Last night in “Another Ham Sandwich,” the legal proceedings against Will that The Good Wife has been teasing for weeks finally got started, and the grand jury hearing – which almost resembled a bottle episode – provided a showcase for excellent work by many of the show’s skilled actors. First, a note on the title: in case you, like me, didn’t recognize it, it’s a reference to a comment supposedly made by a New York State judge about how a grand jury could be made to “indict a ham sandwich” if that’s what a prosecutor asked; Tom Wolfe made the phrase famous in The Bonfire of the Vanities.

As the grand jury hearing gets underway, Diane must tell the rest of the firm – but first acknowledges Alicia’s hitherto-unspoken involvement by taking her aside and telling her first. Two things of note here: Alicia is honestly shocked to learn of what’s really been going on, and Diane is unswervingly attesting to Will’s innocence as a matter of course. Is she really that sure of him, or is her reputation and livelihood so entwined with Will’s that she can’t let herself admit any doubt? Or, for Diane, is there any difference between the two? She also tells Alicia not to feel responsible, which of course ensures that Alicia will feel responsible. (Although really, this is Alicia. She’d feel responsible anyway.) Alicia immediately makes an appointment with Peter – supposedly to discuss his mother – and then finds Will and Elsbeth outside the grand jury room. The reason Will offers for not telling Alicia sooner isn’t about privacy or embarrassment or putting her in the middle, but rather about his own psychology of self-preservation: “This is legal. It’s not personal. If I told you it would become personal.” And Alicia wastes no time in allying herself with Will against Peter, going so far as to tell Elsbeth that she wants to use “what [she] know[s] about the State’s Attorney” to help. Her public decisiveness surprised me a little until I realized that, personal feelings aside, Will is in the right and Peter’s office is in the wrong, and black-and-white moral judgments tend to be Alicia’s fallback when she has to justify her decisions to others – or to herself.

Alicia and Peter do finally talk about the grand jury trial, but Peter insists “It has nothing to do with us.” “Peter, how can it not?” Alicia asks. “Because I won’t let it.” And here we have the trifecta, along with Diane’s unshakable belief in Will’s innocence and Will’s insistence that the investigation isn’t personal if he doesn’t tell Alicia. This show is full of people who believe they can create the world in their image if they say things forcefully enough, and their shifting alliances control which world exists at any given time. Those three, Eli and Alicia, even Elsbeth and Wendy – that’s how they operate. The exceptions here are Kalinda and Cary: their strength comes from observing rather than dictating reality, which in part explains why they can be so effective, why they always seem slightly out of place, and why they have such a unique rapport with each other. Alicia finally gets Peter to admit that “of course” the issue is that he thinks she’s sleeping with Will – and then she looks him in the eye and says she isn’t. Which is true, as far as it goes, but Peter knows something’s up and almost smiles as he marvels, “My God, you have changed. I used to be able to tell when you lied.” Alicia offers up a substantial amount of personal and political capital when she asks Peter to just stop the hearing, hilariously implying that he’s been corrupt forever, so why stop now? But Peter – running for governor, don’t forget – refuses to go back to his old ways on behalf of his romantic rival: “Will Gardner is not my family.” Fair enough, but his children are his family, and they’re likely to be hurt in this. And if Peter is thinking about his campaign, I’m not sure the benefit he gets from keeping his office clean outweighs the risk of public reaction to his wife carrying on an affair with someone convicted of judicial bribery.

Luckily, Will isn’t depending on (and I’m sure doesn’t know about) Alicia’s last-ditch plea to Peter, as he has plenty of defensive strategies up his sleeve. The official strategy – the one Elsbeth endorses – is to have the Lockhart/Gardner lawyers called as witnesses tie all perceived misconduct back to Peter in hopes that Cary will tell Peter to stop the hearing before it hurts him. (Elsbeth wisely realizes that Wendy has no interest in keeping Peter from getting hurt.) Judges went to Will’s basketball games? Peter loved Will’s basketball games. Will had David Lee give a judge a discount on work setting up his kids’ trusts? Peter got an even bigger discount for the same work. Wendy is annoyed, while Cary sits and smirks, understanding exactly what they’re up to. At the same time, Will and Kalinda have a secret strategy: As we all suspected, the case Kalinda gave Dana last episode was bait. Will lets himself be photographed handing an envelope to the judge involved, baldly admits that the envelope was full of money…and then produces a receipt showing that the money was for a UNICEF fundraiser. When Wendy demands to know why he’d want to give that much money to UNICEF and Will earnestly advocates for immunizations for Ugandan children, Wendy’s the one who looks cynical and corrupt. And when she produces incriminating emails that Will supposedly sent the judge about the case, it turns out that they were routine emails to Diane, not the judge, that Kalinda doctored before she gave them to Dana.

Wendy has now been made to look completely foolish, so she lashes out. She subpoenas Alicia and asks her under oath whether she ever had a sexual relationship with Will while working for him. (Take note, Peter: that’s how you ask that question.) Alicia admits to the relationship, but when Wendy implies that Lockhart/Gardner put Alicia on the partner track because she was sleeping with Will, Alicia walks out without being dismissed, as Wendy threatens to arrest her for being in contempt of court. Alicia assumes that she’s sealed Will’s fate, realizes that the transcript of the hearing will be made public if Will is indicted, and goes home to tell her kids about her affair before they hear it from the media. But the grand jury has other plans: Once they establish who “that Peter guy” is (a nice nod to the fact that even though these are public figures, not everyone is as caught up in their drama as they assume), they conclude that he and the judge sound way shadier than Will. Elsbeth’s strategy worked, though not in the way she’d planned: Peter didn’t stop the hearing – he couldn’t after his conversation with Alicia – but tying Peter to the case made Will look good in comparison. And Wendy’s attempt at involving Alicia backfired: the jurors think it’s weird of Wendy to bring in her boss’s wife, and I wish Alicia had been there when one juror asked “I mean, who cares who she sleeps with?” Alicia has been waiting two and a half seasons for this absolution, this dismissal of the idea that her sex life is of great import to the public good. Kalinda calls with the news that Will is free just as Alicia is about to tell her children about her relationship, and I really wish she had gone ahead and told them anyway. Their father was sleeping with prostitutes; I think they could deal with their mother sleeping with a decent guy who has loved her for years.

While Alicia hovers around Will’s hearing, Eli gets thoroughly annoyed at her for standing him up for a pitch meeting with the Gay & Lesbian Alliance of Chicago and sending Caitlin in her place. It turns out that Eli wanted Alicia there because she has become a gay icon – “Your suffering has made you iconic” – and when he finds out that Caitlin is David Lee’s niece, he’s completely dismissive of her abilities. But it’s Caitlin who figures out what the GLAC meeting is actually about – they need a crisis manager for a completely different issue than the one they told Eli about – and therefore gives Eli the ammunition he needs to win the client for Lockhart/Gardner. This plot would have worked with virtually any client, so it’s nice that the show picked GLAC as a reminder that Lockhart/Gardner is at heart a liberal firm. And Eli’s stark argument against DOMA – “It’s wrong” – is an encouraging message to hear from a mainstream, popular show. His competition for GLAC’s business is again Stacie Hall, who spends most of the episode trying to seduce him. He gives in only after he wins – “I still desire you, Stacie. The way a victor desires his spoils.” – but discovers after sleeping with her that part of her motivation was to let him know that she’s working on his ex-wife’s political campaign. As campaign season gets going, maybe Eli and Alicia should form a support group to deal with their candidate exes. But it took Eli, of all people, to finally call out the way Alicia gets obvious special treatment at Lockhart/Gardner, in a discussion later echoed by Wendy’s questions. Eli is Alicia’s superior at Lockhart/Gardner, and it’s wrong – “not wrong as in kill a puppy wrong, but wrong as in incorrect” – that she treats him like her husband’s strategist instead. Alicia agreed, but we’ll see how they negotiate these distinctions as the campaign heats up.

