Reaction Post - I wanna know where I'm vulnerable.

The Good Wife: 4x19 The Wheels of Justice.

It's Colin Sweeney week again! For a chance, he hasn't killed any wives or dogs, but is accused of firing a gun at an orgy, which wouldn't be much of a tragedy, since nobody got seriously hurt, except Cary figures out that the Illinois Supreme Court is about to pass a judgement that would make being convicted for it hist third strike - and land one of L&G's most affluent clients in prison for life. In a very Leverage-y (actual tears) moment, Alicia sets the agenda for the episode "We have to run the fastest trial in history". 

While the entire firm struggles to prove his innocence, Colin, as per usual, makes everybody weird about themselves in the process, with support by his "live-in girlfriend", who flirts weirdly with Alicia while being pragmatic about her relationship - except it turns out Alicia has meanwhile (glorious arc that she's had) also grown pragmatic over Sweeney, to the extent that she answers her "if I marry him, will he kill me" inquest with "I can't actually confirm outright that he totally killed his wife, but if he had (and he totally did), he would have done it for money, which you don't have, so as long as you don't try to blackmail him into not getting a pre-nup, you should survive marrying my client". Naturally what she ends up doing is totally blackmailing Colin Sweeney into not getting a pre-nup, which screws L&G a bit but is their (-psychopaths in love) version of keeping their relationship fun and sexy (and Morena Baccarin is so brilliant in the episode). 

The way Cary figures out what is happening and why ASA Laura Hellinger (awkwardly dating Will for a week now, which is why he needs to get permission to represent him, proving that he's not as cool about it as Alicia is) is stalling is kind of sad, actually. After being shown his new, cramped, tiny office (no $10,000 stipend to decorate for Cary Agos), Diane tasks him with hiring a new associate, like Alicia struggled to do back in the Martha-Caitlin days.  The whole thing proves that Robyn Burdine is one of the best things that have happened to this show in a while, because one) she sits in when he questions a braggy Harvard-graduate, two), when he tells to look severe, she looks SEVERE, and three) when the only thing she comes up with about her supposed college days in Georgetown is HUMID, it kind of sounds like a threat, especially in combination with two. They figure out that the guy is working on a majority opinion for a conservative justice, meaning the thing that will soon pass will affect Colin Sweeney, meaning they have to figure out how much time they have to win the trial (and even losing in time would make the difference between six years and a lifetime in prison). Robyn Burdine, who seems to have absorbed Kalinda's abilities within a week and somehow mixed them with her very own special elven dust and is now terrible and amazing gets the information, and very very drunk in the process. Cary drives her home and I bet he even let her eat pizza in his presumably over-prized car.

Laura, in that amazing way in which only Laura Hellinger actually manages to keep her job and her private life separate (and in the way that she values her friendship with Alicia) - she breaks it off with Will when she realizes that Alicia and Will are not over "it", that his voice is always going to have that edge when she calls him. 

Meanwhile, Kalinda looks into Diane's history, now that she's facing a future vetting-process (if Peter wins...) - and I think the question the episode asks is if we really WANT to know where we're vulnerable. It's still a bit fun when Kalinda discovers smutty TVD fanfiction posted from Diane's IP-address (the awesome reveal would have been that Diane was actually the one writing it though, not the housekeeper), but things get really, really sad when she finds out that her father - the stout liberal she's modelled her entire life after - betrayed one of his friends to the Committee for Un-American Activities back in the day. 

So in the end everyone's a bit heartbroken and weirded out, as they usually are when Colin "the abyss" Sweeney makes them do stuff. All except Diane, who accidentally proposes marriage to a constantly flustered Kurt McVeigh, is told she can't be in a relationship with a gun-toting tea-party supporting separatist, but realizes that if anyone can pull off being a Democratic governor's liberal candidate for the Illinois Supreme Court AND being married to someone still sad over Mitt Romney losing the election, it's Diane fucking Lockhart.