Matlock Recap: Relevance, Your Honor?

So far, this Matlock reboot has been only fleetingly Matlock-y. We’ve had just one murder case, and Matty herself has been more like one of Ben Matlock’s investigators, digging up damning evidence, and not like Matlock himself, tricking criminals into confessions in court.

In this week’s episode, though, we get two “classic Matlock” moments. One involves Matty’s husband Edwin, who takes Alfie’s place as her assistant in the Jacobson-Moore pharmaceutical investigation. In their mansion’s study, Edwin lays out the evidence they’ve gathered so far in a presentation a lot like the kind Andy Griffith used to give to juries: so detailed and persuasive that Matty herself says, “You go on one mission, and suddenly you’re Matlock.”

The other moment involves Olympia, who engages in another old Matlock tradition: effectively testifying while grilling a witness. In the Griffith show, Matlock would often blow past any objections from the prosecution to explain his theory of the case to the person he’d fingered as the actual guilty party, ending his speech by saying, “Isn’t that right?” or something similar, to frame it all — sort of — as a question. Olympia doesn’t go quite that far in this episode’s case-of-the-week, but she does pull the trick of calling a seemingly friendly witness and then confronting her with a series of damning revelations until she breaks.

That scene’s dramatic, for sure. But it’s also indicative of the overall flimsiness of this week’s case, which, for the most part, is effective only for the conversations and revelations it leads to outside the courtroom, not for what happens in the trial itself.

The case is a class action suit, brought by several current and former inmates at a women’s prison, against the private contractor that ran the place and allowed abuse to run rampant. The key witness is Katya Novik (Andra Nechita), an Eastern European immigrant who has struggled to get her life together since her release, due to ongoing trauma over the way she was treated inside. The problem? Katya’s biggest issue is drug addiction, which makes it very risky to put her on the stand.

Enter that seemingly friendly witness I mentioned above: Warden Nicola Caruso (Kerry Cahill), a reformer who has cleaned up the prison in the wake of Olympia’s lawsuit. In a twist that wasn’t hard at all to see coming, we discover that the warden has secretly been tanking the case — including nudging Katya to relapse — because she thinks the money the plaintiffs are seeking could be put to better use. Olympia coaxes that out of her thanks to a security video Matty obtained from the nail salon where Katya works, showing a woman with the same birthmark on her hand as Caruso’s speaking to a clearly distressed Katya.

And that’s … good enough, I guess? Jacobson-Moore’s social justice team banks another multi-million dollar settlement. Nothing to it — and I mean that in an unflattering way.

Ah, but the non-courtroom drama? That’s where this episode hits. Matty’s intimate knowledge of how addicts behave — how they lie, why they lie — proves to be a real asset. It also tests her burgeoning alliance with Olympia, when her boss yells at her for prioritizing Katya’s sobriety over the case and Matty yells back, “What if she was one of your twins?”

Their bond is restored by the end of the episode when Olympia incorporates much of Matty’s righteous rant into her closing argument. But for the first time really, Sarah’s furious jealousy over Matty’s rapid rise within J-M becomes plot-relevant, as Olympia’s casual elevation of Matty to strategy-plotter and decision-maker — and Ms. Matlock’s inadvertent insensitivity to her coworkers’ feelings about this — ends up enraging Billy as well, forcing a reckoning and a reconciliation that culminates in what could be a fateful decision. It’s a crafty piece of writing, having a few seemingly random bits of side business lead somewhere productive.

The main bone of contention for Billy is that while he and Sarah were meant to be providing support for Matty — as she tried to find and help a wayward Katya — she ghosted them and secretly called on Edwin instead, because he also knows a lot about dealing with an addict. (It’s genuinely heartbreaking to see Edwin be the one to break down crying at home at the end of the day, after they trail Katya to an all-too-familiar drug den.) She then has to scramble to make up a lie for why she didn’t call her colleagues, deciding to pen her absent-mindedness on Alfie’s school troubles.

Matty also tries to soften Sarah by setting her up with one of Jacobson-Moore’s IT geniuses, Kira (Piper Curda). Of course, Matty has an ulterior motive. She’s trying to sneak one of Kira’s fingerprints, to get access to the server room containing all of the firm’s old emails. But she’s also genuinely concerned about Sarah’s workaholism. Matty is charmingly goofy as she tries to manipulate Kira: first by trying to get information about the server room by lying that she accidentally deleted a Costco coupon, and then by spilling her pills all over the lunchroom so that Sarah and Kira will “trauma bond” over her haplessness.

The end result of all this bickering and bonding with the other associates, though, is that Billy takes all of Matty’s lies to heart and decides to help a lonely old lady out by creating a dating profile for “Madeline Matlock.” And within a day, she gets a match… with a man who recognizes her as Madeline Kingston.

Now that’s the Matlock we love, right? The Andy Griffith version had its charms. But the new one has stingers.

Hot Doggin’

• One of the downsides to Matlock’s case-of-the-week format is that the “previously” montage that opens each episode really doesn’t change much, does it?

• Before Edwin’s stint as Matty’s helper takes a sadder turn — with him becoming emotionally overwhelmed by the responsibility — he makes a funny Archie to her Nero Wolfe, bumbling his way through legwork assignments while she guides him from afar. He’s hilarious in this episode’s opening scene in a computer store, making up lies about Olympia’s laptop and getting so tongue-tied that the simplest version of his story (the laptop belongs to his grandson) becomes unnecessarily baroque (his grandson has a friend who recently died because he “never ate his vegetables”).

• The reunification of Olympia and Julian continues this week as they talk about selling their brownstone and how moving will affect their kids. Julian has had almost no significant presence in any of the main Matlock storylines so far, but I suspect it’s only a matter of time before he gets his due — perhaps if Matty discovers that he’s heavily involved in the pharmaceutical cover-up.

• Even though the rushed, slack legal drama elements of Matlock sometimes leave me shaking my head, I’m impressed by how well-woven the other elements are. Case-in-point: At the nail salon, Matty riffs with the proprietor about what it takes to maintain a fancy manicure; and after she gets her own nails done, Matty admits to Alfie that she once made fun of his mom for her nice prom nails (calling them “claws”) when she should’ve just complimented her. This leads to an honest and bracing conversation about the nature of addiction. The last part could’ve happened without the earlier parts; but it’s so much more affecting to have the subject arise organically. Nicely done all around.