“Elsbeth” Shouldn’t Succeed, But It Does
Elsbeth aired its first episode on February 29 this year, a mid-season debut featuring a spin-off character from The Good Wife and The Good Fight. Carrie Preston stars as Elsbeth Tascioni, an “unconventional attorney who ends up working as a de facto detective.” The ratings for its first season were strong enough to warrant a renewal for a second season in April 2024. But from the outside, it shouldn’t work. It’s a throwback to a simpler era, a “howcatchem” in the vein of Columbo. There’s no explicit gore to speak of, if it’s not fully family-friendly it’s not all that far off, and it’s a case-of-the-week procedural, one among many littered across televisions daily. Elsbeth shouldn’t work, but it does. Why?
What Is ‘Elsbeth’ About?
Before reappearing in Elsbeth, Elsbeth Tascioni was last seen in “The End of Ginni,” the fifth episode of The Good Fight’s final season. When we are reintroduced to the character in the pilot episode, she has left Chicago for New York City, sent by Department of Justice Agent Celetano (Danny McCarthy) under a consent decree to observe the police, but her real purpose is to investigate NYPD Captain Charles Wagner (Wendell Pierce) for corruption. She sets up shop at Wagner’s precinct and quickly makes friends with Officer Kaya Blanke (Carra Patterson). It doesn’t take long before she inserts herself into the investigation of a student’s murder, where her astute observations, keen insights, and unconventional methods help bring the student’s murderer, a theater professor, to justice.
Elsbeth’s penchant for taking part in investigations, despite her role as an “observer”, is a running gag of sorts throughout the first season. It’s like she can’t help herself, unable to shake something she hears or sees that others are missing, a proverbial dog on a bone that won’t stop until her theories are proven right. At first, detectives assigned to the case are dismissive, but as the season goes on, her infectious warmth and friendliness lead to Elsbeth becoming a colleague and a valuable asset to the team. But when her hidden agenda comes to light, it puts her at odds with an innocent Wagner, who demands she return to Chicago, but cooler heads prevail, and Wagner convinces Celetano to give Elsbeth a position with the NYPD as a corruption investigator. With her new position and her secret investigation wrapped up, Elsbeth heads into Season 2 as a free and quirky spirit, which seems delightfully appropriate.
‘Elsbeth’ Is an Honest Series With a Dedicated Audience
The strength of Elsbeth, or at least one of them, is in its honesty. Elsbeth is very much a rarity, a series that is unabashedly fun, engaging, and, yes, quirky. There are no pretenses to be had, with Elsbeth’s true purpose in arriving in NYC the closest to it, and it was clearly evident how that weighed on her. For a show that features a murder every week, it’s relentlessly chipper and upbeat without a hint of cynicism, but it works, again, because of that honesty. Nowhere is it more evident than in the real, unforced camaraderie between Preston’s Elsbeth and Patterson’s Officer Blanke. Theirs is a friendship that has been allowed to evolve naturally, believably, and it’s refreshing.
There isn’t really a show like Elsbeth today, and one really does need to travel back to television’s past to find its equal. It’s fitting, then, that the series is on a network station whose largest audience consists of an older demographic, the kind that would embrace a show that hearkens back to those shows they look back on fondly. We are, of course, talking about CBS. It’s no secret that the network skews older, but far more successfully than one might expect. According to The Hollywood Reporter, CBS has the oldest primetime audience, with a median age of 67.8, and also has the largest primetime viewership, thanks to Survivor and Tracker. And, of course, Elsbeth.
‘Elsbeth’ Succeeds on the Talent of Carrie Preston
Ultimately, Elsbeth works because of Elsbeth herself, Carrie Preston. The character is not an easy one to get right. If she’s too flaky, then her brilliant insights can’t be believed. If she’s too brilliant, Elsbeth comes off as cocky. If she isn’t sincere, then those things that make her endearing — the whimsy, the compassion, the zest for life — are laced with cynicism, which we’ve already assessed as being absent from the show.
So it’s a testament to Preston that she has been able to craft such a balancing act in what has quickly become one of television’s great personalities. When the scene calls for unhinged with a purpose, Preston pulls it off. Just look at the dancing scene in “Something Blue” with Keegan-Michael Key. It’s a moment of hilarity, two comic powerhouses letting loose and having fun, but it’s a means to an end for Elsbeth, a chance to gain evidence against Key’s character. A very strange and funny route to get there, but it’s a means nonetheless. The way she points out inconsistencies and observances has a charm to it, like Columbo (Peter Falk) before her, or even brings to mind Frances McDormand’s police chief Marge Gunderson in Fargo. Perhaps it isn’t a matter of Elsbeth succeeding when it has no business doing so, but how its success shouldn’t really be a surprise at all.
