanne. You two would get along great.

Could I be any more irritating?

Lucca springs back into action, checking with Colin who confirms that Kresteva is a lying liar who lies. God, why are there so many of those in positions of power these days? But now we have the show’s firmly established villain/perfect Trump surrogate. Hating Matthew Perry will be a relatively new emotion for me. I still miss seeing him from Go On, though not more than I miss Julie White as Anne. God, that was a good show.

Diane and Lucca are back in court on the frozen embryo case. The doctor who plans to fly with the couple to England to perform a procedure that is not allowed in the United States where he will remove healthy DNA from the embryo and implant it in the other woman’s egg. So, yeah, they’re just digging for spare parts. We’ve entered into some Clone Club territory here as well.

Colin talks with the deputy Attorney General about Reddick, Boseman & Kolstad being targeted by the task force. He agrees that it looks unseemly to target a predominantly black law firm for police brutality. Not that it is unseemly, mind you, but looks unseemly. So he tells Kresteva to target them for something other than police brutality cases. Wait, now I’m confused. Isn’t the whole damn point police accountability? How can he even target them for other things? It’s in the acronym. The “PA” of DOJPATCTF.

So now Maia is getting proactive about fighting the Timely! Important! Subplot! with Timely! Important! Side-Subplot! leading to FAKE NEWS! Her lawyer serves her ex with a temporary restraining order to stop his bots from fake tweet/newsing. But he smugly says she doesn’t have the jurisdiction because he bounces that shit to servers across 20 states, Mexico and Japan. Yes, but doesn’t it all originate in Chicago? Again, I know nothing about the law (though still more than Jon Snow), but that seems ridiculous.

So instead they fight FAKE NEWS! with FAKE NEWS! Kiddie porn arrests, butt plugs, leashes and BDSM are thrown into the mix. Wouldn’t kiddie porn be enough? Like the rest is no more mainstream salacious than Fifty Shades of Grey, which gets as much press as a Pixar movie these days. But it works because the exes friends and girlfriend and landlord all buy into the news and make his life not great. Geez, don’t tell hostile foreign governments about the persuasive power of FAKE NEWS! on the American public. They might try to sway a presidential election or something.

When Maia’s girlfriend isn’t on the show for the second straight week, so you write your own fic.

Ted charges into Maia’s firm calling her a bitch and generally being the worst. Adrian is leaving just then and steps in because at this firm they stand up for each other. Also, men need to stand up when they see other men being misogynistic assholes. Maia and Ted come to a détente and agree to stop FAKE NEWS!ing each other. And thus hopefully ends the storyline of yet another bad Ted. (for reference, please see Ted Bundy, Ted Kaczynski, Ted Cruz, Ted Buffy’s almost robot stepdad). So that’s that, right? Please, it’s like you’ve never been on the internet before.

As we chug into the unexplored areas of property law, the team ends up losing the frozen embryo case because of the Innocent Purchaser Doctrine. Everyone is very sad, but none more than the client who now has lost her last shot at having her own child. Look, I get it. But adoption is nothing to sneeze at, says this adoptee.

Diane and Barbara share a nice moment over what I’m assuming is some very nice scotch. The two women talk about children, specifically whether Diane regrets never having them. Women are given such a false and unfair choice in this country – have a successful career or have a successful home life. Only men are granted the ease of having both without sacrifice. And only women are burdened with the stigma of choosing the former over the latter.

As much as I have been enjoying the Alpha Female-Off between these two, there is something undeniably striking about watching two smart, accomplished, powerful women share such an intimate moment. The canards that the outward expression of emotions is a weakness when it comes to business or government or any position of authority is one created by men to subjugate women. The end.

Same.

Diane returns to her office, momentarily decides to drunk dial her ex (kidding, though she did down that scotch quickly), thinks better of it. Then she really thinks better and legal eagles the seemingly over frozen embryo case back into the win category. (Under British law the sale of the embryos was illegal and so they are barred from performing the procedure there.) Bottom line, it worked. Their client gets her “property” back.

Then she graciously reaches out to the other couple, since he did fertilize the damn thing, and tells them if he wants to be part of the child’s life she would welcome them with open arms. He tells her to go fuck herself. Well, let’s just hope the asshole gene isn’t passed down.

