‘The Good Wife’ season 7, episode 12 preview: Eli and Ruth survey the damage

At the end of “The Good Wife” Sunday night, there was a major sea change in the story of Peter Florrick’s run for President: It was at an end. After all of the work that he had put into trying to make his campaign a success, their tracking of voters was extremely off … so much so that he is not continuing on to New Hampshire. It’s over, and with that seems to come the departure of a character we’d grown rather fond of through her appearances on the show: Margo Martindale’s Ruth.

The sneak peek is in many ways a fond farewell to the Ruth character, but it also serves as a pretty dramatic warning from her to Eli: After losing elections, governors often become targets from people looking to take them down a peg or two. Unfortunately for Peter, there are quite a few people who want a piece of him in one way or another.

Is it possible that Ruth knows that something is about to unravel for certain? We’re not saying that, but this is the sort of Chekov’s warning that will not go away. In one way or another, we anticipate that we will be revisiting this statement. It may be soon, or it may be many weeks in the future.

More than anything else, remember here that this is a show that waited years before dropping the Eli – Will bomb on Alicia. It won’t probably be around long enough for another wait of that duration, but it shows that maybe Robert and Michelle King will be in no hurry.