I was surprised at first that it looked like Will’s legal issues were going to be wrapped up in one week after such a long build-up, but by the end of this episode it was looking like he’s not quite in the clear yet. Wendy wants to empanel another grand jury, but Peter dismisses her with my new favorite way to say “go to hell:” “Thank you for your service. My assistant will validate your parking.” Wendy’s new plan: get Will disbarred. Uh-oh. I also wonder whether there will be fallout for Cary: He tried to stop Wendy from asking Alicia about her relationship with Will, and could barely contain his glee at the way Lockhart/Gardner decimated his own office’s case. If Dana is angry about the way Kalinda used her, might she take it out on Cary and try to get him fired? The show is off for the next two weeks, but when it comes back on February 19, it looks like Will’s ready to fight his disbarment. With a baseball bat.

Kate Linnea Welsh is a New Hampshire-based writer and taxonomist. (No, that doesn’t involve dead animals.) She’s a senior editor at TheTelevixen.com, on staff at Vampire-Diaries.net, and writes about other TV shows, books, and more at her blog (http://katelinnea.blogspot.com). She’d love to talk to you on Twitter: @katelinnea

“Bitcoin for Dummies” was one of those episodes of The Good Wife that revolves around everyone manipulating everyone else. Unfortunately, since Will is facing the very real prospect of jail time and Eli isn’t in the episode at all, the machinations are grim, without the undertone of playfulness this show often gives even cases involving serious issues. To make up for that, though, we get double Kalinda, as she plays a central role in both the case of the week and in Will’s legal woes.

A lawyer named Dylan Stack, who has Treasury agents literally following him around, comes to Lockhart/Gardner because of Alicia’s past dealings with Treasury. (This show is one of the best around at remembering to let previous cases affect new ones.) The Treasury department is after Stack’s client for supposedly creating a new online currency called bitcoin, and they’re after Stack because he won’t tell them his client’s identity. At first, Will is understandably reluctant to take on a possibly quixotic and high-profile case against the government in the middle of his own tussle with the State’s Attorney, but the representative of the brave new world of virtual money has arrived with piles of cash, and we know that Lockhart/Gardner needs cash. Judge Sobel quickly rules that Stack doesn’t have to give up his client’s identity, but since we’re still in the first half of the episode, that can’t possibly end things, and it doesn’t: Gordon Higgs, the same Treasury lawyer Alicia dealt with a few episodes ago, promptly arrests Stack for being the creator of bitcoin himself.

Perhaps characteristically, Will wants to go on the offense where Alicia and Diane are inclined to defense. They try to argue that bitcoin isn’t a currency at all, so it doesn’t matter whether Stack created it. But after some back and forth, including a fun cameo by CNBC’s Jim Cramer as an expert witness, Sobel rules that bitcoin is a currency, basically because it’s transferable and you can buy things with it on Amazon. I wasn’t entirely convinced – Cramer made some good points about bitcoin not having many of the characteristics of currency, including a central regulating bank, and another witness’s comparison of bitcoin to frequent flier miles seemed apt – but at least this outcome meant we got to spend the rest of the episode watching Kalinda run around a cryptography conference in pursuit of the real inventor of bitcoin.

Kalinda eventually figures out that bitcoin is three people, not one: Stack and his two partners all accuse each other in hopes of leading both Kalinda and the Treasury agents in circles. The most interesting element of this is that one of the partners is a beautiful young blond woman, and Kalinda astutely points out that the woman could use her gender and looks to deflect suspicion: Everyone assumes that the inventor of a revolutionary tech product must be male, and it’s satisfying to see a woman turn this discrimination on its head and use it to her advantage. In the end, though, it doesn’t matter that Kalinda is being manipulated, because she doesn’t need to have the true answer as long as she can play Higgs the way she wants, and no one on this show – with the possible exception of Eli – can manipulate like Kalinda. She sets up (and “accidentally” records) a meeting with Higgs at which she promises to unmask the real inventor of bitcoin, and this proof that Higgs doesn’t really believe that Stack is the inventor leads the judge to dismiss the case. At their last meeting, Alicia tells Stack that she bought one bitcoin, but that it didn’t feel real. Stack responds with unexpected words of wisdom that could be the tagline for the whole show: “Real’s gonna change. Just watch.”

Will’s storyline this episode starts when Wendy Scott-Carr – with Cary and Dana in tow – meets with Will and his lawyer Elsbeth and makes yet another attempt to get information out of Will before actually starting legal proceedings. Will and Elsbeth neatly play her, acting completely cooperative while giving her no information at all. Elsbeth is being weird, of course, but at this point it’s barely remarkable – except to the people who aren’t used to her yet. And I think this is one component of her strength: in addition to her ditziness making people underestimate her legal skills, her bizarre behavior keeps strangers distracted, so they’re automatically at a disadvantage when they negotiate with her or her clients. As the State’s Attorneys leave, Cary can’t resist rubbing it in to Wendy that Elsbeth played her, and so Wendy orders Dana to use her leverage with Kalinda to get something solid. Cary looks sincerely concerned at this turn of events, and I’m left wondering whether Wendy just hasn’t noticed that Cary is one of Kalinda’s few real vulnerabilities, or whether she’s waiting to use that against them later.

Speaking of vulnerabilities, Elsbeth insists that she and Will have a conversation about his, but he claims not to know what they are. (This made me wonder whether Elsbeth knows about his relationship with Alicia yet.) He comes up with one pretty quickly, though: When he quit gambling, his bookie forgave his debt of $8,000; this bookie was a friend and Will later invited him to join his notorious judge-filled basketball games. Will realized that Wendy will paint this as a payoff for introducing the bookie to the judges, and try to find a case that a judge supposedly threw for Will in return. This is exactly what Wendy’s doing, and since everyone knows that Kalinda is basically a investigative superhero, both sides ask her to find the case that would best fit this scenario. She produces a case for Will (who claims that “Sometimes the ball just bounces funny”) and then gives the files to Dana – who is threatening to go after Alicia for fraud (in regard to the possibly forged document from last week) if Kalinda doesn’t help her. Since Kalinda is Kalinda, it’s not at all clear what she’s up to; I think she’s basically on Will’s side, although even that could be questioned. Did she in fact find the most incriminating case, or is she sending both sides in the direction of an accusation that will be easy for Will to refute? Did she doctor the file before she gave it to Dana? And how does the threat to Alicia figure in? Is Kalinda still trying to make up for sleeping with Peter – and to win back one of her few real friendships – by protecting Alicia at Will’s expense? Will doesn’t know about the threat to Alicia, but if he did, he’d probably protect her as well. After years spent coping with the fallout of Peter’s misdeeds, it’s finally something questionable Alicia herself did (since even if she was tricked into it by David, she went along with it in the end) that may have huge ramifications on the futures of the men in her life.

And there’s manipulation on the home front as well, as Alicia hears Zach and his girlfriend Nisa say “I love you” to each other and quietly freaks out about her baby growing up. When she suggests that the young lovebirds slow things down and see a little less of each other, Zach immediately asks if it’s because Nisa is black, hoping that his mother will be so horrified by the suggestion that she’ll bend over backwards to make it clear that it’s not true. Alicia sees through this one immediately: “You know it’s not that, so don’t try to pretend.” But Zach gets a break when, to get out from under Alicia’s supervision, he takes Nisa to Peter’s apartment – where his grandmother is waiting, as apparently she has nothing to do but lurk around hoping to catch other members of the family doing things of which she can disapprove. Zach can barely hide his glee when Jackie expresses concerns about his relationship in almost the same words that Alicia used, and he takes the first opportunity to tell his mom that his grandmother agreed with everything she said. It works, of course: turning into a mother like Jackie is one of Alicia’s biggest fears, so she immediately reverses her position and the restrictions on Zach and Nisa’s relationship are gone.