Hey remember when I said the Timely! Important! Subplot! with Timely! Important! Side-Subplot! leading to FAKE NEWS! thing wasn’t over? Guess what, it’s not over. Now Reddit has picked up the story and there will be no end to everyone’s misery because that’s Reddit’s raison d’être. Marissa and her lawyer say not to worry about it because Reddit is just the teeming masses and no one believes it anyway. Someone tell our Circus Peanut-in-Chief that, will ya?

And you might want to mention it to Kresteva, too. An assistant carries a file with the $350,000 jewelry purchase “story” to him. And, bingo, he has something other than police brutality to go after Reddick, Boseman & Kolstad for. Look, I get where they are going with this plotline, I really do. But this FAKE NEWS! article is so obviously fake, would they really be able to make hay with it with a grand jury? Oh, what the fuck am I saying? Some people actually believe Hillary Clinton is a demon who eats babies. Run with it, show. Why not. Crazier things have happened.

“The Good Fight” Episode 103 Recap: Trump Voter Blues

Maia is still standing, stunned, in her parent’s house still looking at her gross, hobbit-footed Uncle Jax standing next to her panicked, nightie-wearing mom. Jax tries to make small talk but Maia’s jaw muscle twitches the twitch of righteous indignation and she storms out. Mama Rindell follows with her magically appearing Mary Poppins umbrella. Seriously, who has the presence of mind when running after your daughter who just caught you nearly in flagrante with the enemy, to grab an umbrella? This lady, apparently.

She swears she is only trying to get Jax to change his mind – with her body. Maia is disgusted and doesn’t know who to believe and I am disgusted and don’t know who to believe.

Why yes, I was the model for the Scream mask.

In our Case of the Week, a Chicago surgeon is guiding a makeshift medical staff performing open-heart surgery on a victim in Syria. Timely! Important! Holy crap can people really perform surgery using Skype?! But, as they are finishing up, feds in black trenchcoats rush in and arrests the doctor for aiding and abetting a terrorist. Timely! Important! But, really, Skype surgery? Crazy.

The partners at Reddick, Boseman & Kolstad are going over the firm’s finances. Lots of six- and seven-figure numbers are being thrown around. It all looks great and like they can buy themselves new Benzs (well, minus Diane who has yet to come up with her capital contribution on account of being broke as hell). But there’s one tiny problem. A huge cellphone tower company the firm represents hasn’t paid its retainer yet putting them $12.6 million in the hole. I don’t know much about money, but that seems like a lot.

Marissa is still happily employed as Diane’s assistant, dubious racial politics of the decision aside. She’s greeted by a man who introduces himself as the firm’s investigator, who is a little miffed she stepped on his investigating toes on the class action case. I know, I know. We’re all incredibly disappointed he is not Kalinda Sharma.

Diane has to leave the money meeting to deal with her Skyping doctor. He works with Doctors Without Borders and because of how terrible the situation in Syria has become they provide assistance via Skype. She is handling his pre-trial release hearing, and feels confident it will go smoothly. But then Lucca arrives because this show wants us to be happy and anytime Lucca arrives I am happy.

The face you make when asked to recreate the Bette/Hot Carpenter prison scene.

Barbara has assigned Lucca as second chair, ruffling Diane’s feathers. The power dynamics between these two is gonna make for some excellent wine-sipping viewing. Yes, friends, we have ourselves a good, old-fashioned alpha-female off.

Now they’re in court and facing off with handsome (if you’re into that sort of thing, which is totally cool because love is love and same goes for lust) Assistant United States Attorney Colin Morello. He is played by Justin Bartha, who you might remember as the half of the gay couple on The New Normal who was not Andrew Rannells.

Fireworks fly immediately, both the legal kind and the other kind. You can tell Colin is interested immediately because Lucca calls him on his “idiocy.” Though, come on, who wouldn’t fall for Lucca if she called you an idiot?

Adrian and Barbara go to see the cell tower executive. You know things are going badly when he changes the subject to fresh baked rolls. See, there’s a new administration in town and they are looking for a more Trump-friendly firm. If you were hoping to get away from the shitshow Cheeto Hitler has made daily existence in America, this is not that show.

