Matlock Recap: Paranoia Will Destroy Ya

Two episodes ago, while chatting in bed with Edwin, Matty tried to reassure him that they were in no real danger from all her subterfuge at Jacobson-Moore. If her ruse were to be exposed, so what? It’ll be embarrassing, sure. But the firm likely wouldn’t press charges, and at the end of the day, they’d still be living comfortably with their grandson Alfie. As I’ve stated before, I think Matty’s hugely underestimating how emotionally damaging it’ll be when the truth inevitably comes out. (You think Olympia’s going to be cool when she finds out just how long her new best friend has been manipulating her?) Still, Matty’s not wrong to think the stakes of her little game may not be as high as she so often pretends.

And given that, I have to ask: Why are Sarah and Shae, who don’t even know there is a game, taking it so seriously?

This week’s Matlock is another craftily plotted one, with a big case that thematically reflects the season’s larger arc, coupled with a persistent low-level tension that makes even the lighter moments feel vaguely unsettling. Clearly, we’re racing toward some kind of reckoning. But because we can’t get there just yet, Matty first has to deal with Sarah and Shae’s immediate threats.

As I predicted last week, the a cappella partners forge an alliance after Shae notices how icy Sarah has become toward Matty. (Honestly, it doesn’t take a human lie detector to spot this, given that Sarah keeps dropping snide remarks or haughty scoffs after everything Matty says.) Thanks to some sloppiness by the not-so-tech-savvy Matty, Shae is also aware that Matlock has been extensively and suspiciously poking around on her LinkedIn page.

So Sarah and Shae decide to investigate if this Jacobson-Moore interloper is really a humble bumpkin who left the law profession behind for decades or if — as Sarah suspects, given Matty’s instant success at J-M — she’s a legal shark posing as a guppy. Not only do these two start looking into Matty’s claims about her past, but they also let Matty see that they’re doxxing her to get under her skin.

This all culminates in a genuinely harrowing sequence, with Sarah standing out in the rain and watching Matty get on the bus, leading Matty to fear she’s being followed. Edwin has to calm his wife down over the phone, lest she have another anxiety attack. Which brings me back to my opening point: Is any of this really worth the stress?

Matlock has made a habit of backing Matty into impossible corners and then revealing that she and Edwin had a sneaky plan all along, so Shae’s dogged pursuit of Matty’s lies never made me too nervous. As soon as Sarah uncovered another old news story mentioning Madeline Matlock’s former life in Savannah, I knew it had to be a trap set by Edwin and Alfie. Sure enough, when Shae tracks down the subject of that article, it turns out to be Edwin in disguise, insisting that Matty’s exactly who she says she is.

There is a slyer element to Matty and Edwin’s plot, though. Before baiting Shae into flying to Georgia, Matty files an HR complaint against her, accusing her of ageist harassment. The trip to Savannah triggers a second complaint, which puts Shae in danger of dismissal. So she promises to back off. There’s also this: During his conversation with Shae, Edwin learns about her past in marketing, and speculates that the reason she’s risen so fast in the legal profession (despite lacking qualifications) is that she knows secrets about Wellbrexa’s ads.

As for Sarah, her comeuppance involves less deception and more karma. She’s humbled by Billy, who gets fed up with her moaning about how Matty stole a case from her and gave it to a clearly inferior lawyer — meaning him. Not only does Billy reject her apology, but he also outclasses her again on this week’s big case, making helpful suggestions while Sarah is distracted by Matty-hate. It all ends with Sarah breaking down in Olympia’s office, and Olympia giving this hard-won advice: Maybe chill out a bit? (Sarah responds by asking Olympia to be her mentor, over-eagerly adding, “Shall we link calendars?”)

