Screens: CBS
Remember in the season premiere when Cary (Matt Czuchry) tried to get Alicia (Julianna Margulies) excited about the new law firm they're getting ready to launch by telling her, "We're the new Will and Diane"? After the way things wrapped up in the latest episode, that may not be the inducement it used to be.
Since Alicia joined their firm, Will (Josh Charles) and Diane (Christine Baranski) have been important twin pillars in her life. Diane: an exemplar of professional womanhood, walking the walk of her feminist ideals by promoting the interests of her female associates. Will: the ex she still yearned for, which, yawn, but also an important instructor to Alicia in the ways of how sketchy a defense attorney can actually be and still get away with it while also getting rich. In her special quiet, watchful, only seemingly passive way, Alicia has spent the whole series learning from both of them. But now Diane has burned Will in an interview, and Will's like, "Well, that I will not stand for," so goodbye to all that.
And when one looks back on what we've known about these characters through the run of the series: if this partnership -- and friendship -- had to end, of course this would be how it happened. Diane hasn't sacrificed a personal life for the sake of her career to balk at what might be required for her to achieve her ambitions -- in this case, a seat on the Illinois Supreme Court, consideration for which apparently demands that she publicly disavow her until-recently-disbarred partner. As for Will: we've seen the kind of shady shit he's done on behalf of his clients in order to win any and every battle he's apparently ever been involved in; there's no way he would have allowed Diane's self-interested treachery to stand.
"I must have really hurt you, to make you want to hurt me like this," says Diane, as she and Will discuss the (apparently shitty) exit package she's been offered by her own firm, and Will poker-facedly claims that it's in keeping with what their deal has been all along: "We work together until it's not fun or profitable anymore." Will is definitely making not just a pragmatic move, but one she kind of forced him into: if Diane were to stay at the firm after her comments about Will are published, clients would be justifiably leery about who's representing their interests amid this kind of internal strife. Sure, he doesn't have to be a prick about it, but...he is kind of a prick in this respect, and she's enjoyed having his prickitude on her side, up until now.
It's not certain that, even after selling out Will, Diane will actually make it onto the Supreme Court. Presumably all this business surrounding Peter (Chris Noth) and his Ethics Czar Marilyn (Melissa George) is leading somewhere; yes, yes, to an affair between them, obviously, but if Peter's already getting dinged for appointing a dude to the water bro who happens to have rented office space to Alicia, will he really be able to go through with a Supreme Court nominee who's employed and mentored his wife for the past four-plus years? And if Diane isn't going to the Court, and can't go back to her old firm, and her clients need representation somewhere...is it crazy to think she might join Florrick Agos? Or: that Alicia will take Will up on his Managing Partner offer and the new firm will be Lockhart Agos? OR: that Kalinda (Archie Panjabi) will just murder everyone for their hideous disloyalty and topline a new show that revolves exclusively around her amazing investigative talents AND multifarious sexcapades? So many possibilities!