Contributor: Henry T.
Written by Meredith Averill
Directed by Rosemary Rodriguez
I have made no secret of my distaste for the episodes that concentrate storylines on the Florrick children. On an adult show like this, they seem out of place. It also doesn’t help that the writers will often drop certain character traits applicable to either Grace or Zach at random, which makes it hard to take anything attributed to them seriously. Here, it’s Grace’s sudden fascination with death (I think?) and the effects on her peers after one of them commits suicide for no immediately apparent reason.
Zach gets into the political game by helping out at his father’s campaign office. While I think Zach’s storyline has some juice, there’s no guarantee the show will re-visit it in the future. Here, Grace’s character leaves me feeling puzzled. Couple those storylines with yet another violent jealousy saga from Nick regarding Kalinda’s growing number of suitors and I just had a bad feeling about this episode that got worse as it went along. The Case of the Week can’t even save this one because it determined the verdict well before it actually came at the end. There were some good points, but they didn’t do enough to mask the areas that need improvement here.
If everything that Grace and Zach did on the show felt like a natural evolution of their characters from the start, I think it would make their collective presence more palatable. As it is, young suicide is a topic with some weight to it these days, and is worth exploring. The motives for Zach joining his father’s campaign do make sense. The show often mishandles their characters, though. Here, Grace feels sympathy for the former boyfriend of the girl who committed suicide which evolves into romantic attraction. There is no basis for their relationship other than the fact that the girls shared the same first name and that Grace and Connor are regularly playing hooky from school.
Grace is in the public eye constantly — because of her status as Peter and Alicia’s daughter — and she should know this, so it’s no surprise that she is being followed by Peter’s political opposition. They are, of course, looking for anything they can build an attack ad around, and Grace is going to provide plenty of ammunition if she continues hanging around this kid. It feels to me like they’re in a romantic relationship simply because the plot dictates that they must.
Zach’s storyline is basically foretold by Eli. I did like Eli’s little pause when he found out that Zach was the computer whiz secretly working at the campaign. But Eli tells Zach exactly what he needs to tell Alicia about working at the campaign, and Zach delivers it as read. It comes off sounding rehearsed and repetitive. Both Florrick kids are children of privilege, and they act like it to a tee in this episode. I think that’s part of the disconnect I have with them. Grace and Zach act tortured, yet they live a pretty comfortable life and so any storyline that has them doing commoner, middle-class stuff isn’t attention-grabbing.
The legal matters held some initial interest, but that diminished by the end of the episode. A woman arranged for her lover to kill her rich husband, most likely to get to his large fortune. The fortune is large enough, apparently, to get Lockhart-Gardner out from under their bankruptcy debt. This strikes me as a writers’ shortcut to eliminate an ongoing storyline, possibly because there are only so many avenues to resolve it. The previous episode made it clear that the firm faced long odds to get to the $60 million threshold for solvency. All of a sudden, one case takes them from the red to the black just like that? Hard to believe.
The case is tabled, though, when the presiding judge demonstrates clear bias against both Will and his client. The bar conversation between the judge and Will makes the verdict of the motion for removal of the judge a foregone conclusion. The firm’s tactics also left me with the impression that most of them appear arrogant and convinced of their own invulnerability with regard to any cases they take on.
It’s no wonder others in the legal community make jokes behind their backs and judges like Creary and Dunaway would have disdain for the firm’s lawyers. At least Hellinger makes a fine impression as opposition for the firm. Her story is the most interesting of the episode, in that the firm recently represented her in a case, Alicia helped her get a job, and now, she’s going to regularly sit on the opposite side.
Judge Dunaway’s assessment of the case accurately mirrored my feelings about it. While the bias is without question, the character assassination is unnecessary. The firm use of witnesses and gathering information under the guise of being friendly (in Cary’s case) or helpful (in Kalinda’s case) seem in bad taste. But we move on as always, with Lockhart-Gardner securing yet another victory. Sooner or later, those victories are going to have to come at a cost, though
We may be seeing the beginnings of that cost, as Nick orders a lackey to brutally beat up Cary for just being within Kalinda’s circle. It’s become a belaboring point by now, but the whole domestic violence/dominance vibe between Nick and Kalinda needs to come to a swift end. They don’t even seem to like each other or stand being in the same room together so my apathy towards the storyline is justified. I started out worried that I wouldn’t like this episode. It did little to change my mind so I hope the show gets back to running smoothly soon.
Score: 6/10
