Ten minutes into last night's Good Wife, I figured we'd spend this morning gushing about the episode's first scene, a six-seasons-in-the-making tableau that reversed the show's opening image of Alicia standing soberly to the side of a scandalized Peter. Or, I thought, we might geek out over Freddy from House of Cards (Reg E. Cathey) joining the show's esteemed roster of judges.
Then, s—t got real.
Kalinda's metadata fakery, which reached critical mass last week with the revelation that Diane could go to jail over it, reached the point of no return this week. Cary was being all dashing, trying to convince Geneva Pine to let him take the fall, but Kalinda "I'm fine" Sharma was having none of that. She pinched a thumb drive from Dexter Rojas' car and downloaded all the trucking schedules and who knows what else A.S.A. Pine could ever need. (Maybe now Geneva can loosen that pony and chill. The eff. Out. Does that girl ever exhale?) Bishop caught onto all of it when he returned home (from a trip to Jo Malone, as I imagine it, since I've long maintained that he looks like he smells great) and found a notification waiting for him on his computer: A USB hadn't been ejected correctly.
We all know that after years in the biz, homegirl can work an external drive as well as she can thigh-high leather boots. And that's when I realized that we'd spend the rest of the episode being subjected to the play by play of Kalinda bringing down Kalinda the only way she could: by intentionally being average, rather than great. She sent Bishop straight to Rojas, who sent Bishop right back to her—this was essentially the baby board book version of a Good Wife story line. Bishop and Rojas thought they were catching Kalinda in a sloppy lie, but the sloppiness was by design. She wasn't trying to escape. In fact, we'll probably find out that the mess Cary came upon in her apartment was staged as well—you don't invite someone to kill you and then put up a fight.
There are two episodes left in this season, which means we could still see this plotline twist toward something less painful: Perhaps there, in the note to Alicia, is some coded indication that Kalinda faked her own death and left town. The spin-off potential for that scenario is limitless. Or maybe she seduced Bishop and she's Dylan's new mom! Kalinda and Bishop have always had a somewhat Fifty Shades vibe, wouldn't you say?
Fine, that's probably too optimistic. Especially because this show doesn't do easy, sweet death. No one's ever taken their last breath looking bronzed and peaceful. The Good Wife prefers to take out characters with abruptness, quiet cruelty, and loose ends aplenty—really, it's just Breaking Bad with better tailoring. After the gut punch that was Josh Charles' departure, I didn't imagine that Archie Panjabi would get a sendoff with the soft-focus melodrama of the one enjoyed by, say, Denny on Grey's Anatomy. For this show, even Panjabi's brief look into the camera and appropriate final line—"Goodbye"—felt a little indulgent. Next week, it'll be on The Good Wife just as it is in life: Everyone will have to get back to work.
