It's now day 422 of the Trump presidency and for the first time this season the Trump stuff was taken out of the opening credits. I guess we're breaking away from that, at least for now. Also, for the first time this season we start with a case of the week. In this week's episode, Christine Lahti returns as attorney Andrea Stevens who is defending a reality show against a former contestant who is suing them for allowing her to be sexually violated on the show. Sounds like this week's case is a takeoff of The Bachelor controversy, if anyone knows about that. Two contestants got drunk and he allegedly violated her while the show didn't not just stop it but may have encouraged it. Yikes. Diane and Adrian are defending the young woman, Melanie. Now, this one is interesting and complicated because both Melanie and the other contestants were drinking and she doesn't even remember what happened. The lines of consent are going to be muddled, it sounds like. She says she wants four and a half million from the show, and not the guy, Blake, who actually did the violating. She believes that Blake is a victim too and the show is the real villain. However, she has a problem in that the contract states that the show is not responsible for anything that happens on the show. Bit weird.
During this meeting, Diane sees a young man hanging around the office. Her guard immediately goes up and she wants to know who this guy is. She tells Marissa to get Jay to look into it, but Marissa says she can. Marissa talks to the guy herself and finds out he's a delivery guy who was just on the wrong floor, apparently. But Diane is suspicious because the guy didn't have any food on him. Marissa says she thinks he left it at reception, but Diane is not satisfied with that. Marissa says she'll make sure.
Adrian and Andrea (Yeah, say that five times fast) discuss settlement. Andrea lowballs them at 80 grand, Adrian laughs at her because the contract is ridiculous and they will fight it. Not only that, but they want the footage of the attack itself. Andrea says it's proprietary, Adrian says it's not. Let's see what the judge says, shall we?
The judge, played by Rob Reiner (the blessed man who brought us The Princess Bride), doesn't say anything. Rather, he literally throws a book on the ground to make a noise loud enough to make them stop their incessant arguing. The loud bang sounds like a gunshot, so everybody scrambles for cover before realizing they are running from a book, not a bullet. The judge has no sympathy for the lawyers who think they have a target on their back because of the recent string of lawyer murders. He even gets the book back in case he needs to use it again. Cold. Anyways, they get on with their arguments. Diane and Adrian's request for the footage is granted almost immediately, as the judge finds it open and shut that they should be allowed to view material evidence. He bangs his gravel to make it official, making everybody jump again. Dude, chill out Rob Reiner. Blah blah blah All in the Family joke blah blah blah.
So, the show, Chicago Penthouse, sends them not just that footage but all of the footage of the entire season, uncut, and with no timestamps. Yep, it's a dirty game, but one that Marissa is willing to play. She volunteers to watch the footage until she finds what they need. Marissa and Jay find the footage, and it's almost a shot for shot remake of The Bachelor's incident. She's drunk, he's drunk, she takes her top off, and they make out in the hot tub. It's drunken consent, but it seems consensual enough that it hurts their case. Their only question is why the show would want to hide this footage, unless there is something else on it.
Later, Maia saunters over to Marissa, complaining of boredom. Yeah, that stuff that happened with her father last week is heavily glossed over this episode. She nor Lucca are even in the episode very much. I guess their storyline is taking a break to focus on Diane and Marissa this week, which I will not complain about because it's, you know, Diane and Marissa. Anyway, her boredom doesn't last for long because Marissa opens an envelope addressed to Diane and finds a threatening "Kill all lawyers" note with some mysterious powder that falls out immediately and onto both Marissa and Maia. Not good. They freeze, of course, and grab the attention of Diane, Jay, and Adrian who move right into action. Adrian calls 911, Jay gets everyone out of the building (except for Lucca, who stays with them to help like the awesome person she is), and Diane freaks out about being the next victim of the kill all lawyers initiative.
Hazmat guys come in to help Maia and Marissa, and Marissa spends it not fretting about her situation but just flirting with one of the guys. But fret she didn't need to do because the hazmat guys discover the power is just baking powder. False alarm. Later, Maia and Marissa talk to hazmat guy again and Maya cures her boredom by acting as wingwoman to Marissa by inviting him out for drinks.
Also, it turns out that Liz is married to a police officer, Ian, who is one of the responders on the scene. Ian discusses the letter with Liz, Adrian, and Diane. He wants a list of their clients so he can investigate them, but they can't because of attorney/client privilege. This gets personal for Ian because he's now worried about something happening to his wife. Jay says he'll investigate Diane's clients while Diane goes home to shake off what happened. Somehow, I don't think Diane will be able to shake it off very easily. In his investigating, Jay finds out the envelope wasn't mailed to the office, it was brought in by hand. That delivery guy is looking more and more suspicious.
