Matlock Was Always Going To Let You Down

There was a scene about halfway through Matlock's two-part season finale that got me thinking, of all things, The White Lotus (Thailand). Over the strains of Fleetwood Mac's Landslide, Maddie Kingston (aka Maddie Matlock) takes down the so-called crime board she, her husband Edwin, and their grandson Alfie had created to answer the question of who, among the attorneys at Jacobson Moore, had removed an incriminating report from a discovery production done by their pharmaceutical client Wellbrexa highlighting the danger of addiction posed by its opioids. The Kingstons' daughter (and Alfie's mother) Ellie had died from opioid abuse and the trio believed the firm culpable for her death by hiding the report that would have pulled the drug from the market long before her death. 

As Maddie plucks photos and post its off the wall, a montage of her interactions with Olympia, Julian, Sarah, Billy, and Senior flash across the screen. Maddie infiltrated the firm as a sort of sleeper agent, ingratiating herself into the workplace with her cornpone Southern accent and disarming references to her advanced age to piece together most of the mystery of the missing document. But she also remembers the many good times she shared with people who constantly surprised her with their dedication, willingness to fight for what was right, and their friendship. What she had expected to be a quick hit penetration of a place whose lawyers she thought of as amoral was a more nuanced experience, particularly her bond with the hard charging Olympia, who slowly allowed Maddie in as a confidante and whose betrayal Maddie felt acutely.

Once the board was cleared, Maddie thumb tacked a photo of her, Edwin, and Ellie to the board and in that moment, much like the look of serenity that came across Rick's face after meeting Jim Hollinger and seeing him not as some arch villain who ruined Rick's life and killed his father, but as a frail old man, part of me thought Maddie would simply let sleeping dogs lie and instead of going forward with her plan to expose the firm, and in particular, Olympia's now ex-husband Julian as the guilty party, simply continue working there while letting go of her desire for revenge. 

And, much like Rick's inability to let go, Maddie could not either. Both shows and characters are bent on revenge, but as Matlock hurtled toward the end of its season, it did a great job of examining the same question The White Lotus broached - what cost is paid when we seek revenge? In Rick's case, he paid with his life and that of his partner Chelsea. For Maddie, the costs were more nuanced, but no less devastating. Her lies lost her the trust of Olympia, triggered Sarah into risking her job by taking on a client unbeknownst to Olympia (and in violation of firm policy), and led her to take advantage of other people in the firm, manipulating them into helping her get the information she needed. At the same time, while Edwin was preparing for them to return to their old lives, Maddie's passion for the law had been reawakened through her work at the firm. He looks forward to tackling the bucket list items they have back in San Francisco, she wants to continue working as a litigation attorney in New York. The desire to find justice for their daughter has not only consumed their lives but altered how they each view what their lives should be and affected the lives of the people Maddie works with. 

Of course, the beauty of The White Lotus is that each season is self-contained. Stories resolve and the cycle starts anew. Matlock is a procedural and so its season one ending was inevitably going to be ambiguous. Olympia, unwilling to accept that Julian would violate basic ethical duties, is committed to exonerating him, but in doing so, she is drawn into precisely the kinds of manipulative actions that Maddie now realizes poisons relationships. Doing so lands her in a bank vault with a safety deposit box opened and the incriminating study binder clipped within it. If finding the literal smoking gun was not enough, Julian shows up and confirms he did in fact remove the document, at his father's direction, nearly 15 years earlier. He pleads his case, or at least tries to explain that as a young lawyer trying to make his dad happy, Julian did something he understood was wrong and argued that he is a different (and better person) than he had been all those years ago. 

The price revenge exacts on the one seeking it comes into sharp relief. Had Olympia not pried into Maddie's background, she never would have learned of her duplicity and by extension, learned of her ex husband's perfidy. As a partner, she now has two massive problems - she has a fiduciary duty to the firm and now knows it would experience humiliation if Maddie's infiltration of the firm and exposure of their malpractice becomes public. Moreover, she now knows the father of her children did it, which exposes him to public humiliation as well. On the other hand, Olympia believes strongly in doing what's right and, as a mother, empathizes with Maddie's desire to see the people who she sees as being responsible for her daughter's death be brought to justice. 

