The Good Wife – Recap & Review – Foreign Affairs

photo: cbs

The Good Wife
Foreign Affairs

Original Air Date: Apr 12, 2011

Patricia Morris Buckley – Sr. Staff Writer
pmb@thetwocentscorp.com

Could you follow the case this week? I sure didn’t. It felt as if the writers took every plot line, sub plot and character in show and shoehorned them all into one episode.

It starts off with the firm representing a contractor (who we don’t see) who built an oil well in a South American company and now the parent company doesn’t want to pay for the well.

It just so happens that Alicia has hired Natalie Flores (America Ferrera), Wendy Scott Card’s illegal nanny, to be an intern in her office. Natalie ends up helping with the translation of a document that helps the firm — until the dictator of the country steps in and demands a piece of the action. His lawyer is a lawyer turned famous actor (Fred Dalton Thomas in perfect casting).

It’s sad when a show of this caliber does something trite and cliché. We never see the dictator, who is photographed from the neck down. That’s when I stopped being interested in the case.

But it’s finally election day and Wendy and Peter are neck in neck in the race. Then Wendy’s husband does an interview with their kids and it gives her the advantage. Eli breaks down, realizing that he promised Alicia he wouldn’t ask, yet he does. She says no, then Diane gives her the afternoon off in the middle of a busy case. She is fuming at Eli — but it turns out to the head of the Democratic party who interfered. So she does the TV interview and it goes really well (and someone remarks that she should be a politician — shades of things to come?).

Meanwhile Cary’s detective, Andrew Wiley, won’t let go of the missing report pages that details Peter and Kalinda’s one-night affair. Cary and Kalinda try to stall him, but Andrew’s like a bulldog (oh and Cary now wants a well-earned favor and asks Kalinda to put in a good word for him with Peter so he can keep his job).

Finally Andrew goes to Alicia with it, only saying that Peter had an affair with a co-worker. At that moment, everyone is partying and in high spirits because Peter has won (yet we never see him either). Andrew admits he can’t find the evidence he’s looking for, just the name of the employee — Leyla.

And Alicia knows exactly who that is. She walks away from the celebration, tears running down her face. It’s obvious this has hurt her more than Peter’s indiscretions. But is she now strong enough to handle her best friend’s betrayal?

Do you think Kalinda’s should be forgiven? What will Alicia do to her former friend? And what is this going to do to the Florrick’s marriage? Give us your TwoCents…