There's a certain beautiful symmetry there. On the one hand, Alicia Florrick, with all those recent flashback memories of who she used to be four years ago, before all of this - on the other hand, Will Gardner, in a pub opposite Kalinda Sharma, talking about how neither of them will either be like all those people around them, that they live for this job, for the moment of figuring things out. It's hard to see Will any differently: this is probably exactly who he was four years ago, except with some new scars, but it's that very thing about him that made it impossible for him to forgive Alicia (which is why she is the one, in this episode, who has to take a step towards him because she knows that constantly prosecuting the worst version of each other which they made up in their heads is just going to make life impossible for both of them). He never would have. Alicia grows, Will stays. The meta-level real-life consequence of something like this is that a prolific actor wants to do something different in his career at some point, and decides to leave. And maybe this is far-fetched but the moment you think you're capable of making statements like this, about yourself, you've already trapped yourself. It assumes that there is a limited amount of knowledge that you can have about yourself and Will has now reached that point and with that certainty, he can discount different versions of himself, in the future: Kalinda wants to do something else the next twenty years of his life, but he knows he couldn't (because he went insane for a bit when he was forced not to be a lawyer, even though that just lasted for a second). The sad thing is that he needs to insist that Kalinda is like this as well, because it's lonely being the only person with that burden (and Alicia left - and maybe even Cary leaving left a trace there, we'll never know now). Will Gardner: the downward spiral. Remember the weird tattoo artist who may as well have been imaginary, if The Good Wife were at all like that other show about lawyers that nobody remembers anymore? Or how we never really found out what he ended up telling the Office of Public Integrity guy, if it's a question of poker face or Will just genuinely not having a clue which way to go on this, if hurting Peter is better than protecting Alicia or if hurting Alicia is better than forgiving her, or if it's really just a straight-forward matter of attorney-privilege because he never mixed the two. And then this: a young guy, months ago, stopped for some ludicrous reason by the police while driving, then DNA tested, then accused of murder. Will liked him. Diane brings up the question of his innocence in this episode, Kalinda does (they barely do this at all, but I don't think Kalinda has ever seemed to care, it's about finding the evidence they need more than finding all the evidence). He maybe turned down a plea bargin because of the way Will talked to him, and now he's struggling to convince a jury that the DNA evidence found under the fingernails of the victim were there for any other reason than him murdering her (and the grueling thing is that the moment Jeffrey snaps is when Will is about to present the best case they'll ever have, a shared stretcher when he rode the same ambulance to the hospital as the victim). I'm not sure if it matters whether Jeffrey was guilty all along, if it was just the thought of having to go back to prison (and continuing to either get beat up or face solitary) was enough to make all the little pieces fall into place, a court room shooting, Diane in the room next door, Kalinda in front of it. "There aren't many people that I like left", is what Will said when he attempted an actual pep talk to keep Kalinda. The request to be replaced at LG was a surprise (because how much have we seen of Kalinda, really), and it's maybe a fight for her too, if Will is right and she does live for that moment of figuring things out, but also knows the cost of never being like other people (and when she calls Eli to talk to Alicia, and she's finally on the other end of the line, it's just a reminder of the fact that they literally have not talked to each other for a whole season, and what it took for them to talk to each other again was Will Gardner, getting shot by his client in a sunny court room - I NEED TO TALK TO HER, ELI).
- Five seasons in, Alicia is still trying to figure Kalinda out: "When you say you're seeing her. I thought she was gay?" Aw.
- That conversation was also interesting in hindsight, because initially when Kalinda told Will she needed to talk to him, I thought it would mirror Cary's confession to Alicia that he's been "seeing" Kalinda (who is searching for information about them at the same time, which he's well aware of). But OF COURSE Kalinda wouldn't. This is how you get from expecting a conversation about Cary to Will's "Is this about Alicia" (and the fact that he would know to ask that question).
- By the way, I've never been as fond of Cary as I am now with all the tongue-in-cheek playful "are we the new Diane and Will" stuff. Because by constantly talking about this, even if it's in a joking manner, they are also kind of saving themselves from ACTUALLY becoming the new Will and Diane.
- Not at the center of the episode but definitely relevant in the future: The Office of Public Integrity guy shows Alicia, who has agreed to a voluntary deposition (Cary's her lawyer), a whole bunch of other videos of ballot boxes being replaced on election night. Did Eli know? Did Peter?
- Both Christine Baranski and Archie Panjabi do an amazing job in this episode, with their respective - and very different reactions - to realizing that Will is dead.
- (and obviously Matthew Goode is always excellent but there was something particularly moving about seeing him be completely up to the task of facing Will and then being the one to try and hold the blood in to save his life).
- Nothing will ever beat The Body but it is true, if you've ever experienced the ironic contrasts that life sometimes serves up (that ridiciulous comedian at the correspondent dinner still talking in the background when Alicia finally takes the phone, sees the name on the phone before she starts to listen), the sunshine outside, the way that nothing in the episode seems to work up to that moment because sometimes it's just this random and unexpected and senseless.
- Diane and Kalinda realizing when they see Will lie on the stretcher with no doubt remaining that he's dead what the implications are for Alicia, despite everything else that happened this season.
- Just 39 minutes.
