Reading the In-House: Lifeguard (1x10)
Lifeguard
Air Date: 15 December 2009
Case of the Week: Tapped to defend a nine-year-old African-American boy on a charge of misdemeanor assault, Alicia is shocked when the judge ignores her plea deal and hands down a much harsher sentence; aggrieved, she works to prove that Judge Baxter is racist in his sentencing, only to find that he’s isn’t racist-he’s corrupt. Meanwhile, Diane is approached by a group of Democratic judges who want her to join their ranks, which would entail divesting her clients and leaving SL&G. (N.B.: Even though Stern declared he was leaving the firm last episode, an event Diane mentions in this episode, Duke Roscoe refers to them as "Stern, Lockhart, & Gardner" and shows their logo as such on his show in the next episode, 1x11; the initals S L G are also clearly visible on the walls of the conference room in 1x11.)
The episode opens with Alicia playing hardball for her “98-pound wallflower” of a client with ASA Mark Richardson (“31, a college lineman who turned his football scholarship to a [sic] good advantage”) in the halls outside of court. She’s tenacious here, probably more so than we’ve ever seen her, and she earns every concession from the ASA. Their final agreement is one year probation and 200 hours of community service, with Terrance (“13, small, bookish, with prominent spectacles that make him look even more like bully-bait”) taking responsibility in open court. Even so, it’s a bit of a hard sell to her own clients, as the mother (Talia in the script, Thalia in the subtitles; “30s, middle class African American…a concerned and delicate mom who has made her one obsession the protection of her son”) doesn’t think her son should plead guilty or have any criminal record whatsoever, even if it would be expunged at the conclusion of probation. Terrance agrees to plead guilty, which he does, but Judge Henry Baxter (40, “lean, shaggy, liberal, the life of the party. Bailiffs and court reporters love him. He keeps things moving and fun”), not a party to-and therefore not bound by-the agreement between Alicia and the ASA, sentences the boy to a much harsher punishment: 9 months’ detention. Given how Alicia has just had the carpet pulled out from underneath her, we should know by now that an appearance by Kalinda isn’t all that far off, but it’s also worth noting that Alicia starts to investigate on her own before the in-house comes on board.
Kalinda's first appearance occurs twelve and a half minutes into the episode, which seems rather late in absolute terms but not so much relatively speaking, since the problem of Terrance’s punishment has to be established before she can be expected to show up and work her magic. Her entrance is subtle and unexpected, and it fits very well with her character as we have come to know it. Alicia is sitting around a table with Cary and Julian Cain (“32, African-American, funny, wields his authority with a calm certainty”), who is taking time from the rest of the Sheffrin Marks case to work on this, since Alicia’s client is the son of Sheffrin’s housekeeper. (Cain also happens to be African American.) The three of them are looking at two dozen mug-shots of contestants who have been before Baxter, and Alicia is trying to point out the discrepancy between very light sentences and very harsh ones-a discrepancy that seems to be based on race. (Only one or two of the ones sentenced to probation instead of detention are racial minorities, whereas the vast majority of those sentenced to detention are clearly not Caucasian.) When Cary plays dense and pretends not to understand, saying “So you’re filing a motion to reconsider-based on what?” Alicia just gives him a look that says You’re kidding, right? “He’s a racist.” It isn’t Alicia speaking, but Kalinda at the door. Alicia and Julius are the only two in a position to have seen her, as the door is slightly behind Cary and to his right, though neither gives any indication that they have a guest. Cary isn’t startled when she speaks, exactly, but he does look over at her. Her attention is focused elsewhere, somewhere in the vicinity of the mugshots laid out on the table, and her tone isn’t friendly. It’s very matter-of-fact, which isn’t surprising, but it also has a certainty that seems to indicate Kalinda has made up her mind on the matter. The construction of the dialogue is also very telling. Cary’s actual question was: “Based on what?” Kalinda could have responded: “On the grounds that he’s a racist.” (She could also have made some sort of joke, e.g. about how even Cary’s not that dense.) Instead, her answer could be taken as an absolute statement, and her tone does nothing to discourage that interpretation. Despite the ambiguity there, she seems to be convinced already, highly unusual for a character who’s constantly considering every angle, even if she has gut instincts that serve her well. The script gives no clues here, so I’m not sure we can get much more out of it at this point, except to say that her deadly seriousness here could-and probably should-remind us that she, too, is a racial minority. Though she’s certainly thick-skinned, it seems racial discrimination might be an issue for her, or at least it might have been in the past. She isn’t the type to forgive and forget.
