Spoilers: What Is the Big Twist in Kathy Bates' 'Matlock' Reboot?

By Jen Maravegias | TV | September 23, 2024 |

By Jen Maravegias | TV | September 23, 2024 |

In the same way Marcia Gay Harden deserved better than So Help Me, Todd, Kathy Bates deserves better than Matlock, the “new” CBS legal procedural with a twist, as her final bow before retiring from Hollywood.

Bates’ Matty Matlock (“Like the old TV show!”) fakes her way into a partners’ meeting at a high-end NY law firm in a last-ditch attempt to get a job. She shares a sob story about how life’s downturn has sent her back into the job market after 30+ years.

The firm’s senior partner, played by Beau Bridges—who looks entirely out of place in his cozy plaid flannel shirt—wants to give her a chance to prove herself over a two-week trial period. She’s teamed up with the firm’s two very young junior members to do the legwork on a pro bono case that everyone thinks is a loser. Generational differences will supposedly make for great comedy! How will these two ambitious young lawyers (David Del Rio and Elemental’s Leah Lewis) deal with this “old lady” who has dropped into their lives? Everyone will learn valuable lessons, I’m sure. Matlock is low on the legal end of the procedural see-saw and high on lessons about life and relationships.

Matty, of course, helps uncover the crucial evidence that saves the client, earning the begrudging respect of the lead counsel (Skye P. Marshall, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina) and landing the job. And that should be the end of a mediocre episode. But it’s not because there’s a twist — Matty Matlock isn’t who she says she is. The last name of “Matlock” is even made up, designed within the series to evoke memories of the Andy Griffith character.

One of the most overused tropes in legal procedurals is creating a backstory with a deeply personal reason for the protagonist to have become an investigator. Dead wives, dead moms, injustices that need to be righted—we’ve seen it all, haven’t we? In Matlock, it’s a dead daughter who was a victim of the opioid crisis. And someone at the firm that Matty Kingston has infiltrated is responsible for… not ending the nation’s entire opioid crisis before it could take her daughter’s life.

Yeah, I’m not sure how that works either. Regardless, that’s the real mission and the story the show will be built around, sprinkled with some legal cases to solve each week.

Jason Ritter is here, playing against type as a heavy. How many weeks will viewers buy him as a bad guy? I had a hard time accepting it for 43 minutes. Moonfall’s Eme Ikwuakor is also a vested partner at the firm and the eventual love interest for Marshall’s character.

The one scene in the pilot episode that elicited a response was when Matty and the two junior lawyers visit a former prostitute in their attempt to track down evidence. Sherleen has taken up painting in her retirement, and her apartment is decorated with her yoni art.

She asks Matty, “Do you know where your clitoris is?” I chuckled because anyone who has seen Fried Green Tomatoes knows Kathy Bates has an answer to that question.

When I wake up at 3 a.m. and can’t fall back asleep, there are shows I can put on to lull me back to sleep. Kathy Bates is always a joy, but this show is going onto my insomnia playlist, right next to NCIS and the upcoming Ziva Loves Tony spinoff.

I wanted to like this show for Kathy Bates’ sake, but she has a line in the episode that feels like it explains how this show happened and why it is exactly like every other CBS show catering to the network’s older demographic.

“There’s a time in life when you make decisions based on what you think is right, and there’s a time when you make decisions based on money. I did what was right all my life, and now I need to make it rain.”

The pilot is available to stream now on Paramount+. New episodes of Matlock will begin airing on CBS and streaming on Paramount+ starting October 17th.