The Good Fight
Thursdays on Paramount+The Good Fight Quotes
Marissa: What are you doing prosecuting Julius Cain?
Wackner: What am I doing? My job.
Marissa: But he's from our firm. S
Wackner: So?
Marissa; So it's bullshit. Let him go.
Wackner: No. You're the one that accused me of bending justice to give Del that happy ending he was looking for.
Marissa: This is different.
Wackner: How?
Marissa: Because he’s from your law firm.
Wackner: More the reason not to bend the rules for him.
Marissa: Oh my god, when did you become some person you become?
Wackner: I understand you want your career back. You’re a funny man. It takes hard work to get funny. Maybe you think that’s enough, but you haven't done anything for the women you hurt. You haven't made amendments.
Joey Battle: Your Honor, I brought my checkbook.
Wackner: You're a rich man, Joey. I think everyone here knows the minute you go back to work, you'll learn back you're fine.
David Cord: Your Honor, everybody deserves a second chance.
Wackner: You know the expression doing your time.
Joey Battle: Your Honor, I haven't worked a major venue in over a year. How much time do you want me to take?
Wackner: Doing time means more than taking time. It means serving your sentence, going to prison. You want to come back? OK, first you got to do your time: three weeks sentence.
Judge Abernathy: Thank you for stopping by. I've been worried that I was insensitive, and I wanted to get a gut check from both of you.
Diane: Sure, Your Honor. What is it?
Judge Abernathy: I've been watching the two of you throughout the case, and I realized after what I heard last night that your discomfort made sense to me. If my wife and I ever tried to work together, our relationship wouldn't last. So more power to you. I just… I'm a great friend of the LGBTQ+ community.
Diane: Thank you, Your Honor.
Liz: Yeah, actually you know what, Your Honor, there is, there is something that you could settle for us.
Judge Abernathy: Oh great, certainly.
Liz: One of the jurors, the one from the church, I think she's noticed how close we are together. And I hope you don’t mind me saying it…
Diane: It’s been on my mind as well. She did see us out in the hall together.
Liz: And we're just worried that our relationship may have played into her bias.
Diane: It would just be good to be certain, don’t you think, darling?
Diane: Liz, less you're shoving me out of my name partner position because of my race
Liz: I am doing nothing. You are the one who got our racist clients to whine to STR Laurie about us.
Diane: Those clients bring in a great deal of money, and they are not racist … They have been my clients for 15 years. That's what it was about.
Liz: Are you saying that if you were being replaced by another white partner they would have the same objection?
Diane: I’m saying maybe they worry about racial grudges. I mean what do you call pushing me out of a name partnership that I worked for?
Liz: That you felt entitled to.
Diane: Excuse me? Really, That’s what you think?
Liz: Yeah, I think that Barbara Kolstad said was shoved out because you felt entitled to her position.
Diane: Fine, let's just finish this case because here's the problem: We can't work together if you don't respect me.
Liz: No, we can't work together if you use race cynically.
Marissa: Remember you told me how much you hate being Black-apedia for white people, explaining what is or isn't offensive.
Jay: Yeah.
Marissa: I really need to ask you if something is or isn't offensive.
Jay: We love playing this game with white allies.
Marissa: You can ask me about Jews anytime you want. I'm prosecuting someone in Wackner’s court who lost their professorship for saying a word.
Carmen: What word?
Jay: [N-word-ly]?
Carmen: As in stingy?
Marissa: Exactly. Is the word offensive?
Carmen: No, it means stingy.
Jay: Wait, it's a medieval word that no one uses in casual conversation.
Carmen: You really think it’s offensive?
Jay: I think it’s a microaggression and microaggressions are like Pringles: You never have just one.
Marissa: Mr. Cooper, you hoped to rehabilitate Joey Battle's career, isn't that right, so you could put him back on your streaming site for a standup your recording in St. Louis in 14 days?
Del: No, I thought it would be good for this show.
Marissa: This show, this show meaning Wackner’s court?
Wackner: This is a mistake, Marissa.
Marissa: Is it? Aren’t we just here to discover the truth, your Honor?
Wackner: You have something to say to me, just say it.
Marissa: Have you prejudge this case?
Wackner: Are you questioning my integrity?
Marissa: I'm asking if you prejudged…
Wackner: No, goddammit. You will have to answer my question before you ask me yours.
Marissa: If you've already decided how this case will end, your Honor, if we're here to give Del the ending he wants for his TV show, and to make you rich and famous, then yes, I am questioning your integrity.
Wackner: You pack up your things and you get the fuck out of here.
Marissa: The women who had trusted this court deserve representation.
Wackner: Well you should have thought of that before you ran off your fucking mouth. Now you get the hell out of my courtroom.
Diane: The optics matter racially.
Liz: I agree.
Diane: Some of the jurors may react to a woman interrogating a man, period.
Liz: Well we're both women. That can't be helped.
Diane: Some of the jurors may feel more comfortable if I questioned the cop.