The exec then refuses to get on an elevator with them as they leave because nothing is metaphor in Trump’s America. It’s all just in-your-face horrible. Barbara wonders aloud if this is because she spoke at an anti-Trump rally. Adrian says lots of people (and 2.86 million more voters) did that. But he has an idea and sends the elevator back up so he can snap a picture of the next person the exec is meeting with.

Lord, give me the strength to survive these next four years.

The man is Andrew Hart, one of the only African-American businessmen to run a Trump PAC. He has just moved from D.C. to Chicago to start his own small law firm and cash in on that sweet, sweet minority-owned business tax credit. Just when you thought there couldn’t possibly be more ways for Trump and his reign of hate to ruin your life, boom, another one pops up.

Maia, and her lawyer, go to visit her dad, and his lawyer, back in jail. Their conversation is awkward because no one likes making small talk on billable hours. But just as they are going to part, Papa Rindell grabs Maia in a bear hug and whispers something in her ear as their lawyers freak out. Back at her car she scribbles something on a Post-It as her lawyer gives her the what for. I only took one law class in college, so I don’t entirely understand why this is a problem if both are being covered by attorney-client privilege. Just to repeat, I don’t know anything about money or the law, so I therefore am the perfect person to recap this show.

Adrian and Barbara are trying to manage their Trumptastrophe. One partner, Michael Boatman’s incredibly named Julius Cain, claims it is no big deal. But Adrian knows better. They’re not exactly part of the MAGA crowd as a black law firm that specializes in police brutality cases. His only option is to look, desperately, for a Trump voter within their ranks. Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Ha.

Yes, 94 percent of black women voted for Hillary Clinton. 

So Diane and Lucca are back in court because the Skype doc tried to be a Skype doc again, but got caught again. They decide a two-pronged defense is the best option, with one of those options being Lucca’s devastatingly sexy brain – and the rest of her. She and Colin spar and the judge wonders if they’re a couple. Foreshadowing!

Diane calls Marissa to get a witness, but she has learned her lesson about centering the black characters on the show and goes to the investigator for help. Also, she tries to describe him to Maia as “about this tall, black” before realizing that – unlike basically every other show on broadcast television – that is not an identifier that works here.

Adrian and Barbara are flummoxed. Out of the 80 lawyers and 50 staff, none will admit to voting for the Hate Pumpkin. Reminder: 89 percent of African-American voters were with her (and 94 percent of black women). But then Julius confides in Barbara that he owns one of those stupid red trucker hats. He wants assurances he won’t be ostracized. Oh, a Trump voter needing a safe space? That’s cute.

There, there – how were you to know he would actually govern like a racist/sexist/xenophobe/homophobe when on the campaign he kept being a racist/sexist/xenophobe/homophobe.

Adrian and Barbara bring up the Kanye defense, but get fact checked that Kanye only said he would have voted for Trump if he voted – but didn’t actually vote. My God, the only way this episode would be more amazing is if they included his beef/non-beef/beef again with Taylor Swift.

So now Lucca rushes in to get a bite before court, but there isn’t time. So Colin Lady and the Tramps his burger with her, figuratively. I’ll admit, I like their chemistry. Sure, they’re setting up a James Carville/Mary Matalin situation, but without the geopolitical implications. She relents and accepts half the burger and steals some of his fries because she isn’t here to coddle the patriarchy. She also maybe agrees to drinks after the case because she is also a human person.

Just another woman summarily turning down unsolicited male beef.

They spar again in court. Witness, counter witness. Also, props to Marissa for trying to give credit to the investigator where it is due (and that’s twice now Marissa has been used to showcase Diane’s well-meaning though ultimately unsuccessful navigations in a black space).

By the way, the government’s counter witness is dimpled actor Christian Campbell, who you may remember as the cute gay boy from 1999’s Trick. Yes, my life goal is to identify as many LGBT and LGBT-adjacent TV and film references as possible – why do you ask? Anyway, dimples messes up on the stand and identifies the victim as an “ISIS fighter.” So this gives the defense an opening to find out his identity – an American citizen who went to Syria to stop his brother, a terrorist on America’s most wanted list.

