For week after week, stretching back to the first half of this Matlock season, the “previously on Matlock” montage that opens every episode has been more or less the same — so much so that it’s become like one of those old TV theme songs that explains the premise. Something like, “Sit right back and you’ll hear a tale/About how the law firm Jacobson-Moore/Hid documents that could’ve taken opioids off the market …” And so on.
But this week? The “previously” runs longer and has more to it than just the story of Matty avenging her addict daughter Ellie’s death. We’re reminded about Billy’s furtive affair with Sarah’s archenemy Simone, and we’re reminded of Olympia’s career-defining (she hopes) class-action suit against the alcoholic energy drink Slamm’d. Most unexpectedly, we’re reminded about a joke Matty made in the series premiere about buying butterscotch candies in bulk after turning 60. Finally, we’re reminded that Matty’s sister Bitsy showed up at the end of last week’s episode.
Those last two items turn out to be connected. Because guess what? It turns out the “Madeline Matlock” character that Madeline Kingston has been playing since episode one was inspired by Bitsy. The butterscotch, the Cindy Shapiro anecdotes, even the no-good philandering and debt-ridden dead ex-husband … all of these are bits of Bitsy’s business.
Matty’s imitation is not a form of flattery. When Edwin tries to allay his wife’s irritation at Bitsy’s visit by saying it’ll be good for “research,” Matty snaps back, “Matty Matlock has substance underneath! My sister is a grown woman named Elizabeth who likes to be called ‘Itsy Bitsy.’” Madeline is easily annoyed by her sister’s incessant nattering about inconsequential things like gardening and baking, and she holds a lingering grudge against Bitsy because she once let Ellie hide out from Matty after rehab.
One of the smarter moves that Matlock creator Jennie Snyder has made in recent episodes is to show that Matty can be stubbornly misguided when it comes to her family. She demanded maybe too much of Ellie. She’s perhaps too permissive with Alfie. She’s definitely overly dismissive of Edwin. Although she thinks Bitsy is dimwitted and naive, in this episode, her sister tells her things she never knew — namely that Bitsy skipped college because she was afraid their mother would relapse into alcoholism.
So while Matty considers herself to be an expert on addiction and Bitsy a sheltered neophyte, it’s Bitsy who notes that their mom became a food addict when she gave up booze, and it’s Bitsy who suggests that Matty herself is addicted to being righteous. After she discovers the Jacobson-Moore/Wellbrexa conspiracy board in the Kingstons’ home office, Bitsy asks her sister if she thinks about her mission every day and if she lies and sacrifices relationships to pursue it. If all these things are true — and they are — how can Matty say that she’s any different from Ellie?
I love Julie Hagerty, who has always had the ability to play comic characters with strong notes of pathos underneath. The revelation that Bitsy is more insightful than Matty brings some zing to this episode’s domestic scenes. As an outsider, Bitsy can ask the obvious questions that Edwin maybe won’t (for fear of annoying his wife, if nothing else). For example, once Bitsy finds out about Matty’s Jacobson-Moore subterfuge, she’s surprised to learn that her sister has become deeply invested in the actual cases she’s working on with Olympia. When Bitsy finds Matty working late on Slamm’d, she asks, “Do you care about this case? For real? Not just another ruse?”
To be honest, I had the same question for roughly the first half of this episode. As I mentioned last week, Matty’s recent funk over memories of Ellie has hindered her ability to be involved in the show’s courtroom drama. This has been good for Billy and Sarah, who were sidelined a lot during the first half of this season. But it’s taken some spark away from the Olympia/Matty relationship, which — for better or worse, as we shall see by the end of this episode — is arguably the heart of the show.
At first, Matty seems just as passive and unhelpful during this week’s case. But she rallies by the end for what turns out to be — from a legal drama standpoint — one of Matlock’s stronger episodes.
We begin by meeting a partially paralyzed former college football star named Tucker Hoff (Leonard Harmon), who is the lead plaintiff in Olympia’s Slamm’d suit. Tucker, blackout drunk on Slamm’d, once jumped out of a moving car. While he’s doing okay now, Olympia needs him to be likable enough to win the jury’s sympathy but not so cheery that they don’t think he’s suffered.
