Matlock Recap: The Nanny State

Eight episodes into this first Matlock season, with a long holiday break ahead before we get the next episode, this show has made one idea abundantly clear: Lying ain’t easy. Matty Matlock has to remember every piece of the backstory she created for herself when it comes up conversationally — like in this week’s episode, when Olympia asks for some advice about Julian’s philandering, given that Matty’s fictional dead husband, according to the lore, was a cheater. None of these lies are harmless. At the very least, they’re an abuse of trust.

That’s why it’s probably not a coincidence that this pre-break episode is about a lie that spins out of control. While handling a drop-off at her twins’ school, Olympia learns that one of her family’s favorite nannies, Nadira (Ashley Romans), has been effectively ostracized by her fellow upper-class moms. It seems a website called Eyes From Afar has posted misleading, out-of-context photos of Nadira roughly grabbing a kid at a playground. Olympia wants to see if she can either get the images removed or file a defamation suit against whoever put them there (or both). But she wants to stay out of sight as much as possible, lest the meanest mothers at her kids’ school accuse her of “defending an abuser.”

Now, other more law-focused legal dramas might’ve used this premise as an entry point into a larger consideration of social media, misinformation, and cancel culture, and Matlock does, too — a little. A lawyer defending Eyes From Afar stands up for free speech and crowdsourcing justice persuasively enough to convince a judge. But the judge also rules against Jacobson-Moore because she’s annoyed by Matlock being Matlock.

Rather than going hard on law stuff or culture stuff, this episode relies a lot on Matty using her powers of empathy and her facility with fibs to crack the mystery underlying this case. First, using a tip from Olympia, she tries — and, like I said, fails — to win over the judge by reminding her that her own nephew has been branded as a criminal for life because of one bit of trouble with the law. (The judge: “My nephew is a moron. Tell Olympia I said hello.”) Later, Matty plays the “weak little old lady” card at Olympia’s kids’ school to get the receptionist to step away from the front desk long enough for Matty to steal some pages from a visitors log.

The latter caper bears fruit, as Matty and Olympia — with the help of, appropriately, a nanny cam — are able to coax one of Olympia’s friends, Lacy (Cathryn Mudon), into confessing to framing Nadira to cover up evidence of her affair with one of the other mom’s husbands. (As it turns out, Nadira had no idea about the affair, so Lacy lied about her online for no reason. Never lie, kids.)

While all this is going on, Matty is — as always — sneaking around Jacobson-Moore, looking for the smoking gun that will prove Senior buried evidence against Wellbrexa. Using the password she tricked Stuart into revealing last week, she prints out what she hopes will be a damning document but is dismayed when the papers come out at the office’s print center. The pages are routed to Olympia, who immediately stashes them in her bag. While capering around with her boss, Matty keeps looking for a private moment alone with Olympia’s luggage.

In the end, Matty retrieves the document but discovers that it only proves Senior was out of the office in Sydney (with some mystery woman!) when the damning Wellbrexa files arrived. This is terrible because it means either Julian or Olympia likely forged his signature. Even worse, the result of all this is that both Olympia and Julian can sense Matty’s vibe is off. She wants to stay on Julian’s good side so she can get more pharma work, but she overcompensates to ease his mind at the expense of her relationship with Olympia — who is annoyed when she hears from Julian that he asked Matty to keep her “in check” during the case. Matty apologizes and promises to be the trusted confidante of whichever partner she’s working for on any given case. (Then she plants a surveillance pen on Julian’s desk.)

As often happens with Matty, she’s able to ground her lie in something real and then use that to get Olympia back on her side. She blames her squirrelly attitude throughout the case on a promise she made to Alfie — to watch him in a mock trial at his school — that she had to break due to work. Matty and Olympia have one of their revealing heart-to-hearts about how their personal lives and identities have affected their respective careers. Olympia wonders why Matty put her Alfie appointment in the office calendar as a doctor visit, and Matty replies that back in her first go-round as a lawyer, women always pretended anything child-related was actually a health thing so their male bosses wouldn’t use their commitment to family as an excuse to block promotions or raises.

While on the whole, I felt like this “fall finale” of Matlock was one of its weaker episodes — with very little progress on the Wellbrexa investigation and an underwhelming case of the week — I do think it contains one of the series’s most revealing moments after Matty fails to make it to Alfie’s event. Edwin, trying to make her feel better, chuckles that he covered for her “just like the old days with Ellie.” She responds with righteous ire, noting that she had to cover for him, too, and that he never seemed as bothered about missing those school events. Matty, on the other hand, felt responsible for every parenting misstep and worked extra hard to make up for them.

I worry sometimes that Matty has become so driven to avenge Ellie’s death that she’s deluding herself about what she can actually achieve — and whether it’ll matter. Still, if nothing else, returning to the workforce in her 70s has given her a new perspective on her past as a lawyer and mother. She’s working her way toward some truth, even if it’s not the one she set out to find.

Hot Doggin’

• How is Billy doing post-Claudia? In his own words, he’s “not currently operating at 100 percent battery.” In Sarah’s words, he’s “as fragile as a Forever 21 T-shirt.” But according to Olympia, he’s doing just fine. (“People let you down. Better he know now.”)

• I’ll say this for Matty the Liar: She’s really good at playing the “Matty Matlock” part, making offhanded references to how cash-strapped and low-rent she is. Here she is in this episode looking for a usable prop from Olympia’s bag: “You got any of those protein bars that taste like leather and cost more than dinner at Arby’s?”

• Olympia and Matty after a successful private school entry-log heist: “Hit it, Louise!” “Copy that, Thelma!”