CBS is airing a repeat next week, so I’ll catch up with you in two weeks, when, if we’re to believe the previews, Wendy will ask Alicia under oath whether she has ever slept with Will. Fun times!

Kate Linnea Welsh is a New Hampshire-based writer and taxonomist. (No, that doesn’t involve dead animals.) She’s a senior editor at TheTelevixen.com, on staff at Vampire-Diaries.net, and writes about other TV shows, books, and more at her blog (http://katelinnea.blogspot.com). She’d love to talk to you on Twitter: @katelinnea

If there’s been a theme to this season of Parks and Recreation, it’s accepting who you are, and all the gifts and limitations that come with that state. It’s a theme that was fully on display tonight in a somewhat subdued return for the show, as Leslie tries to figure out how to run a campaign, Ben tries to figure out life after Pawnee government, and Local Hero Pistol Pete comes to terms with his Roman Catholic childhood as the son of a single father.

After the loss of her campaign team, Leslie’s trying to convince them — and herself — that her staff represents an ass-kicking All Star team, even though it consists of a man who lines his shoes with red carpet, a man who thinks he can drive trucks (rented, hilariously, from a firm called Sissman), a campaign manager who Googlesources her wardrobe, and Andy, who rushes into Leslie’s confrontation to tell her, “Leslie, I tried to make ramen in the coffeemaker and I broke…everything.” It turns out that may be what happens when you try to turn a local election into an extravaganza. Leslie’s planned relaunch ends with a too-short red carpet, a stage out of Ron’s workshop, and a group effort to get a three-legged dog across a vast expanse of ice that was supposed to be a basketball court. The moment when Leslie admits to the increasingly disconcerted crowd (pulled together by Jerry, getting a rare, and though mixed, welcome, win), “This is the worst political event ever in history” was the best part of the event. But whether she realizes that simply being Leslie Knope — someone whose accomplishments with the parks pulled Pistol Pete out of a self-imposed exile from pubic attention and the memories of a tough childhood — is enough remains an open question.

The two people who did have come-to-Jesus moments about themselves in this episode, Ben and Anne, ended up switching jobs. Leslie roped Anne into running her campaign with a typical dose of hyperbole, telling her “Anne, you beautiful tropical fish. you’re smart as a whip and you’re cool under pressure. You’ve resuscitated a human heart in your bare hands…You haven’t? You will. You’re that good of a nurse.” And if anything, this episode proved that Anne’s a really good nurse. She listens to Pistol Pete, and figures out why he’s reluctant to take on his mantle of glory. “Right now he’s curled up in the back seat of my car,” she explains to Leslie. “Who sounds like a piece of work. But I think maybe he did the best he could as a single father. I don’t know. I might be too close to the situation.”

Then there’s Ben, who’s trying to fill post-political life with plans to revolutionize Italian cuisine with “The Low Cal Calzone Zone” and claymation projects. When he sees the latter, he’s shattered. “In my head I compared it to Avatar, Chris!” he wails. “And how could it not be longer?” I think it’s a little cheap to have Leslie keep resolving the issues with Ben and her campaign by saying things like, “I don’t care if you’re poison to my campaign. This team has a lot of heart and zero knowhow.” But if she’s going to win this thing on evidence of her hypercompetence, she’s sure setting up a lot of things that she can tell voters don’t matter because she’s so good at her job.

TODD: Do you think Citizens United was a bad decision? [...]

ROMNEY:Well,I think the Supreme Court decision was following their interpretation of the campaign finance laws that were written by Congress. My own view is now we tried a lot of efforts to try and restrict what can be given to campaigns, we’d be a lot wiser to say you can give what you’d like to a campaign. They must report it immediately and the creation of these independent expenditure committees that have to be separate from the candidate, that’s just a bad idea.

Watch it:

It’s not entirely clear from this interview that Romney understands what happened in Citizens United. That decision emphatically did not follow any “interpretation of campaign finance laws that were written by Congress.” Rather, Citizens United threw out a 63 year-old federal ban on corporate money in politics. Citizens United was a case of five conservative justices deciding they knew better than America’s democratically elected representatives, and it was not a case of judges following the law.

More importantly, however, Romney’s proposal to allow wealthy donors to give candidates whatever they’d “like to a campaign” is simply an invitation to corruption. Under Romney’s proposed rule, there is nothing preventing a single billionaire from bankrolling a candidate’s entire campaign — and then expecting that candidate to do whatever the wealthy donor wants once the candidate is elected to office. Romney’s unlimited donations proposal would be a bonanza for Romney himself and the army of Wall Street bankers and billionaire donors who support him, but it is very difficult to distinguish it from legalized bribery.

As Romney himself said in 1994, when you allow special interest groups to buy and sell candidates, “that kind of relationship has an influence on the way that [those candidates are] going to vote.” Now that Romney’s running for president on the Wall Street ticket, however, he’s suddenly unconcerned with whether or not his big money donors exert a corrupting influence.

As with so many of Romney’s positions, however, he didn’t always feel the same way. Back in 1994, Romney delivered a speech — to a group of business leaders nonetheless — calling for much stricter campaign finance laws:

I am personally of the belief that money plays a much more important role in what is done in Washington than we believe. I personally believe that when campaigns spend the kind of money they’re now spending — this race, I understand, Ted Kennedy will spend about ten million dollars to be reelected. He’s been in 32 years. 10 million dollars — I think that’s wrong. And that’s not his own money, that’s all from other people, and to get that kind of money, as an incumbent you’ve got to cozy up to other people — all of the special interest groups that can go out there and raise money for you from their members — and that kind of relationship has an influence on the way that you’re going to vote. [...]

These kinds of associations between money and politics, in my view, are wrong. And, for that reason, I would like to have campaign spending limits. [...] I also would abolish PACs.

Watch it:

The Mitt Romney of 17 years ago was exactly right. When a candidate accepts millions of dollars from wealthy individuals and special interest groups, that kind of relationship does influence how they will govern when they are elected. Indeed, that’s exactly why Wall Street and one in 10 billionaires are planning to get exactly what they paid for if Mitt Romney is elected president.

(HT: Andrew Kaczynski)

By Kate Linnea Walsh

We begin “What Went Wrong” with a slightly distracted Alicia and her colleagues defending a police officer, Lauryn, accused of killing her husband. The judge instructs the jury to only consider judgments of “guilty of first-degree murder” or “not guilty,” but the prosecution – led by Cary – is afraid they didn’t make a strong enough case for that, so they offer a deal: Lauryn pleads guilty to second-degree murder (and gets four years in prison). When the defendant asks for Alicia’s advice on whether to take the deal, Alicia says: “I think that you need to make that decision, Lauryn. You can’t defer to anyone else. You know what you did. You know what you didn’t do. You also know sometimes that doesn’t matter.” Alicia’s words aren’t really helpful to Lauryn, but the fact that Alicia came up with those words – especially the last sentence – encapsulates the way her character has evolved over the past two and a half seasons.

Lauryn doesn’t take the deal, and the jury decides on a guilty verdict. Alicia and her colleagues immediately start talking to jurors to figure out what went wrong, because everyone – prosecution, defense, and the judge himself – is surprised by the verdict. Something clearly happened, because in just one round of voting, over half the jurors changed their votes to guilty. It may have had something to do with outside evidence about one of the witnesses that the foreman introduced, but Lockhart/Gardner can’t use that because they found out about it by going through the trash from the jury deliberation room without permission. Instead, they must play a game of cat and mouse with the State’s Attorney’s office as Cary and Dana follow Alicia and her colleagues around and try to stop them from getting useful information from the jurors – a game that culminates in Cary throwing Kalinda in jail for a while. Lockhart/Gardner finally convinces the judge to declare a mistrial based on a technicality: The judge himself accepted a juror’s Facebook friend request during the trial, which counts as unauthorized outside contact with a juror. Everyone knows that something weird went on with the jury, but everyone also knows that this Facebook friending had nothing to do with it. It’s a perfect illustration of the point the show likes to make about using the system to get a desired (or even correct) outcome, even if the means end up having nothing to do with the motive.

