Matlock Premiere Recap: Matty And Olympia Trade Lies, But Who Got The Upper Hand? (Plus, Grade It!)
It's a battle of the legal titans in Season 2 of Matlock, as Matty and Olympia put their prodigious brains up against one another. But who came out on top?
Sunday's special premiere on CBS — the show returns to its regular time slot this Thursday at 9/8c for Episode 2 — finds Matty and Olympia trying to outmaneuver one another as they dance around the truth about the Wellbrexa case. Olympia knows Julian hid crucial documents, but she's not telling Matty that. And Matty is determined to go to the press, even if it means Julian is implicated. Matty has more troubles on her mind, too, with the arrival of Joey, who claims to be Alfie's father. Matty is skeptical, but Joey produces an old iPod he says was Ellie's, claiming that he and Ellie were in love for two years. (He claims he's clean, too.) Matty will need some proof, so she takes some of his hair for a DNA sample.
Olympia is there for Matty, comforting her about the Joey situation, but she lies right to her face, too, telling her Julian would never conceal a document like the Wellbrexa one. She tries to shift the blame onto Senior, and zeroes in on an unidentified woman Senior took with him on a trip to meet some Big Pharma bigwigs. Olympia sets out to ID the mystery woman so they can get answers from her — and she has a safe installed in her home to keep the damning Wellbrexa documents safe. Julian wants to shred them, but Olympia warns him that could lead to jail time. Meanwhile, Edwin cautions Matty that if they take their evidence to the New York Times, it could mean the end of her friendship with Olympia.
The case of the week is a high school girl named Maya who's accused of burning down her high school's theater after throwing a party there. The kids blamed it on a space heater, but the authorities found nitric acid — an accelerant — at the scene and are charging her with felony arson. What's worse, Maya's friend Georgia turns on her, saying Maya had motive because she didn't get the lead in the school play. The girls both have skeletons in their closet: Georgia went back into the theater after the party to fetch her cocaine (oops), and Maya was being blackmailed by a catfish boyfriend and went back into the theater to use the wifi to pay him off in crypto. Kids today!
Olympia is still looking for Senior's mystery woman and decides to snoop through his Rolodex — old school! — to get the phone number for his flower shop, since they know he sent her flowers. Matty still wants to take her case to the Times, but Olympia stops her: "I'm not implicating the father of my children." Matty doesn't want Olympia or her kids to suffer because of this, but Edwin is pushing her to go public once they get Alfie's DNA results back. While Olympia sneaks into Senior's office and searches through his Rolodex for the flower shop number, Matty has to distract Senior, so she confronts him about treating his son Julian so poorly. A miffed Senior pointedly reminds Matty they're not equals and threatens to use every trick in the book to ruin her career, gloating that "laws don't touch people like me." He's just kidding. We think.
Olympia grills her client Maya's friend Georgia on the stand, getting her to 'fess up about her cocaine use and floating the theory that she torched the theater to cover up that she'd been stealing to feed her habit. Matty tells Olympia she found a disgruntled employee at the flower shop who might divulge who Senior sent flowers to, and they head back to Olympia's brownstone, with the two friends lying their pants off to each other. Olympia worries that Julian came there to destroy the documents, but they're still in the safe — and Edwin thinks he might have the smoking gun in the Maya case. Matty does a fiery demo in Olympia's kitchen, and Olympia confronts the fire expert on the stand with a bucket full of ping pong balls, each of which contain a tiny bit of nitric acid. Georgia brought a bunch of them to the party to play beer pong, and those, plus the space heater, led to the accidental fire. Maya is exonerated. Case closed!
A couple other cases are closed, too: Matty identifies Senior's mystery woman as a lady named Deborah Palmer, and the DNA results say Joey is Alfie's father... and he's not sober, either. Oh, and speaking of paternity: Billy confirms he's the father of Claudia's child, and they decide to get back together to raise the baby. (Note: This episode was filmed before David Del Rio was fired and accused of sexually assaulting co-star Leah Lewis.) As Olympia convinces Julian to come crawling back to work so he can spy on Senior, Matty and Alfie take a nostalgic listen to Ellie's iPod — Florence + the Machine; nice choice — and we find out Matty had another trick up her sleeve. She used a phony phone call to Edwin and the distraction of the fire in Olympia's kitchen to get a peek inside Olympia's safe... and she took the Wellbrexa documents, leaving a copy in their place. She can't believe Olympia lied to her. But she's ready to go to the Times, emailing an editor and promising bombshell evidence.
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