S02.E04: Day 429

[tessaray]

Liz decides to represent her son’s favorite teacher after she senses the school fired him for illegitimate reasons. Lucca enlists the help of Elsbeth Tascioni when an unanticipated lawsuit hits close to home. Despite the recent chemical scare, the firm throws a party to celebrate their new offices.

[Joimiaroxeu]

Lucca's brother is a hot piece. I remember the actor most recently from the unfortunate 24: Legacy where he played a DC-area gangster. It was a surprise to learn he's British.

Interesting development in Lucca's life. Wonder how that'll work when Colin notices her body changing and does the math.

[SomeTameGazelle]

12 hours ago, Joimiaroxeu said:

Interesting development in Lucca's life. Wonder how that'll work when Colin notices her body changing and does the math.

Colin doesn't know that Dominic is her brother, and Lucca mentioned that they had already broken up, so if he counts from the breakup he might not get the math right for a little while.

[Ms Blue Jay]

I'm surprised how much I'm enjoying this show this season.  Maybe Maia's father's shit was a total drag and now I feel a bit more free to enjoy things.  The show is doing a great job with bringing back all the old favourite guest stars.

The bartender that Diane slept with is mad familiar.

Edited March 26, 2018 by Ms Blue Jay

[Linderhill]

Tim Matheson as a bartender gave me all sorts of nostalgia for his charater in Animal House. Thoroughly enjoying the fact that Maia's family drama in over (hopefully). It was getting to be too much of a drag.

[Ms Blue Jay]

Oh ok thanks.  The guy has a million credits to his name so I'm not even sure where I know him from.

[CrashTextDummie]

What a nice little episode. I was positively delighted. Low stakes in terms of the cases, but a really high density of familiar (and welcomed) faces. Much as I love Elsbeth, Nancy Krosier, Kurt, etc, I probably got the biggest kick out of the arbiter returning, who I'm convinced moonlights as Santa Clause during the winter season.

The structure of this episode, while unusual for TGF (and TGW) is of course nothing new, but I appreciated that it was implemented in a benign way and not to spring some sort of twist or great irony on the viewer. Mostly it was used to tell two separate stories highlighting a couple of characters who appreciated being highlighted, while dropping a little teaser here and there during the first half of things to come during Lucca's portion of the episode.

We learned new things in this episode and both Liz and Lucca grew as characters in my estimation in the process. Liz's storyline was less revelationary (spell check tells me that's not a word, but I'm sticking with it), but we now know she's a mom and she seems to have her heart in the right place. Her relationship with Diane is still moving in an antagonistic direction but she has now been firmly established as a character worth rooting for and to me, that makes for a fascinating dynamic. She also got to interact with Maia and Marissa, which is awesome. I want all these people to mingle and not be stuck in their own storyline bubbles and the writers are giving me just that.

Lucca has a brother, which is also awesome. Historically, the writers of this show have been good at adding flavor to their cast of characters by introducing family members and this was no different. I thought it was a very believably played sibling dynamic and while Dominick is in some way a trope (estranged brother with a troubled past), it played out on the low-key and I really enjoyed the actor. And then of course there is the matter of the pregnancy, which on the surface is cause for concern because the Lucca/Colin saga didn't really need a sequel and it's a kind of storyline that is hard to pull off right. What i really liked about it though is that Lucca knew she was pregnant and we didn't and the reveal was handled really nicely. It tells me that there are layers to these people still left to be unpeeled, elements of privacy that we as the viewer are not yet privy to, and that really invests me in wanting to discover more about them.

Really quite close to a perfect hour of The Good Fight for me. It didn't have the kind of high-octane propulsion the show can have in its best moments, but other than that I got everything I watch it for.

[Quark]

I loved this episode.

Elsbeth is always a pleasure. Writers, make her a regular please.

[GinnyMars]

Did you guys see Lucca channeling her inner Rogelio with the purple phone and purple laptop? It's so trivial and yet, that was a window into her personality too... I liked that!