While the Lockhart/Gardner lawyers are looking for evidence, Dana uses the threat of the judicial corruption investigation to try to scare the judge into deciding against Lockhart/Gardner, but he’s not playing. The investigation itself, however, is still going on, and Wendy Scott-Carr dramatically confronts Will at the basketball court where so much of the supposed corruption was alleged to have taken place. She tells him that he’s not her real target – Peter is. (She also tantalizingly mentions that Peter used to be part of Will’s basketball game. I’d love to know more about the history between Peter, Alicia, and Will.) In an echo of the case, Wendy, too, is using the system she’s been given to accomplish her own objective. Now, does she mean that Peter is literally the target of the investigation, or that she plans to use the publicity of the investigation to gain support for another run against Peter when his term is up? It could be either, but I think she meant the former, because she said “Peter’s clean this term. But he wasn’t his first term, was he? And you know where his weaknesses lie.” Will: “Well, I know a lot of things.” I’m sure he does. When he refuses to talk without a lawyer, though, she says the next time they talk will be in front of a Grand Jury. Will calls her bluff: “Okay. So be it.” That should be interesting.

It’s interesting that Scott-Carr specifies that Peter is clean now, because in this episode we finally saw his corruption firsthand. Peter and Alicia have decided to deal with Grace’s behavior by sending the children back to private school, but the headmistress claims there is no space for them. Peter first tries to charm her – and he can be very charming. This scene went a long way to showing the audience how Peter how garnered so much support and loyalty, both personally and professionally, in the first place. When charm isn’t quite enough, though, he openly threatens to use his position to expose the criminal records of a variety of the school’s teachers, and the headmistress gives in. I almost wish we had gotten a scene like this earlier in the show’s run, as an illustration of the way Peter operates. It’s also fascinating that this episode in which we see his corruption at work is also an episode in which we see him act as a model boss and father in other scenes. I don’t talk about Peter much, but the writers’ refusal to make him into either villain or victim is part of what makes the underlying fabric of the show so strong.

Alicia spends much of the episode slightly distracted from her work, both because of the issues with her children and because of the fallout from her break-up with Will. They semi-awkwardly agree that they don’t want things to be awkward, and Alicia marvels at Will’s assistance that they can “just decide it and it’s so.” This is the flip side of what Alicia told Lauryn about the truth not always mattering – sometimes it means that you’ll be convicted of a murder you didn’t commit, but sometimes it means you can decide your way out of an emotional meltdown and just declare that everything will be fine. Alicia’s lonely, though, so while Peter has the kids, she goes out drinking with her brother. I always love seeing Owen, especially when he agrees with me, and this time he was making the exact point I made last week: In this moment, Alicia has obvious, practical solutions to her problems at hand, but won’t use them. As Owen points out, if the secrecy and the “boss thing” are the reasons why she doesn’t want to commit to Will, she could get divorced and quit her job to work for a different firm. Alicia demurs, and leaves us wondering whether the show made Peter so likable and charming this week to lay groundwork for a reconciliation.

Throughout the episode, Diane notices Alicia’s preoccupation and calls her on it, but also offers to take a more active role in mentoring her. Diane is suddenly gung-ho about Alicia pursuing the partner track, and cautions her that it’s better to be associated with other powerful women than with powerful men. She obviously means Will, but it’s a funny thing to say to someone who’s already associated with the State’s Attorney in the most public way possible. Is Diane’s attention a reward for the break-up, or is it a power play? Since Diane thinks Will ended things, does she want his supposedly scorned ex as a partner on her side in future disputes? Diane doesn’t want people’s personal lives interfering in their work – unless or until she can use them for her own means.

We don’t get another new episode until January, so I hope you all enjoy the holidays, and we’ll catch up in the new year!

Kate Linnea Welsh is a New Hampshire-based writer and taxonomist. (No, that doesn’t involve dead animals.) She’s a senior editor at TheTelevixen.com, on staff at Vampire-Diaries.net, and writes about other TV shows, books, and more at her blog (http://katelinnea.blogspot.com). She’d love to talk to you on Twitter: @katelinnea

[SPOILERS IF YOU HAVEN'T READ THE NOVELS TO FOLLOW]

I think the biggest question for me will be how the second season of the show handles the themes of governance that are so important to A Clash of Kings. Other than Jon Snow’s attempts to reform the Wall, the struggle between Joffrey and Cersei on one side and Tyrion on the other over how to run King’s Landing — and by extension, the realm — is one of the few experiments in and debates over governing philosophies we ever see in action. Cersei’s devoted all of her efforts to bolstering the hard power of King’s Landing, recruiting new men into the City Watch, spending coin on wildfire, displaying heads on walls, and paying for it all with a tax that’s throttled already constricted trade. Tyrion comes in and shifts the balance, opening up trade, making a deal with the city’s armorers that both bolsters their trade and lets him prepare to wage unconventional warfare, and takes the heads off the walls in an effort to make the regime less savage. He institutes actual diplomatic relations with Dorne, which you think someone else might have considered at some point earlier, given their utterly badass reputation.

He’s not perfect, of course. The riot that sweeps the city is an augury that neither Tyrion or Cersei read fully (much to the latter’s dismay later) — it always surprises me that Cersei and her advisers are caught off-guard by an upswing in religious fervor during times of insecurity. The fact that even the Lannister who loves learning, who actually has the intellectual curiosity to want to see the end of the world, can’t accept what Ser Allister Thorne is telling him about the White Walkers on the border suggests something powerful about the limitations of our collective ability to grapple with the monstrous and unthinkable. And Tyrion is too personal when it comes to reforming the Small Council, failing to appreciate Maester Pycelle’s abilities and connections (and given the scene the show gave us of his secret vigor, I wonder if he might not resist Tyrion more strongly than in the novels).

All in all, it’s a parable for the dangers of allowing your governance to become personal. Tyrion is doomed to failure when his rule becomes as much about discipling Joffrey and proving his father wrong about his abilities. Both are futile tasks. Joffrey’s already a hopeless sadist with an elevated sense of his own wisdom by the time Tyrion gets anywhere close to him. Tywin ultimately turns out to be flexible, but not in ways that lend him strength or reason. King’s Landing might have turned out to be genuinely salvageable, the unbreakable link in a chain of Lannister defenses. But disciplining these three generations of Lannisters or restoring them to decency isn’t a project worth Tyrion’s considerable talents.

Episodes of television like “Citizen Knope” are reminders, for me, of the limitations of a weekly review model for criticism. Leslie’s campaign has come together piece by piece, episode by episode, with diversions like Tom’s stretch-limo-with-pool and an Apocalyptic cult, but it’s only taken as a whole that this season can get the credit it deserves for finding a device that moves all the characters together on their ways to their separate destinations. And as someone who actually was a candidate for and held (very minor) local office in an earlier life, I will admit I cried as Leslie’s friends presented themselves to her as her gifts, saving her campaign and culminating the work Parks and Recreation has been doing all season long.

