(Lead Counsel: Katie)
Straight into the episode this week, where Ally and Renee are helping each other stretch for some reason while they have girl talk about Ally’s upcoming date with Cage. Ally already has “the ick” about this whole thing (wasn’t it her idea though?), and tries to decide whether to cancel the date or just be really obnoxious while on it. She decides she has to call it off.
At Cage & Fish, Ally dodges Elaine’s scolding about her billable hours (Z: I don’t work in the kind of biglaw firm that keeps track of productivity like this, but some research suggests that 200 billable hours per month is both plausible and a whole lot of hours. Kudos, show.) and Cage’s possibly romantic approach to duck into the team meeting, where Richard is taking input on their next case. After they throw out a lawsuit going after Burger King for their Crispier Fry IP (that’s got to be a product placement, right?), Richard mentions that an artist, Seymore Little, wants to hire them, and Ally gets super excited because she was an art history major. Apparently Seymore wants to get married but his son won’t let him because he was deemed mentally incompetent recently. (Z: Why? He seems perfectly lucid here.) This is the… third? fourth? case where someone wants to get married, right? The Ally-verse sure is high pressure for the single folk. Cage is basically being a surly teen to whatever Richard says and storms out.
Richard follows and reprimands Cage for fighting in front of the children, and Cage admits he’s upset because he can feel Ally hedging about their date. Richard tells him that women don’t really want feminism or gender equality– they just want to be taken. He demonstrates a neck massage and some kiss positioning, and it’s all very No Homo. (Z: Georgia watches this happen, but doesn’t really react and has no lines. This will be her MO for the remainder of the episode.)
Seymore and his (young) fiancee, Paula, are in for their intake meeting. Ally enters the conference room to greet him, but he tells her he’d rather have a lawyer with pants and a penis. (Z: He also thought that her skirt was too sluttily short, but the shots were all framed such that I never saw what this cranky old dude’s definition of too short was.) When Richard comes in to check on things, he tells Seymore he can’t insult his attorneys like that, which is showing more respect than I would expect from him. (Z: Of course, he does this while telling Ally to go change clothes, so don’t get too excited.) Billy saunters in for no real reason and Richard declares him co-counsel. Penis problem solved! Ally tries to run after Richard in protest but Cage corners her, puts his hands on her shoulders, and tells her when their date will be. She seems charmed, rather than weirded out like I would be.
After the meeting, Billy and Ally discuss the case in the Unisex. Seymore thinks his son (Sam) is just trying to control him, but Billy smells a gold-digger. They segue into Ally’s date with Cage, and Ally admits she liked his date-on-demand: “I actually like odd”. (Z: Billy clearly disapproves, for reasons that I am sure aren’t gross or controlling in any way.) They’re interrupted by a toilet flush, but when they check the stall nobody is in there. THAT’S when Cage enters, revealing his toilet remote. “I like a fresh bowl”, he explains. (Z: I would sooooo much rather have had it turned out to be a ghost living in the Unisex.)
The dream team meets with Sam, who confirms that he’s trying to control his dad’s money, seeing as he does things like hold conversations with his late wife. Apparently he bought Ghost Wife a $300k boat, so someone needs to keep an eye on things. (Z: Wait, that’s it? He’s incompetent because he bought a boat and misses his dead wife?) Sam explains that this engagement can’t be legit, because his parents had a great love, and “there are some loves that just don’t go away”. Billy and Ally studiously avoid eye contact, so apparently we’re about to rehash this whole thing again. (Z: Just in case that was too subtle for you, we get a whimsy moment with a literal elephant in the room.)
Ally meets with Seymore and Paula again, and he justifies his ghost gabs with more talk about once in a lifetime loves. Paula sits by unoffended, and Ally warns him a trial could be painful. After his wife kicked it and his son betrayed his trust, what pain does he have left to fear, he asks?
Cage is hiding in some book stacks looking Troubled. (Z: He’s alone in their law library pressing his fingers against his temples, which he describes as “hypothalamus isometrics.”) Richard invites himself into this feelings quagmire for some reason, and it turns out now Cage is worried because he’s a bad kisser– lots of saliva, apparently. Richard tries to explain kissing styles, then tells Cage he should just ask Billy, seeing as he “grew up kissing Ally”. One moment, my brain is seizing up trying to process everything that’s wrong with this scenario.
