‘The Good Wife’ recap: white lies and a red herring

I confess I have trouble following the complicated themes of “The Good Wife� sometimes, and Sunday night’s episode, “Lies,� is one of the more difficult ones I’ve seen. There are lots of story lines to follow, some drudging up old history, and nearly everyone is guilty of committing the eponymous sin.

The lawsuit du jour centers around a tech employee, Kristen, who’s fired for lying on a polygraph test. But it turns out to be a red herring; a stepping stone for a multi-episode plot arc. Kristen’s company gave her the test while searching for a breach in security, and she lied on the test, but not about stealing from the company. But the company also told two very big lies. For one, they didn’t have a security breach; they just wanted an excuse to fire Kristen. But the other big lie was why: They wanted to fire her because they had stolen her idea for an app, called Spoiler, which she had developed outside of work. Spoiler, which helps users figure out possible story plots on television shows, is worth much more than Kristen thought -- because the company sold it to the National Security Agency.

SIGN UP for the free Essential Arts & Culture newsletter >>

Remember the NSA? Remember Jeff Dellinger (Zach Woods), the former NSA employee who helped stop the agency from listening in on Florrick Agos’ calls? It’s been a while since season 5.

Well, Alicia contacts Dellinger — through several convoluted channels to protect his anonymity — to help her with her case, and he confirms that the NSA is using the Spoiler app, which leads to the tech company settling for a sexism lawsuit instead. That was easy. But despite Dellinger’s intricate communication pattern, his paranoia is well founded: The NSA has been tracking him, and now finds him. And now the agency’s on to Alicia again. When Alicia makes the mistake of mentioning something about “the next Edward Snowden,� Dell’s former group of viral video-sharing NSA lackeys decide they have enough cause to wiretap Alicia again.

While Jason helps Alicia and Lucca by investigating their technology case, the women do some investigating of their own, into Jason. We still don’t know why he punched that judge, except that he got angry, but they’re getting different accounts of the new investigator. Alicia speaks to the injured judge, who paints Jason as a sociopath incapable of empathy (reminding me of dear departed Dexter), but Lucca finds a witness who says it was just a scuffle. They don’t know who to believe. It certainly sounds like the judge is overreacting a tad… but what do we know?

What I’d like to know is what happened when Alicia and Jason had drinks last week!

Not to be forgotten, Lockhart, Agos & Lee have their own problems, and not just because of Howard Lyman, for a change. While interviewing and hiring new associates (where did all those other associates go?), the firm has some trouble with a talented young black woman, Monica Timmons (Nikki M. James), who apparently, according to David Lee, didn’t go to a high-profile enough school. Instead of Harvard or Stanford, she went to Loyola in Maryland. Shocking.

Diane really likes Monica and pushes the others to hire her, because they need the diversity. Howard also likes her, though it’s unclear exactly why (because she’s black? because she’s scrappy?), but of course he makes his horribly inappropriate comments during his interview with her. But he isn’t the only one. Whether they realize it or not, all four law partners are guilty of telling little white lies, and they each make easily misconstrued comments to the candidate, before ultimately deciding not to hire her. In a storyline that seems to comment on the current climate in Hollywood, among other places, they instead hire three young white men; men who look just like Cary.

Monica decides to strike back by (somehow) recording the interviews and putting the questionable moments up on YouTube. It looks exceedingly bad for Lockhart, Agos & Lee. When Diane tries to empathize with Monica, comparing her plight to Diane’s climb among her male peers, Monica reminds Diane to check her privilege, because it’s impossible for her to know what Monica goes through as a woman of color.

Among all these amateurs, Eli becomes an expert at lying. Ruth extends an olive branch to Eli and asks him to help with Peter’s campaign, because Peter has decided to skip right past vice president and declare his bid for president. Eli agrees to help, but only because he’s still out to take Peter down. It turns out Peter was responsible for tampering with the ballots in Alicia’s state attorney race (Why would he do that?), and Eli wants to get Peter in trouble for that. But he doesn’t want it to affect Alicia. Eli is getting quite cartoonish. I’m half expecting him to grow a mustache he can twirl.

So what do you think, “Good Wife�-ers? Did you see the NSA twist coming? Any theories for what they’ll do with the wiretaps in the coming weeks? Will Monica continue to cause trouble for Lockhart, Agos & Lee? Did you have trouble following this episode too? Or do you have a celebratory goat video to share?

Twitter: @camusr6