S01.E08: No, No Monsters

[chitowngirl]

Olympia defends a defamed nanny at her children's school; Matty is on a stressful hunt for an important document on the Wellbrexa case.
 

Airdate December 12, 2024

[AnimeMania]

   

Next New Episode: January 30, 2024    CBS    9pm 

[Bastet]

I was heavily distracted by chores (damn holiday season!) so will have to re-watch to properly digest, but I enjoyed Matty back to primarily interacting with Olympia, Sarah, and Billy; the last episode was so jarring, I needed that.

It was huge for Olympia to confide in Matty about the cheating, fun for them to be Thelma & Louise, sweet for Olympia to say she'll allow absences when important to the grandkid, and, of course, the fantastic "You mean something to me" shared exchange -- I am preemptively heartbroken at what Olympia will experience when she learns of Matty's deception. 

I appreciate Sarah telling Billy personal relationships come and go but professional reputations are forever, and hope he indeed heeds that advice. 

I loved Matty calling Edwin out on a marriage spent accommodating his professional schedule, while her schedule conflicts were an issue.  Asking him who Ellie's best friends were was something millions of wives could ask and their husbands couldn't answer, even good husbands/dads like Edwin.  Very well done.  Same with talking about putting child related appointments down as medical appointments -- nice reflection of the time, and what's changed and what hasn't.

Finally, I hate this trend of showing text messages on screen.  Even with my glasses, I can have trouble depending on which TV I'm watching (how big it is and how far away I am) -- I got everything tonight, but if I re-watch in bed, I won't.

[Dowel Jones]

What if no one in the firm actually hid documents, because there never were any documents?  What if it turns out the Reddit post was completely fabricated (perhaps as a trap for someone else)?

[AnimeMania]

Not sure with all the red herrings they threw about who might have posted the pictures, that all the clues were explained. How did that lady get access to someone's else's email account? How did the lady post the message from the school computers if she only stayed at the school long enough to sign in before heading to the hotel. The pictures were taken after the lady left the hotel. I am guessing the lady dropped the case and gave the nanny a huge settlement to forget this ever happened.

[Chicago Redshirt]

5 hours ago, AnimeMania said:

Not sure with all the red herrings they threw about who might have posted the pictures, that all the clues were explained. How did that lady get access to someone's else's email account? How did the lady post the message from the school computers if she only stayed at the school long enough to sign in before heading to the hotel. The pictures were taken after the lady left the hotel. I am guessing the lady dropped the case and gave the nanny a huge settlement to forget this ever happened.

My understanding of the plot was that Affair!Lady wanted to (for some reason) pin the reporting of Nanny to CheatedUponLady in case it was ever discovered. (Which there should have been no reason to expect it would be. There would be no reason to think that Nanny would have the thought process or the resources to probe the anonymous contributor to the site, that the site would give up the identity of the contributor, etc.).

Rather than doing the infinitely easier thing of creating a burner e-mail, she must have convinced Affair!Guy to get her an underused actual e-mail account of CheatedUponLady.

Affair!Lady lied about having not been at the school for a while. Then when she was caught having signed in, she lied again and said she only was there briefly. Again, this seems like an unnecessarily complicated scheme to discredit Nanny on the possibility that Nanny saw AffairLady and AffairGuy at the hotel, recognized them, put two and two together, and then gossiped with her fellow nannies about the affair.

So then she must have said "I'm going to lurk around and take pictures of Nanny in the hopes of getting something that I can use to discredit her. I'm going to ignore the possibility of my hanging around looking for these pictures will increase the chance I get caught." 

This was probably the weakest COTW so far.

Yes, I get it that busybody social media sites might be annoying. But they are not all-powerful and omnipresent.

Nanny could tell the truth of what happened and someone would believe her.

Also, it seems like wouldn't Nanny's employer ask the kids about what happened, and the kid would confirm that they were playing "No, no monsters"?

