This is the romantic tale the final episode of the third season, or, if we are being honest, the entire show, is telling. There once was a woman who fled from her past to a different city, worked her way, assumed a different identity, but always remembered the monsters coming after her. She never took time to personalize her apartment, leaving it almost empty, she never made any serious commitments, she never had any true friends. At the first sign of danger, she would purchase a sledgehammer to get to the money and gun hidden in her bedroom wall, pack a bag and leave without hesitation. Except... except once she made a friend. And everything became about that friend. All the simple solutions to complicated problems became impossible because of the "but" that had never been there before.
Kalinda has to run for her life... but there's Alicia, and she is in danger at well, because the monster coming for her, the ghost from her past, her husband, knows her number and her name, enough to pose a serious danger. So Kalinda can't run. For the first time ever, there are things that she can't afford to leave behind, so instead, she grabs a chair and sits guard by her door, loading her gun and waiting for the stranger to knock. "Alicia. It's about Alicia. That's what you care about."
It's the most romantic tale, because it answers the question of whether the game ends when life are at stake. The answer is: it depends on whose life is at stake.
- Absolutely loved the awkward first scene between Alicia and Kalinda, out of sync after too many months of not drinking together, and the fact that Alicia immediately tries not talking about private lives but about work ("IRA... IRS"), while Kalinda goes straight for the "I am not gay", answering a question Alicia asked TWO YEARS AGO. Kalinda's flexible. And Alicia barely stops herself from advising her to stop "being flexible" with Lana Delaney. As her lawyer. And stuff.
- It's also sort of... awesome, in the context of their relationship, how THE ONE devastating cheque that will reveal everything Alicia doesn't know about Kalinda just FALLS out of the file like it's just been waiting for the right time to appear. Of course Alicia dials the number. Of course it takes her a beat too long to realize that the guy on the other end plays in the leagues of Bishop and is not of the realm she actually has control over.
- Kalinda is "gonna go and take care of it" - which entails getting that sledgehammer and getting ready to run - she asks Will for money (and I wonder what the "You build them up again. That's what you do" means) and she decides to say a final secret goodbye to Alicia, because she can't face leaving without it, but this is when she finds out that her husband called Alicia at HOME (the other terrifying scene - Alicia vulnerable with her kids at home, the guy just saying her name because it's enough to convey how dangerous he is), and she knows that Alicia is in danger.
- The scene of Kalinda putting her game face on was awesome but part of me was weirdly reminded of Ron Swanson's emergency procedure in case Tammy I ever showed up. They'd make a pretty good team.
- Still I wonder where Jackie belongs to. Eli tells her to apologize, even if she doesn't mean it, because Peter needs her in the campaign, Alicia threatens to sue her for using her kids' money unless she gives them the house... and Jackie, meanwhile, seems to fear death and being forgotten ("I dreamt I died. Everybody just did what they always did. Nobody cared.") and has hallucinations.
- I'LL GET YOU A NURSE.
- TGW is secretly a comedy show, seriously. Peter and Will's awkward elevator ride, Alicia's awkward welcoming of them, Eli joining, Cary super-awkwardly joining his past and present employers, Patti's kid wreaking havoc (the literal running joke of the episode, aka the thing Will and Diane should have seen coming but didn't), and finally, Kalinda stepping out of the elevator as well.
- The kids haven't been around much but I really liked Grace and Zack in the episode. "Not like you guys are married. Like a commune!".
- The thing about TGW is that things always somehow come together, but never quite in the way you'd expect. Patti Nyholm and Louis Canning team up to come after L/G after Alicia and Diane win the firm a substantial sum in a lawsuit against a pharmaceutical company, and Patti and Louis change their game often enough to completely confuse them... but isn't this always the case, you think you just won against Louis Canning and out of nowhere comes the revelation that you've been fucked over? It's the pre-occupation with the judicial bribery thing, taking everything personally still, and Louis and Patti (the dream team indeed) go as far as to implicate Peter in the whole thing, who reveals that he is separated from his wife in the process... but in the end, it's all a distraction, because Will and Diane lost sight of their business while defending themselves, and L/G is now without their most profitable client ("Oops!"). I wonder how foreshadowing Alicia's concern about becoming the potential first victim of future cut-backs will be in the fourth season. L/G's possible decline has been lurking in the shadows for quite some time now.
- "You're not a lawyer anymore. I keep forgetting."
- "Oops. Was that the elephant in the room?"
- Peter moves in temporarily (Alicia calls it "colonizing their past", which is... I mean, it's exactly what she was considering for a heartbeat, isn't it?), making the vision of standing outside, looking in true, at least for one episode - except it doesn't seem so bad, in the end. Alicia is about to leave, and then makes an unseen choice about where to go - back in, or away... while at the same time, Kalinda is waiting for her past to catch up with her as well. We know it'll be bad for Kalinda, but I guess it's unclear how things will go for Alicia.
- Talking about elevator scenes - in a great parallel with last year's finale, Will and Alicia finally acknowledge that we've spent the first half of the season dealing with the fallout of their relationship, and decide that they don't regret it - but this didn't feel like either of them really intends to start over either. It's interesting to see how far they've come in such a short period of time though, especially Alicia.
- Telling the truth is bigger than you think: Kalinda finally tells a truth (by moving the chair to the door and loading the gun), the truth that she can't leave Alicia behind. When aren't things in flux indeed. Alicia watches her kids and Peter through the window of her old house, pondering what "family" means now, whether to go back, who she'd be if she did make that choice - and meanwhile, Kalinda watches the light change through the cracks in the door, waiting for her past to return. And then someone knocks.
No comments:
Post a Comment