Cary explains that he isn’t actually that dense, it’s just that they shouldn’t be jumping to conclusions quite so quickly. Not everything is about race, as much as racial discourse in this country has conditioned us to see it everywhere, and they certainly don’t want to go around accusing a judge of racism (especially not in Chicago) if there’s any chance they’re wrong. First, they have to show that race is the only ground for the disparity in Baxter’s decisions by doing statistical analysis on his entire record, not just “twenty” cases (compare “two dozen” earlier in the episode); if it isn’t, they may very well find the real reason. Julius Cain assigns Kalinda to help Alicia with the “hard data” for her motion, instructing them to make use of “Mr. Statistics” in the process. (“He has nothing better to do,” Julius adds. “Who says I have nothing better to do?” Cary objects, trying his cheeky grin on everyone-including Kalinda-before Julius laughs, suddenly stops laughing, and smacks him down: “I do.”)
In the midst of more Jackie drama, Alicia gets a call at home. She doesn’t seem to know who’s calling, offering an impersonal “hello,” but Kalinda doesn’t even bother with pleasantries, instead leaping straight into the latest discovery: “Much as I hate to admit it, Stat Boy may have something. We looked at all the kids Baxter sent to detention sorted by date.” The scene shifts in the middle of her first sentence to the interior of Lockhart/Gardner. As if we didn’t know already from Alicia being at home, it’s dark out. While that could probably be as early as 4:30pm one week before the solstice in Chicago, it visually reinforces the idea that they’re staying late to make headway. While Alicia listens on the other end, Cary jumps in: “The racial pattern didn’t exist before-” Kalinda starts speaking over him, glaring down at him from her position just to the left of the chair he’s in. In the script, she’s meant to hold up a hand: “shut up, would you let me.” (She doesn’t actually say that to him-it’s just in the stage directions-but her meaning’s meant to be quite clear.) I think I prefer the way it’s done as shot, where Kalinda uses her whole 5’3” frame-plus boots-to cow him physically. (Let’s ignore what that makes the seated Cary eye-level with, because he’s ignoring it, too.) At any rate, “the racial pattern didn’t exist before June 2008.”
“Why?” Alicia asks. Again, Cary seems to think he’s talking to her, raising his voice towards the cell phone Kalinda is holding: “I still don’t know if it’s racism or something else…” Kalinda, exasperated at being cut off yet again, pulls the phone away from her ear and holds it closer to Cary. “Do you wanna talk to her?” Cary considers it for a moment before wisely backing down with a (slightly forced) casual “nah.” Their interaction would almost suggest sibling rivalry to me, except that the PI’s no-nonsense attitude and complete lack of amusement make Cary seem like an over-eager puppy (not for the first time). Kalinda finally gets back on the phone, much less annoyed now that she has Alicia her phone to herself. “Look, we don’t know, but something in June changed for Baxter.” “What?” Alicia presses, as if Kalinda hadn’t just said they didn’t know. “I don’t know,” Kalinda repeats, and for a second Alicia looks like she’s going to take out a little more of her frustration on the investigator. Instead she takes a moment, and when she speaks again, asking if Kalinda can find out, she sounds less stressed and more polite. “Oh, yeah,” Kalinda responds with the barest twitch of a smile. She’s finally showing some life now that she has a direction to hunt in, and it’s making her a little more playful. It’s nice to know that she genuinely enjoys Alicia her work. Also, I’m at the point where I’m going to declare her horseshoe necklace as much a part of her character as her boots, since it’s shown up so often and will continue to do so in future episodes. I really like that it’s off-axis (only one of the ends is attached to the chain)-it reminds me a bit of a crooked halo. Okay, that was really sappy-shutting up now.
