At Intolerant TV, we watch every new show on network television for the fall season—so you don’t have to. We don’t watch them for long, though. Instead of giving thumbs up/down or a certain number of stars, we let you know how long we were able to stand the pilot episode before turning it off.
Okay, I don’t know who thought a reboot of Matlock was a good idea.
They spent all NFL Sunday pitching the show and telling football fans that it’s nothing like the old Matlock. So … why reboot a show and then tell everyone it’s nothing like the original? That’s usually the biggest criticism of a reboot.
Of course, there’s no one who will criticize the show for being nothing like the original, because everyone who watched the original Matlock. Literally. The audience was in their 60s when it was on the air. There is no one alive who watched this show voluntarily.
We open in line at the coffee shop. A smarmy lawyer is in line, talking loudly on his cell phone. He’s in a hurry, but someone at the front of the line is struggling to figure out how to pay with a chip card. Finally, he offers to pay for his coffee and hers, then rushes out. When he leaves, we see that the person at the front of the line is Kathy Bates.
“Well, isn’t that a nice way to start the day?” she says, as she stuffs sugar packets into her purse, already filled with hard candy. “And they say the world is going to poop.”
Okay, I agree. This is nothing like the original. It’s also witty and clever. I’m going to need to rearrange my schedule, because this show is not getting fired anywhere near as early as I’d originally budgeted.
Kathy bumbles again at the pass entrance to an office building, holding up the line. Someone uses their pass to let her in. She does it one more time on the 21st floor to get the secretary to let her in. Then her smiling, slightly confused face shifts to deadly serious. She tosses the coffee smarmy lawyer bought her into the trash and pulls out a hand-drawn map of the floor.
Oh it is Kathy Bates, all right, in all her ankle snapping glory.
I delete all the Andy Griffith jokes I’d been planning to use to fill space when I pulled the plug on this show after two minutes. I’m in for the long haul.
Huge conference room. Law firm staff meeting. Another smarmy lawyer is running it. He’s just been promoted and throws his new, high salary in everyone’s face. But he also makes fun of the Mets, so he’s not all bad. He pressures Olympia (played by Skye Marshall, who I recognize, although she hasn’t been in anything I’ve watched. I think I know her from Good Sam) into settling a wrongful imprisonment lawsuit. She wants to get a higher settlement amount, but she needs more research help from a good associate. Jason Ritter, who is also in this show, takes the boss’s side.
Jason brags that he’s about to settle with Peabody for 19 million. Not so fast, Mr. Man. Kathy Bates thinks you can get more out of them. She steps forward.
Who are you?
She introduces herself as Matty, short for Madeline Matlock. “Like the old TV show, she says,” then explains that unlike Matlock, she’s a “real lawyer” and things are getting super meta. She also says, “You can only protest so much before you sound like you’ve got a big old pole up your heinie.”
She crashed the meeting to show that she is worthy of the firm’s open associate position. But they have refused to interview her for it, probably because she’s so old.
“I think you’ve earned yourself an interview,” says smarmy boss.
“Thank you but I don’t want an interview, I want a job,” she answers. She then explains that, when women get old, everyone ignores them. That’s how she snuck in, and how she staked out the coffee shop where the first smarmy lawyer was talking about settlement amounts on his phone. Peabody is willing to pay $23 million.
Beau Bridges—yes, he’s in this too—is the firm’s owner and hires Matlock on a two-week trial basis. And, oh hey, didn’t Olympia just say she needed help from an associate?
I honestly don’t see why they needed to do this show as a Matlock reboot. That will likely turn off much of the audience that would’ve turned out to watch Kathy and Beau. It’s tightly written. Nothing is wasted. The dialogue is snappy and makes fun of its 80s roots before you can. (“I’m Matlock, like the TV show,” she says to a pair of 20-something associates. “What TV show?” they answer.) It also isn’t afraid to walk the line. (An interview with an aging prostitute includes the exchange, “Do you know where your clitoris is? A lot of women your age don’t.” “I do, but my husband didn’t.”)
It’s your standard legal drama, but then, at the end of the pilot, we get a delightful twist at a subplot that looks like it will drive at least the first season.
Verdict: Kathy Bates could have carried a bad show, but this would have been the best-written new show of the season without her. Put them together and this show is alive and well.