It also seems absurd that Affair!Lady would go so far out of her way to try to hide the affair, and that she would think that the cockamammie plot of falsifying allegations against Nanny would work to debunk any exposure of the affair. 

Plus I don't get that Olympia would get involved. The other pro bono work she's been able to sell by saying the firm will get a respectable cut. But in this case, they devoted a fair amount of time to a client who had no prospects really of paying the firm any significant amount of money, and jeopardized the firm's relationship with a judge over it.

Also, the First Amendment protects a wide variety of false speech. The remedy for someone getting on the website and saying Nanny sucks isn't having the government force the website to reveal who said that so Nanny can investigate why or how they said that. The easiest/best way is for Nanny to get on the site and say "I'm a great nanny and these photos were taken out of context. I was playing a game called No, no monsters in this one and [whatever her explanation is for the other]"

[Gregg247]

My problem with the CotW is with the casting.  I thought the AffairLady was ALSO the attorney opposing Olympia in court; that they were friends outside the court but opponents in court.  I was surprised when I learned they simply hired 2 actresses who looked so much alike.  Would it have killed them to hire some dude to be the opposing lawyer?  It's not like they were short on guest actresses this week!

[DanaK]

8 hours ago, Bastet said:

I loved Matty calling Edwin out on a marriage spent accommodating his professional schedule, while her schedule conflicts were an issue. 

That blowup was interesting and unexpected. Perhaps that could be what led the daughter to drugs, her parents were too busy to pay attention to her or perhaps too busy to see the early signs of drug use. It certainly continues to cast Matty and Edwin’s marriage in a different light from the initial sweetness and light we initially saw

[marceline]

I totally thought we were going to learn that AffairLady was screwing Julian.

One of the things I like about this show is when Olympia and Maddie have these honest conversations (or at least what passes as honesty for Maddie). Maddie has to lie about so much but when she talks about what it was like coming up in the corporate world she's spot on.

When Maddie talks about how anything to do with your kids got listed as a doctor appointment that's very real and the idea that she would be a little jealous seeing how different things are for Olympia would strike a nerve especially when paired with Edwin's crack about how he had to cover for her with Ellie.

Edited December 14 by marceline

[Nashville]

56 minutes ago, marceline said:

I totally thought we were going to learn that AffairLady was screwing Julian.

Personally I’m betting Julian’s fling was with Shae, if for no other reason than - other than maybe Olympia’s secretary, the Instagram junkie - Shae is the only person in the firm we’ve been presented with as a viable* option.

ETA: it also doesn’t hurt show-wise they’ve already established Olympia wholeheartedly dislikes Shae (“Meerkat”).
 

* Viable = non-married, non-gay female

Edited December 13 by Nashville

[Daff]

1 hour ago, DanaK said:

That blowup was interesting and unexpected. Perhaps that could be what led the daughter to drugs, her parents were too busy to pay attention to her or perhaps too busy to see the early signs of drug use. It certainly continues to cast Matty and Edwin’s marriage in a different light from the initial sweetness and light we initially saw

I agree. The past three-four episodes there have been events which make Matty stop and think-you can actually see it on her face-what part did I (we) play in daughter’s fall? She’s still hellbent though to find the drug company liable, but she’s beginning to accept they may have been a part of it, too.

[shapeshifter]

12 hours ago, Bastet said:

It was huge for Olympia to confide in Matty about the cheating, fun for them to be Thelma & Louise, sweet for Olympia to say she'll allow absences when important to the grandkid, and, of course, the fantastic "You mean something to me" shared exchange -- I am preemptively heartbroken at what Olympia will experience when she learns of Matty's deception. 

I'm guessing this will lead to Matty discovering Olympia was somehow responsible for Wellbrexa being able to continue to push fentanyl. 

I'm still on the fence with this show.

[Bastet]

9 minutes ago, shapeshifter said:

I'm still on the fence with this show.

