Matlock Recap: Who the Hell Are You?

As I mentioned in last week’s Matlock recap, what I liked most about the long-awaited “Olympia meets Madeline Kingston” twist is that it calls back to this season’s earliest episodes, when Olympia pushed back against Matty’s “poor, pitiful me” act — essentially saying that, regardless of her age, this lady shouldn’t strut that stuff in front of a Black woman in a predominately white law firm. For that same reason, I was pretty jazzed about the season’s penultimate episode, in which Olympia doesn’t let Matty off the hook easily. She’s pissed. Olympia is so pissed that she becomes, frankly, excessively mean. I love her for that.

I have some lingering dissatisfaction with how this episode ends, but I’ll still declare it the season’s best so far, setting up a finale that could, based on the direction this story’s heading, completely upend the show’s premise. This moment — where Matty’s deception is out in the open, at least for Olympia — is something I’d been dreading all year. But watching it felt a little like enduring one of those painful conversations with a loved one that ultimately ends up being more refreshing and energizing than destructive.

But it doesn’t start that way. This episode picks up where the last one left off, with Olympia confronting Matty by the alley where the Kingstons’ secret limo is parked. What follows is a series of chilly orders from Olympia. Dismiss the driver. Get in this cab. Come upstairs to Jacobson-Moore’s abandoned office suite on the 25th floor. Turn over your bags and your phone — and your passcode. Take this pad of paper and write down every lie you’ve told. And don’t — do not — mention your daughter.

Olympia’s fury in these opening scenes is terrifying. She won’t give Matty any opening to spin. From the start, she hisses, “Think very carefully before lying to my face again,” and lets her know, “I’m your judge, I’m your jury.” She refuses to believe anything Matty says about her actual credentials or how she constructed her new identity. It’s all “what a con man would say,” Olympia grumbles. And it certainly doesn’t help that Matty loses her folksy accent the moment she gets cornered.

As savvy TV viewers, we know this ice-out can’t last forever. And while Matty deserves to squirm a little, we also know this show’s called Matlock, and the writers ultimately want us on her side. The problem for Matty is that the best way to defend herself is to talk about Ellie, which Olympia expressly forbids. In fact, Olympia physically winces every time Matty brings it up, perhaps because she doesn’t want to risk hearing lies about a dead kid.

The turnaround begins when Matty catches a break. When Olympia notices that Matty’s phone has been buzzing with concerned messages from her Queens apartment building superintendent, she realizes this must be Matty’s not-dead husband. She orders Matty to call Edwin, on speaker, to tell him she’s working late. And Edwin, god bless him, says nice things about Olympia and about how much Matty loves her without knowing the boss is listening. Eight words in particular — “Now that you know she didn’t do it” — provoke Olympia into letting Matty start explaining herself.

The truce is still uneasy. Even as Matty’s telling Olympia about the missing Wellbrexa document, she’s also reminding Olympia about the depths of her betrayal — like how Matty stole her laptop, containing the only copy of a voicemail from her dead father. And when Matty accuses Julian of taking the document, it makes Olympia think about the spy-pen gambit and how she spent days feeling paranoid and hating Julian for no reason. Genuine damage has been done to Olympia’s psyche. That’s not easily forgiven.

In fact, Olympia gets so mad that she threatens to shut this makeshift tribunal down and call the cops. But remember what I said about Matty’s shifting accent? As we learned a few weeks ago, she imitates her sister Bitsy because it softens her personality. But whenever she drops that act, she hardens. She counters Olympia, saying the cops will find she legally changed her name and took the New York bar exam, making any claims that she’s an imposter seem weak. She also promises to tell the press everything about Jacobson-Moore’s Wellbrexa mess, embarrassing Olympia’s family, kids included. That’s right: Matty is willing to mess up the lives of Olympia’s children for her own daughter’s sake.

I should mention that while Olympia has Matty trapped in an old office on Floor 25 after hours, there’s an actual case-of-the-week on Floor 24, handled mainly by Billy and Sarah at first, with Olympia popping downstairs to track the progress. The case involves Amy Buckley (Eliza Bennett), a heavily pregnant 26-year-old who wants an immediate divorce from her controlling husband, Grant (Michael Antosy), who is about to force her to have a C-section. Jacobson-Moore is the only firm Amy knows, given that her husband’s wealthy family does business there.

