With the Stern, Lockhart & Gardner firm in dire financial straits, Diane (Christine Baranski) and Will (Josh Charles) consult an efficiency expert about cuts that would help them avoid layoffs. Will calls Alicia (Julianna Margulies), but she left her phone at the apartment and he reaches Peter (Chris Noth) instead, resulting in an awkward moment between them Alicia and Cary (Matt Czuchry) are visiting the offices of Eric Dorfman (Boris McGiver), a lawyer with whom their firm is discussing a case merger.

In the middle of their discussion, federal agents arrive and arrest Dorfman for first degree murder. Assistant United States Attorney Harrison Rivers (Sharif Atkins) claims Dorfman gave the name of a federal witness to his client, drug kingpin Lemond Bishop (Mike Colter), resulting in her murder. Dorfman asks that Stern, Lockhart & Gardner defend him, but Will and Diane are hesitant due to fears Dorfman cannot pay. However, when Rivers attempts to intimidate Will away from the case, Will decides on the spot to take it out of pride.

Diane and Peter, who remains restless due to his house arrest, find they are getting along better. However, while searching for old tax forms in Diane’s room, Peter finds condoms in her bedside table and suspects she is sleeping with Will. An argument ensues when he confronts her about it, ending with Alicia angrily insisting she will have to trust him. Meanwhile, political operative Eli Gold (Alan Cumming) tells Peter an anonymous Twitter user named “Upriser7″ who is making disparaging posts about Alicia, some of which are true, including that Alicia and Peter are sleeping in separate rooms. When Eli later realizes the Tweets are coming from inside their house, Alicia questions whether it is her children, but they deny it. When Alicia learns her son Zach (Graham Phillips) communicates with his girlfriend Becca (Dreama Walker) with Twitter, they realize she is Upriser7, and Eli Gold confronts her at school and intimidates her into stopping the Tweets.

Later, Bishop offers the firm $200,000 in cash as a retainer to serve as their lawyer, prompting Diane and Will weigh the ethics of defending Bishop against the firm’s desperate financial need. While working on the case, Alicia realizes Dorfman’s daughter Tammy (Katie Kreisler) gave the witness list to Bishop to win his approval, which led to her murder. Dorfman insists he will go to jail before letting his daughter take the fall, and instead calls Bishop and threatens to give up information about him. In response, Bishop has his bodyguard Tony Grustelle (Creighton James) confess to the murder, which results in Dorfman’s case getting thrown out, much to the anger of Rivers.

Bishop announces he is dropping Stern, Lockhart & Gardner because he prefers Dorfman. Diane and Will decide to seek a third partner with an extensive client list to keep the firm alive. The episode ends with Becca asking to have sex with Zach. Although the condoms he kept in his mother’s bedside table are now missing, he leaves with Becca anyway.

“Fleas” is the sixteenth episode of the first season of the American legal drama television series The Good Wife. It originally aired on CBS in the United States on March 9, 2010.

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