What I’m Watching: The Good Wife

The Good Wife: Season 3, Episode 19 “Blue Ribbon Panel” (B+)

This episode cleverly took on corporate bureaucracy in two vastly different arenas, as the three hotshots at Lockhart Gardner vied for Will’s position and Alicia found herself on a panel utterly uninterested in her legal abilities. Eli and Julius flipping a coin to decide which of them would oppose David was quite entertaining, and I was impressed by Will’s sly peacemaking solution, which put Jerry Adler’s bathroom-obsessed, porn-surfing lawyer Howard in his position in an interim capacity. Alicia’s experience on the panel was wholly negative, though Charles S. Dutton Pastor Daniels seemed less inclined to censor her and somewhat eager to allow her to voice her opinions. Matthew Perry’s Mike Kresteva is a cruel, vindictive character, much more harmful to Alicia than the disgruntled judges played by Kurt Fuller and Peter Rieget, both previously seen on this show. Alicia’s heartfelt letter to the owner of her house was quite intense, and it appeared to worked, though it didn’t achieve the desired effect of getting her lower offer accepted. Jackie buying the house is sure to cause conflict, and I like how this episode ended without resolving it. Kalinda being audited is a headache, and it’s clear that she doesn’t like to be messed with, as evidenced by her very public flirtation with Jill Flint’s FBI Agent Lana Delaney. If there’s one person who is overworked more than any other on this show, it’s Alicia, who’s balancing so many things that sometimes she literally can’t handle more than one at a time.