‘The Good Wife’ season 4: Boss defends controversial Kalinda storyline
Remember when everyone liked to talk about Kalinda? Those were the days on “The Good Wife,” as what was a storyline that many people were looking forward to involving her husband Nick (Marc Warren) has quickly devolved into something that consistently draws the ire of most of the show’s fans. Archie Panjabi’s character has been put repeatedly in a vulnerable place, and it’s not one that many of the fans have liked or appreciated. As a matter of fact, some could even choose to blame it for the show’s ratings, which are the weakest by average of any CBS show save for what is on Friday nights in the 18-49 demographic.
So do the people actually responsible for making the show wish they could go back erase creating this Kalinda plot? Not entirely. Speaking in a new interview with TV Guide, here is what Robert King had to say on this very subject:
“One of the things we’ve always done is try to avoid repeating ourselves and the difficulty is you didn’t want Kalinda to be a character like Fonzie where it’s an established joke and you keep doing variations of the joke. We did want to see another side of Kalinda because we know in Archie we have an actress that can handle almost anything you throw at her. But I do think the audience teaches the storyteller and this is a case of the audience teaching the storyteller the bounds of where they think Kalinda’s universe is. We tried to push the boundaries of that when we had Kalinda sleep with Peter. We were worried that that was going out on a limb, and the audience seemed to respond well. So we went another step here. … I hope the audience won’t think this year that they can demand anything and here we go. We were surprised and intrigued by what the audience reaction was and we want to give Archie the best work we can to show all of her talents.”
What do you think: has the Kalinda plot scared you away in some sense, or are you still excited about the promise of big things coming up that will return her to her roots?