Why Madam Secretary took its biggest leap yet with its Season 5 finale, even though it's on the bubble

Deadline

Creator Barbara Hall says of Sunday's finale and the future of her CBS series: "A lot of it is just instinct in terms of when you feel like you need to change the show and how much you need to change it because you need to keep the show the same show that people love but you have to take it in a bit of a different direction so that we can remain surprising and interesting and not let the audience get ahead of it. So I started to feel that season to season when we’re ready to take a leap and this is obviously the biggest leap we’ve taken but we all felt strongly that we had earned this week."