Matlock Season-Finale Recap: A Matter of Trust(s)

At the end of last week’s Matlock recap, I made my predictions for how I thought the show’s first season would end. My guess was that Olympia’s whole team would leave Jacobson-Moore (either voluntarily or after getting fired) and go into business together with a lawsuit against Wellbrexa as their first major case.

Annnnnd … I wasn’t even close. Instead, in brief, here’s how the finale goes: Olympia becomes a partner at the firm, and the season ends with Matty and Edwin worrying that Olympia will choose to protect Julian’s reputation and career rather than helping them nail Wellbrexa. Oh, and Alfie’s father shows up on the Kingstons’ doorstep just before the credits roll, which … okay.

I confess to being mildly disappointed with how this finale played out, though not because it didn’t match my forecast. Honestly, I prefer to be surprised by TV shows, not to out-guess them. I didn’t even mind that the season ended with so much unresolved. That’s to be expected from a season finale for a show that has already been renewed. It’s a choice made to keep viewers hooked over the hiatus. Totally fine.

No, what let me down is that the closing cliffhangers were so weak, given that this is a series that has so reliably delivered shocking episode-ending twists. The choices facing Matty and Olympia at the end of the finale seemed ill-defined, as did the stakes. And Alfie’s father? That’s a subplot I hadn’t thought about in weeks and not one I was anxiously hoping would return.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Before I get into all the Olympia and Matty business in this episode, let’s knock out the case of the week, which is … fine. It involves Sarah’s secret client, Dino, the personal trainer who had her write a strongly worded cease and desist to his erratic business partner, Rob. That letter was so strongly worded — described as “barbed,” “acerbic,” and “terrifying” — that Rob stormed into the partners’ gym, threw punches at Dino, then died of a burst appendix after Dino socked him in the stomach. Since Sarah is Dino’s lawyer, she has to defend him against a manslaughter charge.

The case’s eventual resolution is easy to predict. When Rob’s wife talks about how Sarah’s letter upset him so much that he threw up, that’s a pretty clear clue that his appendix was a preexisting issue. It turns out that one of the reasons Dino wanted to dissolve their partnership — because Rob was embezzling money to cover debts from his struggling nutritional supplements business — also explains Rob’s health issues. Those supplements were poisoning him. Sarah proves it in court and gets the same hero’s welcome back at Jacobson-Moore that Billy got when he won his first case.

The case of the week is relevant for a couple of reasons. First of all, it forces Olympia and Matty to work together to support Sarah. Initially, Olympia’s so livid at Sarah for taking a case on her own that she tries to get the judge to transfer it to a public defender. But once the judge rules that Sarah has to handle it, the team goes to work, gathering evidence and helping Sarah come across as more likable to a jury. Olympia even lands Sarah an emergency appointment with her dentist after she accidentally knocks out a tooth the day before the trial.

(By the way, here is as good a time as any to say that of all the credulity-stretching legal-drama shenanigans that Matlock has pulled this season, the idea that Dino could go from an arrest to a full jury trial in a matter of days is, well, pretty insulting to the audience’s intelligence. But so it goes.)

The story of Dino and Rob — two men who loved each other like brothers before falling out — also makes Olympia and Matty face the realities of their own relationship. Throughout this episode, Matty tries hard not to re-trigger Olympia’s feelings of anger and betrayal. But it’s impossible. When Sarah asks Matty to trot out one of her Cindy Shapiro stories or when Olympia looks at a picture of her own face on Matty’s big investigation board, her pain is acute.

When we left these two last week, Olympia was visiting the Kingston estate for what I assumed was the beginning of a reconciliation. I was, again, quite wrong. It turns out Olympia just wanted to see Matty’s evidence against Julian and Jacobson-Moore. But the big board doesn’t persuade her. As the finale begins, the two make a deal. If Olympia can prove that Julian’s brownstone money came from the Markston family’s trusts and not from a Wellbrexa payoff, then Matty will delay going to the press for a month. During that time, Matty can stay at the firm and keep gathering evidence, but she’ll be off Olympia’s team.