As I mentioned, all of this infighting and skulduggery echoes the case of the week, which involves one of Senior’s old Texas oilman acquaintances, Ben Vogel (Christopher Gorham), who, according to Senior, has become a “nut job” environmentalist. Vogel’s company RainWeaver is attempting to fix water scarcity through cloud-seeding. If they can consistently keep the number of silver iodide particles they use within EPA standards, Vogel plans to share the tech with the world. Until then, they’re dealing with protests from the activist group Planet Now and competition from a more profit-driven company called Stratusfy, which seems to have inside information about RainWeaver’s innovations.

Vogel is a well-drawn character, inclined to quirks that make him irritating even when he’s trying to be righteous. He believes he can reduce his biological age through clean living. He walks around barefoot. He sits on his haunches even when he’s in a chair. And yet, as he makes clear, “Just ‘cause I’m a peace-lovin’ dude doesn’t mean I don’t want to draw blood.”

The RainWeaver case has some good twists. Olympia’s team first uses Planet Now’s environmental activism to force Stratusfy to release their silver iodide data. When that tactic goes nowhere, they then try to figure out if someone inside RainWeaver is a corporate mole. In the end, they reach an unexpected conclusion: Vogel has been surreptitiously relying on his most trusted associate to funnel info to Stratusfy, trapping them into breaking the law so he can sue them out of existence and control the patents — which, again, he plans to share.

The thematic connection between this case and the Jacobson-Moore office drama is twofold. For one, there’s a link between Vogel’s obsessive tracking of his employees’ movements and Sarah and Shae’s investigation of Matty. Also, the justification Vogel gives for his maneuver — that he’s doing “a little bit of bad for a whole lot of good” — sounds a lot like Matty’s own rationale.

Matty isn’t in the room when Vogel makes that point. In a nifty bit of narrative misdirection, we see Olympia tearing Vogel down on the witness stand, in what turns out only to be a “what if” scenario, presented by Olympia to Vogel as they sit in Senior’s office. After she explains to him how the trial could’ve gone, she endorses the tech guru’s sneaky plan, saying that as his attorney she won’t spill what she knows. She hates his lies but admires his idealism, as she had a revelation about her career and is now choosing to use her skills and resources to make the world better.

This isn’t an entirely happy ending — not even with Vogel promising to send Olympia more business. Senior’s looming presence dampens any potential celebrations, especially after he drops by Matty’s desk to ask about her HR complaints against Shae. Senior calls this a “friendly check-in” and doesn’t blink when Matty asks — not exactly playfully — if Shae has some kind of hold over him.

Could there be another parallel then between the case of the week and Matty’s mission? While she’s playing cat-and-mouse with Shae and Sarah, it may be that Senior — like Vogel — is acutely aware of everything going at his firm and is allowing it all to happen for his own twisted ends.

Hot Doggin’

• I love that Matlock’s “Cindy Shapiro stories” have become so ubiquitous that Olympia requests one when she’s struggling with a work problem. (Matty obliges in her own way by telling a story about Cindy’s sister-in-law, Gail.)

• Whenever Sarah is furiously angry, she lowers her temper from a boil to a simmer by listening to the audiobook editions of Victorian novels. The only downside? She then starts tossing around phrases like “fie upon her” and “fear hath gripped her heart.” Shae’s exhaustion with this shtick is very funny. Even if these characters aren’t going to work together to take down Matty, they should still share more scenes.

• This is such a packed episode that there wasn’t really room in this review to cover a new subplot that emerged last week. Matty and Edwin have been debating whether or not to find Alfie’s real father so the kid’ll have options should his grandparents die … or get arrested. This week, Edwin insists he no longer has access to the email Alfie’s father sent when Ellie died, but we see at the end of this episode that Edwin is lying. Something else to track.

• The other big ongoing subplot right now involves Olympia and Julian’s divorce, which he tries to expedite this week by telling Olympia to take whatever she wants from their shared assets. She’s not satisfied with this deal because Matty has made her curious about how Julian can afford such a high-end lifestyle on just his salary and his trust fund. Olympia wants to look at the books. She says, “Secrets need to come to the light.” I say Olympia should be careful what she wishes for.