Elsbeth Tascioni (Carrie Preston) is out of jail and back to working with the NYPD, but her future is far from set in stone. That’s mostly because Elsbeth showrunner Jonathan Tolins has no idea what will happen in Season 3, or at least he didn’t when he spoke to Parade ahead of the Season 2 finale.
The writers’ room hadn’t started meeting about the next season yet, so the finale ends with little tease for what comes next. That said, Elsbeth’s world was tipped upside down enough in the past few episodes that we do know she’s facing whatever’s ahead with a new, post-jail outlook that’s pretty similar to her pre-jail outlook: People should be held accountable for their crimes.
In “Ramen Holiday,” Elsbeth was taken to the same jail that housed the majority of the people she herself helped put away for murder. They’re all mad at her, but they’re also busy with their various prison exploits. They cook, they work in the library and they put on little plays about their shared enemy, Elsbeth. Alex Modarian (Stephen Moyer), the theatre director from the show’s pilot, is now directing a show starring Quinn (Elizabeth Lail) as the tote-toting lawyer who, in his version, planted evidence to frame everyone she put in jail.
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Alex is also the prisoner in charge of distributing library books. And when Elsbeth goes to exchange her book, she finds Alex dead next to a big bowl of ramen. Eventually, she learns that the prisoners are making things out of ramen in arts and crafts, including kitchen knives. When she tells the warden (Donna Lynne Champlin), chef Pupetta Del Ponte (Alyssa Milano) gets carted away, furious. It’s then that Elsbeth envisions a colorful performance of “Cell Block Tango” starring Quinn, Pupetta, Vanessa (Gina Gershon), Margo (Retta), and Freya (Mary-Louise Parker).
Meanwhile, even Elsbeth’s son Teddy (Ben Levi Ross) is going full amateur detective back at the precinct to figure out how to get Elsbeth out of jail in time to say goodbye to Kaya (Carra Patterson) before she goes undercover. It turned out that the judge who threw Elsbeth in jail was paid, in a roundabout way, to recuse himself from Crawford’s murder trial, and he also had a mistress. This info was enough to convince him to back off and let Elsbeth out in time for Kaya’s going-away party.
But first, Elsbeth was figuring out who murdered Alex. He was getting contraband, like fancy cooking ingredients, from the warden and was about to blackmail her to get transferred to a nicer jail. So the warden killed him with a ramen knife and used an old Del Ponte family secret jail tunnel to craft her alibi. And sure, she solved the murder. But she also got rid of the person supplying the prisoners with things they needed, pissing them off even more.
“The truth always matters,” Elsbeth said in explanation. “Without it, we’re lost.”
That line is a pretty good summary of Elsbeth’s attitude. But that doesn’t mean the show will be following in the footsteps of The Good Wife and The Good Fight and tackling real-life truth-telling, at least not directly. Check out the interview below to find out why and to learn all about that show-stopping “Cell Block Tango” performance.
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What was the reaction when you first told people you were going to bring back all these guest stars and do “Cell Block Tango?”
Jonathan Tolins: God bless Gail Barringer, our executive producer, who, when we floated the idea, said, “Absolutely, we have to do that.” It was an idea we had very early on…There was a lot in terms of casting and finding out who was available and willing and getting the rights to the song and building a prison set… I still can’t believe it all came together. But I have to say I’m so lucky to be working with people who, when they hear something crazy like this, say “Oh yeah, let’s do it,” as opposed to starting to list all the things that make it impossible.
Carrie Preston: A lot of the actors said yes without even reading the script. They just wanted to come back and play with us. Alyssa Milano had said, “Yes, anything, I’ll make it work.” She was in Europe or something, so she had to do some major shifts. Then she texted me when she got the script, and she was like, “Oh my god, this finale. I’m dying.” She didn’t even know what she was saying yes to. So that was a real compliment to the show and the writing and to all of us. For me, it was like my wedding or something. All these different people who I’ve done these intense, wonderful episodes with focused time with them but who I hadn’t seen [since], and then to have them all come back…It was just a big social time.
It’s crazy that you had so many guest stars who fit into a Chicago number perfectly.
Preston: It’s New York theatre. That’s the caliber of actor here in New York, people who can do theatre and TV and film, all of it.
Tolins: The crazy thing is some of the former guest stars who really are musical people were unavailable because they were doing a musical in London at the time.
So, where does Elsbeth go from here after being in jail, seeing her nemesis die, and now losing her best friend to an undercover assignment?
Tolins: I wish I knew. I literally have no plans for Season 3 yet. I mean, I’ve been talking to some of the writers. But we start in three weeks, and those first few weeks of discussions are pretty much the most important work we do all season. I feel like all the things that happened to Elsbeth in Season 2, I think she’s in a place where she has to redouble her efforts to hold on to the things that matter, which is what starts in the finale. She asserts her belief in the system, or at least in trying to make the system better and to holding onto and fighting for the truth. The last thing she says to the warden is, “If we don’t have [truth], we’re lost.” She’s going to probably have to forge some new relationships now that Kaya won’t be around as much and reassert herself. And I do think that some things that the judge put in motion in his attempts to thwart her will still be around.
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What did Judge Crawford show you about how Elsbeth deals with a nemesis and how you might top that story going forward?
Tolins: I mean, I think the thing that really tapped into Elsbeth’s feelings and shook her was the sense of someone who is above any accountability. I think there’s something so satisfying every week when she catches someone who thinks they can get away with something awful. And they can’t, because Elsbeth is there to find that clue or something no one else can see. It’s funny because injustice is something that causes a real emotional response in me, as it does in many people. I think just blatant injustice is very hard to deal with, and you have to live with it in the world. But Elsbeth feels like she can do something about it, or at least her little part to try to combat it. I think that’s always a driver of the character in the show.
When Trump took office the first time, we had The Good Fight dealing with political chaos on screen. Now, we have its spinoff, Elsbeth. Do you feel any responsibility to carry on what that show did and reflect real-life injustices? Or is this not that kind of show?
Tolins: I worked on The Good Fight for five of the six seasons. And I do say sometimes in our writers’ room, “Well, if this were The Good Fight, we would go somewhere like this.” But we’re a very different show. This is not an overtly political show. This is a show that is still a fun procedural, but it does deal with issues of class and money and people who feel they can get away with stuff and policing. I wouldn’t say we’re trying to impart any message, but I do think it’s important to us to not do things that feel divorced from reality. We want to do things that come organically from our own experience of the world. It’s like what Mark Twain said about history: It doesn’t repeat itself, it rhymes. I feel like our show rhymes with reality, though it isn’t trying to depict it.
We know Kaya is leaving, which puts a damper on Elsbeth’s new adventure. What do you envision for her and her circle of people now?
Preston: I think it’s just good to see what this person who is so willfully and decidedly positive [does]. It takes concentration, it takes work, it takes practice to be that way in the world, and when there’s loss, when there’s a crisis of faith, when there’s something that comes in your way that feels insurmountable, to see a woman deal with that and not succumb to it, let it happen, feel those feelings. That’s what I love about Elsbeth. She’s kind of transparent and feels things even when she can’t articulate it, but she overcomes it and goes about her mission. She wants to experience life to the fullest. So that means if she can’t be with a new friend every day, she’s going to miss that friend, and it’s OK. It’s just going to be different. She’s also not going to try to replace her with a new best friend. I think it has to do with courage.
But will we see Kaya again?
Tolins: Yes.
Preston: She’s very much a part of the show, just in a different capacity.
Elsbeth airs on CBS. All episodes are available to stream on Paramount+.
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