Percysowner

There are ways around it. it does seem as if she did maintain her bar license even after she stopped active practice. Her maiden name could, by coincidence, have been Matlock and she continued to use it when she practiced and never changed it as her professional name. Yes, I know she and Artie talked about how Matlock was his mom's favorite show, but it could have been her favorite BECAUSE he had the same name as her mother. She could have covered her bases and changed it legally, so she is practicing under proper credentials. Basically, there are ways that using her Madeline Matlock persona meets legal criteria.

The show has been doing a slow burn of this story, so I'm trusting them to eventually give us more information on Matty's daughter. As to why Wellbrexa, this is the US of A. All drugs get patents and the company that invented them gets all the profits. For example fentanyl was made by TEVA owned by the Sackler family and THEY are the ones that pushed the drug as safe and non-addictive, or at least not very addictive. Other companies my develop similar drugs, but only fentanyl one that has caused the biggest crisis. Pharmaceutical companies do not enjoy sharing the credit or the wealth from their drugs. We have to accept that Matty's daughter got addicted specifically to the drug that Wellbrexa made. That is a reaction a lot of people have. It is carving out the "right kind" of addicts and giving them sympathy. It is similar to how for most of history rape victims had to be the "right kind" of victim, someone who did nothing to "ask for it". The point of the show is, whether the addict was completely sympathetic or not Wellbrexa manufactured, promoted and sold a drug under the umbrella of being safe and not incredibly addictive and that they not only lied, they hid documents that proved the lie at some point when their safety was being reviewed. Addiction really is and illness. Some people can deal with the stresses of life better than others. That doesn't make the fact that, in Matty's theory, a rich, powerful company TARGETED the people who were most likely to be hurt by their product.

They could be moving toward that, but pulling the drug early would not have affected "street drugs". Like Fentanyl, this was an opioid that was prescribed legally for pain management, because the company withheld information that the drug was highly addictive and ODs were highly lethal. Their daughter may well have simply gotten the drug after an injury, continued to get it from the doctor and then gotten hooked that way, not because she had working parents. Yes, they could have missed the signs of addiction, but I'm hoping the story is more complicated than "bad parenting made her turn to drugs".

I have heard that defense attorneys tell all of their clients to NOT tell them if they are guilty, because they can't ethically put a person on the stand if they know they are going to lie. It could easily be the same here. If they don't know, they can proceed. If they know their clients did certain things wrong, then they can't legally defend them the same way.

On a totally trivial note, I guess sketchy doctor and his former girlfriend need to get a divorce now, right? That could lose one of them some money if one or the other has gotten better salaries, benefits, etc. since they split.

I have a different view on confessions about having an affair. I think Julian did the right thing. He and Olympia are about to restart their marriage. She has the right to make that decision based on all the facts, not just the rosy glow of having made up on the issues that set off the divorce. If the affair had happened when they were separated, the way I think happened with Olympia and Elijah, it would be a different thing, because they were apart and no longer owed fidelity to each other. If the affair had happened while they were married, I don't approve of hiding it, but see more reason that it would be cruel to reveal it. I admit, this is based on the fact that I spent years working on my marriage because he said I was the only thing keeping him sane, he had mental health issues, and that he had no one else. Come to find out that he had been seeing someone else for a couple of years while I ran around getting him therapists, understanding why he couldn't work, going to counseling to try and get the marriage back on track. If I had known that I wasn't his only means of support, I could have gotten out earlier. Olympia needs to make her decisions based on all the facts. She may be able to reconcile this because of her feelings for Elijah. She may be really angry because she did put her feelings for Elijah on hold until the divorce. I think she deserves the choice.

