The return of FBI Agent Lana Delaney (Jill Flint) on “The Good Wife” Sunday night brought out the best in Kalinda (Archie Panjabi), as everybody’s favorite investigator was back to being devious, sexy and mysterious — all while solving the episode’s B-plot.
Just like the good old days!
Kalinda’s had quite a few encounters of the unclothed kind over the years, but few have been as erotic and conflicted as those with Lana. Sunday night’s episode, “Shiny Objects,” allowed us to compare and contrast, too, because Kalinda bedded both Lana and Cary (Matt Czuchry).
And it didn’t look good for Cary — it’s hard to understand why Kalinda would go for a guy grinning like an altar boy who just stole candy.
Flint — a regular on USA’s “Royal Pains” and now NBC’s “The Night Shift” — has been on just a couple of episodes each season, but her Lana has made quite an impression anyway.
Lana first showed up in Season 1, and did something sexy with Kalinda behind a roll-down storage-unit gate — we assume, since we only saw their feet. She’s been in the investigator’s hot pursuit since Season 2.
How could we tell? Subtle hints, like sultry, heavy-lidded double entendres about “preliminaries” and playing footsie while sipping wine.
In a classic Season 3 scene, Kalinda got right back at Lana by making her all hot and bothered with some just-below-the-frame action. Alas, it quickly surfaced that Kalinda had an agenda, and the talk turned to the women’s mutual exploitation and conflicting work interests.
Things got even trickier in Season 4, when Kalinda’s psycho husband (Marc Warren) turned up and threatened her “girlfriend,” who can take care of herself, but, still.
Overall, Lana seems to share regular girl-on-the-side duties with Kelli Giddish’s Sophia Russo, though she’s always made Kalinda confront her choices, sexual and otherwise.
Typically, the key moment in “Shiny Objects” was when the agent mentioned coming out to her mother, then asked Kalinda if she had done the same. The investigator responded with a troubled, vulnerable look we’ve almost never seen on her. Clearly this was a sensitive spot, but why?
With the news that this is Archie Panjabi’s final season on “The Good Wife,” we can only hope creators Robert and Michelle King do well by Kalinda this year. But will they make her choose among her competing love interests?