Back to the case of the hour. Andrea shows up and expresses sympathy for the ricin scare. She suggests that they settle the case right now so they don't have to go to trial. Adrian is not on board. He and Liz are going to push forward. So they have a deposition with a producer on the show. Luckily, Marissa has found something incriminating on the tapes. The producer is coercing Melanie into stripping, threatening that she will not get to stay on the show if she doesn't. He doesn't even let her eat, encouraging her to drink from the tequila buffet instead. Needless to say, Adrian and Liz have Andrea and the producer under a barrel.
Maia and Marissa are having drinks at a bar. Quite a few drinks, actually. Drew, hazmat guy, shows up. But he's not there for Marissa, he's there for Maia, or so Marissa believes. But Maia solves that problem by telling him she's gay. A bartender ... Is that the same one from the first episode? I can't remember. I'll look it up and let you know at the end of this review. Anyway, he offers them something stronger than those drinks. I thought this was going to lead somewhere, but it actually gets dropped for the rest of the episode. Weird. However, we do discover Drew is interested in Marissa because they end up hooking up at the end of the episode.
Now Adrian and Liz are depoing Blake. Diane shows up late, having spent her time at home doing something called micro-dosing on mushrooms and hallucinating Donald Trump adopting a pot-bellied pig. Blake stresses his innocence and lambasts Melanie for accusing him of something he didn't do. But she comes back at him with the fact that even though she initiated it, at some point she was so intoxicated that she was no longer sober enough to consciously consent to sex, which he ignored. Jerk.
Jay talks to Diane's client. He doesn't seem to have any ill will toward Diane, only his ex-wife. He definitely seems off, but is he off enough to have done this?
Next, the lawyers depo the former production manager of Chicago Penthouse. She was fired after raising an objection to what happened between Blake and Melanie. However, Andrea turns it around to say that this production manager wanted Blake off the show because she didn't approve of interracial relationships. Her objections had nothing to do with unconsensual sex. It helps her case, but not by much.
Jay joins Marissa at the office while she's going through the tapes. He's got printed papers from multiple clients' offices so he can do this actually cool thing which is to check to see if these printed papers match the letter. Apparently, printers always leave a unique pattern of hidden dots, so if the dots on these papers match the ones on the letter, they've most likely got their guy. However, neither paper matches. Marissa gives him an idea to check the printers from their own office. He does, and it's a match. The letter was printed out from their very own office.
Marissa finds out there's a third camera on the tapes, of which the footage was not given as part of the evidence. The judge tells her to hand it over. You'd think it was over, but the judge makes a sexist remark about Diane not smiling. She laughs in response. Then she keeps laughing all the way out of court, disturbing everyone. Marissa figures out she's micro-dosing. Diane denies it, but then outs herself by asking about Donald Trump adopting the pig. It didn't happen, so Marissa doesn't know what to say other than it didn't happen. Diane can't believe it.
Jay has found the culprit. Turns out it was an associate who was feeling overworked and wanted a day to get caught up. He was afraid he'd be fired if he didn't. Welp, apparently he wasn't afraid of going to prison, because that's exactly what happens.
Adrian shows Andrea the footage from the third camera. It shows Blake and Melanie hooking up in the hot tub, but she gets out of the tub and passes out on a couch. Then, the producer picks her up from the couch and guides her right back into the tub, and Blake continues hooking up with her even though she was barely even conscious. It's terrible, and Andrea knows it. She offers them 3.2 million, and Adrian and Diane celebrate. He tells her about the associate sending the letter, and she blurts out laughing again. Adrian knows something is up. He asks her about her leaving law after all the deaths going on. She assures him she's not going anywhere. Even though she's been haunted by seeing death everywhere, now she no longer cares. It's not a healthy reaction, but Adrian lets it go. Diane realizes it was Liz who must have told him about leaving, so, sans shoes, walks over to Liz's office and lets her know how she feels about that with just two words. If you haven't seen the episode, I won't tell you what they were, but I'll give you a hint; The second one is 'you,' and the first one is NOT 'thank.'
That's it for episode 3. I liked seeing more Marissa, but I'm kind of disappointed in Diane's storyline. It's basically just her freaking out about death and then getting drugged up. It's not something I'm all that interested in and wished she and Christine Baranski had more to do.
