“It’s what you do for family.”
Of all the quotes on “Party”, the 20th episode of The Good Wife’s seventh and final season — and there were many — this one seems to encompass the essence of the series more than the others. Alicia Florrick (Julianna Margulies) is pleading with her son, Zach (Graham Phillips) to not flee to France and marry his girlfriend, Hannah McCreary (Taylor Rose), in the name of family. Peter (Chris Noth) is going to need his wife and kids around as this trial goes down. In a final attempt to sway Zach to stay stateside, she blurts out that statement before walking away.
“Stick around for dad”, is implicit in her wish, and that wish appears to fall on deaf ears.
Yet family is precisely what has been at the center of this television series for about seven years now. All the shit Alicia’s had to swallow in the name of being a politician’s spouse. All the shit those two kids have been through in the name of being born into a family filled with egomaniacal characters. All the shit we’ve had to witness in the name of moving the plot into forward momentum. At this point, all of us — from the Florricks, right on down to your great aunt who hasn’t missed an episode — combine to make one big The Good Wife family. With everything winding down, a heavy dose of empty nest syndrome is about to descend upon all the relatives who weren’t in Alicia’s apartment this week.
Actually, that cluster made for a great — not just good — hour of television. Everybody’s there. Diane (Christine Baranski) and Kurt (Gary Cole). Zach and Grace (Makenzie Vega). Peter. Eli (Alan Cumming). Eli’s daughter, Marissa (Sarah Steele). Howard (Jerry Adler). Jackie (Mary Beth Peil). Alicia’s mom and brother, Veronica (Stockard Channing) and Owen (Dallas Roberts). Jason (Jeffrey Dean Morgan). We even reunite with Louis Canning (Michael J. Fox) and Matan Brody (Chris Butler), even though they never make it over to Alicia’s.
And what’s happening at Alicia’s? Glad you asked. Jackie and Howard are finally making their romance official with a ketubah, a Jewish marriage ceremony that features our two lovebirds signing a contract to prove to the universe that they are, indeed, in love. The event leads to a comedy of errors (or, well, drama) that unfolds like a play (if you think Roman Polanski’s film adaptation of Carnage, you wouldn’t be wrong). Among the errors …
The flowers and cake arrive and it turns out someone messed up the order: they’re actually meant for a funeral, complete with a “rest in peace” message on the cake. Zach pops in with his overeager girlfriend to announce that they, too, are getting married; he’s quitting school and moving to France to be a writer. Eli hires Jason to look, again, into Peter’s mess, before firing him after Peter convinces him he did nothing wrong. Kurt and Diane are The Super-In-Love Couple at a Party. Veronica accidentally spills the beans on Alicia and Peter’s impending divorce to both Jackie and the kids. Marissa wants to be a lawyer. Jason buys Alicia a plot of land on Mars. And creators Robert and Michelle King continue to take shots at the type of uber-vogue television series most commonly seen on AMC or FX or HBO with the deliciously subversive Darkness At Noon, The Good Wife‘s parody within a parody.
Where we end up is essentially a goodbye line for a handful of characters to whom I, for one, am not ready to say goodbye. This is highlighted by a particularly memorable exchange between Alicia and Jackie, as the latter reminds her soon-to-be-ex-daughter-in-law that the two aren’t all that dissimilar. It cuts. Deep. Especially considering Alicia’s uncomfortably dickish reaction to Zach upon hearing the news that he’s in love and leaving the country. Jackie’s never been a favorite character (perhaps a testament to Peil’s terrific acting), but despite her hate-ability being through the roof all these years, she’s had spontaneous moments of poignancy, this, perhaps being the most lasting.
In the middle of all this are a few notable moments. Alicia and Diane pause to look at the firm’s new letterhead, which aligns the former’s last name right next to the latter’s. This is particularly significant because you have to think it puts an exclamation point on The Professional Journey of Alicia Florrick. She started as a bumbling junior associate who didn’t have an office. She ends as a name partner in one of the most prominent female-led law firms in the country. Who says feminism is dead on mainstream television?
Also: Jason and Alicia get confused about being confused. First, she wants to talk while he wants to leave, and then he demands to chat while she’s hosting a party. What’s concluded is that yes, they want to be together, and yes, life is hard. She’s made him want to stick around longer than he might have planned, but he also can’t promise her that he’s always going to want to chill out in Chicago for the rest of his life. But with the kids gone … what the hell, Alicia? Pull a Zach and just go follow your heart.
