The Good Wife, Season 5, Episode 4: “Outside the Bubble”
Directed by Felix Alcala
Written by Robert King & Michelle King
Airs Sundays at 9pm ET on CBS
When conversations about the best shows on television begin, The Good Wife is rarely in the conversation. It lacks the tight structure of Breaking Bad or the elegant languorousness of Mad Men. It doesn’t have the flashy madness of Homeland or Hannibal, nor the period prestige of Downton Abbey or the new Masters of Sex. And it is plagued by two terms that have become dirty words in this Golden Age of Television: network procedural. Yet in its fifth season, The Good Wife is showing once again why it is the best at what it does, and a strong contender whenever TV’s current cream of the crop is mentioned.
“Outside The Bubble” is an example of the show firing on all cylinders, deftly juggling its multitude of plot points, cycling through its phenomenally deep rolodex of recurring characters, and making what would be a minor event on a lot of shows into something downright momentous. When Diane returns to Lockhart Gardner, the firm that still bears her name but no longer requires her presence, as the episode closes, she is both the killer in a slasher flick and his victim in the moments after death has become inevitable. She knows a secret that will shake all of her colleagues to their cores. She sees the card that will bring the whole house tumbling down, and in an instant, she chooses to go with old loyalty instead of fresh enmity. Diane goes to Will and tells him the secret that’s been hanging over the whole season: Alicia is leaving the firm, and she’s taking the top clients with her.
Most shows would probably have jumped from last season’s cliffhanger to Cary and Alicia running their firm, using the break between seasons to launch ahead and force us to become acclimated to a brave new world. Yet The Good Wife is nothing if not a juicy soap opera and it understands the dramatic potential in watching Alicia try to navigate between her duty to Lockhart Gardner and her investment in Florrick Agos. Just when the push and pull of Alicia’s ethics was beginning to get repetitive, the show has pulled the rug out from under her and after this build up, the fall-out promises to be a thing to behold.
However, “Outside the Bubble” is first and foremost a blessedly rare Diane-centric episode. She is learning to love life after Lockhart Gardner, moving forward in her engagement with Kurt, and generally getting pretty used to an existence where she is not glued to her cell phone. And yet.
There’s a tinge of regret and nostalgia to every scene that puts Diane in her old environs. Its clear that she is having fun with Kurt and with the silly little problem of her friends thinking he is too conservative for her, but every time she walks into her office, which is less and less her own as the episode progresses, its clear she isn’t quite done with the place that put her name first on the letterhead (yet another Diane-Will/Alicia-Cary reflection). She is mostly a passive presence in the case-of-the-week, which finds Viola (Rita Wilson, always fun) representing a paralegal in a sexual harassment suit against the firm, and she is so unimportant Alicia is actually surprised to find she is still in her office at the end of the episode. She finds a way to make her presence known again, something big and explosive to ensure she goes out with the bang she wistfully references early in the episode. What is so glorious about her slow walk to Will’s office is that, in some sense, what happens once she gets there is inevitable. Diane Lockhart doesn’t get stepped-out on. If anyone needs to be crushed, she will do the crushing.
The rest of the case is pretty thin material, enlivened by Carrie Preston’s Elsbeth, who is one of the best recurring characters in the show’s arsenal and who has now added a manic need to keep walking to her litany of quirks. Preston keeps Elsbeth just grounded enough to be believable and she is aces in each scene, the perfect mixture of comedy and tactical brilliance we have come to expect whenever she drops by. The capper to this plotline, that Kalinda had a lot of sex with the paralegal who is claiming to be offended by the sexual nature of Lockhart Gardner, is perhaps a bit too cute (would she really file a lawsuit knowing she had been involved with the firm’s top investigator?), but the subplot gives us plenty of Elsbeth, as well as fantastic deposition sequences with Diane and Kalinda, so it is worthwhile in the end.
Toss in a repetitive tiff between Eli and Jackie, who are still fighting over control of Peter like they have been since day one, and you have the ingredients of a solid episode of The Good Wife. In order for a procedural to be successful, it must display a certain facility with repetition and “Outside the Bubble” is a strong argument for how great this show is at recycling core conflicts for new drama. Eli and Jackie have basically one story together, but the two have such a fun combative energy, and Alan Cumming is so entertaining when exasperated, that it always manages to be compelling, especially where, as here, the storyline is little more than a runner. Elsbeth and Viola are both fun characters basically reenacting their same schtick again, and the Florrick Agos plotline is basically a skipping track at this point.
What makes “Out of the Bubble” great, and it is, is Christine Baranski. Diane Lockhart is one of the best characters on television and The Good Wife treats her like a secret weapon. Rarely does she take center stage, because Baranski is good enough to make her shine from the sidelines, but when she does, it is always a stellar reminder of how fascinating Diane Lockhart can be. If she is to be shunted off to the Supreme Court eventually ( presumably to her own storylines there, where maybe there’s a gay clerk or the Chief Justice eats her food out of the refrigerator or something), at least she will have a big, climactic exit before she goes. “Not with a bang…” she regretfully whispered this week. We’ll see about that.
Notes:
-“Then we move fast. Call this tall lawyer’s bluff.”
-“Do you want to take over the questioning?” “Sure!”
-“You’re in a hole, Ms. Walsh. Best to stop digging.”
-“Yeah, that’ll be on my mind the rest of the day.” “Just the rest of the day?”
