Television shows have been producing spin-offs for a very long time. When Frasier premiered, it was a spin-off of the very successful sitcom Cheers. Three’s Company produced The Ropers spin-off and ended by introducing another one, Three’s a Crowd. The Big Bang Theory has even produced two spin-offs of its own, including the new series Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage.
Sometimes spin-offs are successful and sometimes they aren’t. In the case of Elsbeth, audiences seem to be enjoying the series. The show is a spin-off of The Good Wife and focuses on the character of Elsbeth Tascioni. The Season 2 finale recently aired and there is already growing speculation about what will take place in Season 3.
Elsbeth Might Have More Than One New Companion Going Forward In Season 3
Carra Patterson’s final episode as a series regular on Elsbeth came in the finale of Season 2. It turns out that Detective Kaya Blanke has once again been promoted to a special task force. However, this means that her training is located in Washington, D.C. Kaya and Elsbeth Tascioni, played by Carrie Preston, had to say farewell. Following Elsbeth’s release from jail, she ended the episode with an emotional tribute to Kaya at the precinct’s goodbye party.
Despite her current exit, Carra isn’t leaving Elsbeth for good. Her role will continue to pop up in the series as a guest star. Still, the Elsbeth universe will seem quite different now that her character is far away. During an interview with TV Insider, showrunner Jonathan Tolins spoke about the possibilities for Elsbeth’s next companion officer.
Kaya has been an important person in Elsbeth’s life, and therefore, can’t be replaced. Such a friendship can’t simply be replicated, so the writers will have to come up with a new dynamic that is special in its own way. Some believe that the different officers who accompanied Elsbeth on her investigations after Kaya’s promotion might be that person. Jonathan said audiences will continue to see these interactions in Season 3.
“I don’t want to shoehorn another character into exactly the same role that Kaya played in Elsbeth’s life,” he said. “I do think that Elsbeth usually must be working with a uniformed officer because she’s not a detective. She can’t just go to these places without someone. So we’ve started introducing some new characters.”
In fact, Jonathan said viewers will most likely see a rotating cast of characters accompanying Elsbeth during Season 3. “We had B as Nikki Reynolds and Ethan Slater as Chandler” in season two, Jonathan said, “and I think we’ll keep introducing some more.” He did say that viewers might not see as much of Ethan, though.
“We love Ethan. I don’t know if we’d be able to have him as often because he’s very busy,” Jonathan told the outlet. “So we’re going to let things develop organically and see who will end up being there more often with Elsbeth. We may end up using our uniformed officers like we use our detectives, where we have a great stable, where you’re excited to see every one of them, but you don’t know which one it’ll be in each episode.”
Another thing fans can expect to see is the aftermath of Elsbeth’s presence at Judge Milton Crawford’s murder. This could affect her professional life in a variety of ways. The killer, Delia Kirby, was driven to commit the murder because he killed her lover, Andy, and framed her for the murder. However, the trial might not be a plot point going forward.
“I don’t think this will turn into [covering] the trial of Delia Kirby. I think that’s done,” Jonathan said. “But I do feel that the way that whole experience affects Elsbeth — and the way people perceive Elsbeth because of her perceived connection to what happened — that will continue.”
Elsbeth is now out of jail after the memorable Chicago tribute in the Season 2 finale. “Our show, as much as we love our beautiful prison set that we built, we kind of stay in glamorous places,” he said. The show’s usual format, investigating the “lifestyles and murders of the rich and famous,” will now continue, Jonathan said. However, the show does hope to keep a list of various guest stars in the future.
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Jonathan teased fans, “We are not done looking at what happens to some of our people after Elsbeth seems to be finished with them in their original episode.”
Jonathan And Carrie Preston Revealed How They Put Together The ‘Cell Block Tango’ Homage
Showrunner Jonathan Tolins and star Carrie Preston spoke to The A.V. Club about Elsbeth Season 2 and the memorable finale. The episode featured the return of several guest stars, including Stephen Moyer, Elizabeth Lail, Retta, Alyssa Milano, Gina Gershon, Arian Moayed, Mary Louise-Parker, and Andre de Shields. It also featured an elaborate musical sequence which paid tribute to Chicago‘s “Cell Block Tango.”
