The Good Wife Solves The Mystery Of The Garbanza Garbaby

Obviously, there's a lot to like in the A-plot of the latest Good Wife. As if its recent run of tech-focused episodes hadn't already burnished its reputation as one of TV's most secretly nerdy shows, it started the new year with a take on the dispute between Jonathan Coulton and Glee over the latter's flagrant theft of the former's arrangement of "Baby Got Back" — a battle that lit up the geekiest corners of the internet around this time last year. As in the actual story, an independent musical artist is shocked to find his take on another artist's song outselling all the other singles on offer from a popular musical teen comedy. But The Good Wife deviates from reality by letting its underdog win against the powerful TV network and its very deep pockets (as represented by F. Murray Abraham, reprising his role as Burl Preston and, by the end, hilariously disgusted by the song he's supposed to be fighting for). Too bad Jonathan Coulton didn't have the benefit of hiring an investigator who learned from the fictional best, by which I of course mean Kalinda.

But as many knowing chortles as the "Thicky Trick" will have earned from viewers in the know, I can't say it was the episode's strongest plot performer: too much quirk from Matthew Lillard as Coulton stand-in Rowby; too many sexy flashbacks to happier/hornier times from courtroom adversaries Alicia and Will. The real magic, for me, came from a place I did not expect at all: Marilyn.

Melissa George's Marilyn has never been my favourite character on the show. I'm sure that's partly due to lingering animosity toward George from Alias, where she had the temerity to marry Vaughn when he was OBVIOUSLY meant for Sydney Bristow. But even if I'd never seen Alias, it would have been hard to warm up to Marilyn, between her breathy sexyvoice (is that really appropriate for an ethics czar to deploy in the workplace 100% of the time?) and the way she's leaned all the way into pregnancy, using morning sickness to get out of sticky situations. Lady, don't wander around Alicia's apartment carrying one of her nice saucepans like you might barf into it. That's what plastic snack bowls are for, and you know a mom like Alicia bought some from Target at some point. And when she ended the show's 100th episode by dropping the bomb that she plans to name her baby Peter, she seemed to be in danger of making herself even more unlikable. She...isn't pregnant with Peter FLORRICK's baby, is she? She couldn't be! Except she totally could.

So this week's episode, of course, had Eli doing pre-emptive damage control. Naturally, he doesn't just take Marilyn at her word when she says that her baby Peter has nothing to do with Peter Florrick, and that she won't say who actually did father the baby because he's a private person: he hires Kalinda to investigate Marilyn and find out who put the bun in her oven. This leads to a pretty hilarious moment of watching Kalinda at an OB-GYN's office, chatting up Marilyn by pretending she's pregnant too, like Kalinda would ever have anything to do with a baby. A promising lead involves a Peter Marilyn used to date and recently ran into at her twentieth high-school reunion, which would time out perfectly with her apparent conception date. But that Peter tells Kalinda that Marilyn was called away on a professional errand before the night was over...which leads Eli to an even worse discovery than that Peter got a lady pregnant: Peter may have stolen the gubernatorial election.

And just as he's trying to process this news, Marilyn rolls up. She's done with all the secrecy surrounding her pregnancy, and she wants Eli to meet her baby's father.

IT'S PETER GODDAMN BOGDANOVICH. FOR NO REASON. It's such a non sequitur of a moment that it kind of redeems Marilyn for me!

And, of course, Bogdanovich shows up in a cravat. Because of course he does.

Back to "Thicky Trick" for a second: since we're here and I'm not made of stone, let's all enjoy the "Thicky Trick" video the Good Wife cast made, featuring real behind-the-scenes footage. You didn't realize when you got up this morning that all it would take to make you happy was F. Murray Abraham and Dominic Chianese grooving to an easy-listening rap cover, or Christine Baranski dancing with the faux-Gleeks with curlers in her hair.