The trial scenes are well written and staged, beginning with the way the two sides’ opening statements are intertwined, to produce a genuinely challenging debate. Is Slamm’d just a fun product, properly labeled with warnings of any potential dangers? Or is this drink — which contains five times the alcohol of similar canned cocktails, plus an unspecified amount of caffeine that can trick the body into missing the warning signs of intoxication — callously targeting impressionable young people with underdeveloped reasoning skills?
To support Tucker’s testimony, Olympia wants to bring in Kennedy, the college kid from last week who accidentally killed a sorority sister. But Kennedy’s hesitant. The ADA is planning to prosecute her, because her victim’s mother, Lydia Reed (Marley Shelton), needs to hold someone responsible for her daughter’s death. Matty, of course, can relate to this feeling. So, for the first time in a while, she gets to draw on her Bitsy-inspired “Matlock” skills: homespun wisdom, empathy, and persuasion. Matty talks to Lydia — grieving mother to grieving mother — and tells her to focus her anger on Slamm’d, not Kennedy.
The case needs Kennedy because the teenager can provide a firsthand account of how marketing reps for Slamm’d secretly distributed the drink at high-school parties before it was available in stores. Her testimony matters especially because Olympia has a jury problem. Not wanting to work with Shae, Olympia hired an outside jury consulting team: the bickering Alli Glenroy (Kara Luiz) and Hayden Glenroy (Gabriel Bonilla). Shae does her usual appraisal and research anyway, discovering that Juror 32 (Jim Hanna) pseudonymously wrote multiple libertarian-styled blog posts about how people need to take responsibility for their own actions. Shae thinks Olympia should build their case around the idea that kids like Kennedy and Tucker were trying to make good choices but were manipulated and misled by the exploitative creeps running Slamm’d.
Alas, despite everyone’s diligence, the case goes haywire. When the defense team finds an old video of Tucker in high school shouting in agreement when a football teammate suggested they all get “so blitzed we can’t remember tomorrow,” the kid decides to settle his case rather than continue the trial. Olympia is inconsolable. All of her pro-bono social-justice work was supposed to be paid for by this class action against Slamm’d. If the case is dead, her drive to be made a partner dies too. Olympia talks to Matty about starting over in her own practice with Matty as her first hire.
And here’s where we come back to all of Edwin’s and Bitsy’s past warnings about how Matty’s obsessive nature can blind her to the bigger picture. Throughout this episode, Matty tries in her spare moments to trace Julian’s movements on the day the potentially damning Wellbrexa documents arrived at the Jacobson-Moore offices. She has a whole scenario worked out in her head, where Shae warns Julian about the documents and then he sneaks them into the shredding room. Except … Julian’s key card was also logged as entering a women’s restroom on the 25th floor and then entering Olympia’s old office, 2523. Slowly, a different scenario — with Olympia as the villain — dawns on Matty.
The revelation that Olympia may have hidden the documents should be unsurprising to any Matlock viewer who’s been paying attention — and to anyone who knows anything about how melodrama works. Still, this is a huge narrative pivot point. Can Matty take a step back, consider everything she knows about Olympia, and rethink her whole mission? Or is she so driven to finish the job that — yet again — she’ll risk destroying the life of someone she cares about?
Hotdoggin’
• Romantic status reports! Sarah has decided to give being in an open relationship with Kira a try, although Billy doubts she’ll be able to stand it for long; and Billy is still sneaking around with Simone, even after telling Sarah that he’ll stop.
• The Simone/Billy and Kira/Sarah subplots actually feed a bit of tension in this episode since all of the ducking into empty offices and supply rooms occasionally means that one or more of these characters crosses paths with Matty as she’s tracing the path of Julian’s key card. I was certain that Matty was going to get caught by one of these folks; and honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if it happens by the season. If the “previously on” next week shows Billy and Simone having a secret rendezvous, buckle up.