When we next see Kalinda, she’s pulling up in front of a dark house at night, Cary in tow. They pass a realtor’s “For Sale” sign, which can be seen in at least two different shots and is also mentioned in the script. “So what’s this?” the curious puppy asks. Kalinda informs him that it’s Baxter’s old house, adding: “I’m meeting a friend. So don’t talk, alright? I used to work with this guy.” (Side note: somebody needs to hire some new subtitlers, because “all right” is not what they mean here.) And now we finally have a definition for Kalinda’s use of the word “friend”: someone she works (or used to work) with, particularly one who is useful as a source of information. If you caught the “For Sale” sign, the emptiness of the interior won’t catch you off guard. Otherwise, it makes it a little (more) creepy. Sometimes I wonder it’s taken so long to find Kalinda in a dark, abandoned house at night doing who-knows-what (or meeting who-knows-whom). Turns out the house, while uninhabited, is not quite so abandoned: Cary gets a faceful of flashlight as he walks in behind Kalinda, whose shorter frame actually works to her advantage here, as does her coat, which is purple but rather dark.
“Don’t move an inch,” says the guy holding the flashlight. Cary starts to raise his hands, but Kalinda just smirks and says, “Hey, Frank.” “Frank” (Frank Seabrook, 32, plainclothes, weathered, lumberjack handsome”) is hidden in the shadows, of course, but we can see him because of the camera position. He’s also wearing a dark coat, probably black, and the top of his light-colored shirt is poking out above the collar. He holds the flashlight in one fist like a police detective. Now according to the subtitles, he says “Okay,” but in speaking he says “Kay,” and the script actually has “K.” I’m more inclined to think that he’s acknowledging her by calling her “K,” not by abbreviating “O.K.” This would fit in with what the police detectives in earlier episodes have called her, and it indicates a sort of established professional rapport. “You bring a friend?” The voice is deep, curious but not exactly hostile. “I come in peace,” Cary says, and we finally see all the colors he’s wearing: tan coat, brown gloves, blue button-up shirt with a darker patterned tie, and a plaid scarf with what looks like tan, green, and red. I guess he just can’t decide if he’s celebrating Christmas or Hannukah. “Colleague,” Kalinda corrects, starting up the stairs towards Frank. “Not my decision.” Now if Kalinda had truly been against bringing Cary, we all know he would never have made it out of the office, but I think there’s some ambiguity here whether she means it was Julius or Cary who insisted that he tag along.
Finally Frank comes out of the shadows, taking a seat at the top of the stairs. We get a good look at his face as Kalinda begins to interrogate him-rather gently, true, but interrogate nonetheless. He’s no sleaze by any stretch of the imagination. Not bad looking, a very clean face, reddish hair, moustache, and beard. Under his coat he’s wearing a white button-up with the thinnest of stripes and a black tie with tiny white polka-dots. He looks like a cop who didn’t have time to change after work. (Though it’s worth noting he’s never actually identified as a cop in the episode, just in the script.)
DETECTIVE SEABROOK: What’s your beef with Judge Baxter?
KALINDA: I don’t think I have one. [Total lie, for the record; she’s still convinced he’s a racist at this point. And even if he isn’t, he’s giving Alicia problems. She clearly had "beef" with one Amber Madison for that very reason not too long ago.]
DETECTIVE SEABROOK: Then why’d you want to meet?
KALINDA: I came across a crime report with your name on it. You mind walking me through it, Frank?
[The detective flashes his light on a window to his left.]
DETECTIVE SEABROOK: Burglar broke in here. Back window. Flipped the lock. The judge wasn’t here. Only his wife.
[I can see why Kalinda gets on with him-he’s plain, straightforward, direct. No BS to cut through, no obscure clues to decipher. Just a simple give-and-take.]
KALINDA: No warning from the security system?
[Seabrook just shakes his head, his “no” not even fully formed.]
KALINDA: And what did the guy want?
DETECTIVE SEABROOK: Mrs. Baxter said it was robbery.
KALINDA: “Said?”
DETECTIVE SEABROOK: She was pretty shaken up. She had a cut on her cheek, wrists looked like someone’d been handling her.
KALINDA: Rape? [She sounds surprised here, despite her claim in Orthodox. Seabrook doesn’t deny it. Cary immediately looks to her, then turns to Seabrook.]
CARY: Why lie about being raped?
[Seabrook shows absolutely no inclination whatsoever towards answering him, just stares at him, expression unchanged.]
