Is the good wife finally about to have a good time? On this Sunday's episode, Jeffrey Dean Morgan joins The Good Wife as Jason Crouse. You may recognize Morgan from his previous TV gigs like Grey's Anatomy's lovable Denny Duquette, and Supernatural's daddy Winchester. On the CBS legal drama, the notoriously attractive actor will be putting his good looks to use playing a private investigator who Alicia hires to help with her small start-up firm.
Morgan's casting is part of a large behind-the-scenes shuffle as The Good Wife enters its seventh (and final?) season: with Archie Panjabi's Kalinda Sharma and Matthew Goode's Finn Polmar both exiting the main cast, Morgan's Jason Crouse and Cush Jumbo's Lucca Quinn have taken their place. But while we got a sense of who Lucca is during last week's premiere, Jason is still something of an enigma. What exactly is this guy's deal?
Jason will be playing a lot of roles and filling a lot of holes in the Good Wife family. On the most obvious level, he'll be replacing Kalinda as the show's primary investigator. (In this aspect, he's also replacing Jess Weixler's Robyn, who has been mysteriously absent since Season 6's second episode.) He's also providing the bad-boy attitude that has been missing since Josh Charles's Will Gardner was killed off mid-Season 5. (While Will was almost disbarred at one point, Jason is only working as an investigator because he was disbarred as a lawyer.) And then of course, he's also providing the charm and electric chemistry with Julianna Margulies' Alicia that Finn brought to the past season-and-a-half — before Goode left the series.
Will Alicia and Jason actually be hooking up? Or will the writers keep teasing us and teasing us with amazing couch chemistry without ever giving us any payoff? Fortunately, it looks like romance might actually be in the cards for our protagonist this time. When Morgan has one word to describe Jason's first interaction with Alicia in an interview with YahooTV, he chooses "sparky." "There's definitely some sparks going on," Margulies agreed. Morgan also said that there's an "immediate attraction" between the investigator and his employer, adding, "Now where that goes, I don't know." And Margulies noted that Jason is one of the few characters on the show who's capable of putting the typically unflappable Saint Alicia "completely off-balance."
In an ironic twist, while the sparks are flying between Alicia and Jason onscreen, Margulies and Morgan are great (and platonic) friends off of it. In fact, Margulies herself is the one who lured the actor to The Good Wife. "I’ve known her for probably 10 years," Morgan told TVLine. "I’m excited to go to work with her. When the offer had come in I was in the middle of working and I had to think about it. To go from one show to another without a break was a little daunting. And I got a great e-mail from Julianna and that’s what closed the deal for me. I just wrote her back and said, 'I’m in.'"
Will the romance between Alicia and Jason be unrequited, like it was with Finn? Or doomed, like with Will? Or self-destructive, like with Peter? Or will the character perhaps present a whole new chapter for Alicia Florrick? We'll find out when Morgan makes his debut on The Good Wife this Sunday.
Images: Paul Sarkis/CBS (2)
