To Marissa and anyone with common sense, the notion of an alternative court giving out actual hard time - as opposed to a minor dispute between two parties who agree to have Wackner as their arbiter - seems fanciful at best, self-destructive at worst. (Marissa tries to devise a hilariously unsubtle hand signal to wave Wackner off such ill-advised cases, but does it to no avail.) To Wackner, taking this assault case is a perfect example of relieving an official justice system that’s too broken to handle properly. Once again, Wackner is doing what he absolutely should not be doing, presiding over a criminal case that will likely call for incarceration, which he should not have the power to enforce, especially considering his association with David Cord and his network of private prisons. Given that they’re dealing with a dangerous man, who will almost certainly attack another stranger on release, the cops instead take him to Wackner’s court for a ruling. (He blames the victim for the “Kung Flu,” which is oddly and conspicuously the rare time the pandemic has been an issue this season.) Two officers bring him down to the bond court for processing, but the place is a practical and bureaucratic nightmare: The elevators are out, for one, forcing them to climb up to the seventh floor on foot, and once there, they’re told that many collars are being released due to limited space in lockup. Tire Iron,” gets arrested for assaulting an Asian person on the street.
Take the opening of this week’s episode: A deranged white man, so notorious for violence that he’s called “Mr. The legitimacy problem is perhaps the largest because it poses a relevancy problem, too. But a gamble is a gamble, and sometimes you come up snake eyes.
Let it be understood and appreciated that you can count on zero hands the number of legal dramas that would have the go-for-broke commitment necessary to pull off an alternative court. But now it’s starting to become a question for The Good Fight itself, which has invested in the Wackner subplot with the sort of creative élan that makes the show lively. That’s certainly been a question for Hal Wackner, who’s been fighting for legitimacy and viability from the start, given that he personally has no official judicial power and has been reliant on dubious money sources to keep the lights on.