The Good Fight - First Week - Review: "Giver her two weeks..."

"Hi, Good morning. Fuck you."

Anecdotally I've heard and read that it's really in episode 2 that people really started to enjoy The Good Fight. It's easy to see why, as this episode gives more room for each character to work with: Maia is given her first assignment at Reddick & Boseman; Diane learns more about the Rindell scheme; Lucca handily takes lead on the case of the week; Marissa Gold makes her debut. 

"Comforting, but not necessarily effective."

Wait, you literally make like no money?! 

In what starts as a routine meeting with members of a worker's union, Maia and Lucca find themselves on the cusp of a multi-corporation class action lawsuit. Through employing the use of "the Friedman method," which is a tactic that is supposedly taught to police officers to gain insight from interrogations, middle management in multiple large firms were apparently borderline torturing employees over unsubstantiated claims of theft in order to garnish their wages. It was outright disgusting, the further they delved into the method and its applications.

Lucca led the case with Maia being second chair, once it left arbitration and fell into a court. Cush Jumbo and Rose Leslie knocked it out with their duo of  Lucca's assertive and concise arguments and Maia's sheepish, but increasingly improving first time attempt at cross-examining a witness. It was hard not to verbally root for Maia, and she had the perfect judge to start on, in Judge Abernathy (Denis O'Hare, sunglasses and all). Christine Lahti returned as a supremely dismissive and conniving opposing attorney who even managed to catch Lucca off guard a few times.

In an uncomfortable twist on a case that had been going well due to a lot of teamwork in Reddick & Boseman, their original test case, the man whose wages were being garnished, had a former place of employment quietly terminate him under similar circumstances before, which de-legitimized their entire claim on the class action lawsuit. It's left a bit ambiguous, but I believe this one was a loss. Diane and Maia, near the end of the episode once again discuss duplicity, as she states he might have lied before, and was being truthful this time. No one is 100% one thing. It echoed the statement from the pilot about saints and the guilty, and it also seemed to touch on the situation with Maia and her parents.

"I'm better in person."

Diane's first week at Reddick & Boseman starts with a two-pronged attack from David Lee. First: the firm decides to hold onto her capital contribution in order to "ascertain" her level of tenure. Yes, they wanted to investigate the validity of her claim, as one of the founding members of the firm. Secondly, he shipped an off-color "gift" of African-style masks to Diane either instead of her belongings, or alongside them to make for an embarrassing moment happen whenever opened.

Housekeeping was Diane's main concern this week, as she was brought into the new algorithm-based caseload decision-making meetings, and had to find a useful assistant quickly. Thankfully, it was Marissa Gold (Sarah Steele) that was sent to bring Diane's office possessions to her new digs, because Marissa Gold is still the best Gold. (Given that Alan Cumming's Eli Gold was one of the very best regular characters on The Good Wife, I hope I'm making it clear that Marissa is just the sassy shot of investigative fun we needed!)

Please don't make me go back to selling smoothies.

Immediately after helping Diane, she finds a way to keep her foot in the door to stay with Diane as an assistant instead of lagging back in the corporate wasteland that is Lee, Lyman, Deckler, etc. And while persistent, at first it didn't seem like Diane was very keen on keeping Marissa around. Which makes narrative sense, because Marissa was only around Eli and Alicia in the original series. She didn't interact very often with Diane. But, once she got a taste for the case Lucca and Maia were working on, Marissa was able to gain traction on a possible class action suit, just by doing legwork at the local mall, where she chatted up her former workmates. Having proven herself through providing names for a multi-corporation level suit, Diane hired her on the spot.

Again, please let me reiterate just how much levity Sarah Steele brings to the show with Marissa Gold. I'm really hoping she develops more towards a proper investigative role, as it suits her.

Barbara eyed Diane over the course of the episode. Between the awkward package in Diane's office, her immediate hiring of Marissa Gold after a spate of candidates was left for Diane to interview through, as well as her inability to immediately provide a capital contribution it seemed like things were going as she might have expected, but didn't appreciate. She doesn't seem impressed yet with Diane, even though Adrian is very supportive of her. (This is very much like the situation where Will Gardner brought Alicia into Stern, Lockhart & Gardner, and then supported her while Diane was less than excited at Alicia being thrust into the firm on what seemed like a whim).

"That could take years..."

Definitely not suspicious-looking. Nope, not at all.

In the midst of Diane settling into her new position at Reddick & Boseman, Lenore Rindell visits her, and pleads with Diane to see Henry in prison. At first, Diane balks, but Lenore claims they've been falsely accused, and Henry is Diane's oldest friend.

