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Going into last night's episode of The Good Wife, we knew one fabulous thing: Nick was gone. For good. He wouldn't be returning with either his school bully snarl or vulgar ice cream parlor antics. He was gone. Phew. Done. Thank God, right?
Well, yes. Except Nick's absence was also the only fabulous thing about last night's episode. In "Boom De Ya Da," Alicia reacquainted with an old nemesis, Diane Lockhart glared at Nathan Lane in over six ways, and Kalinda appeared for a quick minute to show us she was Nick-free Kalinda. Otherwise, the episode was a dull, almost nondescript regurgitation of the firm's familiar woes and Eli's familiar grimaces. I never want to feel sick of Eli's maniacal responses and pointy face. And here I am, mirroring his frown in a sad update of the Harpo-and-Lucy act. Noooooo.
Nonetheless, here are some provocative moments worth revisiting. Let's add 'em up.
1. Nathan Lane is back with a sack of sad for everyone.
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All hail the bastardly existence of Clarke Hayden (Nathan Lane), the most grumpily bespectacled character since Mad Men's Miss Blankenship. He'll wither his way into your boardroom and grumble about creditors like a very lame Satan. He's a buzzard in your Birdcage.
This episode, he attempted to dropkick Will and Diane out of the firm since they thwarted his planned merger "for personal reasons." Oh, whatever, Nathan. It doesn't take a side-eye between Diane and Will for me to realize you're hopeless. This storyline has to end sooner or later, and now it appears -- following the judgment at episode's end -- that we have another five weeks to see if he's going to sink Lockhart-Gardner. Ugh, what. Unless this is a prelude to an exciting new chapter of The Good Wife where Diane simply kills Clarke by running over his slow ass with the greased wheels of her swivel chair, I have the feeling the firm's unending troubles will be unceremoniously tied up within the month. Yuck. Let's rectify this situation by thinking about comely men.
2. Can we just rename this show Deposition of 1,000 Stars?
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Now joining (or re-joining, depending on the role) the Good Wife cavalcade of conniving guest actors: Mr. Michael J. Fox, whose work as the nefarious Louis Canning is still enjoyable, the homosexual favorite T.R. Knight, who follows around Eli in case he's taken off Peter's campaign (Could this be sexy and carnally gay? Here's hoping.), noted character actor James Rebhorn, playing Canning's shifty CEO client, and even Anika Noni Rose as Wendy Scott-Carr, who reappears to formally ruin Eli's life with an investigation. This is deemed allowable despite her botched campaign against Peter, but let's not even try to justify that jump in credibility with actual thoughts. "No one disappears!" Eli clamors. "They all come back like zombies!" He couldn't be more weirdly-aggressively-meta-on-the-nose right.
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Of the four orbital newcomers, Knight is currently most fascinating, even though Fox wickedly tells Alicia at episode's end that he purchased a chunk of the firm's debt and implies he's their personal grim reaper. I simply don't know where Knight's character is going, though he is still cute as a nervous little button. He remains the most ideal man on Earth to hug. Let's cling to that loveliness. Or at least instruct Eli to do so. With his legs.
3. Ugh, Eli. We need to get you another emotion.
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Eli is on autopilot. He spent another hour stammering, pacing, fretting, and resembling a living exclamation point. I'm trying to decide how I want Eli to evolve: Perhaps he'll skip town like he's in a Grisham thriller, and Alicia will have to track him down in the Seychelles? Maybe he'll run against Peter in convincing Maura Tierney drag? Maybe he'll nonchalantly reveal that he has slept with literally everybody who has ever walked in the door of Lockhart Gardner? And maybe there are scandalous pics with Cary that will circulate in the office and wind up on my desktop forever? I need something. Eli is a fabulous character and Alan Cumming is a revelation in the role, but his issues aren't compelling enough.
4. This should've been the greatest scene ever, and for some reason it wasn't.
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Kalinda -- like a guardian angel sponsored by Prada -- arrived at Alicia's hotel door in remote Minnesota. Alicia waited night and day for Louis Canning and his client to comply with her scheduled deposition, but mysterious delays kept interfering. When Kalinda showed up with extra clothes for Alicia, the two should've enjoyed a great bonding moment. We mostly got silence, and that is deeply disappointing following Alicia and Cary's sweet, personal chat (also set in a hotel room) some weeks ago. I guess we should cherish the fact that Nick never came up, and it never even felt like he should come up. But the relationship between Alicia and Kalinda is a new place, and I wish we'd seen some sort of fresh dynamic between them. Instead we saw that lamp.
5. Wait. Was that... a bad acting moment from Julianna Margulies? NO! Say it isn't so!
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Deep breaths. Here I go.
I visibly gawked at a flimsy acting moment from the goddess Margulies. This is the exception that proves her prowess, because she's so casually convincing and cool as Alicia that I simply never question her presence onscreen. It's kind of refreshing to see her slip for even a millisecond. But I stopped, paused my DVR, rewound, and watched again the first time Canning's client walked out on Alicia's deposition. In her thrilling shock-red blazer, Alicia squawked at the runaway recluse, "W-w-wait a minute!" with the contrived air of a high school drama student. It was weirdly stilted. "Phony" sounds a bit harsh, but whatever the issue was, it rendered the scene's action unexciting. We needed genuine exasperation from Alicia to believe this guy's shady ways, and instead she just seemed uninspired. Boo this! Let us never speak of it again!
Wow, this turned into a dour recap, and I apologize. Did you dig this episode? Why? I bet you didn't.
