"The Good Wife:" Diane Lockhart (Christine Baranski) is on the Way Out

CBS, 10 PM ET, January 11, 2011: The big news from January 11th's episode of "The Good Wife" is that Christine Baranski's character of Diane Lockhart is being written out of the show. This was not the leading plot line, but it is the one that has the most implications for the series, going forward.

The plot, whose story Courtney Kemp Agboh contributed, focused on a young couple who are arrested, initially, for trying to buy prescription amphetamines illegally. The young man, Jonathan Murphy (Scott Porter) and his girlfriend Alexis (Elizabeth Reaser) claim they were just trying to purchase the prescription drugs to help get them through finals at the fictional Cook County College. Young Jon is the son of a heavy hitter at the firm, so Alicia (Julianna Margulies) is dispatched to defend the young man and his pregnant girlfriend.

Meanwhile, we get to see Alicia's brother, Owen (Dallas Roberts), who comes for a visit unexpectedly. Owen is gay and has just broken up with his lover Kevin. It was a pleasure seeing "Owen," who played Miles Fiedler on "Rubicon," a series that was just hitting its stride when it was inexplicably canceled. (It was a good series, but we're left, instead, with unscripted "Bachelor" fare).

Once Alicia arrives to aid Jon Murphy, it becomes apparent that former colleague Cary Agos (Matt Czuchry) has pulled a fast one. It isn't really simply a small-time pharmaceutical prescription stimulant case at all; it's a murder investigation into who killed the pharmacist at the store where the drurgs were stolen. The only way to get the truth, it seems, is to try to turn the young lovers against one another by playing one off against the other as to who will rat out the other first to get the best deal. ("It's a matter of who wants to spend their 24th birthday in prison, versus their 48th.")

Robert and Michelle King created the series, and it just keeps improving with lines like, "They're going to protect each other right into prison." When Alicia seems put off by the strategy of turning the 2 lovebirds against one another, she is told, "No one said it would be pretty."

There's also some fairly deep pondering on the nature of true love. Owen opines, "I'm never gonna' find love. Love just doesn't seem to last very long for me. How do you make love outlast passion?" Alicia responds that "The heart needs steering," which both of them laugh at as not being that profound.

By episode's end, Will Gardner (Josh Charles), learning that Diane Lockhart is attempting to start her own firm and take Alicia (and others) with her, causes Will to tell Diane not to come in the next day, that guards will be stationed to keep her out of her own office. Diane has been stewing about a plot to displace her, feeling that Bond and Blake and Will are in cahoots to get rid of her. Will denies this and says, "Gorge on your own paranoia." When he tells her to never come back, Diane says, "Tell me my concerns weren't real." Will responds, "You made your concerns real." This is true. In a self-fulfilling prophecy sort of way, Diane brings about her own demise.

I could relate readily to this episode, on several levels. I once had a handshake book deal with an employer. To wit: "You quit your current job, come to work for me, and write the company Bible, and I'll give you credit co-equal with my own on the book jacket." When I said I'd like to see something in writing, the boss said he always did business with a handshake. I trusted him, and I accepted that.

Later, my mother began planting seeds of doubt in my mind, reminding me that I had nothing in writing. When the wife of the boss said to him, aloud, in front of me, "Get rid of her and hire someone who will write it for no credit" my paranoia knew no bounds.

I, too, created a self-fulfilling prophecy. The boss did live up to his promise of credit co-equal to his own, but the damage had been done by the mere thought that, "He's trying to get rid of me," It was the wife of the boss, not the boss, himself, who was in favor of that course of action, but I began to doubt and that was all it took. I could definitely relate to Diane's character's paranoia and feelings that others were out to get her, when, really, they were not.

The show's comments on love and how to maintain love when passion is gone were profound and thought provoking. All in all, a very good episode that shows why the show is raking in the honors.