The Good Wife's Euthanasia Case Gives Louis And Diane A New Reason To Hate Each Other

Eyebrowing A Test Case

The Scales Of Justice

What's the game? Perps By The Pound.

Who's playing? Lucca; her fellow bar attorneys Don and Bernie; not Alicia.

What's at stake? The bar attorney who racks up the most total pounds of clients wins first choice of which day to work.

Who wins? Lucca, who apparently continues her streak...

...even with this half-pint of a shoplifter.

Sweating A Sweater

Justice vs. Expediency

Having been retained by Maia, Alicia has to take her direction and tell both Matan and Schakowsky (surprised to learn he's in this episode after the corruption sting in "Cooked"? Because that does not come up AT ALL) that Maia won't allocute because she's not pleading guilty. Immediately, everyone is incensed that Maia's not sticking to the script: Matan tries to move things along by sweetening his offer to six months' probation; Schakowsky orders Alicia to make Maia take it and not to slow him down. Alicia urgently relays the offer to Maia, wheedling that she won't do any time and that the conviction will come off her record in six months. But Maia stands firm! And...Schakowsky strips Alicia of all her other sheets for the day, telling her, "I know you get paid by the case; call it quid pro quo for the time you're costing this court." "Your Honour, this is unfair," whines Alicia. "Ma'am, when did you think bond court was about being fair?" snaps Schakowsky. Lucca watches this happen from across the room and asks Alicia what's happening. "I'm being taxed," mutters Alicia. And vigorously defending your client, which I thought was something you're supposed vow to do, or something?

Winner: Expediency, for now.

Everyone's Just DYING For This Matter To Be Resolved

Who called the meeting? Cary.

What's it about? A physician-assisted suicide bill that's about to cross Peter's desk: the reason R.D. has backed the Alexa Banner case is that Illinois is considering a bill that would legalize it, and R.D. wants Lockhart Agos to get its pet governor's wife to lobby Peter so he'll veto it.

How'd it go? Cary comes in pretty confident: he tells Alicia that if she successfully lobbies Peter on this bill, R.D. would not only be okay with her coming back to the firm: he'd "sprinkle rose petals as [she] step[s] off the elevator." But Alicia's not interested: she's happy in her low-dollar job, besides which getting Peter to do something she wants means she'll be obligated to do something for him at some future time: "I don't want to be asked for anything -- especially not physician-assisted suicide." So it's a bad meeting for Cary...

...but maybe it's a good meeting for the campaign strategist lurking around the corner!

BREAKING: Mom Sad About Dead Daughter

Because this episode wants to present all the pros and cons of physician-assisted suicide, we have to watch Diane -- who, remember, is personally in favour of the practice -- doing her direct on Lina, Alexa's mother and the plaintiff in the case against Alexa's Oregon doctors. Lina didn't want Alexa to suffer, but she denies the premise that Alexa was terminally ill with no hope of recovery. In fact, the week before Alexa's death, Lina read about a study at Duke that treats glioblastoma multiform with the polio vaccine. What if, Diane asks, Alexa's doctors had told her about the study? "She'd still be here!" Lina insists, starting to cry. I feel like the mother of a brain tumour patient would know better than to think a medical research study is a failsafe guarantee of recovery, but whatever, I guess.

The Gifter That Keeps On Giving

Oy With The Poodles Already

Alert Type: Troublesome Florricks Alert.

Issue: Eli is still/constantly looking for ways to undermine Ruth with Peter, and with this physician-assisted suicide bill, he's found a real honey. He calls Jackie in for a chat, and urges her to share her (positive) views on euthanasia with him -- and if Peter's new campaign manager tries to stop Jackie from having access to Peter, Jackie should just be forceful. Then, when he stops by Alicia's to drop off the latest packet of campaign invitations, he checks with Grace that she's still a Christian; when she confirms that she is, he urges her to tell Peter she opposes the bill on sanctity-of-life grounds, and so should he.

