The Good Wife is historically no stranger to shaking things up. The show pushed Alicia together with tough-as-nails legal snoop Kalinda Sharma (Archie Panjabi) in the pilot episode, allowing for their friendship — developed over drinks and shared workloads — to unfold, only to explode this dynamic by revealing that Kalinda had slept with Alicia's husband when she worked at the state's attorney's office. (That Alicia then packed up all of Peter's stuff and had it moved to an apartment, while he was rejoicing over his re-election, was cause for celebration as well as sorrow.)

And while the two women currently haven't appeared together on screen in more than 30 episodes, there is perhaps some hope that, in Season 6, the duo might finally mend their rift: In the Oct. 12 episode ("Oppo Research"), the writers went to lengths to bring up the affair between Kalinda and Peter, and the looming threat of Lemond Bishop (Mike Colter), a drug kingpin in a slick Brioni suit, might bring the two women back together somehow. Or it might not: The show has proven itself impossible to predict at times, not least of all because of the suspended Alicia/Kalinda developments. It's Alicia who brings up the affair, and Alicia who seems to be carrying a grudge — and yet Margulies makes her enmity all the more sympathetic because of how nuanced her performance is. Even when she's prickly or righteously indignant, Alicia remains innately sympathetic.

That's no easy feat, particularly as Alicia has of late considered running for state's attorney, a position once held by her philandering husband (now Illinois state governor) and one that offers some semblance of symmetry. After standing by her man at press conferences in which the most personal details of her private life were held out for the 24-hour news cycle, wouldn't it just be perfect if she ended up replacing Peter, at least symbolically, in the position he held when their lives imploded?

But Alicia has a lot to consider: the current S.A., James Castro (Michael Cerveris), has a vendetta against her; her partner Cary is currently facing trial for drug-related charges; Diane Lockhart (Christine Baranski) has now joined them at the firm as a new partner; her nascent campaign is already compromised thanks to Bishop; and there is more trouble at home. Which brings us back to the opposition research of this week's episode, written by the Kings; even as Alicia must confront what Eli (Alan Cumming) and her potential campaign manager Jonathan Elfman (Steven Pasquale) are telling her about her own life and that of her family. Alicia's coldness, her ability to compartmentalize, her fury at Zach — after discovering that he lied to her about his girlfriend having an abortion — is further compounded by the fact that Alicia realizes that she should have noticed what was going on in her home. Her flashbacks to Zach and Nisa (Rachel Hilson) kissing in his bedroom, and of Zach furtively washing his sheets, reveal the conflict at play inside Alicia's mind. Is she guilty of not paying enough attention to her kids? Has she placed her role as a partner above that of mother?

These are not the things that race through Peter's mind, by the way: The show is clear to depict the weight of this discovery on Alicia, and she masks her guilt by lashing out, by making a list, by sublimating her emotion over the telephone and channeling it inward. It is a reminder that working mothers don't have the luxury of looking the other way, and it's a reminder that the sacrifices that Alicia has made do carry heavy consequences.