Kalinda jumps in: “Cary, you wanna go sit in the car?” Her voice is tight, firm, a little concerned that he’s going to make Frank stop talking-or worse, refuse to talk to her in the future. Wisely, Cary chooses to remember that she told him not to talk, so he doesn’t say another word, just mimics locking his lips. Finally she turns back to Seabrook.
KALINDA: I couldn’t find a case file in the SA’s office. You never caught the guy. Bad description?
DETECTIVE SEABROOK: No, good description. His Honor phoned later, said his wife just wanted to drop it.
KALINDA: Did she happened to mention the race of the perp? [Cary takes his eyes off of Seabrook to turn to Kalinda.]
DETECTIVE SEABROOK: Yeah, African-American. Why? [Kalinda just takes a moment to stare at him, something like a spark of triumph lighting her eyes.]
KALINDA: And this happened in the summer of 2008? [Cary, still looking at Kalinda, takes a breath, smiling.]
DETECTIVE SEABROOK: Yep, June.
Script: Kalinda nods. All she needs to know.
Outside, Kalinda leads Cary back to the car. He hurries to catch up with her, protesting on the way.
CARY: I don’t believe it. People aren’t that simple.
KALINDA: People are exactly that simple. Before the assault, Baxter’s sentencing is race neutral. After, it’s not.
[It seems so cut-and-dried when she says it that way, but there’s something missing here. Cary, of all people, is picking up on it, but Kalinda doesn’t want to see it. The question is: why? Sure, she loves to think the worst of people, but she’s also (usually) the first to discard the simple, prima facie answers and dig for the truth, no matter how ugly it turns out. Her motivations here are unclear. It could be nothing more than the fact that she’s experienced racial discrimination first-hand in some way, or even that she’s often right about things like this, but we aren’t given any real answers.]
CARY: Yeah, but that could be anything. People do things for a hundred reasons.
KALINDA: No. People like to think they do things for a hundred reasons. They do things for one reason.
CARY: What reason? [Kalinda turns at the end of the driveway and stops, causing him to stop and face her.] Come on, Yoda. What reason?
KALINDA: Sex. Money. Hatred. Love. You want to make people mysterious. People aren’t mysterious. [She says it with a hint of disdain. People are always trying to make themselves more interesting, somehow greater than they actually are. She knows by now just how great they’re not.]
CARY: Okay, the same thing goes for you. You’re not mysterious. [She’s looking away from him by this point.] By the same logic, you’re completely knowable. [Finally, she looks him in the eye.]
KALINDA: Sure. [It’s an almost casual admission.]
CARY: Okay, so then hit me. [She gets this curious look on her face as he pauses, like she thinks that he actually wants her to hit him for a second.] I wanna know. [And now he’s actually poking her-and whatever gave him the impression that she likes being touched? Did I miss that memo?-as if to say, “I want to know you.”] Go ahead. [It’s a challenge, and she looks away, perhaps contemplating how to get him to give up. After a second she uses one gloved finger to draw a stray lock of hair back over her ear and turns back to him.]
KALINDA: Cary, you and I have nothing in common-[She has a slight smile as she says it, but her words don’t match her expression. It’s an odd but fascinating combination. He smiles back, perhaps thinking he’s finally getting somewhere, not seeing what’s ahead.]-because you and I are from different worlds. And it’s not just Mars and Venus, it’s spaghetti and hydrogen. We’re different categories. I’m knowable, just not to you. [She walks back to the car, and his smile grows.]
This is a veritable speech by Kalinda’s standards, and I’d like to think it reveals quite a bit about her. That said, I’m at a bit of a loss as to what we learn here that we don’t already know. Cary likes her. She tolerates him. He might want something more. She doesn’t. He thinks they could have something. She conceives of them as not just worlds but categories apart. He’s trying somewhat amateurishly to turn the tables on her with her own logic. She shuts him down coolly, professionally, but still in a very Kalinda way. What really intrigues me, though, is the concessions she makes here. She barely bats an eye as she admits that she’s “knowable”; more than that, she herself reiterates that she’s knowable, just not (as she claims) to Cary. Whether or not she's lying (and it's possible she is, but I think it would be strange here), that last line has to make us wonder: to whom?