Complicating Factors: When Ruth gatekeeps both Jackie and Grace away from Peter and gets yelled at by Jackie for keeping the candidate away from his beloved mother and daughter, she tattles on Eli to Peter. Which backfires on her in the exact way Eli had intended:

Peter orders her to deal with her issues with Eli and quit bothering him with this petty bullshit...and then takes his time re-entering his office as Grace and Jackie battle it out on the other side of the door.

Resolution: Ruth decides to take the fight straight to the Florrick women, separately buttering up Jackie and Grace. To Grace, she builds common ground by showing off her knowledge of Bible verses. To Jackie, she schmoozes, "The smartest men listen to their women, and the smartest women are those with more than a little experience -- am I right?"

Spoiler: Ruth has come to play.

Making Offers Political Ideologues Can Refuse

Who called the meeting? Louis.

What's it about? Now that Diane has found and put on the stand a Mr. Linklater -- who had exactly the same kind of tumour Alexa did, and who is completely cancer-free following his participation in the Duke study -- Louis is prepared to make a settlement offer: $1 million, and a gag order.

How'd it go? At least it's brief? Ethan asks whether Louis would consider dropping the gag order; when Louis says he will not, Ethan says it's a pass on the offer. But in the hall afterward, when Ethan is elsewhere, Louis tells Diane it's a good offer, and she promises that her clients will hear it. Louis then tries again to appeal to Diane on moral/philosophical grounds: "Why did you go mercenary?" "And who's paying your bills, Louis?" counters Diane. "You win, more people kill themselves, and the insurance companies save billions on hospital expenses." "Sure, I'm an insurance company shill, but they happen to be on the right side of this issue," says Louis. "Carver and Dippold don't care about your clients. They just want to raise malpractice rates, intimidate doctors out of helping people die. Talk to your clients. See how much they really care about gag orders."

Diane vs. Ethan

Her chat with Louis has led Diane to ask Ethan point blank whether the Banner case is just a trojan horse to raise malpractice insurance, and Ethan's basically like, yes, so? Ethan et al want to make it as unattractive as possible for doctors to participate in ending a patient's life; he's not so sure doctors are moved "by ethical arguments against euthanasia," but he knows they understand money. Diane asks whether Ethan knows anyone who is terminally ill. When he says he has -- duh, he's middle-aged, it would be weird if he didn't -- she asks whether those people he knew or knows shouldn't have the right to end their suffering. Ethan says he doesn't think doctors should "be in the business of killing." Clearly enjoying this as an intellectual challenge, Diane asks whether, in that case, Ethan would be okay with euthanasia if it were performed by civilian volunteers; he says he wouldn't, though at least that would take the "veneer of medicine" out of the process. Ethan cites an example of someone in Basel who euthanized herself just because she didn't want to get old; in Belgium, more than a thousand people last year underwent physician-assisted suicides, "some only suffering from depression. (That "only" suggests an imperfect understanding of what depression actually feels like, but anyway.) Diane chuckles that "If this were Belgium, we'd have something to argue about," but Ethan says dominoes fall fast: she could just ask a gay couple getting married in Alabama. Ethan says this country shouldn't make it easier to die: "We should make it easier to manage pain -- that should be the goal." Diane asks why they can't do both?

Instead of answering, Ethan asks whether she wants off the case. "No," she replies. "But I want it to be about this case, and not every case." Ethan: "Okay." I guess that's it for argument time, until Diane goes home, brings this question up to Kurt, and has an hour-long debate over it followed by Kurt giving her the rogering of a lifetime.

Winner: Diane. In so many ways.

After burning another half-hour or so of Maia's time at Salvatore's, Jeffrey finds Alicia in court to follow up on his first-hand observation of an innocent black customer getting arrested on false shoplifting charges: he looked at the arrest records from Salvatore's, which show that their arrestees are overwhelmingly African-American. Jeffrey thinks there's a spotter in the store who keeps an eye out for shoplifters, and that said spotter may be targeting black shoppers just to keep them away from the store.

