The Good Wife Lets Jackie Sit In Judgment

The Good Wife has always been a showcase for epic power struggles between characters — Lockhart Gardner attorneys vs. memorable antagonists like Patti Nyholm or Nancy Crozier; Lockhart Gardner attorneys vs. (now) Florrick Agos partners; Kalinda vs. any number of unlucky fools. But the antipathy between Jackie Florrick and Eli Gold is consistently my favourite, and their battle in the latest episode reminds us of why Jackie is one of the show's best characters.

Given what we know and have already seen from Jackie and Eli, the clash is a classic, pitting Jackie's entitlement as the governor's mother against Eli's overriding motivation to advance Peter's political career. By chance, Jackie happens to be dining out with friends (and dining out on her new status) when she sees Eli enter with a woman and is clearly stricken. Rachel, Eli's lunch companion, clerked for Jackie's late husband when he was a judge — was his favourite clerk, in fact! — and is now the new Supreme Court nominee Peter has chosen to replace Diane (snif). Eli dismisses Jackie's misgivings at the restaurant, so she has to come to him later and let him know why he needs to drop Rachel: she had a long affair with Florrick Sr., which "almost ruined [Jackie's] family," and about which Peter knows nothing. Jackie warns Eli that he doesn't want her to go to Peter with her objections, and Eli tells her she's right, he doesn't — but he thinks she doesn't want to either. For Jackie partisans, it's heartbreaking to see not just the effect it has on Jackie to contemplate Peter learning about his father's indiscretion...but also her realization that she made a strategic blunder by telling Eli of Peter's ignorance, so that Eli could potentially use this information against her. Of course, she couldn't lie that Peter did know, because if he did he probably wouldn't have nominated her in the first place, but still, she could have held it back until she was forced to use it. Jackie! You know better than to make a doomed attempt to bring Eli onto your side your first move! This bitch has his own agenda and you know it!

Jackie's misstep here seems to have thrown her off her game, as her next gambit finds her "running into" Rachel and warning her that if she doesn't withdraw her name from consideration, Jackie will narc on Rachel to her husband, Ronald, telling him about the two-year affair between Rachel and Jackie's husband that took place after Rachel was married. Rachel says her husband is in the process of dying of cancer. "That's too bad, it'll make it that much harder for him," says Jackie smoothly. Except, dammit, Rachel says he already knows! STRIKE TWO, JACKIE.

...Make that Strike Two, TARA, because how dare I underestimate one of The Good Wife's most Machiavellian geniuses? Jackie bounces back from her encounter with Rachel by heading to the hospital to visit her old friend Ronald, and has a few moments with him to agree that being in the hospital provides a real education into who one's true friends are before Rachel comes out of the bathroom, and then this happens.

Even if we hadn't just seen a few flashes of the monster movie Ronald's been watching on TV, this would be chilling. That turn is the whole scene in minuscule: Jackie can wear that smug expression and take her time looking over at Rachel because her earlier anxiety and urgency are gone, and she knows she's won. Of course Rachel never told her husband about the affair, and of course Jackie could tell, and of course I was wrong to think she'd bungled any part of her plan, because she is a goddamn master.

We close out the storyline with Jackie popping by Peter's office with a new piece of art, juuuuuust in time for Eli to get the call that Rachel's dropping out, and to remind him that her interests extend beyond decorating and party planning and that he is a fool to underestimate her. Maybe Eli has learned that he should run any of Peter's judge candidates — all of his cabinet hopefuls, probably — past Jackie first, because she knows about bodies Eli's never even considered, and probably buried them herself, because she's the best.