David Giesbrecht/CBSSpoiler alert! Do not continue reading if you've yet to see The Good Wife's gamechanging episode on Sunday night. We're serious. If you choose to continue reading, you can't complain about spoilers in the comments or we will knock everything off your desk!
Well, that was intense.
In The Good Wife's suckerpunch of an episode, sh-t hit the fan in a big way (how fitting that the episode's title was "Hitting the Fan," no?), as Will (Josh Charles) learned of Alicia (Julianna Margulies) and Cary's (Matt Czuchry) plan to start their own firm and take some of Lockhart & Gardner's biggest clients along with them and promptly fired everyone involved, officially declaring war. Yes, a legal civil war just began in Chicago and it's going to get ugly, people! "It's going to be bitter and it's going to be tense and it's going to be heated and painful and passionate," Matt Czuchry teases of the new rivalry between Lockhart & Gardner and Florrick & Argos.
We chatted with Czuchry about the gamechanging episode, which he calls the series' "best," including how it will turn The Good Wife into a "completely different" series moving forward. Plus, he previews Cary and Alicia's new dynamic as partners, as well as what's ahead for Cary and Kalinda (Archie Panjabi)...
Fans have been waiting for this episode since Alicia decided to leave with Cary in the season four finale. Were you guys just waiting for the fallout to begin as well?
We had been kind of waiting for that kind of giant blow up to happen, and I think the audience was waiting for that as well after the end of season four, so that's what makes this episode even more special, because people have been waiting months to see what would happen, and I think the result meets everybody's expectations, and exceeds them.
What did you think of the episode when you first read the script?
After I first read it, I thought it was one of the best scripts, if not the best script, we've ever had. It's just rich with so much of the history getting torn apart.
People are saying this is the best season of the show ever and that it's currently the best show on TV. Do you guys have that feeling as well? Why do you think this season, and this particular storyline, is so compelling?
All of us feel, this year, excited creatively by the material, and episode five. When we got that script, everybody had the same feeling, that it was an amazing script. The word "brilliant" gets tossed around a lot. When you feel that, when you feel passionate about the storylines and you feel passionate about what comes next on the page, and really at the end of season four, breaking those two firms apart…that was a great cliffhanger.
It's amazing that we're in season five and wondering what the hell is the show going to look like now. Can you preview how different the show will feel moving forward?
For four seasons we've been following one firm and now we're breaking that into two firms, so it's going to be a battle between these two firms for the foreseeable future. It's going to have a completely different look and a completely different feel. I think that by the nature of breaking those two firms apart, you have these relationships that have been torn apart. What is this going to do to all the relationships? It affects everybody. I think it fundamentally changes all the relationships on the show, whether it's Cary and Kalinda, whether it be Cary and Diane, everybody. It fundamentally changes all the relationships on the show, so yeah, it's going to look very, very different.
It's interesting to see Cary and Alicia evolving into the new Will and Diane. We've seen them as rivals, so how are Alicia and Cary going to fare as partners now?
Yeah, I think part of the hype with season five, where we are now, is because again, all the history of these characters being built up, you have Will and Diane and now you have the new Will and Diane, with Alicia and Cary. I think the very idea of starting the firm is so romantic and so grand, but then when you actually get into the nuts and bolts of it, it becomes incredibly challenging to make it come to fruition. So with it, Cary and Alicia are going to face a lot of different challenges.
In the episode, Will says he wants to destroy the competition. Just how vicious is this rivalry going to get?
It's going to be a bitter rivalry. I think you kind of have the feeling of the intensity this episode. There's an incredible intensity there, and these battles are going to be more intense and bitter because of the stakes that are involved, talking about stealing clients or taking clients or keeping clients or trying to change your career and build up a livelihood through Florrick-Agos. These are high stakes elements for both parties, so it's going to be bitter and it's going to be tense and it's going to be heated and painful and passionate.
While we didn't see Cary confront Kalinda, he seemed to figure out that Kalinda was the one who ratted them out to Will. How does this affect their dynamic going forward?
I'll just say that we're going see them kind of go back and forth in terms of Kalinda kind of won this round, but there are still more rounds to come between these two in terms of where their loyalties lie, in terms of how they use one another.
And those two have a lot of fans rooting for them to get together. Do you think there's any chance for romance, or would you prefer this game of cat and mouse?
I think right now, with this particular storyline about them using each other and the back and forth is fun to play at this particular point, because we have these two warring firms so that's kind of the nature for all the relationships like I mentioned, to be battling each other; that goes for Cary and Kalinda as well. But I always think that although kind of Cary and Kalinda are ships passing in the night often times, I think there's always that potential for a romantic relationship, because we've never seen them fully go down that route. There's always potential for those two characters, even though right now they're battling it out.
What did you think of The Good Wife's gamechanging episode? Are you excited to see the two firms duke it out? Sound off in the comments below!