Kalinda brings her new information to Diane, Julius, and Alicia. She’s still clearly thinking-and persuading everyone else-that it’s about race, despite Cary’s persistent misgivings. (She seems almost to be dismissing his concerns the same way she dismisses his adolescent enthusiasm and personal interest. Still, she doesn’t seem the type to be so baby-with-the-bath-water without some underlying reason that makes her particularly blind in this case.) The three lawyers ponder how to get Baxter's cases taken away from him, and Diane volunteers to “try a more direct route” (i.e. talking with the chief justice), which quickly backfires. (Side note: the chief justice’s name is Victoria Adler, which means “victory” [Latin] “eagle” [German]. Not an inauspicious name for a chief justice, eh?)
After the (in)famous Jackie-with-the-sprinkler incident, Alicia finds herself back in the conference room with Cary and Kalinda. The same twenty (or two dozen) mugshots are laid out on the table, and Cary is explaining (in a rather serious tone, for him) that they have a problem. “Really,” Kalinda says with mock-seriousness, turning from Cary to Alicia and looking at her intently, “Stat Boy says we have a problem.” Alicia stares calmly back, left hand casually flipping a pen, and I can’t quite tell whether she’s silently willing Kalinda to have a little more patience with the puppy or trying to keep from bursting out in laughter. Cary ignores her tone, trying to explain said problem to the two of them: “Blacks go to detention. Whites go home, right? The question is why.” “We know why,” Kalinda interjects, as if explaining it to a toddler. Cary goes over the facts: An African-American man assaults Baxter’s wife, Baxter starts handing out harsher sentences to blacks. Kalinda looks to Alicia, expecting her to be equally exasperated at this point. Alicia, however, is actually paying attention to Cary, and Kalinda settles down. Cary goes on to explain that he’s analyzed the sentences using two non-racial factors: family structure (single-parent homes vs. two-parent homes) and age (under 14, over 14). In both cases a few mugshots are exchanged, but the racial makeup stays the same. Kalinda, who’s been shooting Alicia covert glances the whole time (trying to stare without being caught, are we?), silently resigns herself to the fact that she might have been wrong.
Alicia’s understandably quite concerned, but at first she’s afraid that there was no change in sentencing at all after June 2008. Cary assures her that there was a drastic change, but that it wasn’t because of race. Kalinda has nothing productive to add, and it shows. She challenges Cary further, daring him to agree that the assault on Baxter’s wife was irrelevant to his change in sentencing. Cary doesn’t take the bait, reiterating that while they know it’s relevant, they just don’t know why. Kalinda finally takes another look at the mugshots. We can tell the wheels are grinding now, and it seems like she has an idea, but one that she’s not particularly happy about. Script: Kalinda considers this for a second, thinking, realizing.
The dialogue of the deleted scene involving Kalinda, which originally came here:
Parking lot. Daytime. Kalinda is standing next the driver’s side of her TrailBlazer, facing Seabrook, who’s sitting on the hood of his sedan. Kalinda is flipping through a folder.
KALINDA: Got five petty assaults. Nothing much else. This doesn’t look like the rap sheet of a rapist.
SEABROOK: Maybe Mrs. Baxter was his first.
KALINDA: Or maybe…
SEABROOK: What?
KALINDA: She wasn’t raped. They trade a look. Do you remember a bookie, Arnie Castor? He used to use gangbangers to enforce.
SEABROOK: Yeah. What are you thinking?
KALINDA: Mrs. Baxter wasn’t raped. Judge Baxter didn’t wanna prosecute because he knew who assaulted her.
SEABROOK: An Arnie Castor protégé.
KALINDA: Yeah. She hands back the folder. Check those five petty assaults. I bet half of them owed money to Castor. And I checked the judge’s house. He refinanced it, borrowed half a mil.
SEABROOK: So there goes your racist theory.
KALINDA: Yeah. But I got a better one. He’s corrupt.
