Matlock

 The first word that popped into my head when I finished watching the pilot episode of Matlock is one not normally associated with CBS’s prime time programming: subversive. The network that churns out crime procedurals year after year has launched a reboot that is not really a reboot and a show about a law firm that is actually a show about revenge. The sleight of hand extends from the show’s title to its closing scene, which turns everything else that happened in the prior 40 minutes upside down.

If you invoke the name “Matlock” to people of a certain age, we immediately think of Andy Griffith’s whose intelligence was sometimes masked by an aw shucks, country lawyer vibe, so it was logical to think this new Matlock just updated the original version, cast a new lead (Kathy Bates) and moved the show to New York. And through much of the premiere, that assumption held true.

Like the original, Maddie Matlock is also a lawyer, albeit one we are told has reentered the legal field after three decades because of a husband who left her destitute and caring for her grandson after her own daughter passed away. Maddie also has that homespun, lilting southern drawl that disarms people. As she notes, once women get to be a certain age, society starts ignoring them but instead of being mad about it, she uses it to her advantage. It may look like she is struggling to pay for her coffee but she is actually eavesdropping on a chatty lawyer talking into his phone and discussing an amount he is willing to settle a case for.  She fumbles in her purse for an ID badge that does not exist so a younger employee while swipe her into a building. And so on.

The goal of all this subterfuge is gaining access to the law firm Jacobson Moore and the rest of the episode follow beats that will be familiar to anyone who has watched a legal procedural. There is of course the case of the week, here, a wrongly convicted former prisoner now seeking punitive damages and the law firm cast of characters. There is Olympia, the intense, sharp-as-a-tack partner, her ex-husband Julian, Julian’s father who is simply referred to as “Senior” (who is also the managing partner of the firm), Billy, Olympia’s new love interest, and the bumbling junior associates who can’t seem to do anything right. Maddie wends her way into a two-week tryout thanks to the settlement information she shares (it turns out the firm is representing the parties on the other side and her intel nets them an additional $4 million) and after a few fits and starts, also tracks down the smoking gun information that helps their former prisoner client net a massive jury award.

Admittedly, I was ready to bail on the show at this point. The plot was so predictable I even guessed the punitive damage award amount, but then Matlock paid homage to another pop culture icon, The Usual Suspects. In the show’s final moments, Maddie boards a city bus to what we expect will be a modest apartment she shares with her grandson. Instead, she gets off after one stop, turns a corner, and slips into the back of a chauffeured Town Car and is driven to a mansion where her husband and grandson await.

Maddie is a lawyer, but one who stopped practicing just 10 years ago, not 30, she is still married, and her grandson is a techie who helped create her Matlock alter ego, complete with a fictionalized résumé and references. See, it turns out FIRM covered up the dangers associated with opioid usage, allowing the pills to stay on the market for enough time that her daughter got hooked on them and ultimately died of an overdose. As Maddie explains, her goal is to find out which of the lawyers at the firm was responsible and bring them down.

What a great plot twist! A show I was prepared to write off suddenly got a lot more interesting. That said, I do wonder how they’ll balance the needs of a standard legal procedural, with its case-of-the-week format and interpersonal dynamics of the office, against this deeper story of what is basically corporate espionage. Elsbeth, the show Matlock is paired with, attempted something similar in its first season (a murder of the week combined with a longer story arc about police corruption) that was tonally awkward. Part of the problem is the limited runtime of each episode and the need to lay track for each story line within those 44 minutes. The other is that the energies are much different. Elsbeth, and, it appears Maddie, have what the kids might call good vibes even if they are solving murders or exonerating the innocent, whereas digging into corruption and bribery are darker subjects that just do not blend well with that type of aesthetic. Elsbeth (smartly) resolved the police corruption story to focus on being a quirky Columbo knock-off. Whether Matlock will be more like its namesake or Michael Clayton is to be determined.