After what seems like a lifetime, The Good Wife has finally returned! It’s picking up right where it left off: with Alicia agreeing to join Cary’s new firm. It’s about time!
But the two only have a bit of time to plot their futures before Alicia has to return to work. She and Diane have to meet to witness the execution of their death row client. But just as the guards are about to administer the lethal injection, the IV falls out and the inmate begins to seize.
When Diane runs to find out the problem, she’s soon informed that the guards had quite a lot of trouble placing the IV in the first place. Torture? Diane certainly thinks so!
The lawyers at Lockhart Gardner now have just 48 hours to prove a man’s innocence before the prison attempts the execution for a second time. Let the race against the clock begin!
Their client Eddie was accused of murdering two girls after a botched car-jacking attempt. Evidence? His hair was found at the scene of the crime and he had possession of one of the girls’ necklaces. Not to mention a prison snitch that testified in court.
Since the snitch died in prison, their best bet is to prove the hair found wasn’t actually Eddie’s and try to get it retested. Diane, Kalinda, and newbie investigator Robyn are all on the case, but Will has another plan. He snatches Cary and asks him to call famous lawyer Barry Schick, who happens to be working on an eight-amendment class action suit. But Will doesn’t want to join their case. No, no, he wants to Eddie to be used as evidence!
But while all the lawyers are running around like crazy, top divorce attorney David Lee is getting suspicious of the fourth year law associates. Despite their attempts to keep their new firm hush-hush, he’s caught wind and asks Kalinda to start investigating their phone records. Too bad Kalinda is playing for the other team — well at least her little boy toy Cary is.
Meanwhile, Peter Florrick has just begun his new position as governor of Illinois and there’s already trouble. His head of the ethics committee looks like she could have been a former Playboy Bunny and Eli is already worried how this will look in the future. Peter is unconvinced by Eli at first, but he’s eventually convinced to “promote” the hussy to keep her out of sight, out of mind. Just as she’s leaving, she tells Eli that they’re making a huge mistake. Hmmm…maybe this isn’t the end of her quite yet.
Back to Lockhart Gardner, Diane and Kalinda have a lead. Kalinda quickly discovers that their client Eddie’s hair was actually retested six years ago — but not in Indiana where the crime took place, but right there in Chicago. And luckily, our favorite ASA Geneva Pine did the testing herself! But Diane and Kalinda’s luck stops right there: ASA Pine is unconvinced to help them.
Just as Diane hits a roadblock, Will is gaining momentum. He and Alicia barge into Barry Schick’s trial and announce that Eddie is the perfect witness to speak to the pain of lethal injection, considering he’s been administered it himself. The judge gives them an extra 48 hours to get his testimony for the case.
This buys Diane and Robyn enough time to convince ASA Pine. After chasing her down and harassing her, they eventually get her to speak: The reason she even retested the hair six years ago is because she believed the snitch was lying! Not only that, but as fate would have it, the snitch isn’t actually dead after all. Now, Kalinda and Robyn just need to track him down.
Unfortunately, once found, the snitch sticks to his story. He claims that Eddie came to him and confessed; that Eddie even admitted to wearing a ski mask — a fact that the police failed to mention in their report. But Kalinda isn’t buying his story and insists that there must have been another way he knew about the details of the crime.
That’s when Robyn thinks of it: back at her old job, there used to be policemen who would give the inside scoop to prison snitches in order to close and case, in exchange for the snitch’s freedom. With ASA Pine’s help, Robyn, Diane, and Kalinda pour over the case report to try to find the police person who could be the culprit.
But this time it’s not the police who have gone rogue: the real culprit turns out to be none other than the typist! Apparently, the typist has a prison guard brother who she began feeding secrets to. After a mob-style confrontation, the typist cracks and so does the snitch.
Diane races off the court, where the snitch finally changes his testimony, and admits that Eddie never made such a confession to him. But the judge isn’t having it, and decides that this new evidence just isn’t enough to overturn the verdict. Rats!
Despite all their attempts to save their client, the Lockhart Gardner crew just can’t win them all. The guards come to get Eddie for a second time and it seems like the jig is up. But not so fast...Will has one more idea up his sleeve.
Just as they go to inject Eddie again, the police arrive for the Warden. Turns out he broke the law by mailing the lethal chemicals! The police will, of course, need to promptly confiscate the drugs. As the prison has now made a fool of themselves twice in a row, they will not be attempting to execute Eddie a third time. Success!
For a very exciting, heart-racing episode, it was a pretty lame conclusion. But it’s a solid start to the season and with all the tension about to build up between Lockart Gardner and the fourth year associates, this is sure to be a great fifth season of The Good Wife.