The problem is that Olympia needs Matty’s devious expertise — her “tricks of the trade” — to get to those trusts. She’s trying to be brusque and dismissive toward Matty, even telling her at one point, “My inner thoughts are no longer your privilege.” But she still gets Matty’s insights into how to extract information from Julian, Julian’s mom, and the woman who works at Julian’s bank, without any of them realizing she’s up to no good. “How do you just use people? Like they don’t matter?” Olympia says to Matty with undisguised disgust while they’re strategizing. But then she follows her advice, and it works.

The good news for Olympia is that Julian did, in fact, get the money for the brownstone from the family trust. The bad news is that she also discovers Julian’s secret safety-deposit box, which contains — ta-da! — the missing Wellbrexa documents. Julian arrives at the bank as Olympia is standing in the vault, looking at the papers in shock.

And so our cliffhangers commence. One story line ends at the bank, where Julian begs Olympia to forget what she’s seen for their kids’ sake. Jason Ritter plays Julian’s scenes in this episode with raw emotion, making the character’s choices more explicable, if not entirely forgivable. Julian says he was just following Senior’s orders. Meanwhile, Olympia was just made a partner by Senior, making her beholden to Jacobson-Moore for her future livelihood. So what should she do?

The other story line ends at the Kingston estate, where Matty has set a 4 p.m. deadline for Olympia to reveal what she finds at the bank. As the time ticks past four, Edwin gets impatient, certain Olympia has duped Matty. In fact, Edwin’s impatient throughout this episode as he talks about closing this chapter of their lives and moving back to San Francisco to do typical retiree stuff. Matty, though, enjoys being the lawyer she has always wanted to be. So what should she do?

As I mentioned, the season’s actual closing cliffhanger is the arrival of Alfie’s father (summoned by Alfie without his grandparents’ permission), and while I do not care much about this subplot, my hope is that dealing with this distracts the Kingstons from their “alert the media” plan, long enough for Olympia to make her intentions known.

As for what I expect next season, well, after last week’s total wipeout, I’m out of the predicting game. I do hope Matty comes fully out into the open sooner rather than later. Season one was at its best when the writers accelerated the Wellbrexa story line, forcing Matty into decisions that had consequences. Another season of her hiding in the shadows, lying, and manipulating …?

Well, actually, I’m sure that would still be entertaining, given the quality of Matlock’s writing and cast. But I also think these folks are capable of shifting gears and delivering something unexpected. After all, that’s what made episode one of this show so buzzy. True surprise is in this Matlock’s DNA.

Hot Doggin’

• A few fine performance details: (1) When the episode begins, Kathy Bates plays Matty as absolutely exhausted from her all-nighter, struggling to get through a sentence. (2) Even though Sarah gets her teeth fixed before the first day of the trial, it sounds like she has a little bit of a slurred “s” when addressing the jury. (3) All season long I have loved the quiet menace in Beau Bridges’s whispery performance as Senior.

• The ups and downs of Sarah and Billy’s respective love lives get some play here, and at the episode’s end, their romantic foibles actually inspire a couple of mini-cliffhangers. Sarah’s story is simple. She broke up with Kira, and she’s sad, but also she and Kira had sex after the break-up (which feels like the kind of “no commitment” relationship Kira wanted in the first place). As for Billy, he admits he’s been having sex occasionally with his ex Claudia and has decided to cool things off with Simone. But then Claudia shows up at the office to say she’s pregnant. Meanwhile, an embittered Simone starts questioning Sarah’s Dino case to see if she can get her old rival into trouble.

• One last complaint: The sheer number of flashbacks to earlier episodes made this finale feel like a clip show at times. The double-length running time could’ve been put to better use. (The lone exception is when Olympia drops Ellie’s name to get Matty to trust her, then the episode flashes back to Matty teaching Olympia how to exploit people’s sentimental weaknesses. Cleverly ambiguous, that.)

• And that’s a wrap on Matlock season one! Despite my issues with the finale, this was a fun season to watch and to write about. I look forward to the show’s return.