Topping off an impressive first season, “The Good Wife” is getting ready to end the year with a bang — with viewers wondering “Will she or won’t she?” all summer long.
The “she,” of course, is Alicia Florrick, the attorney based on a composite of political wives from Hillary Clinton and Silda Spitzer to Jenny Sanford. In the premiere, she left her husband, Illinois state attorney Peter Florrick (Chris Noth), after he was sent to prison in a political scandal that included infidelity.
Even though the story has progressed to the point that Peter has won a retrial for his crimes and is permitted to live with his family again while he is under house arrest, Peter’s fate will not dramatically change the way Alicia feels.
She’s not taking him back?
“I don’t think so,” says the show’s co-creator Robert King. “The drama of the show is how much should the marriage be respected when someone has broken the [fidelity] rule.”
Does that mean that Alicia is running into the arms of her colleague at the firm, Will Gardner, played by Josh Charles?
Classmates at Georgetown Law School, he and Alicia have been generating sexual tension all season — tension that culminated in a late-night office kiss at the end of a recent episode.
It left female fans all hot and bothered, and they were digging Will’s five o’clock shadow and tousled hair.
“For me, it was a perfect way to handle the kiss,” says Josh Charles. “It stayed true to the characters. It felt organic, authentic and necessary.”
“Will is not a neutral [figure],” says King. “There are questions about him: How much is he a player? How ethical is he? We’ll trace more about their relationship. We’ll find out more what happened between them at Georgetown.”
Michelle King, who created the show with her husband, says fans are split 50-50 between Alicia going back to Peter and Alicia starting up with Will.
“Fans of the marriage want her stay with Peter,” she says. “The young babes are responding to the hotness of Josh Charles.”
The last episode is in production at the “Good Wife” studios in friendly Greenpoint, Brooklyn — though the Kings are still writing some scenes.
They stress that the season finale will not be on the scale of what you might find on “Lost,” but that it will be a lot like the precarious nature of Alicia’s life — the thing that has made the show more than just another law-office soap.
And they won’t guarantee another kiss between Alicia and Josh.
“She’s had a series of small rugs pulled out from under her,” says Robert King. The episodic format of the show allows them the luxury of telling us about Alicia’s life “in chapters.”
One of the upcoming chapters will address the job rivalry between Alicia and Cary Agos (Matt Czuchry), the Zac Efron of the firm. It will culminate in one being named junior associate.
“It’s a big, dramatic thing,” says Robert King. The firm’s decision may not have Alicia uncorking a bottle of champagne. “Alicia never has that much to celebrate,” he says.
Another chapter will look at her relationship with the show’s pet snake, Kalinda Sharma, played to shady perfection by Archie Panjabi.
King says in one episode, Alicia will probe to find out who Kalinda — who’s so expert at getting into everyone else’s business, from murder suspects to judges — really is.
The Mascara Queen is also going to see her sexual switchboard light up with calls from both sexes.
King reports that with the “Good Wife” receiving an early pickup, he and his wife began “squirreling away stories for next season.”