In fact, Jeffrey recognizes the woman he saw getting arrested in the holding pen, talking to Don! When Alicia hisses at him not to plead her out, and that she has a witness who can testify, Don barks, "I don't care, you're slowing things down!" But it turns out his client does?

Punching Up

Continuing not to let Schakowsky bully her, Alicia has put Jeffrey on the stand to testify that he watched Betty get approached by Salvatore's racist security guard even though she hadn't done anything wrong. Case closed, right? Wrong, because then it's time for Matan to do his cross, and he knows quite a lot about Jeffrey. Like, is it true that Jeffrey was disbarred as a lawyer six years ago? Jeffrey, to Alicia's horror, cheerfully says that it is. Was he disbarred because he punched a judge who found his client guilty? Sure was! And wasn't he investigated by the bar four times before that for altering evidence on clients' behalves? Alicia tries to argue that Jeffrey's background has no bearing on what he witnessed in the store, but given that one of the past issues Matan JUST raised was altering evidence for his clients, I feel like it might, a little? Schakowsky also thinks Jeffrey's background is relevant...but if overruling all his objections was his way of speeding things up, it doesn't work: the African-American women in holding all yell at their bar attorneys that they want Alicia to represent them. Unable to proceed, they all give Alicia the stinkeye as they load her up with their sheets. Schakowsky:

Alicia leveraged her incriminating list of past Salvatore's shoplifting arrestees into security footage from the store, she's brought a relevant clip to show Maia in jail: her mother, shoplifting the sweater in the first place. Alicia explains that the only way to get Maia off is to show this footage to the judge; Maia sadly adds that will mean the judge calling out her mother's name in court, in front of everyone. And that's how Maia ends up taking that deal after all. I'll say this for her mother, though: if you're going to take the risk of shoplifting, you might as well go the whole nine and grab the most expensive sweater you can find!

And then it's time for closing statements in the Banner case...or is it? It isn't: Louis puts Alexa's husband back on the stand! Though Diane destroyed him earlier by questioning him about the girlfriend he started seeing a month before Alexa's death, now he can actually help his late wife's doctors' case: Louis pulls up a post Alexa made on a message board a week before her death -- specifically, a message that reads "Garbage!" -- about the Duke study. So she did know about the study, and decided to end her life anyway!

Sorry, Diane...but look at it this way: you still get paid, and your actual ideological position gained more support in the courts!

Ruth pops by Eli's office to thank him for his latest covert assault: "I know you were trying to make my life hell by siccing all those Florricks on me, but you know what? We worked through it. And it wound up bringing me a lot closer to Jackie and Grace. So thank you. And just remember: I'm good at what I do. You want to get me? You'll have to bring your A game." As Eli fumes, Ruth turns to leave, asking of the office door, "Open or closed? ...Or, I guess it doesn't matter." #TinyOfficeBurn!!!

And then Alicia and Lucca are having rueful after-dinner drinks. Lucca exposits that Alicia came second in Perps By The Pound, but Alicia doesn't care, since the other bar attorneys think she's a slimy client poacher. "Who cares about them," drawls Lucca. "I also gave up a possible class action suit for some video footage I couldn't use," crabs Alicia, but Lucca cuts that off to say Alicia has two problems: she takes too long, so she'll always be a disaster in bond court: "And two...nope, one problem." Alicia makes her say it, and though Lucca doesn't want to because she knows Alicia will wear it like a badge of honour, she says that Alicia cares too much: "There's no glory in this slog, Alicia. Shake the trees for better-paying cases!"

And then Alicia has an epiphany and turns to Lucca to deliver the dramatic end-of-episode kicker: "Wanna do it together?"

And Lucca looks stunned because she didn't see this coming since the season premiere, LIKE EVERY OTHER PERSON WATCHING DID!