Matlock: An Episode 2 In-Joke Might Tease Matty's Downfall
Contains spoilers for "Matlock" Season 1, Episode 2 — "Rome, In a Day"
Audiences are still learning all about Matty Matlock (movie star Kathy Bates), and Episode 2 threw some surprisingly dark shades onto our antiheroine after building her up as such a sympathetic force in the pilot. It turns out she has a happy marriage, a nice house, and a loving grandson — but she didn't lie about her daughter's opioid addiction, which is part of her driving motivation to work with Jacobson Moore. Unfortunately, the seeds for her very destruction are sewn during the first few minutes of "Rome, in a Day" — and it may hint that her lack of attention to detail will come back to bite her in the end.
At the beginning of the episode, Matty has a dream that she's being confronted by Olympia (Skye P. Marshall), Julian (Jason Ritter), and Senior (Beau Bridges). They've caught on to the remark she made in the pilot episode about the NBC run of the late Andy Griffith's "Matlock." She misstated the end date of the series as being in 1992. It turns out it ran for three more seasons on ABC, ultimately leaving the airwaves in 1995 after 9 seasons. Envisioning herself in a white seersucker suit like the one Griffith wore in the drama, she covers for her mistake, saying she doesn't count the ABC seasons as part of the show. But the questioning grows intense, and she wakes up spooked. Her husband comforts her, telling her it's best to simplify her stories to make sure her nightmare doesn't become reality.
Indeed, this is a big hint that Matty will cause her own downfall, either through elaborate lying or by hubris. But apparently, this little in-joke in the pilot wasn't intentionally created to build into the episode.
Matty's gaffe was actually a writing room error
It turns out Matty's pilot gaffe on "Matlock" wasn't an intentional easter egg. Writer and series co-producer Jennie Snyder Urman, formerly of "Jane the Virgin," made the gaffe while creating the pilot's script, realized what she'd done, and decided instead to simply let the mistake stand and make a correction in Episode 2.
"I thought, that's going to be useful because Matty is tracking everything. It's also a nice way into the meta storytelling for the second episode and I knew it would help me do a little table setting," she explained to the Seattle Times. Her ultimate goal? To make women like Matty a little more visible in the television landscape. "I wanted to write about how older women are overlooked in society, and I gave myself a challenge: I wanted our heroine to be constantly telling the audience that she's being underestimated, and then I wanted the audience to enjoy watching her take advantage of that underestimation," Snyder Urman continued.
Ultimately, the series' goal is for the audience itself to realize that it has underestimated Matty. Time will tell if they continue to overlook her obvious assets.