Maia goes to see Uncle Jax to confront him about the Ponzi scheme. He blames the dad, saying he wasn’t intentionally trying to steal people’s savings but instead just wanted to be seen as a “winner.” Maia’s slight nostril flare tells us all we need to know.

Jax’s phone rings (it’s Marissa, hey girl!), which takes him from the room. So Maia springs into action, accessing his computer. Unlike Lost in Translation, we actually get to learn what her dad whispered in her ear. It was the password and file to look up. This sort of plot device always makes me so nervous despite its silliness.

Sorry, my girlfriend isn’t in this episode so I was just gonna rewatch our bed scene from last week again.

Her father wants her to find some “Schtup List,” which sounds really dirty. She does and luckily it’s not a bunch of sex tapes. Instead it’s what looks like names, dollar amounts and bank account numbers. Oh, and I checked, Diane’s name isn’t on there. Maia takes pics of each and then returns to end her confrontation with Jax and storms off.

The firm’s sole Trump voter is being prepped for their meeting with the cell tower people. But he doesn’t want to be defined by his decision to pull the lever for the Cheeto. Adrian asks Julius if he really gave money to Trump, and we don’t get an answer.

Marissa and the investigator, whose name I’m not sure we’ve been given yet, tack down the Syrian-American victim’s mother, who takes the stand in his defense. There’s a lot more legal wrangling, over the semantic of “material support” and airline tickets and Supreme Court precedent. But Diane and Lucca lose, at least for now.

But then the Syrian medical staff call back, desperate for help and the victim’s brother barges in threatening to kill them if they don’t perform the surgery. This is brought before the judge, who now has the emergency workers lives on her head as well. And Colin does not dispute it.

Jill Stein voter realizing Trump and Clinton weren’t actually the same.

The firm has notched its own victory. Julius and his Trump love have prevailed and saved the company’s cell tower contract. We won’t discuss how disgusting it is that businesses must now prove their loyalty to that Angry Creamsicle. But before Julius can go get himself an Orange Julius to celebrate, Andrew Hart is in his office offering ominous warnings about the sad, lonely lives of Trump voters. He says when he starts getting the cold shoulder from mean liberals, he should give him a call.

Lucca joins Colin in the bar for that drink. But she swears he and his gelled hair aren’t her type. She gets up to leave, but he gets a call. And then it’s on the news. The U.S. bombed the hospital where they were treating the victim to kill his brother – and everyone else – inside. The military was using the court delay, and all its legal players, to lure out the brother. So now 34 innocent people and one terrorist are dead. Strange how thousands of miles can turn human beings into collateral damage.

Maia returns to visit her dad, and brings the Schtup list with her. She gives it to him and asks what it will do? Take down Jax, he says. But how about her mom? Well, we’re not sure. I’m not sure of anything either, except that this show has gotten realy, really good.

The Good Fight Episode 102 Recap: The Other Shoes Drop

Oh hi there. How have you been? Good, good. Hey, let’s start this thing off with some horrendous misogynistic and homophobic harassment, shall we? Fun times, fun times. Poor Maia is listening to a barrage of hate left on her voicemail. Her face quivers with disgust, humiliation, anger, fear. See, now, this is why I never listen to my voicemails.

When your workout mix comes on and you remember it’s leg day.

It’s truly awful. I won’t repeat it. But, you know, visit the mentions on any feminist and/or lesbian and/or queer and/or trans activist on Twitter and you’ll get the gist.

It’s Maia’s first day at her new law firm. I whisper my new mantra to myself: Please, please don’t let this show be the wacky adventures of two white ladies at a predominantly black law firm, please, please.

Diane is still having mucho money problems. Her old partners at Lockhart & Seventy-Thousand Other Names are refusing to give her back her capital contribution, even though Lockhart is the first of those 70,000 other names. You see, this is where it helps to have never had any money in the first place. You’ve got nothing to lose. At least that’s what I tell myself as I sprinkle a few basil leaves over my Top Ramen to make it “fancy.”