I’ve long said that I thought it would make sense for Tom to rehabilitate himself and find his calling in public service, and despite his misstep earlier in the season, that his contacts with Pawnee’s business community could be critical to Leslie. So there’s something genuinely sweet about him stepping forward to present himself as “Tom Haverford. Image consultant and swagger coach.” But everyone else’s commitments made sense for them, too*. Andy may harbor fantasies of rock stardom or fictional heroism (I hope by Chekov’s rules, he is in fact forced to deploy or parry a javelin at some point during the campaign), but this season has been very much about him edging toward adulthood, whether in his and April’s journey to the Grand Canyon, or the suit he donned for Leslie’s hearing. Ann will forever be Leslie’s loyal number two and source of emotional support, and that’s OK — not everyone has to be the first woman president. April, despite herself, is grasping at both responsibility and her true potential, and I’m excited to see what she’ll do in her capacity as “Youth Outreach and Director of New Media” if she can keep her Janet Snakehole on a leash. Gary (I feel like I have to call Jerry that now that I know his real name) doesn’t have a role, but that’s because he’s not on a journey, and that’s also OK. Some people have already arrived where they’re going to be. And as I’ve written before, Ron and Leslie may have competing views of government in the big picture, but when it comes down to specifics, Ron is completely won over by Leslie’s vision and enthusiasm. When he promises “Ron Swanson. Any other damn thing you might need,” he means it.

But even if the episode hadn’t reached its big emotional reveal and the cost for Leslie’s transgression, cementing this as a truly excellent season of television, “Citizen Knope” was still a phenomenal, joke- and character-dense episode. One of the things I appreciated most about this and about “The Trial of Leslie Knope” was the way it found a role for Chris by really making him Leslie’s boss again, and by focusing on the challenges he’s faced in managing her. She’s a pain when she misleads him because she’s a disappointment. But her dedication and inability to relax can also be irritating, especially when she’s trying to palm him a nasal spray and trying to toss down chairs as obstacles in his way. “Leslie Knope! I am much faster than you!” he declared. “I have Bumbleflex!” And his glee when Leslie presented him with a (typically) perfect gift was wonderful and spontaneous. It’s been a total delight to see Rob Lowe show off his comedic range in this role, and I hope it’s a facet of his career her pursues in his career. There’s a lot more to life than being really, really, ridiculously good looking.

I also appreciate that the show is making Ben pay some costs too, and giving credence to the idea that without government, he’s genuinely unmoored. Even when he messed up his political career, Ben could go back into accounting and stay connected to something he loved. But without that, he’s sort of lost, and it’s a privilege that he can turn down a good job to figure out who he is without government. There isn’t exactly a career to be made in “model trains and toy Gandalfs,” as Jean-Ralphio puts it.

And this was a very nice episode about what a waste it is to keep Leslie, and people with Leslie’s energy, out of government when they can do so much good there. She may be right about the deliciousness of salgar on butterscotch pudding or strawberry margaritas, but that doesn’t mean inventing a new spice is the best possible use of her time. A lack of Yahtzee access is not actually a human rights disaster. Getting mired into fights about Chutes and Ladders is not going to change the world, or even Pawnee. It’s the greatest gift Chris could give Leslie, and his adopted town, to get his most energetic employee back on the job. And I’m pretty sure that Ron is right, and the real Leslie will replace a marshmallow facsimile in City Council by next May (I do like how Pawnee’s election and swearing-in cycle are attuned to sweeps. It’s so convenient.). But not because it’s consistent with some corny arc the show needs to accomplish. It’s because Pawnee needs her there even more than we do.

*A side note. I think the staff is exempt from Hatch Act rules because their positions aren’t mostly funded by federal grants. These things. They do get to me.

State of Play is one of the only cinematic explorations of journalism that works, precisely because it gets at how drawn-out the process of nailing down a good story is. Nailing down two murders, a corruption narrative, and a story about political maneuvering takes five reporters, with five different sets of sources. The story emphasizes that it takes different skills to work with disenfranchised residents of council housing than it does to massage a prime minister or browbeat a corporate executive. And State of Play recognizes the costs of doing that kind of work, of having a fidelity to the truth that overrides relationships or practical accommodations. How far can you pursue a story when you’re an editor with a wife who needs expensive medical care? What kind of person do you become when you subordinate past and future romantic relationships to your needs as a journalist? How justified is it to worry about your personal safety when you’re in pursuit of a story of national importance? It’s a vision of crusading journalism that’s unglamorous and deeply human, that recognizes that not everyone can bear the costs. Reporters like Cal McCaffrey are the elect not because they’re capable of goodness, but because they’re capable of its inverse.

It’s also a thrilling and effective look at the power and hollowness of political theater. We all love the idea of Congressional hearings where honest lawmakers take down corrupt witnesses, or noble witnesses reveal the pretentions and vanity of preening lawmakers, but State of Play shows us the choreography that goes into the rare moments when something like that happens. If you’ve ever wanted to see a political wife do something other than stand placidly by her erring husband, State of Play will let you watch one stick a knife in and twist it. And if you want to know what it’s like to be the press flack for some truly disgusting people, Michael Feast is pure acid as a man pushed to his absolute limit by the lies he’s supposed to tell.

This is not a comforting story. It’s not an argument that the political system is purifiable, or that the truth will set you free. State of Play is an argument for doing the best we possibly can, recognizing the costs that other people will pay to keep the rest of us as honest as possible. I don’t know that a standard that depressing is ultimately the one we should really be setting. But it’s probably worth acknowledging that in our present environment, it’s often harder and less rewarding to do the right thing, and we shouldn’t make false promises to the people who want to do it.

President Obama and OIRA head Cass Sunstein

In this case, I am especially pained to say my predictions about President Obama’s “regulatory czar” Cass Sunstein have borne out.

You may recall the background: in 2009, President Obama nominated his old friend, Harvard Law School Professor Sunstein, to run the White House Office of Management and Budget’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, an office little known outside the Beltway but one with enormous power. It is, in effect, the gatekeeper over all major rules issued by agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency

In his prior life as an academic, Sunstein had raised serious questions about environmental requirements. He had urged, for example, changing the Clean Air Act to require that national clean air standards pass a cost-benefit test – a change in the law long sought by big corporate polluters who understood this meant a weakening of the law in the real world. (National clean air standards today are supposed to be based only on science so the public can know if the air is actually safe to breathe.)

I noted that had a Republican president nominated someone with similar views, public interest groups (and Democrats) would be screaming. But progressives and most Democrats basically gave Sunstein a pass.

His nomination was approved on a 57-40 vote. Once approved, Sunstein has generally worked in the office’s typical obscurity. Following his advice, the president issued an executive order demanding that agencies review existing regulations. This was generally viewed as a political concession to anti-governments groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

In perhaps his best-publicized activity, as the New York Times recently reported, Sunstein joined forces with then-White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley to torpedo the EPA’s attempt to update national clean air standards for smog. Sunstein basically imposed his own illegal cost-benefit ideology on the decision. As a result, many millions of Americans will be breathing dirty air longer. To compound a bad decision, he then lied about it, claiming politics was not a factor.

If anyone thought this was an isolated incident, I suggest you read a provocative new report by the Center for Progressive Reform. It is the most thorough analysis I have ever seen of Sunstein’s office, and the results are pretty appalling. It documents in great detail how big business groups are using Sunstein as a tool to weaken health and safety standards. It has also become a tool of the administration’s foolish political efforts to mollify the business lobbies.

During a six-month period, Sunstein’s office literally met with nearly 6,000 lobbyists, 65 percent of whom represented industry, compared to only 12 percent representing public interest groups. In a shocking discovery, the analysis found that Sunstein’s office changed more rules than it did under the prior Bush administration!

The analysis notes that EPA rules were singled out for special review and change and that Sunstein’s office frequently ignores public disclosure requirements.

The report ends with a call for reform that it not likely to happen anytime soon. Indeed, even as I write, Sunstein’s office has become the conduit for meetings with dirty electric power companies who are seeking to weaken and include new loopholes in upcoming EPA standards aimed at cutting mercury and other life-shortening toxics from coal-fired power plants.