I'm certainly not here for the cases, but the cast and characters are largely doing it for me -- I only watched because of Kathy Bates, and wouldn't have watched beyond the pilot if not for her, but I'm glad I did because Olympia is terrific.  I was worried at first, but she has been well developed and fantastically performed.  Kathy Bates made the right call in choosing Skye P. Marshall from among the finalists for the role -- their chemistry became the reason I keep watching.

[possibilities]

I've given up trying to predict where the show is going. I don't think blaming the daughter's drug addiction on having two working parents is a good or reasonable plot, though, so I hope that's not what they're going to say. Lots and lots of kids have working parents. And it doesn't sound like the daughter was neglected at all, either. 

I was surprised by and also really interested in and gratified by Maddy's blow up with Edwin. I like that the show is sticking with the portrayal of what it's been like for women and not ONLY from the "invisible if deemed old" angle.

I also like that they are willing to say that even some marriages that look like they are loving and supportive have been dependent on the woman doing more and compensating for the dude's oblivion. I attended a workshop about "the Mental Load" (by the author of a book by the same name) where this phenomenon was investigated and it was pretty depressing. It needs to be reckoned with.

I like Olympia a lot. I am not sure I buy just how much she's bonded with Matty, nor how sympathetic she is to "break up blues" associate. But it does make her very likable as a character.

 

Edited December 14 by possibilities
fix typo

[DanaK]

1 minute ago, possibilities said:

I've given up trying to predict where the show is going. I don't think blaming the daughter's drug addiction on having two working parents is a good or reasonable plot, though, so I hope that's not what they're going to say. Lots and lots of kids have working parents. And it doesn't sound like the daughter was neglected at all, either. 

It's possible Matty feels guilty about her daughter being on drugs, wondering if it's something she and her husband did wrong. It's possible Matty will eventually see it's nothing her husband or her did wrong. I was also surprised at Matty's sudden blowup at Edwin as she really seemed to explode pretty quickly when he seemed to suggest she wasn't there for the daughter. I'm sure some of it is the stress at her current deception, but she has very likely hung on to that hurt for a long while

Something I've been wondering, given Matty is 70-something, it suggests she and her husband had her daughter later in life. Has that been addressed and I missed it?

 

[MissLucas]

Urgh, this was not the episode to correct errors in my cable-knitting. The COTW flew right over my knitting needles but I enjoyed all the interactions between the main players. Once Matty's house of lies comes crumbling down the fall-out will be epic. I love how the writing adds those subtle layers of self-doubt to Matty. And now we know what Senior meant when he called out Julian earlier over the failure of his marriage. TV rules says that Julian must have been sleeping with someone at the firm and that would indeed leave Shae - again according to TV rules. I do hope for a rule-breaking though.

[Chicago Redshirt]

7 hours ago, Nashville said:

Personally I’m betting Julian’s fling was with Shae, if for no other reason than - other than maybe Olympia’s secretary, the Instagram junkie - Shae is the only person in the firm we’ve been presented with as a viable* option.

ETA: it also doesn’t hurt show-wise they’ve already established Olympia wholeheartedly dislikes Shae (“Meerkat”).
 

* Viable = non-married, non-gay female

I guess it depends. Even operating on the assumptions (which I believe are likely valid) that a) the affair partner has to be a) someone we've been shown at this point and b) someone who Olympia knows/ someone who works at Jacobson Moore, there are some number of admins/attorneys who have been in the background, clients, and now the moms at the school where Olympia and Julian send their kids.

There's probably a third assumption, that the affair would have been with someone age-appropriate and conventionally attractive, which would rule out, say, Mrs. B. 

All that said, I was suspecting Shae of having an affair with Julian before the show confirmed that Julian had had an affair.

Edited December 14 by Chicago Redshirt

[shapeshifter]

3 hours ago, MissLucas said:

TV rules says that Julian must have been sleeping with someone at the firm and that would indeed leave Shae - again according to TV rules. I do hope for a rule-breaking though.

20 minutes ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

Even operating on the assumptions (which I believe are likely valid) that a) the affair partner has to be a) someone…who works at Jacobson Moore, there are …now the moms at the school where Olympia and Julian send their kids.