Lucca meanwhile has been unceremoniously bumped down the hall to make way for Diane. Her new office is a door’s slam away from the men’s room. How the righteous must suffer. Speaking of suffering, Diane and her liberal guilt are awkwardly meeting with Barbara, one of the other named partners at the firm. It’s like watching progressive ladies squirm when black women remind them that 53 percent of white women voted for Trump.

I know, I know – white women voted for Donald Trump. God, what is wrong with us?

Diane arrives at her desk to find Marissa Gold plugging in her computer. As a non-The Good Wife watcher, I have no point of reference here other than knowing she is Alan Cumming’s TV daughter which makes me inclined to like her. I feel my instincts are probably right about this.

Diane’s old partners have sent Marissa over with her boxes. They’ve packed one full of African masks as a joke because racism is just hilarious. Oh well, at least Diane still has her photo with Hillary Clinton to cling to. (Cue jukebox to Tiffany’s “Could’ve Been” and let’s just sway together gently for the next 1,348 days.)

Imma get “BUT HER EMAILS” tattooed on my middle finger.

So Lucca and Maia get tasked with staffing the firm’s pro bono meeting with the Sales Associate, Warehouse & Shopping Mall Union. The firm represents them and offers members quick, surface legal advice once a month.

The longest line forms for Maia, the only non-black lawyer at the event. Um, is that because of racism? Yeah, I’m going to go with racism. Still, because we know this show has a do-gooder heart – I mean, it’s in the damn title – Maia gets sucked into a case about a shoe store worker who says he is unfairly having his wages garnished for stealing. He swears he was pressured into confessing to a crime he did not commit.

Before signing off for Maia to handle his arbitration, Lucca checks in with her to see how she is doing because not all heroes wear capes – just cute pixie haircuts. Maia says she finally is, because nothing takes the edges off of rape threats like hard work – right, ladies?

Back in the office the partners are meeting with the “litigation financiers.” Um, I did not know that was a thing. People really can invest in lawsuits? Hm, I dunno, maybe this is one of the reasons why our legal system is so massively fucked up? Anyway, these financiers have an entitled tech bros feel to them, complete with an algorithm for deciding which cases to back, so obviously we hates them. We hates them forever.

Who would win in a knife fight between me, Patti LuPone and Audra McDonald? Please, no contest.

Diane gets called out of the tech bro summit because Linore Rindell (a.k.a. Bernadette freaking Peters) is there to see her. Diane is, naturally, conflicted. Sure, she’s married to your oldest friend, but then there’s the thing where he also stole all your money. (Again, not having money makes this kind of conflict very rare.) Linore claims her husband’s innocence and her curls are so delightful you want to believe her. You really do.

So now it is arbitration time and it’s actually kind of cute because this is Maia’s first “case” and it’s happening in a shitty, cramped office stacked to the ceiling with boxes. She is clearly nervous, but is using the sisterhood power of Pearl’s portfolio to guide her through.

TV Nerd Aside: The arbitrator is Robert Picardo, who you may remember most from Star Trek: Voyager, but I recall fondly from China Beach. So that makes this episode a mini China Beach reunion because Michael Boatman, who was also on China Beach, is a series regular. Now please just cast Dana Delany and I’ll bust out singing “Reflections” by Diana Ross & the Supremes. Yeah, if you thought mentioning Cybill was a deep cut, just you wait. I contain multitudes. (And am old, I am really old.)

OK, back to the arbitration. Lucca comes in to observe and continue to be awesome. My greatest wish is for Maia and Lucca to become BFFs. OK, my actual greatest wish is for them to become more than BFFs. But Maia has what appears to be a very nice and smart girlfriend and I’m not about breaking up happy relationships – fictional or otherwise.

What do you mean the Lesbian Blogging Community has found us?

They lose the arbitration. But the case – and particularly the manager’s use of some shady sounding “Friedman Method” to get the confession – peaks Lucca’s lawyer Spidey senses. This is about more than just one dude and sneakers. This is about systematic corporate horribleness/unfair labor practices. Class action suit says whaaaat?

Diane goes to visit Henry in jail. He swears he didn’t do it and his brother Jax is really behind it all. So the options here are: 1) he is really innocent, or 2) this is biting your own arm to make teeth marks and blaming it on your sibling to your parents taken to the nth degree. Along the way he also drops a guilt bomb on Maia (by way of Diane) by telling her Lenore’s breast cancer has returned.