Will Sunstein strike again, as he did in the ozone decision?

By Kate Linnea Welsh

Lockhart/Gardner is facing the military justice system again in “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot” as Will and Alicia defend Sgt. Regina Elkins, a young, female drone operator who is charged with 12 counts of murder when drones kill civilians in Afghanistan. Elkins’s parents are paying for civilian representation, and Capt. Hicks, who we first met in “Double Jeopardy,” comes to Lockhart/Gardner because he thinks they “would do the least damage.” Interestingly, though, it’s Kalinda who convinces Will to take the case: he’s reluctant, unsure of his own competence in the military court system, but when Kalinda tells him that the State’s Attorney’s investigation into him is winding down and that he should “do something nice for someone,” Will takes her at her word, and he and Alicia are back in military court. The judge is the same one Will clashed with during his last experience, so he does what he did when the British judge didn’t like him: He has Alicia talk in his place. Even though Will loves Alicia partially because she can hold her own in a courtroom, he persists in believing that she will come across to others as meek and kind to a fault. This play never really works, and despite Alicia’s compelling argument that Elkins’s accuser was sexist and that she was prosecuted as a scapegoat, Elkins is found guilty. I liked that, because the courtroom scenes have no tension if Will and Alicia always win, but I wish the show had taken this opportunity to delve into the questions it raised about civilian collateral in drone strikes and about the illegal use of drugs like Adrafinil by soldiers who must stay alert for long shifts.

It turns out that Kalinda had Will doing something nice under false pretenses, anyway, because her information was wrong. The investigation into Will isn’t winding down — it’s heating up. Peter assigns his old rival Wendy Scott-Carr as special prosecutor, and Scott-Carr decides to forget about Lemond Bishop and drugs, and instead go straight for Will and judicial corruption. (While we have no reason to think that Will is actually bribing judges, it is interesting that judges from outside his own system, like the British judge and the military judge, tend to hate him practically on sight.) Scott-Carr says it’s her own decision to make Will the focus of the investigation, but everyone, including Diane, assumes Peter is coming after Will because of Alicia. Diane knows the allegations against Will are unfounded, but her patience has run out, and she talks to him like a school principal scolding a wayward 10-year-old: “Stop it. Alicia. Peter Florrick is coming after you because you are sleeping with his wife. Don’t lie to me. It’s wrong. You are her boss. He is the State’s Attorney. Even if it weren’t wrong, it’s not smart. Stop sleeping with his wife. Do you understand me?” By the end of their confrontation, I’m ready to let Diane take over running the whole world, and Will looks appropriately chastened — though he never actually agrees to stop sleeping with Alicia.

Because one love triangle between Lockhart/Gardner and the State’s Attorney’s office wasn’t enough, the Cary/Dana/Kalinda situation goes to a new level as Kalinda — maybe? — tries to seduce Dana, who then sleeps with Cary. I’m still inclined to see Dana as mostly a pawn in the complicated Kalinda/Cary dynamic, but she might simultaneously be using them to get information or leverage toward her own ends, whatever those may be. And it’s interesting that Cary — who was, after all, fired by Lockhart/Gardner — is the one person in the State’s Attorney’s office most reluctant to pursue the case against Will, and most determined to keep Alicia out of it. Is it because he genuinely likes them and thinks they’re innocent, or because he knows firsthand how ruthless Will can be when crossed, or some of both?

Eli’s subplot supplies the comic relief again this week as he works with the cheese lobby to try to get the USDA to adopt a more cheese-centric recommended diet diagram. While it’s hilarious to listen to him try to talk about “the bread people” and “a mutual enemy in vegetables” and food pyramids without laughing, his cheese clients actually are important to Lockhart/Gardner’s bottom line, and in the end he loses them to a fruit lobbyist played by Amy Sedaris. While Diane thinks Eli just needs to get used to the occasional failure — “You’re brilliant, but you’re not God’s gift.” — I think it’s telling that this failure stemmed from that brilliance and his related inability to take seriously things he basically sees as trivial. The great Eli Gold was outmaneuvered by someone who could genuinely concentrate on fruit interests as a real issue, rather than a punchline or a way to keep the lights on. Will there be consequences? At the beginning of the episode, Will told Kalinda, “We lose cheese, we lose our quarter.” I hope the show follows through with the effects that the loss of this client will have on the firm.

On the home front, Alicia finally makes some definite progress in her ongoing battle with Jackie. It turns out that Alicia’s webcam was recording during Jackie’s snooping mission last episode, and that evidence is enough to make Alicia change the locks. This leads to a showdown in which it’s made clear once and for all that Alicia has found her backbone, at least in this situation: when Jackie asks if she’d like to explain why she changed the locks, Alicia says “Sure. I don’t want you in here anymore.” And when Jackie threatens to have Alicia’s children taken away, Alicia is having none of it: “Look at me, Jackie. Look at my face. You no longer have the power to wound.” After she shuts the door in Jackie’s face (Go Alicia!), she has a moment when she looks like she’s going to break down — but, instead, she does the practical thing necessary to follow through with her decision. Since Jackie’s excuse for being at the apartment was to pick up the kids to drive them to Peter’s house, Alicia announces to a delighted Zach that she’s going to buy him a car so he can drive himself and Grace to their dad’s instead. I was torn between being proud of Alicia’s personal growth that got her to this point and being afraid that she had reached this level of confidence exactly at the moment at which it might all blow up in her face because of the Will investigation. The big question here is whether Jackie is acting on her own. Does Peter even want full custody? Will information Jackie gives Peter end up being used against Will instead of in a custody dispute? Did Jackie actually find anything, or is she bluffing?

Kate Linnea Welsh is a New Hampshire-based writer and taxonomist. (No, that doesn’t involve dead animals.) She’s a senior editor at TheTelevixen.com, on staff at Vampire-Diaries.net, and writes about other TV shows, books, and more at her blog (http://katelinnea.blogspot.com). She’d love to talk to you on Twitter: @katelinnea

Thankfully, at least one member of the Federal Election Commission appears to agree with us:

The commission issued a draft advisory opinion Wednesday that if adopted would shoot down the Utah senator’s request to turn his Constitutional Conservatives Fund into a political action committee capable of accepting big dollar checks directly from corporations and unions. [...] A draft opinion means that at least one of the six commissioners disagrees with Lee’s legal argument, but other commissioners could release their own drafts before the official meeting — and that’s exactly what Lee’s attorney Dan Backer is banking on. [...]

[T]he draft opinion says Lee’s request flies in the face of the 2002 campaign finance law that expressly prohibits elected officials from being associated with a political entity that collects money beyond the legal limits. For a PAC such as the Constitutional Conservatives Fund, the limit is $5,000 per person per year and a complete ban on corporate giving.

The draft opinion, which the full FEC will consider this Thursday, is available here. Should the full body agree that Lee’s proposed slush fund is such an invitation to corruption that even Citizens United can’t save it, the Tea Party purist is unlikely to take that decision sitting down. Lee previously claimed that federal child labor laws, FEMA, food stamps, the FDA, Medicaid, income assistance for the poor, and even Medicare and Social Security violate the Constitution, so he would hardly be going further out on a limb by claiming that any effort to keep wealthy corporations from buying politicians violates his twisted vision of our founding document.

Murdoch’s company sustained another major blow today as police revealed they are investigating News Corp. for attempting to bribe a former Australian senator into voting for favorable legislation. The charge stems back to 1998, when Senator Bill O’Chee was approached by an “unnamed executive of News Ltd” and promised favorable treatment by the media conglomerate’s numerous outlets if the conservative lawmaker voted against proposed digital TV legislation. The AP has more:

The newspapers reported that an unnamed executive of News Ltd asked O’Chee during a lunch on 13 June 1998 to vote against his conservative government’s legislation on the creation of digital TV in Australia. The news group stood to profit from the legislation failing. [...]