The next scene opens on Kalinda letting herself in to see Will without so much as a knock. He’s behind his desk packing a briefcase and looks up only briefly as she walks in, closing the door behind her. “We need to talk,” she says in a tone of voice that seems to mean “sit down and shut up, because we’re going to have a talk, and we’re going to have it now.” He doesn’t even bat an eye at her walking in unannounced and without an appointment, and he doesn’t stop what he’s doing. “Tomorrow,” he says, “I’m late for lunch.” She doesn’t react, putting a folder and her orange notebook down on his desk and taking a position in front of a chair. “Henry Baxter.” It’s not a question; it’s a statement. Will pauses for a second. “No.” Ever wonder what happens when two pit-bulls go at it? Stay tuned. (Script: “There’s a familiarity there. The two can cut through the shit.”) His expression says he’s deadly serious, and although he continues to button his jacket over a hideous red-and-gold striped tie, she’s got all of his attention at the moment. She doesn’t waste it, bluntly declaring: “Everyone is pussyfooting around you because you’re his friend.” She isn’t happy about confronting him, and she really isn’t happy that no one else has had the balls to do it before this. “I said no,” Will says, emphasizing his point with a finger. It’s a second warning, and one that Kalinda doesn’t ignore but also won’t obey-not in this case. Will turns to retrieve his coat from its stand, and Kalinda ends up explaining to his back that she knows he’s her boss and can tell her to get lost when he wants, but she knows something happened. All she wants to know is what, even if the only one who can tell her is too close to the situation to remain unaffected. Will rounds on her, vehemently asserting that Baxter (“Henry,” rather) is not a racist and rhetorically asking if Kalinda knows what a charge like that does to someone in Chicago. Strangely enough, Kalinda’s anger melts at his emotional state, and she quietly but firmly assures him that she knows Baxter isn’t a racist (a fine admission, coming from someone who was convinced for quite some time that he was) while again insisting that “something did happen.” Her admission knocks the wind out of his sails, erasing his righteous anger in a heartbeat, and she finally has the space to explain the change in sentencing. She presents it as a curious change that he can help explain because he’s Baxter’s best friend. After some more poking and prodding (gently, this time), Kalinda finds out that Baxter just borrowed “some money, that’s all.” “How much?” she inquires. “$120,000.” Kalinda just gives him this look. (Script: Holy-! I don’t know exactly what curse is meant to come after, but the thought’s pretty much the same either way.) Will continues to explain that Baxter was in a tight spot because of his gambling, but that he was “going to make it right.” It turns out that he had only paid “some” back (Kalinda probably doesn’t even want to ask), but it’s enough for the PI to figure out that it was a bookie’s enforcer that had visited Baxter’s house, not a would-be rapist. And it’s-surprise, surprise-Will who figures out the second half of the puzzle: all of the contestants sentenced by Baxter to detention were sent to Palgrave Academy.
Given Will’s by-now-infamously prickly attitude in defense of Judge Baxter, we might be surprised that anyone was willing to broach the subject with him at all. Now Kalinda isn’t the type to shrink back from a difficult situation, but from what we’ve seen she also tends not to interfere in matters between players on a certain political level (e.g. the partners, Alicia, Florrick, Childs, etc.). It’s no secret that she has no official power on that level-in fact, she’s rather vulnerable, what with all her extra-curricular (read extra-legal) activities-so she sticks to what she can do behind the scenes, and she’s devastatingly effective from that angle. That’s why it’s so momentous when she’s the one who finally confronts Will about Baxter, declaring that she won’t “pussyfoot” around him like everyone else, despite the fact that he as her boss has every right to tell her to “get lost” (or “bugger off,” in the words of the script). This scene goes a long way towards defining their relationship: we see a long-standing but reserved familiarity in Kalinda’s determination to broach a difficult subject with an equity partner; a unique self-awareness on the investigator’s part that she is above all Will’s employee, and therefore subject to his instructions to a certain degree, no matter how independent she is; above all a gentle but determined firmness in her no-nonsense attitude as she gives it to Will straight, despite acknowledging that she is not in a position to force him to do anything. There’s no attempt on her part to use whatever familiarity they have as leverage to influence him, nor does she cajole or coax or wheedle. Somewhere along the line Kalinda’s learned that being earnest can capture Will’s attention; conversely, Will’s learned that he’d better pay attention when Kalinda’s being earnest. Once Kalinda has convinced him to put aside his blind defense of Baxter, Will realizes that she’s actually coming to him for help in confirming the reason behind Baxter’s drastic change in sentencing. She’s admitted, contrary to her initial assumption, that they were wrong about racism; now she suspects that Baxter is corrupt, and Will is the most direct route to proving that suspicion. (A deleted scene from this episode shows Kalinda confirming her suspicion with Frank Seabrook, but that would have detracted from this scene, in which she’s basically relying on Will to put the nail in Baxter’s coffin.)
