Editor’s note: The below recap contains spoilers for the Matlock series premiere.
There’s a new TV lawyer in town, and she’s gunning to be the most fun we’ve had since Ally McBeal (Sorry, Elsbeth. You’re still loved). Kathy Bates is heading to court in the new CBS Matlock reboot from Jane the Virgin bossJennie Snyder Urman, and the first episode proves that she’s a charming old lady with more tricks up her sleeve than anyone could have guessed.
The premiere begins with Bates’ Matty Matlock trying to scrounge up cash for her coffee order, which the audience quickly understands to be a ruse so that she can listen to the smarmy lawyer behind her boast about how much he’s going to save his pharmaceutical client during his next settlement talk. Matty continues the innocent grandma routine until she finds herself in the partner meeting of the smarmy lawyer’s competing firm and uses what she overheard in the coffee shop to get a job as a junior associate.
You have to suspend disbelief to think this is a plausible way of getting employment at Jacobson Moore, a corporate law firm in the middle of Manhattan. Still, Bates’ charm and Snyder’s whip-smart writing make the suspension work an easy enough lift to get into the meat of the episode. Once Matty has secured employment (on a trial basis, at least), she is assigned to work with Olympia (Skye P. Marshall) on a pro bono case to win a man wrongfully imprisoned for 26 years a worthy settlement from the city. Olympia’s case is built around widespread corruption in the NYPD at the time of Raymond Harris’ (Rothaford Gray) arrest, and that seems strong until the NYPD came back with a night-before-trial settlement offer that’s dropped from $2 million to $200 thousand. Olympia promptly uses Matty to convince Raymond and his daughter to go to trial instead of taking the deal so that Jacobson Moore’s boss, Senior (Beau Bridges), won’t blame Olympia for drawing out the case.
Matty takes the blame like a champ, but she knows that she needs to get into Olympia’s good graces in a more meaningful way. What she’s not expecting is to be assigned the task of getting Olympia custody of her children for Thanksgiving weekend, especially when the opposing side is Julian (Jason Ritter), Olympia’s ex-husband and Senior’s son. Matty doesn’t want to get involved in family business, but she does want to talk to Julian about potentially getting involved in some of his pharmaceutical cases, which seems like the line to butter him up during the exchange but becomes important information later on. The buttering up doesn’t work, and Julian declines to give Olympia the kids for Thanksgiving. However, there’s no time to focus on that, because a news article says that widespread NYPD corruption in the ’90s wasn’t as bad as anyone thought! Suddenly, their change in settlement numbers makes complete sense, and Olympia must scramble for a new defense with only hours to go before Raymond’s trial begins.
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A Little Listening Goes A Long Way in the ‘Matlock’ Series Premiere
While Olympia works on her opening statement and witness gameplan, Matty and her fellow associates – the ambitious and tactless Sarah (Leah Lewis) and the more amenable Billy (David Del Rio) – get to work on tracking down a prostitute who they believe was attacked by the actual murderer while Raymond was already in police custody. Once again, Matty shows off how far you can get just by listening to people. Olympia and the associates hadn’t been able to find the prostitute during the six months of working on the case, but Matty was able to unlock the key info they needed after a brief conversation with an “old hoe” who originally told the associates about the victimized prostitute in the first place. Armed with a better description – red hair and a drug problem – the trio is able to track down a drug dealer with a connection to their potential case-saving witness. Matty pretends to be an old family friend of the drug dealer to get him to talk, and he manages to remember a name: Carlin (Nicole de Boer).
At this point, both of the associates have to admit that Matty is an asset when it comes to getting information out of people. It’s hard not to trust an old lady with an endearing Southern accent! However, you need drama and obstacles to create a good television episode, and Matty makes her first major faux pas when they finally go face-to-face with Carlin. They need to convince her to testify to save Raymond’s case, but Matty goes soft when she sees how terrified Carlin is of taking the stand and having her old life potentially become public knowledge due to the high-profile nature of the case. She tells Carlin they can’t make her testify. It’ll only happen with an affidavit signed with Carlin’s agreement, and the former prostitute refuses to give it. In the span of a few hours, Matty saves and then immediately sabotages the case.