Maia and Lucca are now full scheming to get this potential class action case off the ground. Operation Make Them Legal Besties is a rousing success so far. Plus I’m going to have to start some sort of running counter for the meaningful, “Girl, please, did you see that?” looks these two give each other. Maia finds out, thanks to her very nice and very smart girlfriend, that the Friedman Method is an interrogation technique used by cops and now co-opted by corporations.

She goes to a seminar and listens to the dude who thinks he is Tom Cruise in Magnolia profess the virtues of having middle managers coax fake confessions out of unsuspecting employees. You guys, if corporations weren’t people, I’d totally say that they were the absolute worst. But since they are (thanks, Supreme Court), and I believe bullying people is wrong, I’ll just say they can suck it.

There’s already Maia/Lucca fic up? Damn, they’re fast.

Thanks to Diane’s new assistant, Marissa (we will get into the racial politics of Diane surrounding herself with an all-white team later – I promise), the team is able to move forward on the class action. But first firm partner Robert Boseman uses Maia as a prop to get a new judge on the case to please the tech bros’ algorithm. Also, I still can’t get over the fact that people can invest in lawsuits.

So now it’s court time. Oh, look, it’s Christine Lahti. Oh, look, it’s Denis O’Hare. The guest star budget on this show must be crazy. Maybe they got some tech bros with a guest star algorithm to finance them.

Legal wrangles wrangle on. Lucca is great. Maia is pretty great, too. Lahti’s Tesla-driving attorney Andrea is not so great, and filled with condescending compliments and faux feminism to boot. And everybody loves wacky Judge Abernathy and his aviators.

No, yeah. Fifty-three percent, I know.

Maia finally relents and sees her mom (again, she’s Bernadette freaking Peters, how can you not?) Turns out she used the cancer scare as an excuse to meet. Over red wine Maia tries to Friedman the truth out of her mom. But that sort of pseudo-psychology enhanced interrogation is bunk and we all know it. So who the hell knows what the truth is here.

In bed, Maia muses on truth and lies and family while Amy plays with her hair. If at least once each episode The Good Fight puts Maia and Amy in a totally casual yet entirely intimate setting together like this I will be a very, very happy gay lady.

When you’re passive aggressively arguing about whose turn it is to clean the cat box.

Right, so remember when I put a pin in the whole racial politics of hiring Marissa? Now seems as good a time as any to take it out. Barbara comes into Diane’s office inquiring why she didn’t like any of her (all African-American) assistant candidates. Diane says she knows Marissa and she’s “on the ball.” Now, the latter may indeed be true. And, no doubt, holdovers from The Good Wife are pleased to see her on the spinoff. Heck, I think she’s likeable and spunky.

But what exactly is the show trying to accomplish by bringing in not one, not two but three white ladies into this predominantly black law firm? Is this some strange reverse Affirmative Action? All I know is that if you are going to intentionally use a black setting, you’d better also use those characters as more than window dressing. Yes, the focus on Lucca is wonderful. Just please never stop centering the people of color on this show. Thus endeth my diversity sermon.

Now we may return to lawyer land. Andrea offers up a $500,000 settlement to the shoe guy. But, if they take it, the class action goes poof. Lucca tells her to stick it where the Tesla don’t shine – metaphorically. But then – sad trombone – their plaintiff’s past being accused of stealing at another job gets uncovered. And poof, the class action goes away anyway.

Seriously, I saw Jon Snow’s junk. You didn’t miss a thing.

So now mentor and mentee have another heart-to-heart about lies and the lying liars who tell them, but in a nice way. Maia decides to go see her mom again. But when she gets there Mama Lenore has stolen Amy’s lacy satin nightie look. I assume that’s just what rich folk wear around the house. But Maia knows better. Her mom is flushed and trying to rush her out of the house because – oh, look, it’s Uncle Jax with his shirt all unbuttoned. I’m all for having a tight family, but, you know – ew.

