Death can be random. Will Gardner was convinced of his client's innocence and when he realized what Jeffrey was intending to do, he tried to stop him - which is what cost him his life. Random, sudden, meaningless. Humans, meanwhile, are constantly searching for meaning, trying to find connections and explanations for why things happen. This can be both a consolidation and self-harm: Kalinda isn't going to find peace in seeing everything, understanding everything, trying to comprehend who was responsible and then dangling the possibility of death rather than having to face his own guilt in front of Jeffrey's face. It's just what she does, since she's Kalinda - and she loved Will - but none of it will make any of it easier.
Alicia: I'm going crazy.This is everything, and if it's going to be the base for something new, I'll love this show as much as I used to: The way they say each other's name, and know each other so intimately that they fully comprehend each other in a way barely anyone does in this episode. They both investigate in their own way, and they are both inconsolable.
Kalinda: I know.
Alicia: I don't know what to do, Kalinda.
Kalinda: I have to go.
Alicia: What are you going to do?
Kalinda: I don't know.
Alicia: Sounds like you do know.
Kalinda: Don't worry. I'll see you later, Alicia.
Diane won't find peace in metaphorically killing everyone in her vicinity, but it's still the most glorious she's ever been, in her grief over her best friend whom she loved - firing an intern for not knowing Will well enough for that loud, almost perverse, expression of grief, firing a client because Will would have done the exact same thing, had she died, for forcing him to attend to his needs in a moment of profound personal grief (and saying absurd things like "I loved him, he was my lawyer for eight years"). This is what matters more - being able to embrace Alicia, who knew Will as well as she did and therefore understands the grief, rather than going to the motions of it. And Cary - it's only bits and pieces of Cary at this point, but as he tries to comprehend Will's passing, the main thing is his fury over still having to deal with the day-to-day of lawyering, of not being given the basic human decency of figuring out his emotions. Someone pushes him too far, and he pushes back, and in that process becomes the best lawyer version of himself, maybe (and one that eerily resembles Will at his best). He knew how much Will meant to Kalinda and Alicia and Diane. Alicia isn't going to find peace in desperately trying to reconstruct a phone call that never happened, because that's not how life works. You don't get the sudden, meaningless death and then, like a gift, a miracle, a message on your phone that gives your closure - the most perfect moment this episode, Alicia listening to Will's last message, which is nothing, really, an interruption. And it's everything, because the potential of it takes a life of its own in Alicia's head. Was Will angry over F/A stealing another of his clients? Was he going to be reconcillatory, angry? Would he have told her he loved her, which would have been the truth, and that he wanted to be with her forever, which is maybe what she would have wanted, at least in retrospect, because nothing about Peter relieves her profound and inescapable grief? She won't know. She can try to assemble and re-assemble the bits and pieces she has of him - what he would have done, based on the intimacy of how well they knew each other, what the people who didn't know him at all saw him do the last moments before he died (Matthew Goode is a relevation this episode, re-telling Will's last moments while all his instincts about how to behave in this situation are shut down by pain killers). None of it will provide closure. The last thing he ever told her is that he would call her back later and she will never know what that call would have been, because life doesn't make sense when it's seen backwards, from the perspective of death. This is a learning moment for Grace as well, and one that she will hopefully will glad she had early in her life, rather than late: her religion, her faith, does nothing to console her mother, who can't bring herself to pretend that she believes in a good and forgiving god. No god isn't better than any god, but it's truer, and there's nothing worse that she can imagine in that search for the truth about Will than telling lies to herself.
- Alicia's "this was supposed to be my case" is one of those moments, because she realizes it might as well have been her in that court room.
- Pointed out elsewhere (because it's true): Going from Alicia finding out that Will has died to Eli trying to make it through a speech originally written for Alicia is so essentially The Good Wife. This isn't artificial comedy, it's the comedy of an absurd and chaotic and at the same time randomly beautiful universe.
- Of course David Lee would go straight from sobbing for a milli-second to figuring out exactly what needs to be done to assure that the firm is safe. He's honest that way too.
- KALINDA is amazing this episode, I haven't loved her as much as this in ages. This is what she does - what Will told her she would do, essentially, in that last conversation. She seeks the truth, which includes looking at the devastation and the blood and the grim biological reality of death, to make sense of it. It's not about what anyone said, the emotional facts of loss, it's what kind of bullet killed Will, who was responsible in the most real and immediate sense for his death, and then denying that person the easy way out he so desires. I don't think that this.... vengeance... or whatever it is, gave Kalinda any satisfaction or closure, but it's the only way she knows how to be (and amazingly, Jenna knows this as well, so instead of intervening at any point, she just follows her around and facilitates her specific expression of grief, which, if I were more romantic than I am, would make me say that I really wish they'd keep Jenna around for a while longer).
- So Damian was nothing but a red herring all along? (when Alicia tries to figure out in what state of mind Will made that last phone call, she's told for a moment that he did it angrily, because of the stolen client - but Finn later explains that he was actually going to fire Damian for stealing clients from the firm) The Good Wife is so fucking good at zagging. It's like a reverse-Caitlin, almost.
- Another favorite moment, because it's a bit understated, is Eli's reaction when Peter blames him about doing damage control - he almost flat-out tells Peter that he wishes he could grief and deal with his emotions except he can't, because maybe Peter stole the whole fucking election and he JUST ISN'T SURE if he did. Alicia and Peter seem like strangers this episode, in his ability to fully comprehend or share her grief, and the fall-out of all of this will be so interesting.
- Cary: I wanna get out my aggression and my anger by destroying your client.
- "You think god is good? I don't find any good here. Kid picked up a gun,, didn't even mean to shoot Will. It was just some stupid accident. What does it mean?"