O’Chee, a former senator for the state of Queensland with a track record of voting against his National party’s wishes, alleged the executive told him that while voting against the digital TV legislation would be criticised, “we will take care of you”.

The executive “also told me we would have a ‘special relationship’, where I would have editorial support from News Corp’s newspapers, not only with respect to the … legislation but for ‘any other issues’ too,” O’Chee reportedly told police in his statement.

Murdoch, who was born in Australia, “has a near monopolistic control of the media in many major cities,” notes Joe Romm. His media empire includes the largest Australian newspaper – The Australian – as well as “the sole dailies in Brisbane, Adelaide, Hobart and Darwin and the most popular metropolitan dailies in Sydney and Melbourne.”

Today’s bribery charges, which are punishable by up to six months in prison, underscore how pervasive the culture of corruption has been at News Corp. for years. From Australia to the United Kingdom to the United States, major ethical breaches appear to have been the norm, rather than the exception, at Murdoch’s media conglomerate.

Despite the seemingly-endless parade of scandals, Murdoch and his sons were reelected to News Corp.’s board last month.

Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL)

Yet as Firedoglake’s David Dayen notes, there was legislation introduced earlier this year that would ban Congress from engaging in this version of insider trading. It only has five co-sponsors:

The simple fix would be to force every member of Congress to put their holdings into blind trusts. But the most difficult thing to pass through Congress is rules that the institution would impose on its own members. Indeed, the STOCK Act, the vehicle that would ban insider trading by members of Congress, has a paltry 5 co-sponsors.

Americans do not have to put up with a political system where a member of Congress like Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL) can attend a private economic crisis meeting and then promptly bet on stocks tanking. Contact your member of Congress and ask them to co-sponsor the STOCK Act and end this practice once and for all.

Lockhart/Gardner goes up against the U.S. government this week in “Executive Order 13224″ as they represent Danny Marwat, an American of Afghan descent who was arrested while working as a translator for a defense contractor in Afghanistan and is now suing the government for torturing him. The various government witnesses keep claiming that they can’t answer questions because of the Classified Information Procedures Act, and Diane repeatedly uses this to her advantage by getting the judge to agree that if the government says information about something is classified, they can’t also claim that it never happened in the first place. Diane is enthusiastic about the case because it’s “the right thing to do,” even if it means, as she says, “poking the bear,” but Will isn’t convinced that it’s right at all. His pragmatic worry that going after the government could make life hard for the firm is combined with his belief that Diane is “fighting an old war.” “Rumsfeld and Cheney are gone. They’re writing books,” he tells her, but she’s firm in her conviction that the government should be held liable for torture anyway. When they discover that Marwat has been lying to them about his connection to a suspected terrorist, though, Will and Diane agree to drop the case. But the Justice Department uses evidence uncovered in that trial to bring criminal conspiracy charges against Marwat, and Lockhart/Gardner is back in, this time to defend Marwat. Diane uses a similar tactic: A military officer refuses to answer questions about an interrogation because the information is classified, so the judge agrees that evidence from that interrogation is inadmissible, and throws out the case. Much of Lockhart/Gardner’s work on this case involves reading through redacted transcripts from secret military trials, and the show made very effective use of bleeping techniques during imagined reenactments of these trials to illustrate the extent of the redaction.

When the case begins, Glenn Childs invokes the titular executive order. Diane says it is designed to help investigate charities who are funding terrorists, but Childs says it also applies to terrorists who hire lawyers. The judge agrees with Diane that it’s a violation of attorney/client privilege, but concedes that it’s the law, so a representative from Lockhart/Gardner must meet periodically with Gordon Higgs, a monitor from the Treasury Department. Diane assigns this task to Alicia, and though Higgs assures her that there’s a Chinese wall between Treasury and Justice, Alicia immediately feels as though Higgs is trying to make her investigate on his behalf, especially when he asks her to report back if Marwat ever mentions the Badula Qulp region of Afghanistan. Marwat later mentions Badula Qulp, so in her second meeting with Higgs, Alicia tries not to answer the question, and Higgs threatens her with a large fine and jail time. He also advises her against getting a lawyer – not something a government representative is supposed to do. Alicia decides to fight back, “poking the bear” – the government – from yet another side. Will offers her a high-powered lawyer who is experienced in cases like this, but Alicia wants some distance from the firm and instead goes to Elsbeth Tascioni, one of the lawyers who worked on Peter’s case. Tascioni first comes across as scattered, a little ditzy, and almost amateurish, but she then uses these behaviors that are generally coded as “feminine” and ineffective to run circles around Higgs. Even Alicia doesn’t realize what Tascioni is up to as she gets Alicia to agree to help her with a case involving an insurance company – and then reveals that this insurance company covered Marwat’s company, so Alicia can’t answer questions about Marwat without it breaking the insurance company’s attorney/client privilege. She even throws in a hilarious bit about how the Supreme Court is very into corporate personhood recently and wouldn’t “take kindly” to Higgs infringing on the insurance company’s rights.

Peter is still cleaning house over at the State’s Attorney’s office, where he’s dropping any long-term investigations from the Childs era that don’t involve drugs or homeland security. We finally learn the details of the mysterious $45k in Will’s shady past as Peter and Cary discuss whether to drop the RICO investigation into Will’s activities. Fifteen years ago, when Will had a gambling problem, he took $45k from a client’s account, planning to put it back, but was caught, and Blake Calamar – that creepy investigator from last season – was “tasked with” covering it up. (An aside: Is the timing coincidental? Assuming it took him a few years to hit bottom, this implies that Will’s problem started around the time Alicia married someone else.) Cary argues against keeping the case open: it’s old, took place out of their jurisdiction (in Baltimore), doesn’t involve drugs or homeland security, and is “too fraught” given Cary’s employment history and Alicia’s current employment. Dana thinks they need to pursue the case in order to get Lemond Bishop, and Peter is clearly torn. He and Cary argue over whether they’d pursue it were Will “anyone else,” and Peter decides to go ahead so it won’t look like he’s giving his wife’s boss special treatment. Interestingly, if Will and Alicia’s relationship were public knowledge, that might tilt the scales the other way: Peter wouldn’t want it to look like he was going after his wife’s lover for personal reasons. Will is confronted by a reluctant Cary and an enthusiastic Dana, and though he more of less laughs at them for trying to intimidate him, he’s shaken enough to go confront Peter on the courthouse steps. I can’t quite decide how our metaphor of the week shakes out here: Peter is poking a bear by going after Will in the first place, but both men are very powerful, and Will is instigating in turn by taking things to a more personal level. Will tells Peter that he’s not buying new clean image, and insists that Peter’s still down in the mud with the rest of them. They then play an incredibly tense game of chicken as Will more or less dares Peter to accuse him of sleeping with Alicia, and I started hoping that they’d actually get into a fistfight, because wouldn’t it be great to watch Eli try to spin that? Alas, there are no fisticuffs or actual accusations regarding Alicia. They have to leave something for the midseason finale, I suppose.