Diane decides to visit Henry, where he discusses how even though he is innocent, Rupert, his attorney claims the optics are bad and he should take a deal. Diane insists on finding a lawyer, and mentions that it is unlikely that Maia would see him or Lenore until the ordeal with the lawsuit is settled. He claims Lenore doesn't have that long to wait due to her breast cancer having spread further and into her lymph nodes. Separately, viewers get to see Henry become quite emotional over his daughter's success, and how she'll eventually outpace the rest of them in her success. It felt very genuine, especially compared to any conversation with Lenore.

Diane takes this information to Maia, and later Amy calls Maia to let her know that her mother has come to visit her.

When Maia and her mother sit down together to talk, Lenore claims her cancer is under control, and though there was a scare, it's nothing serious. So, it is implied that someone --Lenore, or Henry-- emotionally manipulated Diane and Maia into seeing her mother when she was trying to keep her distance. Maia tries the "Friedman method" on her mother but of course draws no proper conclusive tells from her mother.

Rose Leslie really sold the yearning and vulnerability of a woman who is trying to both make sure her mother is ok, but also worried about how she could be involved in the scheming. Bernadette Peters, at least from what I can tell, has played it in a way that I've been pretty suspicious of her from the beginning. Now that there's a "cancer scare" to lure her daughter close to her in the middle of a legal shitstorm, that made her look worse. However...In the last scene of the episode, we see Maia discover that apparently Lenore is in the middle of having an affair with Maia's uncle... Who they repeatedly have claimed is the one really behind the whole scam.

Damn. 

Also,
Why is he looking for tea? Like, if they were doing the do, why do they follow up with tea? Am I mis-remembering this? This whole thing was off. Is tea after extramarital affair-sex a thing?

Notes:

- The text messages Maia had blowing up her phone were both frightening and sometimes just plain weird. The writers definitely got a fair share of profane things thrown into this episode, without having the main characters do all the cursing. (There's only so many times Diane Lockhart can say "fuck" before it seems forced for such a polished and articulate character)

- Elevator Ding! First thing's first, we see Michael Boatman's Julius Cain escorting Maia to her seat. Good Wife fans will remember him as one of the managing partners of Lockhart & Gardner, who often butted heads with David Lee. He was absent during the latter half of the original series for the most part (showing up only for an episode in season 6 when the emails leaked from what I can remember) so it would make sense that at some point he would be drawn into a more welcoming firm with better prospects. He wasn't ever a favorite character, but it's nice to see where characters have landed after The Good Wife.

- Lucca sticks her neck out to get Diane in the door... She comes into work the next week to see that she's been displaced by the new partner at the firm.

- During the union consultation, was I reading the subtext correctly in that people were flocking to Maia's line (even waiting while other lines were empty) because she was white? Even though she was brand new? That's unfortunate.

- The African masks are classic David Lee. What an awful man. (I still giggled at the awkwardness)

- One of the 2 nerdy guys with the algorithm was played by Zach Booth, who played one of my favorite characters, Patty Hewes' son Michael, in Damages. Glad to see him pop up in another favorite series!

- Was it just me, or was Marissa telling the group of women waiting in the lobby "there might not be a job here" a little too off? That rubbed me the wrong way. But, Marissa is pretty awkward at times, I suppose.

- Adrian's attempt to get a judge to recuse himself by bringing Maia along for the case was interesting. It's played to viewers as Maia getting her first shot at the case, but really he brought her solely due to her ability to conflict the judge out of the case. His antics in court once again remind me of Will Gardner, and I'm worried at this point he's effectively the same character -- looking for more depth for Delroy Lindo to play into that distinguishes him from Diane's former partner.

- Adrian's response to the Union's leadership claiming they were threatening him by actually representing the client's interests instead of just seeming like they were was hilarious, and also once again telling. I wonder if we're going to gain insight into some of the stuff Adrian's gone through on his way to the top. (Barbara too, please!)

- Diane seems to be on the path to coming directly into Barbara's crosshairs. First, she shows up without a contribution for her partnership, then she seemingly fast-tracks Marissa Gold over multiple candidates that Barbara had lined up for Diane (when in reality, Marissa made herself invaluable for that class action case by finding others to join the suit even without being hired or asked), and Barbara was already leery of Diane's intentions. I really hope this adds up in a proper form of conflict, and not just a "power struggle between women" sort of arc. That might feel forced. We shall see.

- Judge Abernathy is always entertaining and quirky. But, from now on, he is also required to wear sunglasses in court.











Screenshots: The Good Fight

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