Alicia's Victory Party Is Definitely Over

Castro vs. Alicia

The glow of Alicia's walking into Florrick Agos Lockhart to the cheers of literally everyone in the suite and then into her own office, which is crammed with baskets and gifts, wears off...in seconds. First, Marissa tells her that she's not allowed to drink the champagne someone's given her: the ethics rules prevent her from consuming any gift worth more than $75, and I guess her benefactor didn't cheap out on this bottle. Even worse: her first visitor of the day is Castro. He starts out oily as hell, saying he wants the passing of the baton to go smoothly, so maybe she should consider making her #2 the current deputy, one Phil Laurie. Alicia's like, nah. Next? Castro, getting a lot more chilly, lets her know there's an unwritten rule in the SA's office that the incoming person doesn't investigate his or her predecessor -- which he mentions given that whole thing where he tried to lock up her law partner. Alicia makes it clear that she doesn't give a shit about rules that are unwritten, forcing Castro to hint that there's plenty of shit Peter did that he could have looked into but didn't, and when Alicia points out that he's a lame duck and can't really do anything to her, he snaps, "A lame duck can still tank your record before you get started. I can overload you with loser cases so your stats will be screwed when you drop them." He runs into Cary as he stomps off, and snits, "Your friend, Alicia Florrick? She's playing in a field where she thinks she knows the rules. She doesn't." UMMMM NOT SURE THIS IS REALLY THE DUDE YOU'RE GOING TO GET ONTO YOUR SIDE, BUDDY.

Winner: Alicia...for now.

Cash, Money, Goes

Situation: Since Alicia has somehow managed to get herself elected SA, it's time to discuss her exit package as she departs Florrick Agos Lockhart.

What makes it awkward? She wants a lot more money than her partners want to give her -- and though Cary, at first, advocates for her to get something close to the number she and her representative Finn are pushing for -- $650K to the firm's $350K -- when he sees her making nice with Castro later in the day (at Eli's furious urging, which we'll get to), he's a lot less inclined to advocate on her behalf.

How is order restored? It's not; we leave the matter on a cliffhanger of sorts, which we will also get to.

Pig, Meet Shit

Who called the meeting? Guy Redmayne -- remember him?

What's it about? He also has a suggestion for Alicia's #2 in the SA's office -- some dude named Dean Lumpfer, or at least, that's what it sounds like coming out of Redmayne's geriatric mushmouth.

How'd it go? Well, gross, because he's gross. He starts by forcing Alicia into a hug, and in short order goes on to tell her about having gotten his start selling shoes, and how you can tell everything about a woman's taste from her feet, and SPEAKING of a woman's feet (and her taste, I guess), he'd like to pay Alicia a lovely compliment about hers! "There was this whore in Arizona...She had the most elegant little feet....Cute little piece of ass. And she could do the most amazing things with her feet -- and your feet are like hers!" When he finally gets around to his ask, Alicia politely tells him, "I'm going in another direction," and all talk of filthy foot business ends: Redmayne reminds her that he expects consideration for all the money he shelled out: "I spent seven figures putting you into office. It won't cost me nearly as much to get you out of it." As he's getting ready to leave in high dudgeon, he runs into Bishop -- Kalinda having already called and fulfilled her obligation to get him on Alicia's calendar -- and snaps, "I should've known, it's always the coloured guys." Bishop, hilariously, is like, "EXCUSE ME?!" but Redmayne has no shame: "No no, don't worry about it. I'm on your side, you got it? I gave enough to the Negro College Fund to give the whole friggin' Congo a scholarship." To Alicia, he barks, "This may seem like power to you, but it isn't. You give me twenty hours, I'll show you power." He punctuates his departure by blowing her a VERY dry kiss.

It's not great.

Bishop vs. Alicia

Well, here we go again. Bishop basically begs Alicia to send Marissa out of the office, and when she won't, he has to euphemize all over it about his plans to "get...out...of the business." Alicia thinks it sounds great that Bishop wants to spend more time with Dylan, but Bishop explains that in order for him to do it, he needs something from her -- to scuttle Geneva Pine's investigation against him. Alicia seems only to be hearing about said investigation right now, but recovers quickly, saying she'll be happy to do so AND give him immunity, if he testifies against his lieutenants. Bishop, in a cold fury, says she knows he'd never do that, and tells her he spent $1 million starting her PAC. Alicia tells him that (a) she didn't ask him to, and (b) the campaign laws protect her, since she can't co-ordinate with her PAC at all. "This was not a smart move," says Bishop. "This was not a smart move at all." It SEEMS like he's saying it's not smart of her, but like, also, maybe it wasn't smart of him? Three fingers are pointing right back at you, buddy!

Winner: Alicia?

