How does one deal with grief in the immediate aftermath of a death of a loved one?
The Good Wife deftly explored this topic as all the characters dealt with Will’s sudden death differently.
A stunned Alicia immediately goes to Lockhart/Gardner (sorry, even in this time of mourning, I can’t bring myself to refer to it as LG) and to Diane, a person who also loved Will. She discovers a voicemail from Will, left moments before he was shot, where he just says her name and then is interrupted and says he will call her back. She wants to know what he wanted to tell her. Was he was angry at her for stealing a client? Did he want their feud to end? Alicia goes to the judge, sees the courtroom, visits the hospital, talks to ADA Finn Polmar and meticulously retraces Will’s last moments. She spurns Peter—not able to handle him or the entourage that accompanies him. Grace tries to comfort her mom with the idea that Will is in heaven, an idea that the agnostic Alicia spurns. “It’s just truer. It’s just not wishful thinking,” Alicia tells Grace about not believing in God and heaven.
In the episode’s final moments, as Peter hugs his wife, Alicia imagines what Will wanted to say to her and what she so wanted to hear. “I want to be with you and only you forever,” she envisions him saying—words she will now never, ever hear. There was so much left unsaid between Alicia and Will. For, as we discussed last week, Alicia was never over Will as much as she tried to squelch her true feelings for him. Whatever façade she was trying to keep her marriage under, it will all come crumbling down now.
Diane suffers no fools in her grief. She flays an intern who is sobbing uncontrollably after only working at the firm for one week. “Get your things from your desk. Leave here and don’t come back,” she tells her. Later when one of Will’s clients demands a face-to-face meeting to convince him to stay, Diane fires him as a client and also ensures that no other firm will take him on. “If I were dead, it’s exactly what Will would do,” she tells him. In one of the episode’s very brief lighter moments, she turns to David Lee and says, “That felt good.” “It turned me on,” he responds.
Much like Diane, Cary is in no mood to deal with anyone lacking compassion. When a lawyer insists on a deposition even after Cary tells him Alicia is dealing with a death of a close friend, Cary goes after his client ferociously. “I want to get out my anger and my aggression by destroying your client,” he tells him.
Ever the opportunist, Eli recognizes that Will’s death means Nelson Dubeck no longer has a case against Peter and immediately calls Dubeck. “Can’t we just take a minute?” Peter asks him. But even a grieving Eli, his eyes constantly brimming with tears, can’t turn off his constant political strategizing.
Kalinda does what she always does: She investigates and tries to find satisfying answers where there are none. Nothing can explain such a violent and tragic end to a man’s life. She wants to know if it was Jeffrey Grant or the crossfire that killed Will (as if that will somehow make a difference in the outcome?). She wants to see his body in the morgue and listen in on the police interrogation. In one of the episode’s most powerful scenes, Kalinda visits Jeffrey Grant and offers him a belt so he can kill himself. A despondent Jeffrey eagerly approaches Kalinda. She snatches the belt away. “You’re going to live with this,” she says. “He was trying to help you, so you live with that.” Have we ever seen a more callous Kalinda?
We now know that Jeffrey didn’t intend to kill Will. He shot and killed the witness on the stand and Will was trying to intervene. Finn tried to save Will, dragging him to safety and staying with him until the paramedics arrived. Will was trying to say something, but Finn didn’t know what, just like how Alicia, and the viewers, will never know why Will was calling her. A life cut abruptly short leaves more questions than answers.
Other thoughts on “The Last Call”:
• The sight of the cynical David Lee crying may have hurt the most.
• I’ve seen a lot of grumbling that both the people at the correspondents’ luncheon and the people at LG should have heard about the courtroom shooting. The journalists, in particular, should have been on top of any breaking news event. And I agree. While Will’s name definitely wouldn’t have been released (his family hadn’t yet been notified), clearly people should have at least heard about what was happening. However, I’m willing to give the show some dramatic license here. It was much more powerful for Kalinda to break the news Alicia, Alicia to tell Cary, Eli to tell Peter and Diane to inform the firm. I decided just to go with it.
• That was Will Chase briefly seen reprising his role of Detective Doug Young. He joins former Smash costars Jack Davenport and Christian Borle, who have already appeared on The Good Wife. This can only mean one thing—it’s time for a musical episode of The Good Wife, which might provide the levity we all need right now.
• Matthew Goode, who plays ADA Finn Polmar, has been promoted to series regular. While I’m not ready to completely move on yet, Goode was just terrific in his final scene with Alicia and should be a great addition to the cast.
What did you think of last night’s episode of The Good Wife? Did it bother you that no one had heard the news until Diane and Kalinda told them? How many boxes of tissues did you go through? Talk about it below.
Amy Amatangelo is a Boston-based freelance writer and a regular contributor to Paste. You can follow her on Twitter or her blog.