The Good Fight Episode 101 Recap: Lawyers, Lesbians & Money

Let’s get a little housekeeping out of the way first. I never watched The Good Wife. Okay, this is a lie. I’ve watched a couple episodes of The Good Wife, but only those pertaining exclusively to Kalinda Sharma being a badass. I mean, that’s a rule. Thou shalt not miss Kalinda going H.A.M. on some dude’s car. Still, as far as following the players and any other characters that were not Kalinda, I am at a loss. Like, Big and Carol Hathaway were also on that show, right?

Coming into The Good Fight my main point of reference to the series is a baseball bat and fond memories of Christine Baranski on Cybill. If you have even the foggiest notion of who Maryann Thorpe was please meet me around back for a martini and to discuss our pending hip replacements.

Right, so now that all that’s out of the way, we shall proceed. We open on the worst day of modern American political history. Donald Trump’s inauguration. In voiceover he is being sworn in as a stunned Diane Lockhart watches, slack-jawed, in a darkened room.

Same, girl, SAME.

That feeling when America would rather elect an angry Creamsicle than a qualified woman.

Then we cut to – Ygritte. The red-haired wildling warrior from Game of Thrones is taking the bar exam. So while Jon Snow still knows nothing, Ygritte (who now goes by Maia Rindell) knows a shit-ton about the law.

Hey, did you know Ygritte/Maia actress Rose Leslie descends from honest-to-goodness Scottish nobility? Like, she grew up in a castle. A castle. The more you know.

When you remember you’ve seen Jon Snow naked.

Speaking of castles, Diane is buying her own chateau in Provence. Look, don’t pretend that if you were also a liberally minded, incredibly wealthy attorney from Chicago you wouldn’t consider checking out of this country for the next four years.

While the inclusion of our new Cheeto-in-Chief was an obvious last-minute addition to the show (like everyone else, showrunners assumed Hillary would win when they filmed the premiere and that the world wouldn’t teeter on the whims of a narcissistic toddler with a Twitter account), I actually think Diane’s new-found inclination to flee is understandable – if not exactly commendable.

Meanwhile Ygritte/Maia is now in her apartment obsessively refreshing the bar exam results page. Behind her a blonde woman slumbers in bed. So at less than two minutes into The Good Fight we have our first bona fide gay ladies. Cue rainbow balloons, streamers and drone delivery of a toaster oven.

Suddenly the page refreshes to results, and Maia is now a real-live lawyer. Jon Snow Status: Still knows nothing, and also kind of a zombie. She bounces up-and-down in bed on top of her girlfriend in celebration because the universe still wants us to have good things – despite what the new White House says.

Mike Pence is scared of this.

Things now start to move quickly. Diane announces she is retiring from her law firm. Maia, who is Diane’s goddaughter and has a last name that carries powerful cache, joins her firm as an associate while worrying about seeming entitled. Maia’s father (played by that guy who was the police captain on CSI), who is in charge of investing all of Diane’s savings, and mother (played by Bernadette freaking Peters) arrive at her lavish retirement party where they needle their daughter about getting married because there’s finally no pesky Supreme Court to get in the way.

Marriage equality jokes! You know, I’d feel a lot better about this if Merrick Garland had been confirmed. Fucking Mitch McConnell.

As her mentor, Diane passes Maia the incredibly metaphoric baton/leather portfolio of the first female public defender in the city. They then join forces on Diane’s last case, a police brutality lawsuit. Unfortunately, they are not representing the black man getting the shit kicked out of him by the cops. So much for that fight being good.

Across the table are lawyers from the city’s most prominent African-American law firms, which also includes Lucca Quinn (played by Cush Jumbo, who you might remember as the fiancée to horrible Jay on Lip Service). Google tells me she is a former associate and friend of Alicia Florrick. Wait, are we allowed to say her name on this show? Or is she the Voldemort of The Good Fight?

I like Lucca because she calls Diane out on being on the wrong side of the table on this case. We can only hope this series delves more into the racial dynamics of Chicago and/or the whole damn country. We can also only hope the increased diversity in front of the camera is reflected behind it as well.

