Matlock Recap: Spilt Milk

Matlock
Sixteen Steps
Season 1 Episode 6
Editor’s Rating ★★★★
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Last week’s Matlock episode was the first this season that I found mostly meh, though it did contain one small, quiet moment that may be more meaningful than it initially appeared. I’m referring here to the scene where Matty remembers mocking her daughter Ellie’s fancy fingernails on prom night and wishing she could go back in time and just tell her they look pretty. It’s not uncommon for the parents of addicts to want a redo on the dozens — nay, hundreds — of tiny incidents when they were too critical, too busy, or too disconnected from their child’s life to see how they might be hurting.

In this week’s Matlock — the high point of the season so far — Matty’s memories of Ellie and her reasons for going undercover at Jacobson-Moore become more raw and urgent than ever, thanks to a case that itself is a “do-over.” Olympia and Julian have reopened an old lawsuit against First 12 Formula, a manufacturer of infant formula, whose tainted product may have been responsible for the death of a baby named Dante. Two years ago, this case fell apart at the same time that Olympia and Julian’s marriage was collapsing in the wake of the death of Olympia’s father. The partners have always felt that the strategic choices they made at the trial — and the disunity in their own personal lives — failed their clients, Anna Sampson (Veronica Diaz Carranza) and Vanessa Sampson (Ayesha Harris).

In terms of legwork, the team’s job is fairly straightforward. The factory’s gruff, unhelpful foreman, Harold P. Wong (Christopher Cho), has recently left the company under suspicious circumstances, and the safety upgrades made on the line since his departure suggest that the defendants knew they were negligent. All Matty, Billy, and Sarah have to do is to put the pieces together. With the help of a sympathetic employee, Teddy (Jernard Burks), they figure out what happened: A cascading series of equipment failures and leaks, coupled with a stingy medical leave policy, put Teddy in a position where he was on the production line when he shouldn’t have been, with unclean, ungloved hands. 

But is that evidence enough to sway the jury? Possibly not, given that First 12 has a shrewd lawyer, sowing doubt by arguing there were more opportunities for Dante’s mothers to be unsanitary — intentionally or not — than for the factory to make a catastrophic mistake. And so we circle back to the choice Olympia and Julian still regret from the last time they handled this case: The mothers didn’t want to take the stand back then, and in order to sign them as clients, Olympia promised them they wouldn’t have to testify. 

This time though? Their testimony could be what gets the jury to set aside any lingering skepticism. Or… On the witness stand, the unshakeable guilt that all parents feel when they lose a child may cause them to break down and take the blame.

This is what I was talking about up top. Matty’s mixed-up feelings about Ellie — a combination of rage, grief, self-pity, and self-recrimination — may end up having a profound effect on how her mission within Jacobson-Moore plays out. Throughout this episode, we get flashbacks to two years ago, when Olympia and Julian botched Vanessa and Anna’s case and when Matty visited New York and made the decision to take down J-M. We see how a distracted Olympia yelled at Matty during a chance encounter, which Matty interpreted as “a sign” from “the universe” to proceed with her plan. More importantly, we hear Matty’s justification to Edwin for why she has to take on this challenge: “It’s my last chance to parent our child.”

This notion recurs throughout the episode. Remember the dating app guy from last week’s cliffhanger, who recognized Matty as Madeline Kingston? Turns out his name is Stanley (Henry LeBlanc), and the reason he knows her is because his addict son Tommy used to run around with Ellie. He wants Matty’s help in finding Tommy, who has disappeared on a bender again. Although his timing is awkward, Matty makes an earnest attempt at encouraging Stanley, advising him to approach the search like a private investigator, earning the trust of fellow druggies who might point Stanley in the right direction. 

She gives similar advice to Vanessa and Anna — not about how to find a lost child, but how to give their all for one. She’s sure that if Dante’s moms don’t do all they can to hold his killers accountable, they’ll “regret not taking this last opportunity to parent their child.” (A familiar phrasing!) She tells this to Olympia, who asks her about Ellie, prompting Matty to tell a story about how her daughter used to insist on playing in the park where the big kids played … until she eventually broke her arm. 

Her memory of Ellie’s cast is plot-relevant because it leads to Olympia questioning Teddy about his own broken arm, which affected his reaction to a burst pipe on the factory floor. But it also matters because it’s yet another reminder that Ellie was her own person, making her own choices, and that Matty will always be haunted by where those choices led. 

So again: This is the risk Olympia and Julian are taking when they stake their entire case on the ability of Dante’s moms to hold First 12 — not themselves — accountable. The challenge gets tougher when the warm, relatable Anna (who is pregnant again and on bedrest) can’t testify, leaving the frostier Vanessa as the only hope. She’s honest with the team, admitting it’s taken her years to get to a place where she doesn’t collapse into darkness and dysfunction every time she thinks about Dante. But she holds up well to Olympia’s questions, winning the jury’s sympathy when she remembers how Dante never wanted to go to sleep because he “couldn’t get enough” of being in the world and how she counted the 16 steps from one side of his room to another, back and forth, over and over. 

The Jacobson Moore team wins, of course. (They almost always do.) However, Matty suffers an existential crisis after the verdict when she sees that Vanessa and Anna feel no sense of triumph or validation. If holding the people responsible for the death of a child doesn’t offer any satisfaction to the parents, then why go through all the emotional torment? Now worrying that she’s wasting her time on the Jacobson-Moore mission, Matty has a panic attack. As she recuperates, Edwin again urges her to step aside, focus on raising Alfie, and recognize that nothing about Ellie’s fate makes avenging her into some righteous act. 

Before Matty can tender her resignation, though, Julian gives her news she’s been wanting to hear: He wants her on a big pharma case. With a small, determined smile, Matty accepts the assignment, saying she’s “right where the universe wants me to be.” 

But she still hasn’t honestly answered the big question: Why is she there? Is the “one last chance to parent our child” excuse really about the child or the parent?

Hot Doggin’

• Matty uses her old lady powers to get into Harold’s apartment, saying she has to use his commode and beginning her (never completed) explanation with, “The bladder takes a nosedive after 70, because the vaginal walls….” 

• In one of the flashbacks, Olympia bonds with Teddy in the factory’s outdoor smoking area and mentions how what used to be the smoking patio at J-M is now — as we know — “the crying patio.” But one part of the conversation stuck out to me: when Olympia refers to her “first-year associates” from back then. Where are those lawyers now? I know that even a network show these days probably can’t afford to pay dozens of regular cast-members, but it’s becoming noticeable how few attorneys we see working at Jacobson-Moore. 

• Olympia and Julian officially re-couple by the end of this episode and are planning at the moment to keep this reconciliation “undercover.” I bet Matty might have some thoughts for them about how that’ll go. 

• I appreciate that Matlock has — in small but noticeable ways — regularly reminded the audience that Olympia’s experiences as a Black woman operating at the highest levels in a cutthroat occupation will have been notably different than those of, say, a white legacy kid like Julian. (Or Matty, for that matter! When Olympia eventually finds out that her underdog ally is actually rich, how will she react?) In the flashbacks, Olympia harangues Julian multiple times about his privilege/thoughtlessness, including accusing him of using her race to “seal the deal” with Vanessa. Their most fascinating argument is one about Pajama Day at their kids’ school and how, according to Olympia, Black children dressing sloppily in a predominately white classroom — even for a special occasion — may read differently than Julian realizes.