Ask A Young Person How Torrent Sites Work Before You Write An Episode About One

God, so the case of the week finds FAL representing a filmmaker, Vince Dalton, in a suit against The Pirate Bay WharfMaster, a file-sharing site; his claim is that he's owed damages because the site distributed his movie in advance of its theatrical release, tanking it at the box office when it finally came out. The rounds of negotiation go through some believable plot turns -- Nathan Bacevich, the WharfMaster owner, is disproven in his claim that neither he nor any of his employees can possibly know whether copyright infringement is happening; then Dalton loses ground when Bacevich's lawyer shows that the file of the movie was posted by his own PR company -- but then FAL decides to try arguing "trademark tarnishment" because the file of the movie shares space on the WharfMaster page with a bunch of ads for hardcore porn ads. So far, so realistic...until Bacevich's lawyer claims that the only reason Kalinda was seeing those ads when she pulled it up is that she was using Howard's computer and he surfs so much porn that the site's targeted ad software naturally serves him ads for sites it thinks he'll click on. Except the reality is that torrent sites can ONLY get ads for porn because no legitimate brand would be associated with sites where illegal file sharing doesn't just sometimes happen, it's THE POINT OF THE SITE.

Um. Or so I hear.

Finn Is Not Your #2, Dummy

In an intermission after another failed round of exit-package negotiations, Alicia takes the opportunity to offer the highly sought after #2 job in the SA's office to...Finn. Considering how obviously idiotic this is, I can't believe it takes like ten more scenes for Eli to show up again and yell at her some more, so let me just get to it now: Finn is a TERRIBLE choice for this job! He's connected to no one and does absolutely nothing for Alicia politically! How can she have been married to Peter all this time and be SO STUPID now that she's actually been elected herself?!

Loose Lips Fingers Sink Ships Law Firms

Alert Type: Hack Alert.

Issue: In retaliation for FAL's representing a client who's anti-WharfMaster, a shitload of the firm's emails from the past four months have been leaked to a site that's the Gawker of the legal profession. (Sounds riveting.)

Complicating Factors: Everyone who's written any email at this firm is apparently constitutionally incapable of hitting "send" until they've insulted someone, including their own colleagues. Also, while Alicia escapes for the moment because, for the past four months, she's only been using her campaign email address, the hackers threaten to release two years' worth of emails unless FAL drops the suit -- and since those date back to when Will was still alive, if that happens, she's fucked, as Marissa informs her when Alicia tasks her to read through her backlog.

Resolution: Alicia pulls out some gems from Diane and Cary's own backlogs -- "Let's huddle about the Connelly billings. I want to head that geriatric blimp off at the pass" - Diane -- and informs them that they need to settle the suit immediately.

Spoiler: Alicia makes a good point, but before her words can be heeded, shit gets real and people find out what everyone thinks of each other.

Bishop returns, in a better mood! He tells Alicia she's probably right that it won't hurt her if he goes public with the PAC thing, but that it might interest her to know he also gave his captains some "walking-around money" and sent them into African-American neighbourhoods -- you know, areas where support for her was not so strong! So maybe that will make it worth her while to think about Geneva Pine's investigation? Alicia: "Thank you for your thoughts, Mr. Bishop. All options are open to me, and I plan to decide in the next forty-eight hours." Man, that line is a keeper.

Cary, off Kalinda's tip, tells Bacevich they know he downloaded Dalton's film, because he said he saw it but he was in Europe the entire (short) time it was in American theatres! If they go after him for perjuring himself on this point, he'll go to prison! That seems unlikely, but okay! FAL say they'll go down to $15 million, but Bacevich's lawyer's like, no, actually, WE will take an apology from YOU for bringing this nonsense suit! Everyone at FAL's like, jigga-what, and Bacevich gets a whole eye-rolly speech about how you might as well just knuckle under to anarchists because they're going to win anyway, and then once he leaves, Dalton's like, yeah, totally settle, my company's emails also just got hacked! WELL, THIS IS KIND OF A DOWNER!

Cary and Diane apologize to one another -- her for writing that he's not a great lawyer, him for referring disparagingly to her age and need to get properly laid! BYGONES!

Cary then tells Alicia the suit is settled! She doesn't think the emails really indicate what people think of each other, or maybe she just says that because her email about Finn's "cottage cheese spine" circa Cary's trial never got out, and when she went to apologize to Finn, just in case it did, he didn't give a shit! And the other people she was most embarrassing about/to are either in Sacramento or...uh, dead!

And then it's time for what the FAL partners say is their final exit offer: $100,000! Diane sadly explains that the hack was a game changer: now they need to get all new IT everything and have a lot less go-away money for Alicia! Cary, sadly, tells her to take it! Alicia smiles (or...bares her teeth, more like), and purrs, "I'll consider it. And I want you all to know that this offer does not in any way impact my consideration of your criminal cases when I'm SA." When she's gone, the consensus seems to be that it was not even a thinly veiled threat -- just a straight up one -- and that MAYBE she wouldn't abuse her power like that out of spite...but maybe she would!

And then Alicia tells Eli she's safe for the moment, and that Castro and Redmayne have been duly placated! Oh, and since they're here, ELI has a #2 suggestion too! "Neil Sands...He's a lawyer over at Justice -- African-American, dad was a cop; he is, by all accounts, a top-notch attorney."