Good Trouble has bestowed upon us a character pairing that no one knew to ask for but seems like the most obvious: Mariana and Rowan. Do either of them seem at all inconspicuous while trading some cold hard cash for a flash drive of jury-pool information for Tommy Sung’s trial? No. But they both look fabulous while doing it and, really, that’s the point. Okay, no — actually, the point is that both Mariana and Rowan are geniuses not being used to their full potential. The camaraderie they find in each other as they hang back at the law office while everyone else is at court for jury selection is delightful and yet another highlight from Mariana’s little excursion into the legal world.
It’s pretty clear that Mariana will be heading back into the tech industry eventually, but that doesn’t stop me from dreaming of an alternate universe in which she puts her tech skills to good use as an in-house investigator at a law firm. Good Trouble–The Good Fight crossover, anyone? It’s not even like Mariana’s trying that hard when she uses an algorithm (that she came up with while studying at MIT) that pulls up all of a person’s social-media accounts at once, so think of the possibilities when she’s really making an effort! Anyway, that little algorithm comes in handy during voir dire as Kathleen, Callie, and Tony are trying to figure out which potential jurors they’d like to keep around to help their case and which they’d like to use their limited number of strikes on. Mariana and Rowan are feeding them information to help make those decisions. And Mariana’s algorithm paired with Rowan’s photographic memory really makes these two a dream team.
Of course, the meat of this story line comes when Mariana and Rowan wind down with an after-work drink. Rowan is curious why Mariana would be wasting her skills and hiding away by answering phones at a law firm, so Mariana explains the whole Bulk Beauty saga. She is still really beating herself up about it, but it’s Rowan who reminds her that nobody’s perfect; everyone has done things or thought things they aren’t proud of. For instance, Rowan’s less-than-perfect thought is that he’d love for “Tony to walk into an open manhole.†He explains that it’s not that he doesn’t like him in general, but Tony and his “overbearing white male shadow†mean that Rowan is invisible in this office sometimes. Mariana reminds him how brilliant he is, and their friendship has resuscitated my cold dead heart. As for the perfect little bow: The next day, Kathleen comes in, tells Rowan they couldn’t have done it without him, and says that he’ll be joining them in court from now on. What a win!
No one could blame Rowan for wanting to be where the action is. Sure, there’s a “murder†“trial†going on and an “innocent†“kid†could be “going†to “prison,†but the real excitement in that courtroom is thanks to the welcome return of Callie’s ex, Jamie, and his prosecutorial brand of sexual tension. Maybe I just need a sudsy, sexy lawyer show in my life, but dang, Callie and Jamie staring each other down from across the aisle had me sweating a little bit.
Callie and Jamie’s history almost gets Callie in trouble (not the good kind). Kathleen is laying a trap for the prosecution: She’s trying to trick them into not striking a certain juror by making them believe that Kathleen will strike him. Because of Rowan and Mariana’s insider info, Kathleen knows this juror would actually be great for the defense and wants him to stay. She lets Callie lead the charge on making it look like they’ll strike this guy. She does a good job — unless you’re Jamie and know Callie’s tells. Outside at the coffee cart during a break, Jamie calls her on it all. Friends, countrymen, neighbors, so much laughing and flirting and trying not to be cute but actually being pretty cute ensues. So much.
Jamie tries to warn his boss that they’re getting played with this last juror strike, but he doesn’t listen and Kathleen’s plan works. Still, this means that heading into trial, the prosecution now knows that Jamie can read Callie perfectly. It could come in handy!
Speaking of reading people, after court, Tony tells Callie that it looked pretty obvious that Callie still has feelings for her ex. She brushes it off — she’s in a serious relationship, she tells him — but by the end of the episode, we find both Callie and Jamie longingly staring out windows, which is TV code for “people are having feelings.†This trial should be really interesting, huh?
Callie and Jamie aren’t the only exes who might be reexamining their feelings for one another. We have to talk about Alice and Sumi. Alice! And! Sumi! What a time.
After Alice has a terrible day at the comedy workshop — almost all of her previous sketches are cut from the showcase, and none of the writers want to work with her since she’s the one who blew everything up — Sumi takes her out for drinks to cheer her up.
The Alice-Sumi scene at the bar, in which they make quick work of some racist frat guys with an Asian fetish, is entertaining thanks to the way they immediately read and then dispose of these guys. But it’s also wildly depressing that they’ve been treated this way — as fantasy objects instead of human beings — so many times that they can spot it coming a million miles away. The incident, at the very least, gives Alice an idea for a great sketch.
The sketch kills at the workshop. Unfortunately, Scott is livid once he learns that Alice wrote it herself, which was against the rules when he was the sole director of the program. Ruby, however, reminds him that they’re co-directors now, and she permits the comedians to create their own work. The two proceed to have it out until some Very Important Woman walks in to check on things, and Scott has no choice but to agree to let Alice’s sketch move forward.
That night on the Coterie rooftop, Alice and Sumi toast to Alice’s big win. There proceeds to be some hints at flirting, especially on Sumi’s part, and some real tension brewing. When Lindsay joins them on the roof, they notice something is going on here, too. Before the tension gets too unbearable, Alice runs off to meet Ruby for drinks, explaining that it’s casual between her and the newly instated co-director of the comedy workshop, but things might be back on? This information also seems to intrigue Lindsay a bit.
Later, we find Alice clearly running through what’s been going on between her and Sumi as of late. Are Alice and Sumi going to get back together? They both seemed to have grown so much since we first met them (when Alice was still a doormat for her ex). This could be a very good thing. Or a terrible thing! Such is life at the Coterie, I guess.
Family Dinner
• Oh! One other major item of note goes down during jury selection: Kathleen has Callie act as a sort of emotional support for Tommy since she can tell he trusts her. As Callie talks to him about how he could maybe look a little less guilty in court, Kathleen notices Tommy’s girlfriend, Katie, throwing daggers at Callie via her eyeballs. Katie is really looking like Most Likely to Murder at this point.
• I gave Malika some shit for getting a tattoo so soon after a breakup but have since discovered an action much more alarming: impulse-buying a food truck to prove to a girl you’re figuring out your life. Aww, Dennis. He’s trying so hard to reconnect with Davia that after hearing Davia and Matt bonding over work, he pays to get an open-mic spot at a terrible bar and then invites Davia onstage. It blows up in his face thanks to a heckler, but they spend a fun evening together, and Dennis admits that he loves music, but not the music scene, and doesn’t know what he wants to do with his life anymore. Davia reminds him how much he loves cooking for people, and, well, you can put the rest together.
• You didn’t think GT would just tease us with another Dennis-Davia duet and not come through, did you? I love that we got to hear Josh Pence and Emma Hunton’s version of “Minefields†after all. Especially over that montage of people thinking about who they may or may not actually be in love with, since Dennis and Davia are the patron saints of suffering in silence while pining away for people.
• Well, if Gael and Isabella’s conversation about not forcing gender stereotypes on their child is any indication of their co-parenting style, those crazy kids just might make it! Gael never chastises Isabella for not considering how hard life must have been for someone like his sister, Jazmin, or for going hog wild with a pink Pinterest board after finding out they’re having a girl (this is before their conversation), and Isabella never gets defensive but instead admits she has never thought about it from that perspective. It’s so evolved! It also helps them realize they have a lot more to talk about when it comes to raising a child together.
• “And that’s why I’m not legally allowed to own fireworks anymore.†Davia gives us so many gifts.