Good Trouble Boss Talks Mariana's Evan vs. Raj Decision, Davia/Dennis Complication and Malika's Future
Warning: The following contains spoilers for Wednesday’s Good Trouble. Proceed at your own risk!
Good Trouble‘s Season 3 premiere was heavy on heartbreak as not one but several relationships came to an end — and a new couple started to heat up.
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Following what he perceived to be a betrayal, Jamie and Callie are officially broken up. Meanwhile, Mariana split up with her boyfriend Raj, explaining that their feelings for other people makes her question if they really do want to be together. Then she entered into an (ill-advised?) secret romance with her boss Evan. And just when it looked like Davia and Dennis were finally going to go on their first date, he took off without a word after realizing he needs to find a way to work through his grief over his son’s death.
Elsewhere, Malika was facing her own crisis when the judge for her trial set an exorbitant bail shortly before she was taken into custody.
Below, executive producer Joanna Johnson discusses the episode’s breakups, Callie’s new job (she passed the bar, hooray!), Malika’s struggle and much more.
TVLINE | We get the confirmation in the premiere that Callie and Jamie are over, and he thinks that she is going to get him fired. Is he actually fired, or is he just thinking the worst?
We will find out later what Jamie’s fate has been because of what Callie did. There are real consequences, as there are for all the actions in our show. So we’ll learn what really happened to him and his job, eventually.
TVLINE | You made Beau Mirchoff a series regular. So even though Callie and Jamie are broken up, how is Jamie fitting into the storyline in Season 3?
Callie is going to still have Jamie in her world, but we’ll wait and reveal that later. Jamie is still going to be revolving in her universe.
TVLINE | Callie got a new job in the season premiere, as well as a new mentor in Constance Zimmer’s character. How are those two things going to shape who she becomes as a lawyer, now that she has passed the bar?
Callie’s kind of all over the place. Callie’s dream was really to work at the ACLU, but she did a clerkship because she was told that that’s a good thing to have on your résumé. That didn’t really work for her because she really doesn’t want to be in the judiciary. She really wants to be more in the legislative part of law. She ended up getting that job at Legal Aid. And then because of Jared and what happens with her wanting to advocate for him, she ends up now working with this, I would say, kind of very colorful, dynamic defense attorney and finding herself now doing criminal law. Callie is sort of bouncing around, like you kind of do sometimes in your twenties, kind of letting like the wave of life sweep you up and take you off, and not quite finding your mooring yet about where you really want to be. So that’s something that she’s struggling with.
But she does find this new mentor in Constance Zimmer’s character. Constance is someone that — our kids go to the same school — [I’ve] become friendly with, and I’m such a huge admirer of her work. I had an idea for this character who I sort of wanted to base off of the woman lawyer in Making a Murderer. She’s quite an amazing character, and I wanted to create somebody kind of based on her a little bit. I said that to Constance, “Oh, my gosh, would you ever come do our show?” and she was like, “Yeah!” and we are just so thrilled to have her. She’s just amazing.
TVLINE | Mariana makes the choice to end things with Raj, while starting a secret relationship with Evan. Is she making a big mistake here, having a relationship with her boss?
Well, it’s not ideal. It’s the kind of decision that you make in your twenties, which is what this show’s all about. The things you haven’t quite learned yet that you take into your thirties with a little more wisdom after having made some sketchy choices sometimes or not the most responsible choices. So it’s definitely challenging. She doesn’t want anyone at work to know, obviously. It’s also not something that she wants her Fight Club girls to know, so that continues to be an issue.
TVLINE | The Mariana/Evan attraction is something that you’ve been playing with for two seasons. What made now the right time to jump into that? And what are you interested in exploring with that dynamic?
It’s been growing, and we’ve teased it for a long time, and I think it just finally came to a head, and it was time. One thing that we’re exploring is dating your boss [and] having someone you’re dating be a secret, but also dating someone who’s a little bit on the spectrum, as Evan is, and what that is like as well.
TVLINE | There was a bait-and-switch where we discovered that it was actually Isabella that Gael had sex with, and we also found out that Isabella slept with an old roommate’s boyfriend. Can we put it to rest that she definitely did not have sex with Raj?
Yes, I think that’s pretty clear.
TVLINE | We also need to talk about Davia and Dennis, because we finally got the “I love you” and the kiss, and then he decides that he needs to go away! Can you talk about his decision, and what it means for their future?
When he comes to her, he wants to be ready, and he says, “People are telling me I’m not ready to be in a relationship, but I don’t buy that.” And then when he goes and sees the portrait of Jacob having been covered, which he asked Gael to do, he just sort of freaks out. Sometimes, when you start to move on from something and you start to feel better, you feel guilty. You feel like you shouldn’t feel. Someone is gone, and you shouldn’t feel happy. I think Dennis feels like if he’s ever happy again, he somehow betrayed the memory of his son, and I just don’t think he was ready for that emotion and ready to deal. It just was a little too much for him.
TVLINE | At the end of the premiere, Malika is taken into custody. Can you tease how that cliffhanger is going to play out in the second episode?
Of course, she’s blindsided by this. No one thought that they would try to raise the bail like this. It’s going to galvanize everybody, and this part of the unfair bail practices that are largely reserved for people of color in our dysfunctional judicial system. You put that kind of a high bail, and how’s someone going to pay that bail to get out while they’re awaiting their trial? So what happens is a lot of people cannot make that sort of a bail, and then they’re taken to jail to wait for months, and their lives are destroyed. People lose their children, people lose their jobs, and they haven’t been convicted of anything. So that’s something we want to really talk about this season. That’s going to be the outcry and the outrage in the next episode.
Good Trouble fans, what did you think of the season premiere? Grade it below, then hit the comments!
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