'The Good Wife': Stormy Weather Ahead

ABC

Mainly good news on The Good Wife this week, for a change. Peter Florrick is released from jail, and from further prosecution, the result of an odd stalemate involving incriminating evidence against Childs, Peter's nemesis, who agrees to end litigation rather than risk exposure. Childs, however, hires the embittered and self-pitying Cary for the stated purpose of making life difficult for both Florricks. Stormy weather ahead.

Alicia's first case, now that she's solid with the firm, is to defend a familiar character, a wealthy, flamboyant, and probably psychotic lawyer whom Alicia's firm had earlier helped escape a murder conviction, though not without hints that he may have been guilty. This time he has killed a young woman in the middle of a sex game gone wrong. And while his self defense plea, and the checkered past of his victim, help him avoid a likely 45-year prison term, he will have to serve eight years, long enough for Alicia to survive countless ups and downs before this killer can manage to maneuver himself out of prison and ask Alicia, once again, to extricate him from still another murderous rampage.

In this week's final scene, Peter is celebrating his release and the resumption of his political career (we are spared the obligatory discussion of where—and with whom—he will now be sleeping), and asks Alicia to chat up a couple of union bigwigs who are said to be looking for a lawyer. Alicia is polite, but diffident, and one can see that major career and domestic choices lie ahead, as well as a boss who still shamelessly yearns to pick up the threads of their long-abandoned law school romance.