I thought it was going to the Mom who tried to get rid of the Nanny, but I haven't been watching too attentively, so if you noticed this:

26 minutes ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

I was suspecting Shae of having an affair with Julian before the show confirmed that Julian had had an affair.

she's probably the one. Or at least a serious red herring.

 

[Percysowner]

10 hours ago, DanaK said:

That blowup was interesting and unexpected. Perhaps that could be what led the daughter to drugs, her parents were too busy to pay attention to her or perhaps too busy to see the early signs of drug use. It certainly continues to cast Matty and Edwin’s marriage in a different light from the initial sweetness and light we initially saw

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".

[shapeshifter]

9 hours ago, Percysowner said:

…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".

While working more than full time as a single parent, my teen daughter went from an opioid for wisdom tooth surgery to almost buying pills from a guy on the corner. Yes, luck, diligence, and genetic predisposition nipped that disaster in the bud 20 years ago, but my point is that "street drugs" often start out as prescription drugs. This kid selling them likely pilfered them from Nana's medicine chest.
The show is doing a good job of touching on these aspects aside from the Big Pharma's responsibilities for the addiction crisis. 

Maybe it will turn out Jacobson Moore tried valiantly to report what they knew, but got shut down legally.
Maybe someone at Jacobson Moore is the person who posted on Reddit anonymously? 

 

 

[Daff]

Within corporate/parental/societal/medical culpability, there’s no one entity solely to blame. When lawyers get involved, the finger pointing begins. The drug companies would prefer the blame falls somewhere other than on them.

[rejnel]

19 hours ago, possibilities said:

I don't think blaming the daughter's drug addiction on having two working parents is a good or reasonable plot, though, so I hope that's not what they're going to say. Lots and lots of kids have working parents.

THIS. The daughter got addicted because she's an addict. With opioids, some people are addicted from the first dose. Parents may regret losing time with children because of the demands of work (which are literally sickening in this country) but they shouldn't be blamed for addiction. 

Maddie's blow-up about missing Ellie's events was beautifully written and acted. 

Speaking of writing, the judge said "partial" when the correct word was "impartial." Silly. 

[schnauzergirl]

Poor Alfie.  When he first appeared, I commented that he was that kid who would be bullied at school and evidently that's been happening.  Or at the least not having friends.  

Do we know when Ellie started using?  Was it before or after Alfie was born?  Had she been addicted in high school/college and got clean?  And where is Alfie's dad?  That phone call from Ellie to Maddy announcing her pregnancy -- well, Maddy was happy about that so I assumed (wrongly?) that Ellie was OK at that point.  For grandparents to have custody means something drastic has happened to or with the father.  Guess I'm craving some backstory here.

[Boofish]

I can't imagine for one second Olympia doing anything shady or underhanded like hiding evidence in a drug case. That will be a hard sell for me.

[possibilities]

11 minutes ago, Boofish said:

I can't imagine for one second Olympia doing anything shady or underhanded like hiding evidence in a drug case. That will be a hard sell for me.

I feel the same way, unless the pro bono work is her way of doing penance. 

[Ellee]

I really think it is going to be Elijah if we’ve seen the villain yet.  I guess on the other hand — is this the first we’ve seen of Sr.’s assistant?  I’m sure he could easily forge Sr.’s signature. Now whether or not he knew what he was doing ….

[DanaK]

This show is turning out to be way deeper and more emotional than I’m sure any of us expected when we all thought it was just a “Matlock” remake

[Zaffy]

cannot decide if I like this show or not.. I think I lean to the "no" side of the fence. 
I really like the 75old woman surviving in the big firm (although I doubt how realistic all this is).
But, the whole daughter part of the story  seems like it comes from a different show and apart from giving Bates the chance to shine, I just don't see it gluing to the rest of the show. Basically this show is just Bates. They bend common sense (like involving a kid into investigating who is responsible for his mother death) in order to accommodate Bates.
Also, apart from Olympia, the rest of the cast/characters are not good (I guess also a choice so they wont take the spotlight from Bates). Especially the two younger lawyers who are really indifferent and boring. But this ends up being an issue, since we have scenes where Bates is amazing and all the rest is just "meh".
 

