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‘The Good Wife’ Creator Says Michael J. Fox Character Louis Canning ‘In Love’ With Alicia Florrick

By Sarah Field
Published on: 18:55 PST, May 7, 2016

As The Good Wife wraps up its seven-year run on Sunday night, fans expect Alicia Florrick’s story will have some kind of resolution. Her husband is again facing prison, and she has a new law firm partnership spearheaded by her colleague and mentor, Diane Lockhart. Michael J. Fox, who plays lawyer Louis Canning, has popped up recently as Cary Agos’ attorney, offering a conditional truce with Florrick as Peter’s dirty laundry was again exposed. While Alicia and Louis have had a somewhat adversarial relationship, it turns out he’s actually in love with her — at least according to Robert and Michelle King, creators of The Good Wife.

Robert King made the revelation in an interview with the Daily Beast, when he shed light on Canning’s disclosure that Alicia’s husband may have been carrying on an affair with a work colleague for several years, and she was set to testify against him. Alicia offered up some mock crying in response.

“I think what was fun for her was to throw it back in Canning’s face, ‘Boo-hoo. Boo-hoo.’ And then acknowledge what it really was about with Canning, which is that Canning was in love with her.

“He said ‘I love you,’ which is both as a hyperbole but he also really means it. He’s always had a crush on her.”

But although Canning made his mark in the most recent episodes, according to IMDb, he won’t be back for the series finale. A beloved character from the past, however, is set to return.

Josh Charles, who played Alicia’s old friend, law school colleague, and lover Will Gardner, does appear on the episode cast list. It was rumored earlier this year that Charles would show up in newly shot flashbacks — there would be no miraculous back-from-the-dead recovery for Gardner, whose shocking demise in Season 5 was one of the series’ most pivotal events.

Apart from Charles, there are no major surprises on the cast list. The episode seems to revolve around Julianna Margulies’ Alicia, Peter Florrick, Cary Agos, and the cluster of important characters at the newly-named Lockhart, Florrick, & Associates law firm. As Diane Lockhart and Alicia are at the helm of a new all-female partnership, it seems a fitting conclusion to a series that the Los Angeles Times said paved the way for a full roster of new shows with female leads.

But as much as critics may credit Julianna Margulies’ character as ushering n a new era of strong roles for women, the actor herself prefers to give credit to someone else, as she discussed at a Good Wife panel in New York last month.

“I feel like Kyra Sedgwick, when she did ‘The Closer’ on TNT, I feel like she started that movement because it was the highest-rated show on TNT and it was their cash cow. So by the time ‘The Good Wife’ came along I felt like the network was slowly starting to get it. But I wouldn’t want to take the credit for it. I don’t think I can.”

Robert King told the Daily Beast that ending The Good Wife the same place it started, with Alicia Florrick standing by her husband in the midst of an embarrassing scandal — this time he may or may not be guilty — does not do a disservice to the progression of Margulies’ character. In fact, according to King, it does the opposite. He compared it to going back to a college reunion and seeing how much you’ve changed.

“It’s to dramatize how different she is, because the circumstances haven’t changed.”

The Good Wife series finale airs 9 p.m. Sunday night on CBS.

[Photo by Craig Barritt/Frazer Harrison/Getty Images]

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