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Politics and eroticism: What we can expect from “The Good Wife”

During a TCA panel for The Good Wife, Julianna Margulies wasn’t quite sure what LGBT meant, and thought perhaps they had changed the name of the law firm on her when someone asked about “the LGBT presence on the show.”

“I need everything literally in words!” she joked after executive producer Robert King spelled it out for her. “It’s interesting – I don’t think about it,” Julianna said. “I don’t feel it’s a presence. I feel like it’s part of life. I think that’s why it works. … I don’t think it’s gay and lesbian just to be gay and lesbian and make people happy we have those characters on the show. That would make me uncomfortable because it wouldn’t be truthful. But I feel like the way it’s been incorporated into the fabric of this show really fits in with modern times and what we’re all dealing with anyway, just as much as my character is dealing with the fact that her husband slept with hookers, it’s the same as my [gay] brother (played by The L Word‘s Dallas Roberts) is feeling that he screwed up his relationship because he cheated. And that’s why I love about it. That’s probably why I didn’t understand [the acronym].”

As the show’s sexually ambiguous PI, we’ve watched Kalinda (played by Archie Panjabi) explore tension with both males and females, including this season’s guest star Lili Taylor as one of Kalinda’s exes. But Kalinda’s life has been a mystery, and we have been teased from the beginning of the first season on about her background, her sexuality and anything personal about her at all. Robert King said that we will gradually find out more, and soon.

“Kalinda’s an interesting character because she has to be slightly operatic and there has to be some elements of both high emotion and high visual drama,” Robert said. “And then what we want to show is there is actually a real suffering person in there, too. … In theory we are not trying to tease, what we’re trying to do is explore a woman who is as private as they come and isn’t trying to create mystique. She’s just private and everyone else is applying their own sense of who she is. I think, by the end of the year, just as Dallas Roberts did something for Alicia’s character – her brother – you’re going to find something similar about Kalinda that makes everything make a lot more sense.”

Robert also said he’s thrilled to have Jill Flint back as FBI agent Lana Delaney, whom Kalinda shared a famous garage-scene with.

“She’s coming back for episode 214. We loved her, by the way, and she’s just a really good contrast with Kalinda. Kalinda’s finding that she’s losing a resource in the state’s attorney’s office in Carrie and so she goes to her higher friend, which would be Jill Flint,” Robert said. “But comes with that is obviously the sexual interest the two have with each other. First of all, the fourteen episode, is very charged. Because it involves politics but also eroticism.”

As for Blake, Kalinda’s rival that she also seemed to share some sexual tension with, it appears he won’t be around much longer. “We’re losing some of these people to pilot season,” Robert said, specifically Scott Porter. “There is this Battle Royale between him and Kalinda and I don’t want to give away who wins, but guess. Someone has to come out on top.”

We all know who that is. Who will join me in a victory lap?

The Good Wife airs Thursdays on CBS.

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