With only two episodes left, however, one has to wonder if following the heart will indeed be the path taken. Next week is “Verdict”. May 8 is “End”. One has to assume that this season’s arc (Peter’s trial) will conclude next week, leaving the door open to take the final week to explain what these people’s lives will be like for the rest of forever. Once Peter’s fate is decided, she’s free to move along as she pleases (or at least that’s how things work in TV Land). Will she live happily ever after with Jason? Or will all this end as Alicia finds a brand new beginning?
Either way, you just know that the next family reunion for all these characters would be must-see TV. At this point, though, it’s just an enormous shame to know that we won’t be privy to whatever information such a gathering might manufacture.
Approaching The Bench
OK, let’s get back to this. Honestly: you did Zach dirty, Alicia. We get it — the whole thing’s an entirely dumb idea, and as cliché as it is, don’t get a writer started on moving to France to become a writer (to write memoirs before the age of 20, no less) — but to laugh in your kid’s face like that? That’s tough. Heartless even. It leads me to …
Her similar, dick-ish reaction to Jason’s gift of buying her land on Mars. Why did this become such a point of contention for the first half of the episode? It’s clearly a gag gift, and after all this time, and all this Jason bad-ass-ness, we’re supposed to think he’s less of a man because he bought 500 acres on a planet 63 ga-zillion miles away? He likes space stuff. So what? It’s endearing. Cute. She didn’t expect an engagement ring, did she? I’m sorry, but Alicia came away from this episode looking like little more than an obnoxious asshole. Luca (Cush Jumbo), on the other hand, seemed particularly lovable for reasons I can’t explain.
Even though we knocked out a lot of people this week, here’s my updated list of characters I’m going to keep a running tab on between now and the final episode to see if they make one final appearance (because if they don’t, I’m writing a nasty letter to CBS): Finn Polmar (Matthew Goode), Lemond Bishop (Mike Colter), Glenn Childs (Titus Welliver), Colin Sweeney (Dylan Baker), Wendy Scott-Car (Anika Noni Rose), Natalie Flores (America Ferrera), Frank Prady (David Hyde Pierce), Judge George Fluger, Derrick Bond (Michael Ealy), Robyn Burdine (Jess Weixler), Clarke Hayden (Nathan Lane), Nancy Crozier (Mamie Gummer), and Reese Dipple (Oliver Platt). Again, I’ll be keeping track.
So … Mike Tascioni’s (Will Patton) dog is sick, so now he’s out? Huh? That’s just a bit too convenient, no?
Without question this was the most The Wire-ish episode of The Good Wife in a long, long time. The stuff with Jason heading out into the field and interviewing people about this murder/Peter Florrick investigation just felt an awful lot like McNulty running around Baltimore in search of clues. Overall, the pacing of everything felt eerily similar — and absolutely fantastic. Even the scenes in Alicia’s apartment moved well, I thought. Overall, it was a welcome change of pace.
“Marriage should work for us; not us for marriage.” Whoa there, Hannah.
Speaking of that … what do we think about the latest addition to the Florrick clan’s soliloquy on matrimony? She had some interesting things to say, even if they were painfully ignorant and very I’m-23-years-old-and-I-know-everything-ish (but hell, who hasn’t been there?). You just had to wonder how much it could or would affect Alicia. Her position on all that stuff seemed to fall between “Oh, shut up” and “Girl, you have no idea“, and that’s just through her facial expressions. You almost had to worry that she was going to haul off and hit her at one point.
Worth asking: How do we think that night ended between Peter and Alicia and a bottle of wine?
Worth asking (part two): Didn’t we catch up with Zach nine episodes ago in “Iowa”? And don’t you think that when the Florrick family all packed into that bus to head to the Hawkeye State, literally only three-and-a-half months ago, he would’ve mentioned to somebody, at some point, that he met this girl and perhaps this whole marriage thing was being kicked around? OK, so maybe that last part is wishful thinking, but at the very least, the name “Hannah” would have been used, right? The suddenness of it, on some level at least, is just a little too unbelievable for me.
Crazy Prediction of the Week: Hannah? Yeah, she’s Jason’s daughter.