Monsters of Television

I’m of two minds about “Don’t Haze Me, Bro.”

On the one side, there is no Nick storyline. HUZZAH. (Sadly, he’s back for the next two episodes.) And it was a very funny episode.

On the other side, the case of the week was something of an afterthought (though it had John Glover, who is always a delight). And some of the humor turned out not to be that funny.

Oh, and despite all the mounting evidence, someone is bound and determined to demolish Peter’s run for governor with this campaign worker scandal.  Are we getting played for saps?

I sort of think I should’ve printed up some I Believe In Peter Florrick pins since I do believe Peter hasn’t had an affair, I do think he’s genuinely been faithful to Alicia since he got out of prison, and certainly since he started running for governor. Kalinda, doing her jobs for a change, pretty much demolished the supposed sex-having-campaign worker with some concierge keycard jitsu (that the reporter didn’t do this sort of diligence is rather disturbing, especially considering how long she supposedly had been working the story).  But there’s still some lingering questions. Eli was lying about the door between the two suites being open (and Eli does admit that he lies for a living), so that doesn’t bode well for the campaign. It feels like something’s been hidden, and obviously Eli’s not thrilled with the fact that the story is getting leaked on some no-name blog (no-name blogs have a way of becoming name blogs with one story). What’s going on?

What is going on is that Jackie’s back and she’s not taking any guff from Eli I loved that she’s feisty and ready to mix things up again so soon after leaving the hospital, and I imagine we all had a good laugh at Jackie dealing with those creepy crawly beetles at her speech in the senior center. But then when she sees one of those beetles in her wine at the straw poll event, it stopped being funny and become a touch concerning. I’ve no doubt that Mary Beth Peil will knock this out, so eager to see where things go from there.

The rest of the episode is good. There’s some great stuff as Cary and Alicia begin to share an office (hopefully this means we’ll see more of Cary; and he did save the case this week), with the Robert Altman-esque overlapping phone conversations (adding Eli to the joke perhaps sent it over the top). I think what I liked most, though, was the drinking session between Alicia and Maddie. It’s a delight to see Alicia out with someone again, and then to watch both women’s faces just implode after Alicia goes into the Peter thing…it sort of guts you. Both women are so busy and so isolated that this moment is a rare thing for each of them, and to have it ruined it just sort of the worst.