It wouldn’t be too much of a reach to find parallels between this week’s case and the main Matty/Olympia story. Everything about Amy’s situation reflects badly on Jacobson-Moore’s senior management, which handled both sides of the Buckleys’ prenup. Management, naturally, gets pissed at Olympia for helping Amy. While Matty upstairs is suggesting that Julian may have buried evidence and taken a payoff, downstairs Olympia hears a suddenly familiar tale about how Amy’s own seemingly sweet husband turned out to be a manipulative creep.

But from a story-building perspective, what’s most effective about this case is its urgency. While Olympia’s grilling Matty, barely giving our heroine a chance to think, she’s also rushing to night court to file motions. The team can’t get Amy an overnight divorce, so they aim for a restraining order, keeping Grant away from the baby — who, by the way, he did not father. The judge is sympathetic, but the lack of hard evidence of abuse is a problem.

Enter Matty, an expert in contract law. Another thing that breaks the ice between Olympia and Matty is that the team needs the help of the kindly old lady who has a rapport with clients and witnesses — whether she’s a big faker or not. So Matty pores over the prenup and also reconnects with Billy and Sarah, who sneakily follow Olympia up to the 25th floor and find Matty there. (She lies to them, of course, saying Olympia secretly procured this special office for her.)

The speed-running of this case is exacerbated by Amy going into labor. But with Matty’s help — in particular her coaxing Grant’s priest into praising his parishioner’s devout Catholicism — the team is able to get an annulment, proving Grant committed fraud by lying about his religious faith to his atheist wife. The technicality of the annulment matters because the way the prenup was drafted, a divorce would’ve left Amy with nothing.

As mentioned, I’m taking a wait-and-see attitude on this episode’s ending. After all the talk about duplicitous husbands, Olympia treats Julian to the same “smile in the face of her future prey” routine she did with Matty last week, and then she goes to the Kingston estate in Westchester, presumably joining Matty’s side. Or does she? Before then, she flashes back to the spy-pen fiasco, and how she felt panicked and isolated, without even her dad’s voicemail to comfort her. That kind of memory should turn her against Matty.

Then again, one of my least favorite TV drama complications is “I can’t trust you anymore.” It’s usually such a contrivance meant to drive temporary wedges between characters. (Matlock creator Jennie Snyder Urman’s earlier show Jane the Virgin did this frequently.) And it’s been obvious in recent weeks that Matlock’s better when Matty and Olympia are aligned. Even in this episode, Olympia enjoys brainstorming on Amy’s case despite how angry she is at Matty.

So maybe we’re also going to speed-run this friendship’s collapse and reconciliation, which will be better for the show’s entertainment value. But I hope Olympia holds on to some of her grudge. She now knows that, contrary to Billy and Sarah’s opinion, Matty’s no saint. If she keeps that in mind, it’ll make their relationship — and season two — much richer.

Hot Doggin’

• Sarah struggles with how to handle a pregnant lady. (Does she need a resting area? Weird snacks?) But because Amy is Sarah’s age, they do bond. Their conversation about demanding partners convinces Sarah to break up with her “open relationship” semi-girlfriend. Billy also decides to end things with Simone, which eases Sarah’s heartbreak. (Sarah: “She’s going to be upset. That does make me happy.”)

• A small thing that may be huge: Sarah defies firm policy (or Olympia policy) and takes a case on her own, drafting a cease-and-desist letter for a personal trainer who wants to dissolve a business partnership. She even makes her own letterhead. I suspect we’ll hear more about this next week. And speaking of which….

• I have a screener already for next week’s double-length finale, but I haven’t watched it, so the following speculation is pure guesswork. My prediction? Season one ends with Olympia’s team leaving Jacobson-Moore — either on their own or because they get fired — and starting their own practice, backed with Kingston money and possibly under Sarah’s shingle. Their first case? A major lawsuit against Wellbrexa and Jacobson-Moore.