…
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Okay we’re at the hearing, maybe reality has returned. (Z: Katie, I passed out for some reason and there’s a half-empty jar of forget-me-now’s in my bathroom. How was the last scene?) Judge Raisin is back on the bench, and asks to see Seymore’s teeth to help his preliminary ruling. (Z: He’s also deeply concerned about the boat issue.) Seymore removes his dentures and tosses them on the bench, and Judge Raisin agrees to a full hearing. Outside the courtroom, Ally asks Paula what her deal is. Does she want the money? Paula says nope, she’ll even sign a prenup that says she gets nothing. Ally is puzzled.
Cage has decided to go through with the plan where he asks an associate at his firm for advice on how to best make out with another associate at his firm. Billy wisely gives no tips, but tells Cage he shouldn’t be dating associates anyway. He’s not actually arguing for workplace ethics, as we’ll see momentarily, but he’s not wrong. (Z: It’s so weird. Everybody keeps bringing up how it’s not a great idea for Ally to date her boss, so it’s not like they all forgot, but nobody presses the issue.) Georgia was eavesdropping and points out that his ulterior motives are showing.
Billy and Ally (do they need a portmanteau? Bally?)(Z: Albi? Alibi?) mediate a negotiation between Sam and Paula. Sam offers her his father’s $800k estate if she walks away, but she counters that he can keep control of all the money if they can just get married. Afterwards, Billy and Ally feel like they’re missing something with this engagement. Ally asks Billy if he believes in Lifetime Love, and while he says “it’s been known to happen”, he insists he can’t talk about it, what with him being officially committed to another woman and all. They get back to work and VONDA sings over them drinking, conferencing, and having general good times while Georgia reads. In bed. Alone. What’s the over/under on this marriage?
The next morning at Ally’s apartment, she tells Renee that nothing happened, but she feels like she’s moving backwards in terms of Billy. Renee threatens to break Ally’s knees if she acts on any of these feelings, and I really think Ally would be Muriel Heslop if it weren’t for her roommate.
At another pre-trial hearing, the judge agrees to seal the courtroom during the trial. Billy gives Ally advice to keep her examination soft and gentle, and demonstrates by kissing her. Of course, that’s all in Ally’s head. Well, the kissing part. She still has to do her job.
Cage is grooving to Barry White in the Unisex to ramp up for his date. Seems a bit much for a first date if you ask me, but then I’ve never gone out with one of my bosses. Richard emerges from a stall and asks how his romance trouble is going. Cage says at this point he’s too nervous to kiss Ally, so Richard lassos Elaine to ask for her input. When she finds out about his slobber problem, she suggests that Cage suck Ally’s tongue to get rid of excess saliva. She then proceeds to demonstrate by creating a vacuum seal around his mouth. It… does not look sexy. (Z: “You secreted; I swallowed,” explains Elaine. After hearing that, I was strongly tempted to secrete vomit all over my keyboard.)
Ally is examining Seymore in court, (Z: by which we mean cross examining, never mind that he’s her client. She seems to have missed the part where her whole job is to be an advocate for Seymore, even if she thinks he’s an asshole) and he feels victimized by his son. He’s old and lonely, he shouldn’t have to come to court to get remarried. Sam wants to examine his father and Judge Raisin allows it for some reason. Sam asks whether Seymore is over his dead wife, because this new marriage would demean what they had together for decades. He says this doesn’t seem right, but Seymore starts getting riled up. It wasn’t right for his wife to die either, he says, and starts yelling that he wants a gallery and to marry whoever, then starts talking to nobody, although he calls her Gail.
Z: I think that exchange was supposed to make us stop thinking that the court that declared him mentally incompetent was off their gourd, but it has not. There are a couple different versions and definitions of mental incapacity, most of which involve not being able to understand your decisions or their significance. But this guy is totally lucid. He clearly misses his wife and is dealing with a lot of grief, but he understands perfectly well the stakes of this case, he argues effectively with the judge and his son, and he’s quick enough to get in some zingers. They shouldn’t be arguing over whether this marriage is really such a good idea. Clerks of Court sign thousands and thousands of certificates for marriages that are catastrophically stupid every year. They should be arguing over whether or not this man is incapable of managing his own affairs. Legally speaking, there’s zero evidence that he is.
K: Back at C&F, Ally demands answers from Paula. She finally breaks and says that Seymore just wants to open an art gallery. Since Sam doesn’t think he’s capable, Paula can marry him and become his legal guardian, and then greenlight the gallery. Ally asks why she’s just admitting this now, and Paula says she couldn’t ask the lawyers to argue for the marriage on a pretext. (Z: Why not? It may offend Ally’s ideas about true love, but there’s no law against getting married for a number of mercenary reasons.)
