Season 1
Until Death Do Us Part
- Daniel spends the whole episode trying to help his beloved former neighbor (and surrogate father figure) keep his wife out of a nursing home that he fears is abusing her, even resorting to impugning the reputation of the man's daughter (who also happens to be Daniel's childhood friend) in order to void her power of attorney... only to discover that the wife is too far gone, she doesn't remember being married, and being removed from her friends at the nursing home has only made her depressed and withdrawn. Danny is forced to confront the fact that his client is not thinking rationally, and thus he makes the difficult decision to advise his client to end the marriage. He's left in such a low mood that he decides to call off his engagement to Danielle.
Legacy
- Maggie finds out about Lucy's affair and promptly kicks her out.
- Just as it looks like Abigail and Frank are going to reconcile, Abby discovers that Frank has been gaslighting her for the whole season. He never ended his affair, he just covered it up by using a different cellphone to communicate with his mistress. She is so understandably upset that she almost relapses completely.
Season 2
Historical Revisionism
- Lucy's attempt to reconcile with Maggie ends with Maggie telling her that she's a horrible, twisted person who's completely incapable of love or fidelity. She also reminds Maggie that they first met because Lucy cheated on her previous girlfriend.
- After putting all the blame on her parents' breakup on Abby, Sofia is rocked to discover her father's cheating and is tearful showing Abby the texts they shared.
I Now Pronoun You
- In her most horrific bid for ratings yet, Crystal Steele leaks the name and gender of the firm's latest client, a transgender teenager, to an anti-trans group, resulting in the poor girl being harassed at her school. Even Harry can't defend this, and he promptly dumps her.
Fifty Shades of Judginess
- Abby reluctantly goes out on a date because Jojo insisted on having a night alone with her grandchildren, but then Jojo blows off actually babysitting to go on a date of her own, and while she's away, Nico sneaks out to visit Harry while Sofia gets drunk and sneaks off to go to a party. Abby comes home quickly after, but the kids are gone, and Frank is pissed, and by the end of it, she's been ordered to undergo an expensive and invasive psychological evaluation that might end in her losing all custody of her kids.
- Abigail confesses to Lucy that Sofia's drinking at a party is affecting her especially badly because she remembers how she herself once got drunk at a party and ended up losing her virginity.
- In the B-plot, Daniel's ego gets the better of him, and he gives an unflattering interview in a magazine in which he paints Harry as a dinosaur who's out of touch. Harry initially considers that maybe Danny has a point, but then Danny compounds the situation by making snide comments about Abigail after she's just won an important case. Harry bluntly tells him that if he pulls a stunt like that again, he'll be fired.
Wicked Games
Arrested Development
- After several weeks, Frank finally dangles the possibility of Abby seeing her kids again, but with a major catch - they're not to have any contact with their maternal grandmother. As Abigail is still living with Jojo, that effectively means she can't see her kids.
Family History
- Jerri learns that her daughter Christina doesn't want her in her granddaughter's life, and Abigail naturally tries to intervene. Being Abby, it goes horribly wrong, and this sets off a chain of events that forces Jerri to confront the person she was before her transition, when she was still a raging alcoholic. In the end, she reluctantly agrees that she should not be a part of her granddaughter's life.
Acting Out
- Lucy gets Maggie to the hospital and oversees a complex birth but in the end, is happy to hold their daughter. She brings the baby to Maggie, talking about how they can share rights...and Maggie coldly says this changes nothing between them and doesn't want Lucy to have any part of her daughter's life. Lucy is ready to break down realizing how badly she threw away her best chance at a happy family.
All Happy Families
Season 3
Which Came First?
- Lucy loses her temper at an incredibly obnoxious client and spends most of the episode worrying that she might lose her license over it.
- Poor Bryan, one of the nicest characters in the series, gets horribly conned by his new fiancee, and nearly ends up losing everything he and Nina won from their settlement. The worst part is when Abby leads him to a conference room packed with over a half-dozen of Michelle's past victims, each one relating how she played the same game acting like she enjoyed their interests and such before taking them for everything.
- The client of the week, Magnus Sundstrom, is a well-meaning climate activist who loves his kids dearly, but his activism has made them profoundly anxious and depressed and his in-laws are demanding custody of them. After his daughter Cedar is nearly injured during an activist stunt, he agrees to let the in-laws take the kids, but it's not clear that this will improve things, as the kids are now angry at their grandparents for starting a case against their dad, and Magnus has grown even more obsessed with his activism.
