BWW Recap: Just One Man on THE GOOD WIFE

It's been a long time since THE GOOD WIFE made me gasp. Sure, we still get surprising moments from episode to episode; we sometimes even get plot twists that don't get laid out in the weekly sneak peeks. But ultimately, for a spoiler queen who ruins her own fun close-watching viewer like me, I can generally see what's coming next.

I don't usually gasp. Then need to hit pause, so I can pour a wine and raise my glass at the TV screen.

You'd think the episode title might have given it away, hey? "Unmanned". Whatever. It's been a long time coming ...

D.I.V.O.R.C.E

Alicia asks Peter for a divorce. When she confronts her husband in his office over his own confrontation with Jason earlier in the episode, I'm too busy wondering if she's going to slap him (pilot, people) to realise that the moment has arrived. The moment. I've never been in the Peter camp. I've been waiting for this for years. The moment Alicia makes the choice that will liberate her from a marriage that went from bond to bind years ago.

"I want a divorce."

Gasp. Pause. Wine. And then the unsettling feeling that I suddenly feel kinda sorry for Peter Florrick.

Don't tell anyone I admitted that, okay? Let's look at what else happened, instead ...

Woman to Woman

The case of the week brings back Caitlin, aka mini Alicia from the Martha and Caitlin era. Anna Camp is as Caitlin as ever, which essentially means she plays the decent, very good lawyer that Mamie Gummer's Nancy Crozier pretends to be.

It's a case pitting security against privacy. Alicia and Diane (at the request of R.D. Dimple, legal benefactor to anyone with a case that promotes his Libertarian agenda) are representing a man who is losing clients from his medical practice due to the constant aerial surveillance of neighbourhood watch-style drones on his street.

By the end of the hour, the client not only loses his bid to enforce a no-fly zone over his property, he also ends up having to pay damages after he shoots down one of the drones, because it turns out Caitlin is all grown up and a damn good lawyer now. Good enough to take on both Alicia and Diane, and win.

As Caitlin says to Alicia, she did learn from the best.

We don't often see Alicia and Diane lose. Or do they lose in the end? Caitlin is clearly in the market for job security, now that her ex-husband has absconded to Vegas and left her to raise her young daughter alone, and Diane does have that all-women proposition going on in the background. In losing this case, has Diane found another rising woman to join in her history-making firm?

I Don't Wanna Play House

Meanwhile, Cary Agos is walking away. He's tired of the backstabbing and all that looking over his shoulder. He's got a picture of a tropical island taking up his whole laptop screen now, and just as importantly, he's got a mental image of his father showing him where he doesn't want to go.

So Cary quits the firm. Or he tells Alicia he's going to quit, before dropping a bombshell that he too has been subpoenaed to testify against Peter. This comes after Cary asks Alicia one last time to side with him against Diane. And then tries to stop Diane from bringing Alicia back to named partner status.

Question. Are we supposed to feel sorry for Cary because Matt Czuchry is all kinds of sad-adorable? Tempting as that is, here's my (possibly unpopular) opinion on the relationship between Alicia and Cary: Cary has undercut Alicia as many times as she has undercut him. Presently, he's the one who is a named partner, and he's just tried to block Alicia from being returned to her position beside him. A move he makes because he doesn't want to give Alicia any chance to usurp him from his position.

All is fair with love and the law, man. If Alicia's actions make her disloyal to Cary Agos, then the same must be said in reverse.

Or is it only ever women required to be loyal in the workplace?

Stand By Your Man

So Cary might leave. And Eli might testify against Peter, because that creepy Connor Fox is still out to jail his fifth Illinois governor, and has now started to hassle Marissa Gold. Eli knows where his loyalty lies, but if we know anything about our favorite high-strung campaign manager, Eli Gold will have some trick or three up his sleeve to defend himself, his daughter, and the man he's worked so hard for all these years.

I think.

I do know that one man who won't take Peter down is Jason Crouse, even when the Governor (briefly and foolishly) wants to fight his wife's new lover. This one big/little confrontation is what finally pushes Alicia to ask for a divorce. It's not that Alicia needs to trade one man for another - she's very quick to assert this to Peter. It's that she now knows what she could lose, or rather what she stands to gain, by leaving her husband behind.

This is actually a big, progressive #Jalicia episode all round, where we see the new couple growing closer by actually addressing the issues that exist between them (what a novel idea, Alicia Florrick!).

Alicia worries that she's corrupting the faith-filled Jason, and Jason certainly has reason to press pause after Peter gets aggressive with him at Alicia's apartment. But they talk to each other. Alicia pushes for what she wants yet again. And Jason decides to not walk away. The moment when Alicia comes home to her darkened, possibly empty apartment, then opens her bedroom door to find Jason waiting on her bed brings with it a kind of breath-released relief. He shows up. They're both showing up. No gasps needed.

This is contented sigh stuff, people.

We end "Unmanned" with a humbled Peter coming to Alicia, asking her to stand by him one last time. Peter needs her. He's always needed THE GOOD WIFE. So he lays it all out before her. One last time. Alicia takes a deep breath and then-.

We'll find out in two weeks time. What do you think Alicia Florrick is going to say?

PS. Shout out to Leslie Odom Jr. who showed up as a drone expert tonight. Surely there's time for the entire HAMILTON cast to guest star? Just one tiny rap battle before we say goodbye?

Image Credit: CBS