Liz: Because you're white?
Diane: Yes, I'm just speaking pragmatically. They may not think I have as big a dog in the fight. Liz: And on the other hand some jurors might appreciate that I do have a dog in the fight.
Diane: I could be more dispassionate.
Liz: Do you be what dispassionate?
David Lee: What the fuck is going on?
Diane: Could you be a bit more specific?
David Lee: My bosses in Dubai, they don’t think in terms of millions or even billions. They think in terms of trillions of dollars. They look at their computer’s algorithms and only react when it blinks red, and you two, you’re blinking red.
Liz: Why?
David Lee: Four of your top clients have called with issues.
Liz: What issues?
David Lee: The teamsters, they’re being shifted to another partner. Bob the Fracking King, he’s being shifted too. Who told them about a reorganization?
Liz: Diane, thoughts?
Diane: Nothing from me. I met with my clients. I just told them of the restructuring I was being told about.
David Lee: What restructuring?
Liz: Wait, David, wait. Is this a powerplay on your part?
Diane: No, it’s just updating my clients.
Liz: David, Diane was told about frustration at the partner level about a white woman being a name partner in a Black firm, and apparently, this is her response.
Diane: I just told our clients what was going on.
David Lee: Stop, both of you. Diane’s a fucking name partner until STR Laurie says she’s not. No one decides until I decide. Stick your race war back in its bottle.
Diane: Well that’s unfortunate. We’ve represented people far worse than Kurt, who by the way was found innocent.
Liz: I’m not saying that he wasn’t, but Jan. 6, we watched the Confederate flag make its way to the Capitol building. The people that Kurt didn’t want to turn over to the FBI, those people, they don’t even want us alive.
Diane: Well, not all of them. I’m sorry I didn’t mean that. I’m certainly not defending those people. They’re all despicable traitors.
Liz: And now that’s what people are saying about Julius.
Diane: And me?
Liz: Diane…
Diane: Am I being pushed out?
Liz: No, not pushed out. You’re a name partner. You can't be pushed out.
Diane: But…
Liz: The partners just think you should do the right thing.
Diane: And step aside?
Liz: Stay in the firm, stay as an equity partner. Just step back from your managerial role.
Diane: Liz, I pull in the big clients. I get the billable hours, but maybe you should step aside. Weren’t we going to form a firm led by women?
Liz: And I hope that it will be.
Diane: But Black women?
Liz: Diane, I am not voting against you. I promised you I wouldn’t but there is growing anger here. They want to address it at the next partners meeting, so you just think about it. You’re a good person.
Diane: No, I’m not.
Liz: Yes you are.
Attorney Schultz: What, if any, appropriate instructions were you given as to appropriate wardrobe?
Garrison: I was told to wear a moose suit.
Judge Farley: I’m sorry, what?
Garrison: I had to wear a moose suit.
Judge Farley: A moose suit? What is a moose suit?
Garrison: It’s a suit that looks like a moose. It has a straw hat and a basket.
Diane: What about Kurt?
Dream Ruth Bader Ginsburg: What about him?
Diane: We don’t agree about anything.
Dream Ruth Bader Ginsburg: I didn’t agree with anything with Scalia, but I liked him.
Diane: Yeah, why did you like him? The opera?
Dream Ruth Bader Ginsburg: No.
Diane: Then what then?
Dream Ruth Bader Ginsburg: He made me laugh.
Diane: That’s it?
Dream Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Yeah.
Diane: You certainly didn’t agree about abortion.
Dream Ruth Bader Ginsburg: We violently disagreed about abortion and school prayer. He was a nightmare on everything. He was a nightmare on diversity, but he was funny. He made me laugh, so we had dinner together.
Diane: So you just wouldn’t talk about the political stuff?
Dream Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Well, he teased me. I teased him. You know life is too short to fight over everything, and you’re right about opera. Opera is good. Food is good. And his pasta was amazing. His spaghetti carbonara… my lord. You can’t hate a man like that.
Diane: My husband is going to work for the NRA.
Dream Ruth Bader Ginsburg: You ever read Scalia’s 2000 dissent on Stenberg v. Carhart? Working with the NRA is child’s play. You like who you like. I don’t like bland people, and a lot of the people who agree with me politically are bland.
Liz: Let’s ask for a continuance. We’ll be unopposed from the other side. They’re in no hurry to force this issue.
Wackner: A continuance until when?
Liz: Well, the judge has a busy calendar, so I don’t know, about 10 months.
Wackner: Holy fucking hell, that’s a problem. No one’s in a hurry. We delay, delay, delay. One day, look back on our lives, wondering where the fuck they went. People die while we wait.
Marissa: Hal, this allows you to keep your court open. It gives you the whole year to work out the kinks and get it on TV.
Wackner: What does it matter if people do not have to follow my judgments? I say $6 million, and they just go whining to big boy court. It’s appeal, appeal, appeal. It never fucking ends.