[Yeah No]

This was not the episode for me to watch while busy, tired and distracted by the holidays. There was so much packed into it I'd have to rewatch it 3 times to get it all straight. Although reading here I'm getting the idea that it wasn't just me. And I too was at first confused by the resemblance between affair lady and the opposing lawyer, and I'm usually pretty good with faces too!

I did love Matty's outburst to Edwin. I identified with it and I don't even have kids! It just underscored how men tend to see their involvement in home/family matters on a higher level than women see it. And it is really not a generational thing so I'm reading, but is still relevant to younger women as well. Especially when I was young there was more of a societal expectation placed on women to be more responsible for home matters and to be made to feel guilty if they had other activities that took them away from it. So I really related to that,  and I would be very surprised if the show would want to us to think that Matty and her husband's life distractions were the reason their daughter became an addict. 

I also related to Matty's printer problems. It's a situation I found myself in several times in my career when my printer wasn't working right and I had to choose one in the very busy communal printer room. Usually I'd race to the room to get there before anyone could inadvertently take my page thinking it was part of their document. I wish I had a dollar for every time I had to track down the person who printed before me looking for a sensitive document of my boss's. And why did that always have to happen when I was printing a sensitive document, lol?

Also, how old is Alfie supposed to be? He's already doing mock trials before his voice has fully changed? I guess he's supposed to be in Jr. high and that's when they start that stuff. I couldn't find anything on his age online. The actor is so new to acting there's not much on him. 

[shapeshifter]

11 minutes ago, Yeah No said:

Also, how old is Alfie supposed to be? He's already doing mock trials before his voice has fully changed? I guess he's supposed to be in Jr. high and that's when they start that stuff. I couldn't find anything on his age online. The actor is so new to acting there's not much on him. 

FWIW, Google AI says he's 12, but in an interview he refers to himself as a teenager. I suspect AI confused Alfie's age with that of the actor who portrays him. 

[Yeah No]

Just now, shapeshifter said:

FWIW, Google AI says he's 12, but in an interview he refers to himself as a teenager. I suspect AI confused Alfie's age with that of the actor who portrays him. 

LOL, this time your Google AI was "smarter" than mine. 😉 I didn't even get a Google AI answer when I plugged in that question.

[Dowel Jones]

Maybe Alfie runs Google AI.

[peachmangosteen]

20 hours ago, schnauzergirl said:

Do we know when Ellie started using?  Was it before or after Alfie was born?  Had she been addicted in high school/college and got clean?  And where is Alfie's dad?  That phone call from Ellie to Maddy announcing her pregnancy -- well, Maddy was happy about that so I assumed (wrongly?) that Ellie was OK at that point.  For grandparents to have custody means something drastic has happened to or with the father.  Guess I'm craving some backstory here.

In the voice mail, Ellie said something like 'I'm clean now,' after telling Matty she's pregnant so she was an addict before he was born. She was probably clean while pregnant and a bit after and then relapsed.

I literally never have any idea what's happening in the COTW tbh but I don't care because the characters and their interactions are why I'm watching and those continue to be really great.

[shapeshifter]

7 hours ago, Dowel Jones said:

Maybe Alfie runs Google AI.

Fits!

[Chicago Redshirt]

11 hours ago, Yeah No said:

Also, how old is Alfie supposed to be? He's already doing mock trials before his voice has fully changed? I guess he's supposed to be in Jr. high and that's when they start that stuff. I couldn't find anything on his age online. The actor is so new to acting there's not much on him. 

FWIW, Alfie was playing a role as a witness for mock trial.

