Matlock

The Rabbit and the Hawk

Season 1

Episode 4

Editor’s note

4 stars

****

Photo: Sonja Flemming/CBS

One of the best decisions that Jennie Snyder Urman and the Matlock The writers have made their choice thus far to make Matty a little messy. For every moment where one of her plans comes together and everyone believes her lies, there’s another where her mask slips dangerously or the stories she tells cause more trouble than they do not resolve any. Sometimes it’s too much – to the extent that in this week’s episode she breaks down crying in front of her husband Edwin, complaining about how difficult it is to “lie all the time”.

Edwin’s cold response? “I never wanted you to do that in the first place.”

To be fair to Edwin, his wife has I’ve crossed a lot of boundaries lately. This episode opens with the couple searching around their mansion for their grandson Alfie, who they find sleeping in Matty’s office, behind the sofa, after spending all night searching for evidence on Matty’s laptop. ‘Olympia. And while she promises Edwin that she will stop asking Alfie for help and “let him catch up with life”, Matty soon starts sending emergency texts to Alfie again when he’s supposed to concentrate on school.

The emergency text stems from an opportunity at Jacobson-Moore that Matty and Alfie have been eagerly awaiting. She finally spends some time in the company’s records room, and she needs her grandson’s help to find the evidence they need to prove that JM buried damaging information about opioids.

The scenes in and around the document room are the tensest and funniest in this episode. Matty must navigate the very strict and very suspicious “Mrs.” B” (Patricia Belcher), who doesn’t let anyone look for anything without a supervisor’s signature and an appointment. (There’s a good bit of wordless comedy where Matty, standing right in front of Ms. B, takes out his phone to send an email asking for a date, then there’s an excruciating pause between the WHOOSH from the phone (Matty’s and Mrs. B’s DING.) Ultimately, Matty turns his nemesis into a friend by pretending to have a sick dog – after discovering that Mrs. B is a dog lover.

But here’s another example of how lies beget lies, leading to sticky situations. When Olympia sees Matty crying over his fake dog, Mrs. B. is dismayed that Olympia has never heard of her subordinate’s pet – causing Matty to scramble and blame her subordinate’s philosophy. boss “we are not friends”.

Matty finds himself in the same bind with our client of the week: chronically anxious artist Robert Walton (John Billingsley), who is suing the owners of his apartment complex because his wife died of respiratory failure, likely caused by bacteria present in the old windows of the building. plumbing. Matty’s job is to keep Robert calm, which she does by bonding with him following the death of her own fake husband.

Of course, it’s not all fake. Matty clearly draws on memories of his daughter Ellie when she sympathizes with Robert about distractedly setting a place at the table for a lost loved one or when they talk about the moment before opening the front door where they imagine that their person is still alive. (“I would give the world to experience that split second,” she says.) So it’s no wonder that after spending several days together – with him telling stories about how his wife once saw a hawk catches an adorable family of rabbits and she encourages him to overcome his self-doubt and embrace what’s left of his life – Robert gave “widow” Matty a glass rabbit figurine and asked her on a date.

As if to highlight how emotions and relationships can complicate devious plots, this week’s case – another good one! — pits JM’s lawyers against each other. Elijah, still angry after Olympia unilaterally ended their relationship last week, seems to take perverse joy in informing her that the company now represents Foundate Financials, the company that owns the Waltons’ building (among many ‘others). So they have to hire a mediator to set up a “firewall”, with Olympia’s team working to present evidence of landlord negligence while Elijah’s team places the blame on building codes. Robert’s lax construction and art supplies.

Then, just when it looks like Robert is going to have to settle for a paltry $250,000, he and Matty discover water damage and a patch of black mold in his apartment, which could be a much bigger problem. serious for Foundate. Olympia receives a new offer of $6,000,000, plus a clean-up fund – but only the latter survives after Senior implements a maneuver called “the Texas two-step”, to protect Foundation via a sneaky out-of-state reincorporation. State and a bankruptcy filing. . Matty understands what Senior is doing when she sees him wearing golf pants, something he always does after he “extinguishes someone’s soul.”

This result reminds Matty that for Senior and his corporate clients, people like Robert don’t matter – and neither does Ellie. So it’s a good thing that while digging through JM’s documents, Matty finally finds a damn piece of paper… with a signature that appears to be Senior’s. She’s pretty sure she now has her target, and it turns out it’s someone she already doesn’t like: that smug hawk from the executive suite, carelessly slaughtering rabbits.

She and Edwin also reconcile at the end of the episode, although she never really addresses his deeper concerns. She’s still in cahoots with Alfie, for example. In one chilling sequence, she uses her memories of Edwin’s angry argument – ​​coupled with a bag of chopped onions – to help her fake her grief over her nonexistent dead dog. The more she uses her own life to lend credence to her charade, the harder it will be to keep her own firewall intact.

• Not much action for Sarah and Billy this week. They spend most of the episode bickering over Sarah’s apparent lack of interest in anything having to do with her co-workers’ personal lives – indicating the lack of “balance” in her self-centered personality. the work. But at the end of the episode, she admits that she calls Billy her “friend” when talking to her therapist; and this touches him so much that he introduces her to his girlfriend Claudia (whom Sarah had previously assumed to be one of his many sisters). Billy also gives viewers what I think is new information when he tells Claudia that Sarah wants to start dating, adding, “If you know any nice girls…”

• Julian, meanwhile, is clearly looking to get back together with Olympia. He defends the Walton case when Senior wants to abandon it, and at the end of the episode, he brings his ex-wife a box of Senior memorabilia to smash with a golf club. I’m still having a hard time caring about the Elijah-Olympia-Julian triangle, but at least this week all the confusing relationships make the office politics more juicy. (Plus, I suspect this will all serve a larger narrative purpose, probably related to Matty’s secret investigation.)

• Is Matty exaggerating his office bad luck story? When Olympia says Matlock has a lot in common with her client, Matty jokes, “Did Robert also catch Sandy under a hooker in a flapper dress?” The stunned looks she receives from her colleagues suggest that she may be going a little too far and making everyone uncomfortable.