Back at Lockhart/Gardner, Diane begins to poke the bear of Will and Alicia’s relationship as her plausible deniability slips away. She and Kalinda have Will on speakerphone when they hear Alicia’s distinctive ringtone of Grace saying “Mom, pick up the phone” – because Alicia is in bed next to Will. (I actually wasn’t sure why this incident was such a smoking gun. They both tell Diane they’re at lunch, so couldn’t Diane have heard Alicia’s phone because she and Will were eating lunch together?) Instead of confronting Will, Diane brings in an insurance company rep to talk about their coverage for sexual harassment accusations and lawsuits regarding bosses sleeping with subordinates. When she asks what Will thinks, he doesn’t quite crack, but says, “I think I trust your judgment, Diane. As you trust mine.” We’ll see about that. At least for now, Diane isn’t backing off – she makes everyone watch a video about sexual harassment. While this ploy is clever and pretty hilarious to watch, I think it slightly misses the mark. I can’t come up with a scenario in which Alicia would sue Will; the real threat seems to be claims of favoritism by others in the firm and/or retribution from Peter’s office. Will comes into the video screening late, walks by half the firm to sit with Alicia, and talks to her during the video, which is not exactly the most subtle behavior – unless he’s trying to give the impression that the busy lawyers don’t have time for this nonsense. He doesn’t seem to tell Alicia that Diane’s on to them – Alicia certainly acts like she’s confused by Diane’s cold behavior – and also avoids telling her about the investigation into him. Is he protecting her or himself?

And that phone call from Grace that tipped Diane off? It was to ask if she could go to a Bible study, which is exactly the question every mother hopes to get while she’s spending her lunch break in bed with a man who isn’t her husband. I like the way the show has stuck with this thread of Grace’s religious exploration, and shown that online video and other media are used in evangelism the same way they are in politics. This week, the video Grace watches accurately points out that, in the Bible, Jesus condemns divorce but never mentions homosexuality. While it’s heartening to see the liberal Christian position on homosexuality represented on television – too often, religious characters are one-dimensional and super-conservative – the video goes on to suggest to its teenage target audience that “your divorced parents” are the ones going to Hell. We’ve always known that Grace is particularly impressionable when faced with destabilizing influences, and sure enough, by the end of the episode she’s poking the bear of her family’s tenuous status quo. She asks Peter if he and Alicia are getting divorced and says maybe they shouldn’t, but she doesn’t tell him about the video, which perhaps leads him to think she’s suggesting Alicia might be open to reconciliation. When he points out that it’s not necessarily up to him, she says her mother just wants to be happy. Peter tells Grace that sometimes he doesn’t know what the right thing to do is, and she says that he should just ask her – which leads Peter to some sort of revelation. He repeats “Ask you…” and then immediately absents himself from the case against Will, but tells Cary to go ahead with it. It’s unclear whether he does this because he’s decided it’s the morally correct decision or whether Grace’s words made him think of some new strategy involving asking someone something. Anyone catch something here I missed?

Now that all of these bears have been poked out of hibernation, where do you think everything’s going? Some sort of epic confrontation or revelation seems inevitable, presumably on the last episode before the holiday break. Will suddenly-calm Cary temper angry Dana’s enthusiasm for the case against Will? Will Diane and/or Peter make their suspicions of Will and Alicia explicit? Will Grace get in the middle of things and blow it all up in some spectacular manner? Will Kalinda finally get some quality screen time? And will Eli please come back soon?

Kate Linnea Welsh is a New Hampshire-based writer and taxonomist. (No, that doesn’t involve dead animals.) She’s a senior editor at TheTelevixen.com, on staff at Vampire-Diaries.net, and writes about other TV shows, books, and more at her blog (http://katelinnea.blogspot.com). She’d love to talk to you on Twitter: @katelinnea

Three good things happened in this fairly uneven episode of Parks and Recreation: Leslie’s regret at breaking up with Ben surfaced; we got Ron Swanson’s view on the separation of church and state and a constitutional right to privacy; and the Entertainment 720 subplot that has mucked up this season so far is finally, mercifully over.

The cult subplot was extremely over the top it was, but I do appreciate that the cast treated it with the same deadpan calm that they treat everything, with Leslie checking Google calendars for open dates for apocalypse vigils and Ron taking every opportunity he can to advance his side hustles (I’m amazed Chris didn’t bust him for making like Tom and Snake Juice, though). I do generally really like the idea that Pawnee is outwardly this normal town with a deeply bizarre history, where the residents handle even the strangest experiences with absolute aplomb. And Chris’s cheerful approach to the cultists with questions about their text, beginning with “Full disclosure, I think they’re Bonkersville,” was one of the better uses of his perpetual optimism the show’s made this season. Plus, it brought him and Ann closer together, which I’m in favor of. Ann’s love life was diverting last season, but the two of them feel like a bit too much of a typical television couple kept apart by ridiculousness rather than real obstacles.

And speaking of relationships, Leslie’s reaction when Ben tells her they can’t hang out any more was some of the best acting Amy Poehler’s done in this role. I appreciate that the show demonstrates that there’s a cost to these kinds of decisions. “We broke up because of me,” Leslie confesses to Ron mournfully. “But I have to tell you, Ron, if the world was ending tomorrow, I’d want to be with him.” Parks and Recreation may be a romantic comedy, but it’s one that subtly undermines tropes. There is no chance for a big romantic gesture here, because that could ruin Leslie’s campaign and get Ben fired, just people stumbling towards what they want. The prospect of him hooking up with a pretty reporter is perfect not just because said reporter is someone Leslie’s always tried to control, but because if they go forward, it’s almost inevitable that their affair will be revealed. To win this race, Leslie’s going to have to let go not just of romantic possibilities but of the idea that she can behave exactly as she always has. The world is not the Parks Department, no matter how often it seems like Leslie can manage everything.

Finally, there was the end of Tom’s dream and the fulfillment of April and Andy’s. I thought both were quite sweet stories, though substantially unmoored from the plot. For Tom, at least, it was a return to an emotional tempo that makes sense with the rest of the show. It’s hard not to look at Entertainment 720 and be a bit frustrated with Tom. He’s not a stupid guy: Snake Juice may produce the world’s worst hangovers, but it was lethally effective, and he killed Lil’ Sebastian’s memorial service. And it’s too bad that his effort to strike out on his own couldn’t have been a more measured, meaningful transition that would have brought him into Pawnee’s business community, broadening the scope of the show as Leslie prepares to leave the Parks Department. Similarly, I wonder if April and Andy’s bucket list night marks a turning point for two of them, their growth into something approaching an actual adult couple. A lot of tonight’s episode was about the tough parts of being an actual grownup instead of pop culture’s idea of one, and it was nice to have a reminder that along with the difficult decisions, sometimes you get wonder and beauty.

After our report, the Romney campaign released a statement to ABC News and the National Journal simply attacking ThinkProgress as a “a left-wing blog with a highly partisan agenda.” Despite calling our story “false material,” the Romney spokesperson did not directly dispute any of our assertions. The Romney campaign has not explained why, for instance, Tagg Romney falsely claimed that his Solamere Advisors partners were “cleared” of wrongdoing in connection to the Stanford Financial Group Ponzi scheme.

Now, it appears that one of the firms is trying to cover up its tracks. Sometime last night, Solamere Advisors, the firm run by brokers who allegedly took part in the Stanford Ponzi Scheme, deleted the section of their website that lists Tagg Romney and Spencer Zwick, the Romney for President lead fundraiser. View a screen shot of the current web address, which shows a “404 File or directory not found” error message:

Fortunately, ThinkProgress captured screen shots of the Romney family investment firm websites before we published our story. View a screen shot of the Solamere Advisors directors page before the deletion (click to enlarge the website image):

Solamere Advisors directors, including Tagg Romney, Spencer Zwick, and several brokers who allegedly perpetrated the Stanford Ponzi scheme

In an interview last month, Tagg Romney told ThinkProgress that his partners were “cleared” from the Stanford Ponzi scheme lawsuit to retrieve what prosecutors believe are the fraudulent gains made by his partners, Tim Bambauer, Deems May, and Brandon Phillips. He also suggested that his former Stanford employee partners were the true victims since they had been promised bonuses that they had never received. In fact, in court documents obtained by ThinkProgress, none of the men have been cleared, and a court-appointed audit found that they made about $1.6 million in participating in the Stanford Ponzi scheme.