In my law school experience doing mock trial competitions, there would be two teams: prosecution/plaintiff and defense, and if you were a lawyer representing one side, then you also played the role of witnesses for the other team. You would have to know what was in the prepared statement for the witness you're playing and know what the strengths and weaknesses of that witness were for both sides. It was a lot of work (but a lot of fun) keeping in mind both roles and trying to figure out how to do your best to mess with the other side within the parameters of the case.

Searching the Internet, it seems that they have mock trial programs for middle school/jr. high. It sounds like the setup Alfie's school has would include enough people such that Alfie was only a witness and didn't act as a lawyer. That seems to me to be something relatively low-hanging fruit that he could have been asked to do as a freshman or even an advanced 8th grader if he was at a 6-12 grade school. 

23 hours ago, Boofish said:

I can't imagine for one second Olympia doing anything shady or underhanded like hiding evidence in a drug case. That will be a hard sell for me.

I can't imagine Olympia being the culprit because of TV conventions almost dictate that someone we like could not have done something underhanded.

However, in a vacuum, could Olympia have done it? In my view, yes, in at least a couple ways.

First, keep in mind that the Olympia we are seeing now is 10+ years more mature and established in her career. She very literally could have had a different professional approach than she does now.

There's also the possibility that Olympia (or whoever the culprit is) could have either inadvertently hid whatever documents, or could have deliberately buried the documents without realizing the full import and ramifications of what they did. Matty often acts like the culprit was twirling a mustache and going "Mwa-ha-ha, I'm going to keep this highly addictive set of drugs on the market for another decade causing countless overdoses, as long as it gets me a bonus now, IDGAF." And that's not true.

But for discussion's sake, let's assume both that the culprit was fully aware that they were acting shady, and Olympia's personality/professionalism then were the same as we're seeing now.

Olympia is extremely ambitious, or had been prior to her pro bono kick. She has been primed, as many successful Black folks have, with the notion that you have to be twice as good to get half as far. Could that mindset have led her to do what she felt she needed to do to win a case, including bury documents? IMO, yes.

Olympia has her ruthless and sneaky moments. In this very episode, she tried to obscure that she was behind Jacobson Moore being on the COTW, snuck documents from her kid's school, used IT information of apparently questionable provenance/legality according to Sarah's girlfriend, and essentially blackmailed a personal friend into confessing her guilt to an affair and paying her client a settlement. All  that wasn't even for a real paying client. How far would she go for someone paying the firm (presumably) millions a year?

She condones Matty's shady actions, or at least turns a blind eye to them, because they get her the results she wants. 

So as much as I like Olympia, it's not like she is a saint.

[possibilities]

I'm shocked, honestly, that a law firm would have a printer room where someone could be printing (remotely) sensitive documents and there is no safeguard agansnt them being taken by the wrong person, or even just looked at by someone who has no business seeing them.

Is that something that really happens?

Edited December 15 by possibilities

[Bastet]

2 hours ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

Searching the Internet, it seems that they have mock trial programs for middle school/jr. high. It sounds like the setup Alfie's school has would include enough people such that Alfie was only a witness and didn't act as a lawyer. That seems to me to be something relatively low-hanging fruit that he could have been asked to do as a freshman or even an advanced 8th grader if he was at a 6-12 grade school.

I judge high school mock trial competitions, and the students playing the witnesses are just classmates of the students who are competing as the lawyers.  (So our feedback is to the students competing as lawyers, but I once also told a girl playing the medical examiner that she should seriously consider becoming either an actor or a medical examiner, because I believed every word out of her mouth; she was like Dr. G. up there.)  There is a junior high version, too.

[schnauzergirl]

1 hour ago, possibilities said:

I'm shocked, honestly, that a law firm would have a printer room where someone could be printing (remotely) sensitive documents and there is no safeguard agansnt them being taken by the wrong person, or even just looked at by someone who has no business seeing them.

Is that something that really happens?

Yes!  When Maddy sent the document to that printer, I assumed there would be safeguards against all the possibilities mentioned above so was surprised to see people milling around.  Those of you in the legal profession, is this common practice?