Maia points out what could be a pivotal piece of evidence to Diane. Helps when your family can afford a fancy car with a built-in security camera. But then, bam, shit starts to go very, very wrong. Like FBI agents are in Maia and her girlfriend’s apartment with a search warrant. And agents are at her parent’s house with cuffs. And, oh, did I mention all of Diane’s money – and that of pretty much all the nation’s “liberal elites” – is gone? Ponzi scheme says what?

Fuck, did I remember the dryer sheets?

Cue opening themes with lots of shit blowing up. We get it, show. We get it.

Maia is in shock, soon to be the most hated person in America because – wait, shouldn’t that be her dad? Oh, misogyny. You’re so fun. Her parents’ attorney comes over and wants her to look over papers, but her very smart assistant state’s attorney girlfriend (played by Heléne Yorke of Masters of Sex) tells her she shouldn’t because he is not her lawyer (I know, so much lawyering). Maia wisely turns him down proving for the umpteenth time how much more she knows than Jon Snow. I. Will. Never. Give. Up. On. This. Joke.

Admit it, someone is always cold when you shower together.

So now Diane wants her old job back, but even when your name is on the wall they refuse for reasons I don’t fully understand but will chalk up to old white man nonsense. And Maia is in trouble as an associate for reasons I don’t fully understand but will chalk up to slightly younger white man screaming threats at her nonsense.

Thank heavens for Lucca who has picked up the Kalinda badass mantle for The Good Fight. She tells that angry dude to piss right off. Then she follows Maia into the bathroom where she tells her to get her tears out within its aluminum stall walls. She tells her to harden herself and focus on the work. Also, can we talk for half a second about why American public restrooms have such wide slits in the doorframes?

I know, we should totally use that red/green occupied system like in European restroom doors.

At this point Diane and Maia find themselves on opposite ends of the same shit spectrum. The veteran who finds herself suddenly unemployable and broke. The newcomer who finds herself suddenly a social pariah and probably also broke. Instead of passing the torch to a new young female lawyer, they’re both struggling for daylight underneath that same, still uncracked, glass ceiling.

The face you make right before you look at your phone in the morning to see what crazypants bullshit Trump has done now.

Just when it seems all hope is lost, in comes Adrian Boseman (Delroy Lindo who was so great in The Chicago Code which seemingly no one watched except me because, hello, Bette Porter in a cop uniform) from the lawsuit’s opposing firm. He gives Diane the proverbial offer she can’t refuse – or believe. Come work for him. They joke that she will be his firm’s “diversity hire.” Hahaha, see, because reverse racism isn’t a thing. Like, for real, it does not exist.

He isn’t mad at her like the rest of her progressive friends about the Ponzi scheme. Because, here’s the thing, the Rindell Fund was invitation-only. And, wouldn’t you know it, they never got around to inviting black folks. Like I was saying, reverse racism isn’t a thing.

One of his firm’s other partners, Barbara Kolstad (played by Justified’s Erica Tazel) is none too pleased with Adrian’s audible to hire Diane. Barbara asks Lucca, who once worked with Diane, if they should hire her. And Lucca surprises them and says they should. Something tells me Lucca is the stealth hero of this whole damn series.

Baby, I told you, never read YouTube comments.

In the waning moments of the premiere, just when you’re thinking, this is great. Maia and Amy’s sexual orientation has been almost a non-issue – as it should be in 2017 – we get a “sex tape.” Granted, it’s not really a sex tape of them. It’s just a sex tape that has been posted on TMZ purporting to be them. I know this is meant to illustrate how far tabloid culture will go to sensationalize her family’s scandal.

But, let’s be honest, it’s mostly so The Good Fight could flash “Lesbian Sex Scandal!” across their teaser trailers. Nothing brings in that prime CBS viewership like a “lesbian temptress,” amirite?

Mike Pence is still scared of this.

Diane now triumphantly announces her departure to the firm and tells them not to let the door hit them in the pocketbook. You see, they’re about to have to pay out big-time in that police brutality lawsuit because of the evidence Maia discovered.

But while things are finally looking up for Diane, Maia is getting unceremoniously shitcanned by the other partners. She sheds one single tear before Diane swoops in, returns the leather portfolio/torch and telling her things aren’t over.

You wanna read the Alicia/Kalinda fanfic I write in my free time?