And then there was Eli (the ever-brilliant Alan Cumming). Mr. Gold was rocking his lavender shirt, which, surprisingly, only added to his usual "I could destroy you" aura. Unfortunately, he didn't quite see eye to eye with Adam, the sleazy campaign-related muckety muck (it's hard for me to follow these politics shenanigans, okay?) who wanted to give "Republican money" to Peter's campaign. Only Eli couldn't do anything about it because Adam is BFFs with Peter's mom (apparently they met at knitting club or something), since her role on the show is being close-minded and making Eli's life really difficult! (The latter of which is also Alicia's role, incidentally.)
While Eli was busy having an inner hissy fit, Kalinda and Blake went head to head once again, doing their best who-can-make-the-other's-life-hardest-while-still-pretending-we-don't-want-to-sex-each-other dance, which was either a draw, or not, depending on how you look at it. Kalinda was told (less than tactfully) that Blake had been deemed her supervisor. OH HELL NO. Kalinda answers to no one! Especially not cocky, obnoxious sketchballs who do all kinds of illegal stuff and not in a cool, rogue way like Kalinda. Well, Kalinda was NOT having ANY of THAT. Sooo she was extra snarky for the rest of the episode.
Meanwhile, Cary was trying to be even snarkier (because as we've seen before, absolutely everything on this show is a competition, from salary, to snark, to hotness and frequency of sexual partners) by making ridiculously antiquated suggestions for punishments, like, "put him in a sack with a snake, a chicken, and a dog." Seriously, what does that even mean? Do they fight it out? Does one of them eat the others? Is Cary the snake? Who is the chicken? Is there some kind of philosophical meaning behind it? I DON'T UNDERSTAND. (Side note: This is exactly how I feel about watching the first season of Mad Men.)
Back to the title of the episode: Will started bragging about being basketball buddies with all the important judges in Chicago, which was super cool and not at all a huge problem until the game got a little heated and Will was like, "You wanna call a foul, call a foul." And Judgey McJudgerson did not like that one bit. (These boys have delicate egos, you know.) So naturally Judgey took out his manly insecurities on Wilma in the courtroom. (Whoops.) Good thing Will had a totally risky and belligerent plan to show the jury that the judge is biased; it just required that Alicia take most of the brunt of Judgey's wrath.
Wait, Alicia...? Oh that's right, the titular Good Wife. I almost forgot it was her show, since all she's done for the last two weeks is alternate between looking concerned and nauseated while everyone else loses their cool. Luckily, Blake gave Alicia a chance to really let off some steam when she found out he did a creepily thorough background check on her (per someone's request, presumably). She was all like "WTF BLAKE, YOU SMUG LITTLE DOUCHE." But Blake the Snake told her it was "just a background check," which quelled her anger approximately not at all. And then she was all, "Don't you ever check my background again! Or my front! My background is for my husband's eyes only. And sometimes Will's in my very vivid dreams." After storming out in victory, Alicia went to discuss "the case" (AKA personal and/or business matters unrelated to the case) with Will, who thought she wanted to talk about Diane's departure, but really she wanted to talk about the voicemail he left her, like, eons ago. Fortunately for us viewers, all roads lead to glances of longing between the aforementioned parties. Alicia told Will that she doesn't want to leave with Diane, and he expressed his gladness upon hearing this. And for a brief moment we caught a glimmer of that wonderful sexual tension we saw so much of in the first season. But then it was time to go to court (the one with the gavel, not the one with the hoops) to commence Will's Master Plan.
Will "I'm a Badass" Gardner apparently borrowed Eli's purple power tie for his big day in court provoking the judge. He put his Plan into action by asking the judge to recuse himself on account of their little b-ball dispute, and of course Judgey did no such thing and instead became even more pissed off. (All according to Plan...Mwa ha ha!) Just before Judgey could hold Will in contempt, Will took his seat so Alicia could continue with phase two of the Plan: Invoke more anger from Judgey. She achieved this with her usual skill and cleverness, at one point telling the judge, "No harm, no foul...WORDPLAY." Judgey was appropriately ruffled by her nonchalant basketball references. Will's Rambo Plan was working! To wrap things up, Alicia pulled the old "blame the Scientologist" card, and they thought they had this thing in the bag. But it turned out the jury found their client guilty anyway, which was kind of a bummer, but I guess you can't win 'em all.
Continuing with the episode's theme of badassery, Will confronted Bond about his little plan of manipulation and having-secret-background-checks-done-on-completely-innocent-employees-with-whom-Will-would-like-to-have-relations. Will was like, "I see what you did there." And Bond was all, "can't read my, can't read my, no you can't read my poker face." Then Will was like, "P.S. Kalinda is better than Blake. We'll be paying her accordingly. Or the waters *dramatic pause* won't *dramatic pause* be calmed." And with a flourish of a dramatic exit, Will left Mr. Bond stewing in his own failure. That's how it's done, ladies and gentlemen. To top it off, Will met with Diane (for real this time) and basically told her, "hey, I don't like being played, and my ego is really bruised. What say we give Bond a taste of his own medicine and play his sexy ass right back?" because, hello, THEY'RE LAWYERS. And they're all trying to out-lawyer each other. Everyone just wants their salary to be bigger than his/her rival's salary. Like Cary, who is almost as good at holding grudges as he is at being snarky. When Diane asked him to come back to Lockhart Gardner and be her right hand man(servant), he told her that he'd return if he could have double Alicia's salary. Which is of course totally reasonable and not at all petty.
The award for most dramatic victory of the evening, however, goes to Eli Gold, who went all Charlie Sheen on Adam-the-sleazeball's cubicle, pulling phones out of the wall and whatnot. (Eli is quite the artiste when it comes to tearing people down.) The icing on the cake was Adam's BFF Jackie telling him on the phone, "You better do it, if that's what Eli wants." LAWYERED. (I know Eli's not technically a lawyer, but his level of skill at manipulation is no less impressive.)
After court let out, Alicia caught up with head juror and asked him why they convicted her client even though they knew the judge was biased. He told her that despite Judgey's panties being in a twist, and the possibly-crazy Scientologist manager, they knew the guy was guilty. This came as almost as big a shock to Alicia as it did to us viewers. Wait, you mean even when our beloved TV characters totally dominate and lawyer the crap out of a case, if the guy is really guilty, they'll still convict him??? What is this nonsense?! I bet Law & Order never has this problem.