THE GOOD WIFE: For Peter, Morality is Like Silly Putty

Chris Noth plays Peter Florrick in "The Good Wife."

Season 2, Episode 5 (VIP Treatment)

If asked to define his moral code, Peter Florrick would likely answer, “It depends.” It would depend on how much it would impact his goal. And it would depend on how much it would hurt his enemy.

His ethics ebb and flow, while Alicia’s stand firm. We see her constantly doing battle with right and wrong. It plays on her face, in her frown lines. For Peter, there is no battle. Right and wrong are fleeting and certainly are not set in stone. Ethics are to be wheeled and dealed with, dropped and picked up as needed. But how much of this attitude is simply leftover from his pre-prison days? Maybe he is trying to learn how to do the right thing. The problem is, Peter may not know what that even looks like anymore.

In tonight’s episode, we see a little more of Peter and his unfolding ethics. He is left alone at a banquet while Alicia and the gang run off to look into a new client. But for Peter, that’s fine. He’s there to work the room.

In the process, he finds Alica’s phone, which she left behind in her purse. He tells her he’s found it when she calls in. When her phone lights up with a message, he glances at it. It’s a text from Will, thanking her for “hand-holding.” Peter knows what this terminology means — that she is taking care of a client — so he sort of smiles. But there would have to have been a split second before he realized what it meant and where he wondered if Will and Alicia had been hand-holding. This leads him to look over Alica’s phone messages. There’s one saved from Will left 86 days earlier. Peter starts to listen. It’s the message Will left her when he said he didn’t have a plan. That’s all Peter hears before he’s interrupted.

Now, here’s the interesting part: When given the chance later to replay the message, Peter doesn’t do it. He puts the phone back into Alica’s purse to resist the temptation. He is trying to do the right thing.

And we seem to watch him do other right things. When told he could get a key endorsement if he convinces Alicia to drop a client, Peter laughs, says Alicia will destroy them in court and walks away — seeming to do the right thing. But did he? Or did he simply do what was in his best interest? He didn’t turn the endorsement down. He didn’t call Alicia to tell her that he’d been approached about it. He may have just been making a power play.

In the end, Peter is much like his ethics — indeterminate. He is neither right nor wrong, good nor bad. And yet he is both. I guess that just makes him a politician.

Other thoughts:

• Hate Blake. Hate, hate, hate Blake. He trashes the poor assault victim’s apartment and steals her hard-earned cash? Hate him.
• Not enough Kalinda and her boots in this episode for my liking.
• I have no idea what the name of Will’s date was, nor do I care. I’m going to call her “annoying woman.” I really didn’t like her. She was abrasive and arrogant. And her dress was ugly. So there.
• Diane and Will have such fantastic chemistry, usually when they are disagreeing with each other. They really have the best banter in the show.
• I found it interesting when another Good Wife, this time the spouse of a disgraced Nobel Peace prize winner, called Diane. This Good Wife didn’t care if her husband had assaulted a woman or not. All that mattered was that the greater good would best be served by not filing suit against her husband. By the end of the phone call, she sounds pathetic without even realizing it. And that could have been Alicia.
• Cary did a nice thing? Why? I don’t understand. Why? I mean, he’s Cary. I’m scared.

—Xtine