“We always have a two-week boot camp when all the writers are together in person at the beginning of the season, because most of the time, we meet virtually as few writers live on the West Coast,” Jonathan said. “That’s when someone suggested doing a murder in prison, and then we kept thinking about how it would be fun if the prison had other guest stars who have already come on the show. I think it was [producer] Eric Randall who, as we were getting toward the end of the season, said, ‘If we want to go for it, shouldn’t Elsbeth be a prisoner?’ From then on, we thought about doing ‘Cell Block Tango’ as a joke, but the idea kept hanging around until we said, ‘Well, why not?'”
However, scheduling became an issue when it came time to get all the guest stars together. “In terms of scheduling, it was almost impossible,” he continued. “I wrote the script and figured out the story, but we kept different slots. So it depended on who would be willing and available to come back, and that character’s position in the plot would do something different accordingly. We didn’t know if anybody would say yes. We hoped for at least four or five actors, but ended up with eight, which almost broke our budget.”
Another hurdle Jonathan said they were initially up against was getting the rights to the music. “The other thing we had to wait for up until the last second was to get approval for the rights,” he said. “I wrote the bespoke monologues for every character who is singing, and I did that before writing the episode’s script, just so we could get the approval process started.”
In the end, the Elsbeth team were able to pull it off. Jonathan said that is a testament to how enjoyable it is to work on the show. “But it’s a testament to what Carrie and I have said from the beginning, that we want Elsbeth to be a great place for people to want to come and work,” he said. “And the fact that these incredible actors decided to come back is lovely. Someone who saw the episode asked me the other day if we used a green screen because they couldn’t believe everyone was in the same space at the same time.”
When asked how she felt about the musical number, Carrie said that it felt completely natural to include the segment in the series.
“After we did the Elsbeth pilot, Stephen Moyer and I used to dream about Elsbeth visiting him in prison,” she began. “We were trying to pitch that already because we just love each other. Neither of us could have dreamt that his character would be the victim, but we were very happy to be reunited in that way. It was just absolutely natural that we would have a musical number in this show. Elsbeth is obsessed with all things musicals and all things New York City. These are quintessential things to her. So the fact that she would have a dream about a song made sense. The show is set up tonally for it to happen. In season one, I also had the big dance number with Keegan-Michael Key. We’d already kind of paved the way for something like this to happen.”
As far as Carrie is concerned, socializing with all the guest stars in a big group was the best part about shooting the musical number. “Being there with all of those incredible guest stars, whom I had forged relationships with and went out of my way to make sure that they felt welcome the first time they were on the show, was a wonderful reunion,” she said. “Some of them didn’t know each other, so in between takes, we were all just having the best time. It was mostly just the women. We were all talking and gossiping about everything, from business to our personal lives. The finale is my favorite episode because of that social experience.”
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Jonathan even said that, at first, Stephen wasn’t going to be included in the scene. “I also want to add that with Stephen Moyer, his schedule was complicated because he’s on another show right now, and also we didn’t think of him being in the musical number because his character is dead by that point,” he explained. “But he wrote to me and said he was free on the day we were filming the dance and that he could be in it.”
Carrie Preston Explained Elsbeth’s Unusual Confidence After Being Thrown In Jail
Carrie and Jonathan spoke to TV Insider about the Season 2 finale and Elsbeth’s character development. One particular point of interest had to do with Elsbeth’s confidence despite being wrongfully imprisoned. When asked where the character gets her confidence from, Carrie said, “Elsbeth is somebody who always has one foot forward. She’s always assuming positive intent, even from murderers for better or worse. And when you’re in a prison, there are guards around, there are things like that around.”
She continued, “But I think she realizes that she’s come to a place with all these people who might hate her, but they respect her. And they know that they ended up in jail because of her. So there is something there to — although maybe not love, something to admire about her. So we leaned into that. And also it was necessary for her, for us to just get her in relationships with others to solve the mystery of who killed Alex Modarian. If they all hated her, then we wouldn’t get her in the same room with them for very long. So we needed to do that as well.”
“At the very beginning, you see she is a little scared when she gets there and they’re all a little threatening,” Jonathan said. “But then once the murder happens, she has a mission and she has a purpose, and that always makes things easier for Elsbeth because she knows what she’s after.”
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Jonathan also elaborated on why the show will probably not return to the storyline of Crawford’s murder. “There’ll be reverberations, but I think it’s a pretty open-and-shut case,” he explained. “She was there, seen doing it, and she knew the consequences of what she was doing. She said she was a woman with nothing left to lose. It’s a very tragic story for her.”
Elsbeth
- Release Date
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February 29, 2024
- Network
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CBS
- Directors
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Robert King, Ron Underwood
- Writers
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Michelle King, Robert King