- After seeing Aiden interacting with his friends' young kids, Abigail fears that he won't be happy being a stepdad to her kids, and breaks up with him.
- As absurd as Zander Donovan's efforts to pass as straight are, watching him break down when he discovers that his entourage have all been betraying him is hard to watch.
- There's also Zander rocked to read internal memos from his network that reveal he wasn't being dumped because he was gay but rather because they felt he was getting too old.
- Circumstances beyond their control force Daniel and Abigail to swap their usual caseloads, with Daniel having to deal with a rich but vacuous Gold Digger while Abigail takes the case of a family whose autistic son has been expelled from school for disruptive behavior and who are now struggling to take care of him full-time. Completely in over her head and with Danny refusing to give her resources for a pro-bono case that she has little chance of winning, Abby suggests that the family deliberately abandon their son in a hospital for a night so that the government is forced to step in and assign him to a group home. It's a terrible idea and it almost costs the parents custody of their younger daughter as well, but neither they nor Abby can come up with a better solution.
When the Chip Hits the Fan
- In the B-plot, Danny has taken the case of a wealthy Iranian couple who are trying to get out of compensating the grandmother of their daughter for the years she spent caring for the child while they focused on their business. It's a case that probably should have been settled out of court, and indeed, the plaintiff's lawyer, Clark Gregoriyan, is desperate for Daniel to settle because he knows his client doesn't have a strong case and she is reluctant to fight with her own son, but Daniel needs to build up wins in order to keep the firm afloat, and thus goes scorched-earth, painting the grandmother as neglectful and pointing out that if she had been employed by his clients, she would have been fired for violating the terms of her employment. He wins, but the family is badly split, and the judge, while agreeing with his arguments, tells him he should advise his client to make peace with his mother.
- The revelation of Kelly's true colors. She's alone when Lucy's phone rings and it's Maggie, eager to talk to Lucy, the call Lucy has been wanting for months...and without hesitation, Kelly tells Maggie Lucy wants nothing to do with her, never call again and deletes the call.
Bass Fishing
- In order to win a settlement for Sabrina Bass, Danny elects to completely ignore evidence from Abigail that Sabrina has been embezzling money from her ex-husband's clients. While it allows him to extract a win from the situation, it marks a rift between him and Abigail, and, as it turns out, it doesn't get him any of the things he actually wants in life, as Harry is only mildly impressed and he learns that Martina is marrying Quinn.
Where There's a Will
- Kelly makes a sudden jump from just being emotionally manipulative to being outright abusive, slamming a door on Lucy's hand and injuring her fingers. Lucy is quick to realize that she might be in a bad situation, but doesn't know who to turn to, because her siblings aren't exactly unbiased while her other co-workers just think Kelly's a bit overly romantic.
Catch 22
- The client of the week is a woman who wants to end her life on her own terms before her Alzheimer's gets worse. Her son tries to fight it in court but after losing, comes to Abby, begging to know where his mother is to apologize. Abby takes him to a field where the woman is preparing to end it with her husband and walks off, leaving the family to spend one last hour together.
- Joanne realizes that, no matter how much Harry claims to have changed, his long history of cheating is too much to ignore and breaks up with him rather than have her heart broken yet again.
The Chickens Come Home to Roost
- Running into Maggie on the street, Lucy discovers she'd been back in town for five weeks and Kelly kept Lucy from knowing it. The heartbreak is huge for Lucy, not only losing out on time with her daughter but also the realization that she, a trained psychologist, missed all the signs her girlfriend was a narcissistic, controlling psychopath. And then she comes home to find Kelly still there calmly acting like this was a minor tiff and she and Lucy will get through it.
- Abby reveals that when she was 13, she headed off on her own to find Harry playing with Lucy and Daniel as toddlers, her voice choking at how he seemed happier with them than her. She leaves Harry finally seeming to understand the damage he's done to her.
- Abby reads Sofia's award-winning essay, which details how she hated having a "drunk" for a mother and was always ashamed of her. Abby breaks into tears at her daughter's words, saying that nothing Abby does can make up for what she's done. Then she discovers that her ex and his new girlfriend helped proofread it, and Sofia doesn't want to talk to Abby about it.
- Thanks to a hot mic, Daniel accidentally informs the entire wedding reception how he slept with Martina right after her wedding to Quinn. He can only leave while Martina and Quinn have their backs to each other, their friendship ruined.
- The final scene of Abby, having a horrible day, coming to see Ben only to find him drinking.
