Adam Lenhardt
Senior HTF Member
As a state worker who works really hard with ever-diminishing resources, I always get frustrated with the usual television stereotype of the lazy apathetic government employee who sits on his or her ass all day just running out the clock. It's a stereotype that's useful dramatically, because unfortunately many of the public's day-to-day interactions with their government prove to be frustrating.I mention all of that only because the portrayal of the bond hearing officer was far and away the most balanced portrayal of a state worker I've seen in a long, long time. Linda Lavin played Joy Grubick as a woman who is just a cog in a vast machine, and knows it. She is not in the customer service business, and once she finally gets off of the phone she is polite but not solicitous. She's got a crappy little cubicle in an outdated office, and nothing about the system she is operating in works efficiently. Cary's case is chock full of lawyers, and they all look at her with contempt, though at least Cary is smart enough not to disrespect her. She does her job diligently, and she warns Cary about what's coming even though he wasn't ready to listen. And, when called to testify, she does so honestly and forthrightly from a perspective that indicates both that she did a thorough job on her report and that she possesses the sort of pragmatic and open-eyed judgment of character that her position would require.As soon as it came to Christian arbitration, I knew Alicia would go to Grace. I really like the places they've taken that character; the show treats her faith respectfully, and it respects her as a character. Given her upbringing in a largely secular household, with a blue state education that doesn't shy away from evolution, she was never going to be a biblical literalist. But she doesn't need the Bible to be literally accurate for it to be a source of truth. Alicia looked at Christian arbitration as merely a different forum where the Bible was added to the legal sources being referenced. Grace understood implicitly that that wouldn't be the case, because faith is a holistic enterprise.And given all of the controversy over GMO seeds, and the enormous impact they've had on American agriculture and the business of farming, I thought it was a pretty novel way to tackle the subject matter. The scene near the end where the GMO seed manufacturer and the farmer step aside from the table while all of the lawyers are screaming at each other, and only Cary sees how it's going to play out, played really well. I suspect a handshake and a gentleman's agreement is how most of us wish disagreements could be settled.Gloria Steinem's cameo was a lot of fun, especially when it jumped from the reality of what was said to Alicia's increasingly inflated imaginings of what she might say.And finally, James Castro makes the mistake so many have made on this show: they're so familiar with how Chicago politics work that they become convinced that that's all they need to know. But Castro made it personal, and now maybe Alicia isn't going to do the smart thing. If Castro hadn't been so tenacious in his pursuit of Cary, using Finn as his proxy, and just let things play out, he would have gotten Peter's grudging endorsement. But he had to be so rat-like in forcing Alicia's hand not to run that she might run just to spite him.