There is a lot going on this episode. First, this has raised the first possible indication that Wellbrexa itself may not have been the primary bad actor. What was shown was that the doctor (probably) buried the files and fudged the data. He may well have done it on his own. Yes, it could have been because he was told to. It could also have been because he wasn't told to, but thought it would make the company happy. He might also have done it for personal reasons i.e. if HIS drug goes through he will get paid better and become better known in the industry and worth more. We get reports all the time of scientists fudging their data including the recently revealed case of a Harvard scholar who published an article on honesty that used false data to prove his point. People are weird sometimes. I do agree that finding the text messages to be inadmissible would not necessarily end the case. The Wellbrexa was willing to settle before they showed up, and Matty should have used that argument instead of "let's be nice". The cellist has a friend who is representing her pro bono, so she's not incurring a lot of costs and $50,000 is nuisance suit money for a big corporation, especially if the get a Non-disclosure agreement added. I do think that the case MAY come back and maybe even tie into Matty's quest. Why? Because there is a slight chance we have Chekov's blue file folder out there. It just seems interesting that this fact, that the doctor had different file folders for some complaints, was just dropped in there. OTOH, I may have watched way to many mystery shows and read way to many mystery books and am seeing things that are unimportant. I totally understand. I wasn't a lawyer, I was a law librarian and boy does TV misrepresent the profession. Most of the lawyers who came in were dealing with estates, wills, divorce and bankruptcy. Immigration law was big. Labor law was used. Basically most lawyers do jobs that don't look fun.You really can't get a lot of drama over couples trying to decide who gets the TV, who gets the newer car and what the rotating custody schedule looks like. Once in a while one can get nasty, but generally no.

I have to say that as much as Matty felt that what she did was morally wrong, what she did was actually legally ethical and required. She is employed by a law firm that is employed by Wellbrexa to protect them against law suits. Yes, we are certainly being shown that Wellbrexa is a bad actor, but they are the client. Matty found out something that was true and made it part of the court record. That was her job. Frankly, if she had decided she couldn't do it, she would have needed to quit, because she would have been hiding evidence. The irony is that she is doing all this because she believes someone at the firm hid evidence to protect Wellbrexa. So, to help a sympathetic plaintiff, Matty would have had to do the EXACT thing she is trying to bring the firm down for. You really can't say, "I think this is a good person, so I will hide something to help them," and at the same time "I think this bad person hid something to help themselves and they must suffer vengeance". You can't choose to give a full defense only to the people you like, or feel sympathy for. Part of Matty's journey may be discovering that she has to do things that cross her morals because that's what legal ethics require She may also come to see that whoever represented Wellbrexa all those years ago did the same thing, something legal, but morally wrong. I'm also pretty sure she is going to have to reckon with how much of her soul she is willing to sell in order to get the "justice" she wants.

They are also ignoring that IRL over 300,000 people have died due to fentanyl addiction since the drug was introduced. Even it it can be argued that they were all weak addicts who brought it on themselves, the truth is that the manufacturers and the drug stores that sold it are paying BILLIONS of dollars because THEY DID SOMETHING WRONG. They did things that made the opioid crisis. The manufacturers told doctors they had created a pain killer that worked better than what was out there, which was true, and that it wasn't THAT addictive so it could be prescribed liberally, which was a lie. The producers marketed the drug as useful for many conditions that are painful, instead of limiting it to conditions where is is necessary to relieve pain. They said it was safe, long term, effective. They recommended giving doses that they knew caused dependency. When a panel testified to the FDA about changing the standards for prescribing the opioids to prohibit the use of opioids for chronic, common conditions, somehow 8 of the 10 "independent experts" had ties to the pharmaceutical industry and the panel said, nope all is good. As of now in the story we don't know HOW Elie became addicted. It is quite likely, given the history of the opioid epidemic that she was prescribed the pills by her doctor for an actual physical injury or pain situation and then, using the guidelines put out by the manufacturers, the doctors started upping the doses and eventually she became fully addicted, just the way the manufacturers KNEW would happen. We look down on addicts, but addiction is a disease. In the case of opioids, the opioid fairy didn't drop pills on random people and they got addicted, instead the manufacturers made the pills, set the dosing at addiction levels and made a ton of money. Now, people are dying and, in the worst ramification, doctors are so leery of prescribing opioids that the people they could actually help, people in short term or even long term agony who can not be helped by any other means are being denied proper care. Matty is doing a lot of suspect things, but labeling her as simply seeing her daughter as perfect, and only being selfish isn't the whole story. She is also looking at making people who she thinks helped implement a long term plan to hurt and kill people for money. Matty has targeted 3 people, 2 of whom may be guilty of nothing. She is pursuing a good cause using bad methods and, at the same time, finding out that the people who did this are, people, with hopes, dreams, flaws, good points and she is going to have to face what SHE is doing to good people, who MIGHT have done bad actions, or who might be innocent. That is the reprehensible side of her crusade.

