Alicia's Plate Fills Up Just In Time For Her Nest To Empty

We all understand, of course, that Alicia Florrick has a pretty high-powered job that takes up a huge amount of her time. Still, building a season finale episode, in part, around the plot thread that she's being prevented from attending the festivities surrounding Zach's high school graduation and his last day at home before taking off for his summer job at Georgetown is kind of a suspension of disbelief issue. If Peter, THE GOVERNOR, can get his ass back home in time for some lasagna and burnt cake, so can she, right? ...Yeah, okay, not on this particular day. (Also, it's only high school, who cares? It's not like Zach was valedictorian.)

Along with Zach's secondary-school education, a couple of key plotlines get wrapped up in the Season 5 finale: Finn's race for State's Attorney is over, along with Diane's battle for control of her firm with -- as predicted by Sarah in a recent podcast -- her defection to Florrick Agos. Presumably, Kalinda will be coming with her, which is going to be more valuable to Florrick Agos even than Diane's $38 million in billings will be. Merging with Lockhart Gardner might have been bad for the newer firm, but this sure seems like a compromise that addresses a lot of its problems. If Cary and Kalinda have been in league this whole time to effectuate precisely this solution...I mean, did the show spell it out and I missed it? Did the show not spell it out and trust me to be smart enough about all this business wrangling to follow it? Am I crazy? Am I dumb? Probably the last one.

The finale gave us a nice check-in on Peter and Alicia and how they're doing with their "arrangement," now that both their mothers know what they're up to: they may not be into each other, but they're still good at being a team in opposition to both Jackie and Veronica. And while Veronica seems to be all for Alicia getting hers wherever, Jackie's initial alarm seems to have given way, thanks to some red wine, to resignation, at least for now; after all, she never really liked Alicia much anyway, so as long as Alicia's not taking any affirmative steps to harm Peter's career with this new phase in their relationship. Or she's just drunk and will revisit the matter in Season 6.

Finally, there's the cliffhanger question: will Alicia run for state's attorney in Finn's stead? Leaving aside the question of whether the electorate would be okay having that much political power concentrated in one couple (which...I doubt it? Even or especially in Illinois?), I guess we're supposed to think this is the sign Alicia's been waiting for, since Will's murder, telling her what she should do to give her life meaning and purpose. I never really got the impression that what bugged Alicia about being a lawyer was defending guilty people -- other than Colin Sweeney, obviously -- but if she can be on the side of right, clean up Castro's corrupt office, and work more closely with Finn as a boss he can respect for a change, maybe that will help her get back to normal next season and offer an interesting new challenge now that she'll only have half her usual mom duties (and Grace is all Jesusy so she's probably pretty well squared away). It would have been a bit fast for Finn to be Alicia's new love interest days after Finn had been shot and cradled her last love interest in his arms while he died. But this...this can work.

All told: it's been a fun, twisty season. Up until this time last year, I'd always thought of The Good Wife as a very competent legal procedural that didn't really merit all the praise it received, or to be mentioned alongside prestigious, Emmy-begging cable shows. But with Mad Men and Homeland petering out and Breaking Bad over, The Good Wife has earned its stature for me and become one of my favourite shows. I'm really going to miss it this season. But I'll always have my memories of Diane's prettiest dresses.