TV fail or reality fail?

[lilacsigil]

So, a large US law firm, knowing that it is negotiating with Venezuelans over a Venezuelan company subsidiary, relies on an intern for translation? I'm not talking about the error in the contract - my sister-in-law's job is checking financial reports in four different languages for exactly this kind of problem - but the meetings with "Chavez" and the Venezuelan officials. Natalie Flores is an excellent translator and familiar with legal and financial terminology, as it happens, but Lockhart/Gardner don't know that!

While it was great to see America Ferrera have more to do on this show, it seemed very weird to me - in a plot that brought up "professional translation error" early, and ended with Natalie getting a translation job - that everyone in the office just latched on to the nearest Spanish speaker. An intern, with no apparent translation qualifications at all. What I can't work out is if this is actual plot showing an English-speaking, white-run and largely English-speaking, white-staffed US firm as linguistically ignorant (they didn't make the contract error but they didn't pick it up, either) and assuming that if Random Hispanic Intern does one thing in Spanish she can do everything; or if it's a really lazy shortcut on the part of the writers, leaving out the entire profession of certified, competent, experienced translators (and any Spanish-speaking and/or Hispanic lawyers in the company!) in favour of giving their guest star more screentime. It comes off as incredibly unprofessional to me and I just don't know whether that's normal US company practice or not!

On another note, the Peter/Kalinda relationship is a thousand levels of creepy, no matter how short it was. When it was first revealed, I was really appalled that Peter would be sleeping with an employee, and even more so that he would have sex with an employee who desperately needed his help. That's really revolting, even though it does fit in with the theme of this season, which seems to be "Is looking after your friends corruption, and if not, how do you get by in a corrupt system?" Kalinda's closed-off then wavering face when she spoke to Alicia was horrible; Alicia's silent betrayal at the end was worse. "Which nobody can deny" indeed, Peter.