So far Kalinda has demonstrated a certain degree of loyalty to her employers, and even from what we’ve seen so far in the show she feels no qualms about going to great lengths to do the work they pay her for, no matter how bitter she is over the actual amount. So some part of her loyalty can apparently be bought, but this scene gives us the sense that she might share something deeper with Will in particular. At this point I’d venture to guess that at some point their shared reliance on each other’s complementary skills evolved into a more or less permanent arrangement, with a particular blend of trust and intimacy (however reserved) eventually taking hold as a result. Very different, it seems to me, is Kalinda’s friendliness towards Alicia, whom she has grown to like-and even (dare we think it?) to admire-almost entirely against her own nature in the course of their daily work, not from any kind of quid-pro-quo.
Will gets his reward in the form of accompanying Kalinda to Palgrave Academy. In the beginning of the scene Kalinda naturally takes the lead, spoon-feeding the Palgrave director (identified only as “Shaw”) some lie about having a juvenile delinquent who might be sent there; the director is all too eager to boast about the academy. Kalinda begins easing the conversation towards the topic of money, and she’s managed to get an admission from him that the county pays a stipend to the academy for each of the children it sends to Palgrave when Will suddenly takes over. “And how do you know Henry Baxter?” Will asks. Kalinda’s meant to shoot him a look, but she ends up looking off into space somewhere, silently praying Will hasn’t just fucked this up. (Leave the investigating to the professional, please.) The big chance he took pays off, and Will and the director start chatting about Baxter and his wife, Ellen (“wonderful tennis player,” apparently). Only once the director gets comfortable again can Kalinda finally bite her lip in relief and spare a glance at Will.
A buzzer sounds off-screen, and the director starts to show them out. Will stops at the top of a flight of stairs, forcing Kalinda to hang back as well. He finally asks about the kickbacks and approaches Shaw as the director pretends innocence and more or less flees, instructing an Officer Michael to show them out. Will keeps coming, getting into a minor scuffle with the guard, but eventually gives up. (Note Kalinda raising her hand to get Michael to back off of Will.) It isn’t the director they want, after all; it’s the man Will thought he was friends with. Kalinda watches Will as they walk away, Will looking up, upset. “You look good in action,” she says, and they share a look. It’s husky, even bordering on flirtatious, but in a very playful way. It’s meant to shake him out of his funk, at least for the moment, and it works: their look is smothered smiles (W: You think so? K: Oh, yeah.), and it gets them moving out of the academy. “How does this happen?” Will asks, still bitter. (“He was a friend,” the script adds in beforehand.) “It happens,” Kalinda assures him. Like the sun rises and sets. Just another day at the office. Etc. etc. Will’s hurt isn’t going away anytime soon: “So what’s the solution, don’t trust anybody?” “Works for me,” Kalinda quips, with only the barest hint of regret. Better never to have had a friend at all than to have liked and lost.
In the closing scenes Will is left to confront Baxter alone, and Diane is given the kiss of death by the chief justice, who finally has to admit falling off her high horse in front of Terrance, T(h)alia, and Alicia.
As episodes go, this one promises more personal interaction on Kalinda’s part than is par for the course (e.g. her conversations with Cary, Will, even Frank). However, her scenes with Will in particular-like the rest of the episode-are clearly geared towards making him the focus of attention. The writers claim that they cut the aforementioned deleted scene to take the plot in another direction, specifically so that we could see two characters working together whom we don't normally see doing that. Unfortunately, I think Kalinda ends up a little out of character, if that's possible. For instance, confirming through her usual means that Baxter was corrupt (as she does in the deleted scene) is much more her style, and certainly she was capable of discovering on her own that every detained kid was sent to Palgrave, but that would have meant that Will would not have played nearly as important a role as he does. I like the idea of putting Will and Kalinda together for part of the case, especially her disdain for others' pussyfooting around him and his ultimate disillusion and disappointment with Baxter at the end of the episode, but not at the cost of her own character.