Screens: CBS
If your favourite thing to watch on TV is a succession of people reacting to the tragic, sudden, violent death of a character, then you have probably already set your DVR never to delete last night's episode of The Good Wife. More like The Grieving Wife, right?! Now that we've all had a chance to work through our feelings about last week's events, let's judge how well or poorly the people within the episode took the news, by ranking their cry faces from first to worst.
1. Diane
Like the elegant professional she is, Diane holds it together the whole way back to the office from the hospital with just a few picturesque tears, and sucks it up when her assistant reminds her that she's late for a partners' meeting about the L.A. office, collecting herself at her desk. Then she makes the mistake of looking through the halls at her old partner's office and, seeing it empty, loses her composure (still beautifully). Diane will, of course, go on to behave perfectly through the rest of the episode: Diane tells Alicia, "I loved him," and warmly tells Alicia that Will loved Alicia too; she also takes a meeting with noodgy client Bob Klepper -- who wants to shore up his business that very day even though he knows that his lawyer just got shot to death -- to inform him not only that he's fired by Lockhart Gardner, but that she's already called around town and gotten him blackballed everywhere. (And that's not all: see below.) Diane's reaction is a reminder that as much as the show wanted us to invest in Willicia, Will and Diane's friendship was always the true heart of the show.
2. David
When Diane walks into the partners' meeting to tell everyone that Will's dead, David takes off down the hall in what I assume is going to be a flurry of businesslike damage control. Instead, he kicks a couple of junior associates out of a conference room and allows himself a few gasping sobs. This death is such a shock that even a complete scumbag like David Lee can't help giving in to his emotional instincts. (Completer scumbag Eli Gold never takes a day off, and uses Peter's speech to the Chicago Correspondents Club to call Dubeck and gloat that his case just died. I mean, it happens offscreen. But we can assume.)
3. Kalinda
Kalinda seems to be running on adrenaline and rage as she gets hold of Alicia to break the news to her; eavesdrops on the police interview with the idiot bailiff who got his gun snatched; stares death-rays at Jeffery Grant and his new lawyer; ends up in the morgue to find out who actually fired the fatal shot (Jeffery); and screws up all her strength to go in and look at Will's body on the slab. Bad news for Alicia's most unrealistic fantasies of how the day will end: it really is Will, and he really is dead. And only then does Kalinda let herself cry, just a little. Guess she's definitely not quitting Lockhart Gardner like she threatened to before Will croaked.
4. Alicia
Alicia has made the (bad) decision to drive herself to Lockhart Gardner after getting Kalinda's phone call about Will's death, but she's being a responsible, safe motorist, despite her wild imaginings of how the shooting actually went down. But soon her fears give way to her heartbreak when she sees a mom outside a drugstore holding her son back from stepping into the street, and realizes that she wasn't there to protect Will from danger and/or that there purity and goodness still persist in our fallen, post-Will world, and the split-second glimpse at these strangers' lives is what makes her lose it. But the fact that she barely cries for the whole rest of the episode is just a reminder of how Alicia's poise can make her seem robotic and cold.
5. Jeffery
I guess this helpless sobbing and drooling is a good foundation for an insanity defense? Or he really means it, but either way, if you're going to open fire in a crowded courtroom, have the courage of your crazy-ass convictions! And for God's sake, just because Kalinda teased you with your belt and then took it away doesn't mean you can't still kill yourself in prison. Make like Marie Wallace and chew through your wrists, DUH.
6. This Bitch Gail The Intern