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Kathy Bates' CBS legal drama has a trick up its sleeve that rivals any courtroom reveal. Can the show pull it off?
[Warning: The following contains spoilers for the series premiere of Matlock on CBS. Read at your own risk!]
Up until the last few minutes of the Matlock season premiere, there is no doubt in my mind that the majority of people watching were thinking something along the lines of, "Well, that was nice but also, why?" I'm sure the sentence "Kathy Bates is very good, but do we really need a Matlock remake?" came out of more than one person's mouth. Yes, there's a certain delight in watching Bates take Matlock — the original Andy Griffith-led legal drama premiered in 1986 and ran for nine seasons — and turn it into a story about how foolish it is to overlook and underestimate women of a certain age. How can one not be entertained by Bates using that Southern charm to disarm suspects, witnesses, and colleagues to get what she wants? Plus, who doesn't love a big courtroom reveal? But in a landscape full of more legal and crime dramas than one could ever really need, to just gender-flip the Matlock formula feels a little underwhelming.
And then we get the twist.
The bulk of the pilot episode plays out much like you'd expect. We watch Bates scam and sneak her way into collecting some important details regarding a high-stakes negotiation, then bypass security in order to get a seat in a partners meeting at Jacobson Moore, a huge corporate law firm run by "Senior" (Beau Bridges); his son, Julian (Jason Ritter); and Julian's soon-to-be ex-wife, Olympia (Skye P. Marshall). She interrupts that meeting to introduce herself: She's Madeline "Matty" Matlock; yes, she's a lawyer, and yes, her name's Matlock, just like that famous TV lawyer; and she wants a job at their firm. She's broke, she's raising her grandson, and she spent most of her life as a lawyer trying to do the right thing — now she wants the money. Or, rather, she'd like to "make it rain," as she tells the room. She uses those aforementioned important details about a high-stakes negotiation to earn herself a two-week trial for a more permanent gig at the firm and gets pushed onto Olympia's team.
Olympia is an excellent lawyer, so it's not exactly the reject team, but Matty is for sure being brushed aside at the moment. Olympia has grown weary of big pharma cases and corporate law and wants to prove to Senior that they could actually take on cases that help people who need it and still make money. She, too, is being underestimated. So they work the case (the case in the season premiere has to do with a wrongly incarcerated man suing the police department), Matty uses her "harmless old lady" act to get some leads, and they win the case for their client. It's good old-fashioned, harmless fun. Bates and Marshall are a super compelling onscreen duo, and even within their first few minutes of interaction, you know there's a lot to mine from their characters' relationship. The other junior associates on the team — Billy (David Del Rio), the empathetic and patient one; and Sarah (Leah Lewis), who is neither of those things — make great additions to the mix, too. The first episode easily sets up the workplace dynamics, and sure, Matlock could certainly coast as a harmless legal drama with a likable group of characters for the foreseeable future.
But the last few minutes change everything. Surprise: Matty says goodbye to her new colleagues after a job well done and hops on the bus, and one stop later, she steps off the bus and into a limo. Matty has been lying to everyone, including us, from the very beginning. She's not Madeline Matlock — she's Madeline Kingston. She's definitely not broke — she lives in a mansion with her very alive and lovely husband (Sam Anderson) and, yes, her grandson, Alfie (Aaron D. Harris). She didn't bust her way into the Jacobson Moore conference room because she needs a job; no, she has a much more interesting motive.
Matty's daughter died of an opioid overdose, and they know that not only did Jacobson Moore represent the pharmaceutical company, but that someone at the firm hid documents that would have implicated the drug company, which would have gotten the drug off the market — potentially saving not only Matty's daughter, but countless others who became addicts. Matty — with assists from her husband and Alfie, both very much in on her plan — wants to figure out who got rid of those documents, bring the truth to light, and send whoever it was to prison. The three suspects she has up on her handy-dandy crime board? Senior, Julian, and Olympia. Matty is willing to do anything to get justice for her daughter.
Now, let's be real: Matlock is still very much a broadcast TV legal drama, and it's not reinventing anything here, but this twist certainly gives the show a little bit of edge. It most definitely gives Kathy Bates a whole lot more to play. Suddenly, there are layers to the tricks Matty is pulling off: She isn't just playing up the "harmless old lady" act to solve cases — her entire persona at the office is a performance. And now, this seemingly harmless woman is living in a moral gray area. We're rooting for her to find justice for her daughter, but we are also watching her lie to literally every other character around her.
That compelling back-and-forth between Matty and Olympia I mentioned earlier? It's only going to get more interesting now. It's clear the two women, who both have their guards up (for very different reasons, of course), are headed toward common ground and perhaps an actual friendship. What happens if Olympia is the guilty party? How will Olympia react when she learns she's been lied to so deeply? From this point on, we can view every relationship, every budding friendship Matty is building, through a wildly different lens than we would have. We'll also, no doubt, watch as this lie and this personal mission take a toll on Matty — not only will it be exhausting to keep up the ruse, practically speaking, but there is sure to be an emotional toll as well, as these faces up on her cork board become real, live people she's interacting with and getting to know better every day. With this one twist, Matty becomes an exponentially more interesting character.
ALSO READ: Matlock's Kathy Bates reveals the major flaw in Matty's master plan
Though some might feel duped, it's smart to deploy this twist at the very end of the premiere. As if you'd expect anything less than a twist played to its fullest potential from a show with Jane the Virgin's Jennie Snyder Urman at the helm — taking notes from the telenovelas it was both celebrating and satirizing, Urman's CW series was nothing if not a twist-a-palooza. It's smart to let the Matlock twist unfold this way for two main reasons. One, this is a huge endeavor for Matty to take on — but we now already know she's pretty capable of pulling it off. Why? Because she just tricked us all. When Matty tells the room full of lawyers that she was able to get past security because "this funny thing that happens when women age: We become invisible. Nobody sees us coming," she's talking to the audience, too. Two, tucking this twist into the end of the episode means we just spend 43 minutes becoming (mostly) endeared to this group of people whom we now learn are villains in Matty's eyes. This setup makes things much more complicated than they would be if we came in viewing them as the bad guys from the get-go, which means we're already setting up a whole slew of moral dilemmas and impending confrontations for later in the show's run. The best TV twists aren't just fun or surprising — they also up the stakes. This one does exactly that.
There are, of course, some major pitfalls to a premise-changing twist like this one. Let's be honest: How long are we going to be cool with — or interested in — watching Matty lie to everyone? That scenario has both an emotional shelf life and a practical one. While Matty certainly seems capable of keeping up the ruse, it wouldn't be plausible for her to never slip. The point where the audience will begin to roll their eyes and rescind their suspension of disbelief will come sooner rather than later. If I know my Jennie Snyder Urman, there will surely be some additional twists and turns along the path to Matty finding justice, but there's no way her secret can believably stay a secret for too long. And once Matty's truth is exposed, what happens next? Do we return to being a typical legal procedural drama? Matlock is risking a lot with a twist that, by its very nature, is unsustainable, and yet if anyone has a shot at making this work in the long run, it's probably going to be Urman and Bates. At the very least, it's going to be fun to watch them try.
Matlock moves to its regular time slot with a re-airing of the series premiere on Thursday, Oct. 10 at 9/8c on CBS. Episode 2 will air on Thursday, Oct. 17 at 9/8c, with new episodes available to stream the next day on Paramount+. For more on Matlock, check out our interview with Kathy Bates.