[2727]

I'm afraid that Tim Matheson is too big an actor to be relegated to a bit part in one episode. Sorry to say, but we're probably not done with the "Diane cheated" plot line. Were she and Kurt on a break?! Countdown to it all blowing up in her face in 3, 2, 1 ...

(Also, Diane has now had sex with both vice presidents from The West Wing.)

[Aulty]

23 hours ago, Ms Blue Jay said:

I'm surprised how much I'm enjoying this show this season. 

Me too!!

Its great that Lucca has a more prominent spot on this show, she was sold short on TGW. I was even happy that Lucca is pregnant - the scenes with her and the kid were so cute. I hope she'll get back together with Colin, they are hot as a couple.  And her brother was not bad either - as a character he was even likeable at the end.

A bit disappointed that Diane always ends up locking heads with every other strong female of equal stance. The scene with Liz and her in the bar was really promising. Kurt vs. the bartender, whose political opinions, incidently, are the total opposite of Kurts? meh, not that keen on that, because it will be ugly.

I love Marissa, her quirky style speaks more to me than Kalinda's approach to investigation. I hope they can find a suitable story for Maya, now that we've hopefully seen the last of her annoying family. Loved seeing Elsbeth again and I hope they're gonna have Rita Wilson on the show again too.

[auntiemel]

On 3/26/2018 at 5:36 PM, 2727 said:

(Also, Diane has now had sex with both vice presidents from The West Wing.)

You're my new favorite!

[John Potts]

OK, for a show that prides itself on its liberal leanings, I felt the show really chickened out on not even suggesting Lucca might have an abortion (even if she decided to keep the baby). I guess her brother might know she'd "always wanted a kid", but I'd expect it to be mentioned.

I couldn't believe the lawyer suing Lucca's brother would flat out admit that he was worried for his job if you allow "Robolawyers". Not only are convicts scarcely a lucrative source of clients, but while WebMD (or sites like it) exist, there are still real Doctors around so you need to provide a better service than just pointing out what forms to fill out - Luddism is not going to cut it.

On ‎27‎/‎03‎/‎2018 at 1:36 AM, 2727 said:

Diane has now had sex with both vice presidents from The West Wing

I was going, "Ah, Mr Vice President - no, wait, he's the other Vice President!" Probably be inappropriate for her to add Leo McGarry (John Spencer) or Glen Walken (John Goodman)!

[Hanahope]

these "new" offices are just new since the first episode this season, yes?  They can't be new from the last episode, that's just too little time.

Also, I thought open staircases were not allowed due to fire risks.

anyway, as to plot, I agree that there's no way an app for convicts to file legal papers is going to replace lawyers.  There aren't enough lawyers who want to take on convict work.  It doesn't pay well, if anything, and there's only so many pro-bono or clinic lawyers around.  A large number of convicts do their own work anyway (I used to work in a firm that handled the defense of some of these lawsuits and 95% were filed by convicts pro se), all this app does is help a few more do so as well.  What the Dept. of Corrections is really afraid of is all the valid lawsuits and having to cough up money in either changes, damages or both.

I also liked the story of how teachers were changing student's answers on standardized tests (which don't count towards the student's grade) in order to save their jobs (and probably get more funding too).  I had to laugh at how fast the teacher's arbitration occured.  Again, in my experience, usually several months pass before such would happen.

Finally, Lucca having a baby?  Oh jeeze, not this tired trope again.

[pinetastic]

I just loved this episode.

• loved Dominic and Lucca's sibling dynamic.   
• loved Liz's attempt to help a teacher and public schools - only to have the teacher leave anyway (a total TGW twist)
• loved Lucca and Liz's son bonding
• loved Elsbeth geeking out over Diane

[Milburn Stone]

The arbiter will always be Brenda Morgenstern's boyfriend Nick Lobo to me.