It's been a while since I delved into the legal intricacies of Matlock, a show whose initial legal representations were somewhat shaky, and which, let's face it, still retains a certain level of shakiness. I grant Matlock some leeway when it comes to legal realism because it's a reboot of the '80s/90s Matlock, a weekly murder mystery in which the hero routinely secured victory in the courtroom through piecing together clues and trapping the real killer, rather than through any particular legal prowess. The original Matlock was heavily inspired by Perry Mason, which also took a similar approach to its mysteries. The difference being that Perry Mason actually used his knowledge of legal nuances to introduce exculpatory evidence, while Ben Matlock mostly relied on monologues for the jury, disregarding every objection.
The new Matlock differs from its predecessor in many ways. It features a serialized storyline alongside the weekly cases, and it's more about office politics than it is about procedural crime-solving. However, the show's approach to courtroom scenes bears a striking resemblance to its namesake. Olympia's team represents their clients through vibes, intuition, and dumb luck. As I mentioned in last week's footnotes, "good lawyering" for these attorneys often equates to stumbling upon a crucial piece of evidence through sheer happenstance. It's almost as if in movies about poker players, a "good poker player" is someone who always seems to draw the best cards.
This week's case actually requires more legal maneuvering than usual, although, in the end, the team once again wins after catching a late break. The result is one of the series' weaker episodes—one that mostly seems to be marking time until the season's climactic "Matty vs. Jacobson Moore" arc can commence.
The team arrives at the case in a roundabout way. Olympia has been pursuing a class action against the makers of Slamm'd, an alcohol-based energy drink marketed to young people that has been sending many of those kids to the hospital. ("It gets people way too drunk too fast," one college student explains.) When a Fordham sorority sister named Zoey Santos (Galilea La Salvia) is accused of sneaking Slamm'd into a romantic rival's cup at a party—ultimately killing the young lady, named Violet—Olympia decides to defend Zoey as part of a larger strategy to drum up publicity for her lawsuit.
The Matlock writers have a lot of fun with modern college Greek culture, getting in a few good zingers about the kids' sickly sweet cocktail recipes (rum, strawberry lemonade, Sour Patch Kids) and about how many of them are named Kennedy. Even the relatively young Sarah regards these women as aliens in her midst, with their self-tanner and the way they refer to the music of Destiny's Child as "the oldies."
When it comes to defending Zoey, Olympia faces a predicament: the cutthroat nature of sorority life has created a vacuum of character witnesses among the sisters. Each of them bears memories of Zoey either humiliating them personally or gleefully embarrassing a friend, making it difficult to find anyone willing to vouch for her innocence. As a result, they all implicitly believe that she might have killed Violet intentionally. This belief is further fueled by the emerging evidence suggesting that someone using Zoey's ID purchased the fatal can of Slamm'd.
Jacobson Moore's defense is peppered with real legal acumen, as Billy and Sarah try to corroborate Zoey's alibi by following her jogging path and proving it physically impossible for her to have reached the store from the park in time. However, the key piece of evidence comes from Matty, who notices a "live photo" in one of the pictures they were examining from the sorority party. Upon watching it for its full duration, they see in the background an image of Zoey's ID being sneaked back into her drawer by...one of the Kennedys! (This character, played by Rae DeRosa, physically resembles Galilea La Salvia.)
This brief, incredibly fortuitous moment of insight is the most Matty contributes to the case because, for the second week in a row, she's so distracted by her memories of Ellie and their contentious custody hearing that her focus is elsewhere. When Olympia asks her for an "angle" on the case, Matty uncharacteristically mutters, "You first." Even at home, she wants Edwin to make all of her tough decisions for her; she's lost in a fog.
Her daily routine is still heavily devoted to the mission of revenge against Jacobson Moore. This week, Matty intends to use the distraction of an annual office Easter egg hunt—with Alfie as her guest—to sneak into the security monitor station and extract the info she needs from Julian's ID. The plan almost goes haywire when her reliable, friendly guard knocks off work early for the hunt. A quick-thinking Alfie has to get "accidentally" trapped in a stairwell to coax the replacement guard out of her office long enough for Matty to sneak in. The plan almost goes haywire again when Alfie calls Matty in a panic and says he lost his wallet—which contains a library card and an ice cream shop punch card with addresses close to their real Westchester home.
Matty is able to retrieve the wallet from Olympia's office mostly undetected (Olympia does make a comment about ice cream, but it's unrelated to Alfie's punch card). Still, the stress of the day overall, coupled with the stress of the past few weeks at home and at the office, is almost too much for Matty. Almost...until she gets some unexpected help. Senior, lying back in his special chair with an edible, invites Matty to sit down and indulge with him. The two of them giggle while listening to the original Matlock theme song, talk about their regrets, and then howl their apologies to the ghosts of the people they wronged. For Senior, it's his little brother who died in a car wreck the day after they had a raging argument (Senior mourned by suing the car manufacturer and the tire company...and winning). For Matty, though she doesn't speak her daughter's name aloud, she nevertheless breaks down crying.
This scene between Kathy Bates and Beau Bridges is magnificent. I can overlook the lack of legal realism when the character work being done at the center of this show is so strong. It whets my appetite for the eventual moment when Bates and Bridges—as Matty and Senior—can square off with all their cards on the table.