Ally tries to explain this to Sam a bit later, but he still refuses the idea of a gallery, even if there’s no marriage. He takes Billy and Ally to Seymore’s studio, where the only thing he’s been painting is Gail. That’s all he wants to exhibit, too, and Sam is afraid that if he does he’ll ruin his artistic reputation. He couldn’t save his mother, he says, but he can preserve his father’s legacy.
Wait, hold up. So nobody actually wants to get married, and the gallery is the real issue here. Do they still need to be arguing in court? Can they still sue Sam over this? Can you change the basis of a case mid-trial, (Z: No) so that you don’t have to go to the trouble of booking another courtroom and everything? (Z: There was no non-crazy basis for the way they’ve been arguing it in the first place. If he’s incompetent, then his guardian makes the call unless somebody else brings an action alleging that the guardian isn’t doing his job properly and tries to get a new guardian appointed. The court isn’t going to nit-pick the guardian’s choices about how to spend Seymore’s money. And if he’s not incompetent, which he isn’t, then he can marry whoever he wants and spend his money however he wants.)
Well, whatever is going on there, Billy tries to segue from that into relationship discussion in the post-game talk with Ally. Cage pops in and interrupts to whisk Ally off to their date. She starts acting like a makeup-obsessed airhead in the elevator to turn him off, so I guess she wasn’t THAT impressed with his male aggression. Of course their date is at VONDA Bar, and Ally, bored and pouty, can’t believe that Cage looks like he’s having a good time. (Z: She also complains about it feeling like the 70’s, I guess because VONDA and the Ikettes sing the same Barry White song. As somebody who sees Ally’s purple-pantsuit-and-neck-ribbon outfit in the credits to every episode, I do not think she has room to talk about things that feel anachronistic.)
Walking home after the date, Ally is still talking about nail polish, and Cage calls her on her faux-vapid behavior. She drops the airhead persona and talks about how the case has thrown her, since she’s a “sucker for unrelenting love”. “I have unrelenting impulses,” (Z: not the most comforting thing to hear on a date) Cage replies, and proceeds to Hoover the shit out of her face. The suction is so strong she falls over. He helps her up, but she calls him “buddy” and runs inside.
The next day, Ally shows up at Seymore’s studio, and he makes a comment about her doing “house calls”, so I feel justified in my thinking that they should not be coming over to their clients’ houses all the time. (Z: There’s no rule against it, but doesn’t she have better things to do, like moon over Billy and try to find a Time-Turner so that she can hit 200 billable hours?) Ally tells him today is the day for final arguments and “we don’t really have one”, which seems like not the best thing to tell the person you’re defending. (Z: Especially when you absolutely do have a strategy. Just argue that he’s not incompetent, for fuck’s sake) He says he just wants to paint what he feels and share it, those Feels being his dead wife.
Ally is distracted by the feeling and the sharing and when she arrives at C&F, she knocks Cage over. When he tells her he knows the date was a dud, she admits that it’s not a match for her. She talks about “the ick”, which means it’s not meant to be, and Cage thinks that it’s that she’s in love with someone. “Something tells me he’s still in love too”, he comments, and Ally stares as if she didn’t already have this conversation with Renee.
In court, the opposing lawyer and Billy shout over each other. The opposition argues that Seymore is still mentally incompetent, and if he does what he wants, his estate will get hurt. Ally speechifies about the insanity of Lifetime Love, and that everyone should have someone who cherishes you forever. (Z: Every time this woman makes an argument in court it’s a grand statement of the episode’s themes that has nothing to do with winning her case. She could have done that without going to law school first.) Significant looks are exchanged with Billy. Judge Raisin rules that he’ll construe a guardianship to let Seymore open his gallery, and nobody even has to get married. That seems like it really could have been settled out of court.
VONDA sings Ally into her office, where Billy enters. They have this exchange:
Billy: Will you ever forgive my letting go?
Ally: I’ll forgive it, but I’m still not sure I understand it.
Okay well I understand it, so let me fill you guys in. You were baby lawyers with different opportunities in different places, as happens in life, and so you went your separate ways, both of your own volition. Billy met a woman he (supposedly) loved and married her, and Ally denied her burgeoning mental illness to hold on to the idea of the boy next door. Then you met up again and, I can’t stress this enough, BILLY WAS ALREADY MARRIED, so any of your history became a moot point, and any letting go on anyone’s part was a mature adult decision. (Z: Also, wouldn’t ‘letting go’ typically involve not being jealous and controlling every time Ally makes eye contact with another man? He reacted to Cage asking her out like a cranky dog with a bone that somebody tried to take away.)
But whatever. Billy and his Runner-Up dance at VONDA Bar, Seymore paints, and Ally walks home alone. Maybe she should take the Baby with her. Safety in numbers, you know?
The Unisex Bathroom 