If the pregnant mother had testified, she would have been subject to cross-examination and that part would be stressful, especially since the defense was trying to prove that the contamination came from the mothers being negligent, not from the factory.

A cat, so Owned by Percy would have been more true. My boy died after 18 years of loving me and me loving him. I'm glad I can keep part of him alive when I post.

Her mother was addicted to alcohol. Her daughter was addicted to drugs. Those addictions were more important to them than anything else, which is part of addiction. Matty told Alfie that there is a genetic propensity to addiction. What if Matty's addiction is this search for either "justice" or revenge. It's not exactly the same thing, but Matty is starting to go down the same path an addict does.

I think the show is being very clear that Matty, while being the protagonist, is not really "the hero". She has a very clear cause. The emotions behind her actions are very understandable and in many ways relatable. People do want to bring those who hurt a loved one to justice, or at least to bring the people they BELIEVE hurt their loved one to justice. Matty is also doing a lot of underhanded and wrong things to achieve her goals. The show is doing a good job of showing that and criticizing her and her actions. Her husband has real doubts about her mission. We have seen how this has already affected Alfie and, I suspect, will continue to affect him negatively. We see that at least some the people she is targeting are basically good people, not perfect, but not evil either. I will not be surprised if her brushing off Stanley has bad consequences, either by his son dying, or Stanley being hurt trying to find his son. The show portrays a LOT of moral ambiguity. I like the moral ambiguity of it all. I also know that they needed an actress of Kathy Bates' ability to pull it off. She embodies Matty making her understandable, likable (mostly), driven, grieving, angry and unlikable at times. This show rests on having an actor of her quality to make it work and for me, it really works.

For those who have been wondering we will finally be getting a look on why Skye and Julian are getting divorced this week Matlock’s Skye P. Marshall Previews ‘Magical’ Flashbacks, Mulls Olympia’s Eventual Reaction to Matty’s Secret Marshall also talks about the casting process for the show.

Yes, the premise of this week's case was weak and you have pointed out all the holes in it. I'm pretty sure that the point as to show how their daughter's death has affected her parents and led to this obsession to find the "guilty" party who could have stopped the drug company from distributing the opioids. The show pretty much relied on the general public knowing certain catch phrases about legal matters so most viewers would nod and go along with the premise. As to the daughter, I think the show is doing a pretty good job of fleshing out all the characters slowly. They are all getting edges or getting edges sanded down. We are learning about them the way most people learn about new coworkers, over time as you find out more about their lives. I do expect a good look into the daughter at some point, especially since we don't know anything about Alfie's father or why he isn't in the picture. There is a story to mine there and I trust that they are working to reveal it when it will be most effective. I'm not sure Matty et al. think the drug company would have been shut down if evidence hadn't been buried, more likely that the FDA would have pulled the drug off the market and/or a big lawsuit against the drug company would have started 10 years earlier and the company would have stopped certain practices that made getting access to their drug so easy. I don't know that they are right in this belief, but losing a child can make you a little crazy and make someone obsess to find someone to blame and make pay. I'm not sure Matty is SUPPOSED to be the "good guy" protagonist in the show. She may well be intended to be the villain. Certainly enough viewers are questioning her actions that the writers may want us to see this as a shades of grey situation and Matty et al. being a lot darker grey than most series protagonists are.