The Good Wife is finally taking Kalinda off the backburner.

“Kalinda was a little bit adrift in the first half of the year,” exec producer Robert King acknowledged Wednesday at the Television Critics Association winter press tour. “[But] she starts exploding in the second half of the year. Her story starts crystallizing in the back half of the year.”

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King added that the ongoing challenge with Kalinda is “sometimes she can’t live in other stories,” but he’s “aware of where the fans’ heads are out” regarding the character’s marginalization.

Regarding the scene in Sunday’s episode that hinted at a rekindling of a romance between Kalinda and Cary, King said, “It’s a version of the hate that Will and Alica have, especially because they’re at [different] firms now. Can they pursue each other? Can they sleep with each other and make that exist? Is there a Dangerous Liaisons aspect to it? What I liked about it is that Kalinda saw a Cary that had balls and was really attracted to that. So Cary’s going to want to live up to that Kalinda idea of who he is. Cary as a character is sweet, too, but he needs to harden himself.”

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Some additional Good tidbits…

* Michael J. Fox will likely reprise his role as Louis Canning later this season. “We’re trying to make that work,” said King. “Because he finished filming [The Michael J. Fox Show], so it looks like we’re going to get a chance to get him back.”

* The EP also shared this fun tidbit: The recent “Thicky Trick” episode was supposed to pit Diane against Florrick Agos, but Christine Baranski was otherwise engaged filming Into The Woods, so Will was plugged in.