The political storyline is usually the less interesting, more hackneyed part of The Good Wife's episodes but that was not the case with "Cleaning House," although I guess that's what happens when you have Corbin Bleu playing the client of the week. Not to be mean to poor Corbin (of the High School Musical series) but this is a show that gets some big names for its guest stars, whereas his brief appearance felt more like the kind of stunt-casting you'd see on a CW show. Okay, I'll lay off.
The entrance of a third candidate into the State's Attorney race was the political plot of the week and the whole time they had us fooled that it would be Justice Adler, played by Kate Burton, who showed up to offer Diane a judgeship and then snatch it away, in one of Diane's more intriguing first season stories. A third candidate makes total sense for this race, considering it features a guy who was released from jail after it was proven he slept with a prostitute, but he didn't pay her (Peter) and the sociopath who knifed him in the back and seems mostly obsessed with knifing him in the front this time (Childs). Eli is fretting that a female candidate will split the vote, but the prospect of any new candidate would look good to me if I lived in The Good Wife's Chicago.
The carpet gets pulled out in the episode's climax. Adler is persuaded not to run by Diane (at Eli's behest), because she has a history of corruption. Diane tells her it'll just hurt the possibility of a female candidate getting in office in the near future, and Adler instead announces Wendy Scott Carr (Anika Noni Rose, the chilly State's Attorney from last episode) as the historic candidate. "Who is Wendy Scott Carr!" Eli barks into the phone to close the episode. Rather than the gaffe prankery of the last few episodes, this felt a little more substantial and was great fun to watch. Eli's badgering of a Sun-Times reporter, and subsequent hanging out in the offices to follow a skateboarder carrying the leaked deposition from last week, was a little too slapstick and quite unrealistic, but I'll let it slide.
The interesting spin on this week's legal case, which was over the death of five attendees at an overcrowded rave, was that Alicia had to do battle with Nancy Crozier (Mamie Gummer, daughter of Meryl Streep), a faux-ditz/secret genius that she managed to outsmart in a season one episode. Except they were on the same team, Nancy representing the club and Alicia representing the DJ. The Good Wife just keeps finding new ways to make the sleepy courtroom format fresh. Alicia thus had to fend off both the opposing attorney (the always-able Edward Herrmann, sadly underused) and Nancy's attempts to make her clients look less culpable than Alicia's.