‘The Good Wife’: Michael J. Fox makes a triumphant return

Any time Michael J. Fox comes back to “The Good Wife,” we are excited. Especially when it doesn’t involve that rat video.

In the case of the week, Alicia and Caitlin are facing off with Louis Canning and Martha, the girl who was going to be hired by Lockhart/Gardner before David Lee got Caitlin hired. They are arbitrating a wrongful termination suit brought by a religious, politically conservative woman who taught English at what is implied to be a very liberal college.

It doesn’t go Lockhart/Gardner’s way, but the pivotal piece of evidence was obtained by Canning from Alicia’s bag – right after he was sort of helping her look for her missing daughter.

The Grace thing was interesting. We thought from the previews it was going to be the entire episode’s focus. But it was more like Act III and it was resolved really quickly, which is fine. Because this isn’t “24.” But Alicia and Peter, due to Alicia’s involvement with the Donny Pike case (he’s the white supremacist Colin Sweeney helped L/G trap who kills witnesses), the Florricks are concerned Grace has been kidnapped.

It all turned out fine when Kalinda tracked Grace down on the South Side, getting baptized by the guy she watches on YouTube.

What that plot succeeded in doing was A) make Alicia re-evaluate her relationship with Will, B) bring her and Peter (albeit only slightly) closer, C) make Alicia give some serious thought to joining Louis Canning’s firm, where he promises she’ll be home at night to spend time with her kids.

In smaller storylines, Wendy Scott-Carr wants a bigger budget than she’s getting to investigate Will and L/G. She also hires Andrew Wiley, that stay-at-home dad investigator we’ve seen before. He and WSC think Lockhart/Gardner win an awful lot of cases and the implication is they buy wins.

In the end, Alicia breaks up with Will. Diane thinks Will broke up with Alicia, but either way – Diane’s happy.

Thoughts & Tidbits

• The actor who played the arbitrator, John Michael Higgins, never fails to crack us up. Martha was also a welcome return.
• It was also wonderful to see Jennifer Carpenter in a guest-starring role. We’re so used to seeing her as the foul-mouthed Debra on “Dexter” that we almost didn’t know what to do when every other word wasn’t the F-word.
• It was pretty awesome to see Kalinda be the unknown hero.
• Speaking of Kalinda, her flirtation thing with Dana was interesting at first. Now it’s just getting kind of old.
• Didn’t you think Will’s reaction at the end was telling? He just oh-so-subtly stressed the she when he said, “She will [get over it].”
• This episode could be Julianna Margulies’ Emmy submission. Her building emotion in the search for Grace, the way she seemed to be hanging by a thread on the edge of going over into blind panic was wonderful.
• Do you guys think there’s any chance Alicia goes to Canning’s firm? Talk about a game-changer. We’re fairly sure it won’t happen because the show would lose too many main characters, but we’d love to see Michael J. Fox on a regular basis.

What did you think, “Good Wife” fans?

Photo/Video credit: CBS