Matty has to tell Olympia what she’s done, and she gets a deserved earful about privilege and saving a suburban white lady while their Black client risks getting no settlement after losing a quarter of a century in prison. It’s a great speech that shows Olympia is a powerhouse… and also sends Matty to the crying terrace outside of the office. While she’s beating herself up for losing track of their priorities, Sarah and Billy arrive for an associate pep talk. They really were impressed by how much progress Matty was able to make in only a couple of days. And yes, she screwed up, but they also think that she can get a hold of herself and fix it. Teamwork makes the dream work, and this was a really nice way to show how much the trio has bonded in a short amount of time.
The team is down, but they are not out when Matty returns to Carlin’s house and explains why she let her off the hook yesterday. While Matty has obviously postured during her other manipulations earlier in the episode, it’s obvious that her talk with Carlin comes from a genuine place. Matty had a daughter who died of a drug overdose, and that’s all she could think about when she heard Carlin talk about how hard she fought to build a new life. She’d do anything to help her daughter, and that turned into her wanting to do anything to help Carlin, but that came at the expense of her client, who was going to suffer if Matty did not figure out a way to get Carlin on the stand.
Spoiler alert: Carlin does not make it to the stand, but she does give Matty something even better. The manager of a Greek restaurant saw Carlin get attacked and walked her to the police station afterward. Matty tracks down the manager, who was on the phone after Carlin escaped her assaulter. The city’s defense counsel argues against letting a witness who would only be able to give a hearsay testimony on the stand, and Matty asks if it would make a difference if the call the manager was on before walking Carlin to the police station was recorded. The opposing counsel falls for the trap and says, hypothetically, if the call was recorded, then it would be acceptable evidence. Boom, roasted, my dude. It turns out the manager was on the phone with 911, but the police station had deleted the record of the call. Fortunately, it was backed up on the city server and could be played in court.
Olympia wins the case and the jury awards Raymond $20 million. Not only is justice served, but Olympia can now make the case to Senior that social justice cases can make the firm a lot of money — and she can save herself from going back to the soul-sucking pharmaceutical work she’s been trying to escape. Moreover, Matty secures full-time employment. Then comes the twist.
Matty Isn’t Who She Seems in the ‘Matlock’ Series Premiere
Throughout the episode, Matty weaves a sob story about wanting to work at Jacobson Moore because her deadbeat cheating husband died and left her with a mountain of debt she needed to pay off. That explains why she needed to come out of retirement, but it doesn’t explain the lengths that she went to to work at this specific firm. Couldn’t she have just restarted her own law office or found someplace less likely to discriminate against her for being old?
Well, it turns out that almost everything Matty said about her personal life during the episode was a lie, and viewers are reminded of every misleading thing prior, as her real life is revealed on screen. She’s not poor. Her husband is definitely not dead, and the grandson she’s raising absolutely adores her. Her real name is Madeline Kingston, and she’s a very wealthy retired lawyer. She chose that specific firm because she and her family have figured out that either Olympia, Julian, or Senior hid documents in a pharmaceutical case a decade prior that could have taken opioids off the street years in advance and potentially saved her daughter from overdosing. Matty is working at Jacobson Moore so that she can investigate further to figure out which one of them did it and make sure they go to jail for it.
Matty told you all along not to underestimate an old lady just because she carries caramels in her purse and talks very sweetly, and now we know she’s truly a mastermind. In the span of a few days, she’s already ingratiated herself within the firm. Matty may not have Olympia’s full trust yet, but she’s well on the way, and if she keeps pulling off miraculous saves, she’ll be one of the most trusted associates in no time – and we’re going to have so much fun along the way.
Episode 1 of Matlock is available to stream on Paramount+ in the U.S. New episodes will premiere on CBS on Thursdays, starting on October 17.
Matlock is already off to a memorable start with its premiere, as Kathy Bates plays a grandmother not to be underestimated.
- Kathy Bates is endearing and hilarious as Matty.
- The dysfunctional trio of associates is a team you already want to root for.
- Olympia is a legend, an icon, and she is the moment.
- The ease with which Matty gets this job is salt in the wounds of everyone looking for employment in this current hellscape market.
- There is an overabundance of exposition and over-explaining (especially during the twist) because pilots are going to pilot.