While the writers set up Season 2 to answer these questions, they lack the whodunit-ness of Season 1. After all, the mystery that triggered Maddie's desire for justice has been solved, it is just a question of whether Olympia will tell Maddie what she discovered. And while that is enough to fill some storyline, the finale showed that the writers know far more needs to be put on the plate to fill out the meal. Billy's ex-girlfriend Claudia is pregnant with their child, Sarah is feeling herself after notching her first trial victory but has drawn the attention of her nemesis at the firm, who suspects Sarah of obtaining this client against firm policy, and Alfie's father shows up at the family's front door. Are his motives to simply be in Alfie's life or attempt to take the boy away from his grandparents? That is a lot of narrative runway to fill a season and suggests the Wellbrexa storyline will just be one of many, not the central focus. The big reveal of Julian's complicity was not a Perry Mason moment, rather, it was a melancholy and muted ending that will require Olympia, and to a lesser extent Maddie, to decide whether revenge is worth it and what justice looks like. These are existential questions that can lack the flash and pop that TV procedurals traffic in, but the show has, to its credit, tried to reach for a higher plane than most of what is still on network TV. As they say in the business, stay tuned ... 

Book Review - There Is No Place For Us

One of the joys of reading is coming across a book so profound, so thought provoking, it lingers with you long after you've finished reading it. Such is the case with There Is No Place For Us, Brian Goldstone's heart wrenching tale of five low income families living on the societal margins of Atlanta, Georgia. 

Goldstone's remit is quite broad. Over 365 pages, his lens zooms in to the granular struggles of the working poor, who live one bad decision or one decision out of their control, from losing their homes and spiraling downward toward homelessness. But he also zooms out, challenging conventional wisdom about the benefits of gentrification, the failed governmental and private sector attempts to address poverty, and the rapacious desire of corporations to profit off the poor in America. 

It would be reductive to suggest there are heroes and villains in this story, although there are plenty of both; rather, Goldstone asks readers to move beyond the stereotypes we associate with the poor and homeless. The families we meet are to a person hard working, often in physically demanding jobs for little pay who live (at best) paycheck to paycheck but are never secure. Things spiral quickly for one family of four, a husband and wife with full-time jobs and two kids, when the owner of the condominium they rent decides to sell. Unable to find an apartment anywhere near the rent they were paying to her, they are forced to move into an apartment they know they will be unable to afford in the long run and when the inevitable eviction occurs, they must move to an extended stay hotel, where they pay even more than either of their two other homes and for far less room, worse accommodations, and no legal remedies or protections. 

The other families are single parent, led by mothers whose grit and determination is at once inspiring and also deeply saddening. They are on a hamster wheel that never allows them to get ahead and often has them taking one step forward and three steps back. For one woman, the triggering event is an ex-boyfriend who, while she and her children are out of the house, sets it on fire. Not only does the corporate owner of the house do nothing to assist her in finding a new home, it goes through the process of evicting her even though the home was inhabitable. Having the eviction on her credit score makes it nearly impossible to rent an apartment and she and her children get sucked into a vicious cycle of extended stay hotels, boarding houses, and living on the street. For another woman, it is discovering her boyfriend is cheating on her, leading her to move out and on her own, but with little money to house herself and her three children, she toggles between the couches and floors of family and friends until the inevitable blow ups occur and she is left to start anew. 

Over the course of telling these stories, Goldstone teases out so many of the contradictions that exist in the housing industry and the stringent but often capricious rules that make it so hard to establish stability. One woman Goldstone profiles loses her Section 8 housing when she allows a family member, an ex-offender, to live with her temporarily, something prohibited by the program. Unable to secure another apartment that accepts Section 8, she ends up at yes, the dreaded extended stay, where she quickly falls behind on her bills and is summarily evicted, left to panhandle, using her two-year old daughter as bait to garner sympathy from passersby. Of course, that same woman's credit had basically been destroyed years before when her own mother convinced her to apply for an apartment on her behalf because her own credit was poor, but when the mother falls behind on rent and gets evicted, its her daughter whose credit is now ruined. 

For other families, it is "the system" that keeps them down. Federal agencies who define homelessness differently, making it impossible to access needed services. State laws that provide renters almost no legal rights and tilt heavily toward landlords, who more and more simply rely on algorithms to determine whether they will rent to you even as they pocket application fees many of these families can ill-afford to lose but have to spend that money on the off chance they get approved. On the other end of the spectrum are the companies, private equity groups, and other conglomerates that scoop up residential properties in the growing Atlanta market. Some avail themselves of federal programs allowing them to obtain the benefit of tax credits for purchasing distressed assets and then flipping the properties before they would otherwise be able to because lobbyists stick loopholes into the federal tax code allowing them to do it. Meanwhile, the families who lived in those rent-controlled complexes are left to fend for themselves, and typically with little help or guidance.

Credit scores not only complicate the effort to find housing, but bleed into other aspects of these families' lives, particularly in transportation. The interest rates they are charged to borrow money to buy even a used car are usurious and overwhelmingly result in repossession, leaving them the unenviable task of using a wonky public transportation system that turns 20-30 minute commutes by car into multi-hour trips by bus and train. All of this while attempting to raise children, many of whom shuttle between family members' homes while losing ground at school. As these stories unfold, it is like watching a movie knowing a car crash is about to happen. Any time a family seems to be on the path toward a better tomorrow, the cruel hand of fate intervenes. 

