Elsbeth is finally on the verge of returning in the 2025 TV schedule after more than a month of hiatus, and the fall finale ended on a cliffhanger. Carrie Preston's character's past from her The Good Wife and The Good Fight days has come back to cause problems, with the troublesome Judge Milton Crawford (Michael Emerson) exposing her role in hiding documents in the Van Ness case when she was in Chicago. Showrunner Jonathan Tolins spoke with CinemaBlend about what Elsbeth fans need to know, whether or not they watched The Good Wife and The Good Fight back in the day.
After the winter finale back in December showcased Laurie Metcalf with a more dramatic story than she'd usually get on The Conners, Crawford somehow arranged for documents to be unsealed that revealed Elsbeth was involved in hiding material in service of a client who seems to have been pretty sleazy. The episode ended before any fallout, although Kaya looked shocked when she saw Elsbeth's picture on screen during a news broadcast about the scandal.
And as somebody who didn't regularly watch The Good Wife or The Good Fight when they were originally releasing, I found myself wondering if there was history to the Van Ness case from one of those two shows that I just didn't know. After all, the CBS hit did bring back a Good Wife alum to start Season 2, but the stars had also explained why Carrie Preston's previous two shows weren't required viewing for Elsbeth. (Both shows are currently available streaming with a Paramount+ subscription.)
So, when I spoke with showrunner Jonathan Tolins about the fall finale, I had to ask: is there any Good Wife/Good Fight context that fans need to know as Elsbeth digs deeper into the leading lady's past? The EP responded:
Well, they don't have to. The specific past story of the Van Ness divorce that led to Elsbeth deciding to come to New York is not something that happened on The Good Wife or The Good Fight. It's something we invented. It is interesting to note that when we saw Elsbeth as a lawyer, she was not the most scrupulously ethical lawyer who ever lived. She's very aware of the fact that she was working to do right by her clients, but she could operate in a gray area.
Fans don't need to know the ins and outs of Elsbeth's storylines prior to her own show premiering in 2024, but they should know that she was not "the most scrupulously ethical lawyer." She seems to have rediscovered some legal scruples since coming to New York City, as she couldn't just sit by and watch Judge Crawford put an innocent woman behind bars just because the woman had an all but useless attorney. It's that shadier past that's about to cause her some problems. Tolins went on:
The thing that really was difficult for her this time was that she was victimized herself and didn't catch what was really going on. And that just made her angry and hurt and embarrassed, and she'll talk about that in Episode 9.
The winter premiere is going to dig into Elsbeth's anger and pain on January 30, which is particularly intriguing in light of her usual perky attitude toward life and the cases she investigates. We just don't often see Elsbeth Tascioni angry, and when I noted as much to the showrunner, Tolins responded:
That's one of the great gifts of being able to do so many episodes. We're finding more and more about her, and Carrie has been playing the part for a long time and really understands her. And we know that whatever we come up with, if it feels right, Carrie's going to play it so honestly and in such surprising and satisfying ways that we're finding that the show is able to contain more and more colors and we can go to more and more emotional and deeper places than you would expect on a standard network procedural.
Carrie Preston certainly has been playing this character for a long time, as her first episode as Elsbeth was in the first season of The Good Wife in 2010, and she won the Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama for her work in Season 3 in 2013.
So, what will change for Elsbeth now that Judge Crawford aired some of her dirty legal laundry? Well, I asked the showrunner how well (or not well) Carrie Preston's character would be processing having the documents unsealed, and Tolins previewed:
She's going to have work to do. She's going to have work to do to try to make things right, to try to navigate the conflict she's having with Kaya, when Kaya has trouble understanding why she did what she did, and she's going to have to get help from her friends to find a way out of this. But most of all, she feels really bad about being part of something where an innocent person was victimized, and she's not going to rest until she makes that right somehow. And that's part of who she is.
Fortunately, the wait to see exactly what comes next for Elsbeth and Co. is nearly over. The winter premiere airs on Thursday, January 30 at 10 p.m. ET on CBS, following Matlock. Called "Unalive and Well," Will & Grace alum Eric McCormack guest stars as the charismatic founder of a holistic wellness center who Elsbeth suspects is guilty of murder after a young man was discovered dead.
It remains to be seen if Michael Emerson will appear in the winter premiere to thicken the plot further after bringing Elsbeth's past to her present life in NYC, but McCormack as a guest star is reason enough to get excited. After all, Laurie Metcalf is proof enough that sitcom vets can tackle Elsbeth's brand of drama!
