Alicia Out-'Foxed' by Rival Attorney on "The Good Wife"

The smug lawyers at Lockhart Gardner are outfoxed by none other than guest star Michael J. Fox on this week's episode of "The Good Wife." Fox, who in real life has Parkinson's Disease, plays neurologically impaired lawyer Louis Canning, who abuses his condition to manipulate the jury. In the show's opening scene, Canning (or should that be Conniving?) cons Alicia by pretending he dropped his bus pass at the coffee cart in front of the court house. Running late as usual, Ms. Do-right can't refuse a disabled man asking a favor, and Canning hustles up to the courtroom ahead of her. Of course, this causes Alicia to be late for court and Lockhart Gardner partner Diane to glare disapprovingly at her tardy junior associate.

Meanwhile, at the Peter Florrick campaign headquarters, the usually savvy Eli Gold turns out to be too smart for his own good. Trying to find a flaw in his candidate's saintly opponent, Wendy Scott-Carr, he sends out a flunkie to dig up some dirt on her and learns she recently had expensive breast implant surgery. Delighting in this apparent hypocricy (Scott-Carr is a champion of the poor), Gold plants this information with a mole for the Glenn Childs' campaign, who runs with it. The rival's campaign produces a JibJab style cartoon lampooning Scott-Carr's plastic surgery, but the joke turns out to be on Gold. Scott-Carr had the surgery because she had a bilateral mastectomy the previous year, a personal matter she had preferred to keep private. Although Gold does not take any heat for the mistake, his devious plan has clearly backfired since now Scott-Carr is not only a saint, but also a sympathy magnet.

Back at Lockhart Gardner, the war heats up between Blake and Kalinda, with Blake uncovering one of Kalinda's ex-girlfriends, a public defender, who Kalinda has recently given the pink slip. It is hardly a revelation to "Good Wife" fans that Kalinda is gay, or at least bi-sexual, but the secrecy with which she shrouds her personal life makes a poker-faced CIA agent look like a blabber mouth. Why is Kalinda hiding her sexual preference? Is she afraid that if she comes out she cannot use her sexuality to manipulate men? Surely the progressive Will and Diane would not fire Kalinda over her preference for ladies over gents.

To make matters worse, Blake has not only discovered Kalinda's secret, he rubs it in her nose when he shows up for a Lockhart Gardner victory party arm-in-arm with Kalinda's thrown over flame. In an almost sitcomish moment, Kalinda's ex-girlfriend mistakenly assumes Alicia is the woman for whom she was dumped and seems poised to join forces with Blake to make life messy for the cold-hearted Kalinda.

A popular theme on the show, loyalty, resurfaces as a moral issue when the Florricks' daughter, Grace, is videotaped at a rally for her father's opponent, enthusiastically stating support for his female rival. Grace obviously has some deep-seated anger at her father for betraying and humiliating her mother, if not herself, but the dog-loyal Alicia does not condone her daughter's public payback. She informs Grace that freedom of speech will start when Grace is 18 and out of the house; until then she should keep her beefs with her dad inside the family. When Grace (mistakenly) finds out the vicious viral video was not her father's campaign's doing, but that of rival Childs, she has second thoughts about dear old dad and tenderly tidies up his bedroom, whether as an act of contrition or a sincere desire to return to the family fold.

Back at Lockhart Gardner, the lawyers are whooping it up after settling with Fox's client for a whopping $35 million. Even humble Alicia can't help but gloat just a little, but Fox gets the last laugh. In an O.Henry twist, he reveals the folly of the firm's victory party. "You think you were my equal in that courtroom?" he asks Alicia. "I didn't lose. Lockhart Gardner stumbled their way into a $90 million class action. The manufacturer of the pharmaceuticals asked me to lower you down to $50 million. I lowered you to 35."

Ouch!