When one woman takes her children away for a quick weekend trip, the friend she is staying with moves out of the apartment they were staying in. By the time she returns, the locks have been changed and not only is she left homeless, vital documents, like her family's social security cards and her kids' vaccination records were tossed out without her knowledge. Another mom works with a non-profit that offers to cover an entire year's rent but when the woman finds an apartment, a needed inspection takes too long and the property owner rents the place to someone else. When another apartment comes free, instead of risking losing it, she switches to a less generous program the non-profit offers, where they simply cover the security deposit and one month's rent, leaving her to take an overnight job, leaving her three kids, all under the age of 12, alone all night. She unscrews the knobs to the stove and hides all the sharp objects to mitigate the risk anything bad will happen while she's away, but lives in constant fear of it or of a neighbor reporting her to the authorities. 

It is a grim tableau and much of it is centered on the extended stay hotels that become makeshift temporary homes for these families. The facilities are expensive while also being filthy, with burst pipes, non functioning air conditioning units (not a small thing during the summer in Altanta), and the standard risks of crime, drugs, and prostitution. It is one of the cruel ironies of the story that the lower down the housing totem pole you fall, the costlier it is to find stable housing. And because there is so little governmental support for the working poor, in a booming city like Atlanta, families must put more and more of their modest income toward housing, which can force them to triage paying other bills. Utility cut offs, car repossessions, and even cell phone plan terminations are routine and of course, any time this happens, it is another mark on their credit score, not to mention increasing the instability these families already face. On top of all that, the laws in Georgia tilt heavily toward landlords, reducing the chances that tenants, especially ones in a precarious financial situation, will complain about leaky plumbing, mold, or cockroaches for fear of being evicted. The common thread you see through so much of this book is the willingness of companies - be they in hiring, housing, or lending - to take advantage of the desperation of the people who need them.

But even in the face of these challenges, Goldstone manages to find humanity's better angels. Be it an overnight shift worker at a gas station who allows one of the mothers Goldstone profiles to sleep in her car with her kids in the station's parking lot, promising to keep an eye out for them and allowing them to use the bathroom to clean up in the morning or the manager of a 24-hour laundromat who lets another of the women Goldstone profiles and is also homeless at the time, to use the phone to make calls in an attempt to find help. Still another, a colorful community activist named Pink is a whirling dervish of effort, dropping off meals to families, finding second hand clothes for their kids, and even putting up families for a few nights in her own home while trying to connect them to community programs. The grace notes are their own form of heartbreaking. One woman, Celeste, who, over the course of the book, gets and loses several different places, is diagnosed with cancer, spends six months living in a boarding home with her young child and other renters who range form the schizophrenic to the sociopathic, hands over a large chunk of her COVID stimulus money (which she really needs) to her eighteen year old daughter, so she, her boyfriend, and baby can stay in yes, you guessed it, an extended-stay hotel.

While Goldstone is comfortable in pointing fingers (and rightly so) at the slumlords who take advantage of these families, less is said about the decisions some of these families make, particularly when it comes to having kids. I did find myself shaking my head at the decisions that led to several of the women profiled in the book having multiple children with multiple men even as they struggle to make ends meet. Men are also vanishingly absent from the story. Of the five families profiled, only one is headed by a husband and wife. Every other adult male is either absent, derelict, or actively sabotaging the women we meet.

And the people you feel worst for are the kids who did not ask to be brought into this life or these circumstances. The children are exposed to drug and alcohol abuse, domestic violence, shootings, unemployment, evictions, and so much more. One child, a young teen named DJ, effectively becomes the parent to his two younger sisters when his mother goes on a weeks-long drinking bender that renders her incapable of doing the bare minimum of parenting. Schooling is often an after thought and one can only imagine the psychological damage being raised in such squalor will have on these children, but the likelihood is they will fall into the same vicious cycle of dead end jobs, scarce resources, and housing insecurity that their parents did. 

If there is one conclusion Goldstone comfortably reaches, it is that we, as a society, have largely turned a blind eye to the working poor among us. The federal government has largely removed itself from the problem, outsourcing public housing to an ill-conceived, ill-funded voucher program that cannot meet the needs of all the people who want to access it or have the available rental stock to house them. Instead, gentrifying downtrodden neighborhoods that replace public housing with pubs, bistros, and yoga studios has become the norm. While this may be in the public interest, it has been done with little thought for how to help working people who still need a place to live. The book ends on an uncertain note. The epilogue does not update us on what happened to these families, whose stories end sometime in 2021 or 2022. But perhaps that is the point. As Goldstone shows, the uncertainty and instability that marks the lives of the working poor make it difficult to find a happy ending.