 

[Zaffy]

50 minutes ago, schnauzergirl said:

Yes!  When Maddy sent the document to that printer, I assumed there would be safeguards against all the possibilities mentioned above so was surprised to see people milling around.  Those of you in the legal profession, is this common practice?

 

Realism is not strong in this show (or any show recently). I mean the assistant gave the password to his boss on the phone, which is the biggest no-no on sharing passwords, especially when we have a legal firm and the owner.

[GHScorpiosRule]

3 hours ago, possibilities said:

I'm shocked, honestly, that a law firm would have a printer room where someone could be printing (remotely) sensitive documents and there is no safeguard agansnt them being taken by the wrong person, or even just looked at by someone who has no business seeing them.

Is that something that really happens?

 

1 hour ago, schnauzergirl said:

Yes!  When Maddy sent the document to that printer, I assumed there would be safeguards against all the possibilities mentioned above so was surprised to see people milling around.  Those of you in the legal profession, is this common practice?

 

Well, in the many firms I’ve worked at that had a similar set up- but not at all like the one on this episode which looked like something at Staples or FedEx Store, your print jobs would have a cover/first page with your name or surname so others would know which print jobs were theirs.

[shapeshifter]

When they were cross-cutting scenes between Olivia in front of her kids' downtown school with Matty in front of Alfie's suburban school, I was getting twinges of anxiety that at some point Matty was going to show up at Alfie's school and discover Olivia & Julian's twins had been transferred to Alfie's school. 
This episode seemed like a possible setup for that plot with all the lines about Olivia's dissatisfaction with the other parents at her kids' school.

Regardless, with Matty and Olivia growing closer, it seems like Olivia would be expecting a doting grandma to share pictures of Alfie, if not bring him to work for a moment.

[Chicago Redshirt]

5 hours ago, possibilities said:

I'm shocked, honestly, that a law firm would have a printer room where someone could be printing (remotely) sensitive documents and there is no safeguard agansnt them being taken by the wrong person, or even just looked at by someone who has no business seeing them.

Is that something that really happens?

I'd expect that there are various setups at various size/types of firms. Where I work, there are multiple printers and one can set things up for secure print, which will mean that the actual printing only happens when you enter a code at the printer to prevent anyone from intercepting something they are not supposed to see. But people typically do normal printing and inadvertently scoop up stuff belonging to others. The print jobs here don't have a built-in cover page to show who they belong to.

I can certainly buy that Jacobson Moore, (and really, any firm in the real world) does not use all the precautions that they should in the year of Our Lord 2024 to safeguard things. After all, Matty on Day One managed to circumvent Jacobson Moore's security systems to gain access to the partner meeting. And people could think, "Well the only people who have any business in these printer rooms are other employees, and we don't have to worry about them misusing information, do we? I mean, it's not like someone is going to get a job with us seeking to bite the hand that feed them, are they?"

I am more surprised that Senior does not have a dedicated printer in his office/with his assistant so that he/his assistant needs to go pick things up from among the commoners.

But then I am also surprised that Sarah, Billy and Matty don't have their own individual offices.  And that it's taken till now for us to see any sign of an administrative assistant who works with any of the three or Olympia. 

3 hours ago, Zaffy said:

Realism is not strong in this show (or any show recently). I mean the assistant gave the password to his boss on the phone, which is the biggest no-no on sharing passwords, especially when we have a legal firm and the owner.

I would bet that in real life there have been actual law firm bosses around Senior's age who called/e-mailed their assistants asking for their password, and actual law firm assistants who have provided their bosses or their "bosses" passwords or other protected information in a non-secure fashion without thinking twice about it. 

[Dowel Jones]

If my memory is correct, the massive DNC/Hillary Clinton email meltdown of 2016 started when a hacker sent an spoof email to the DNC chief requesting the password for security reasons, and he handed it off to the AA, saying "Handle this, please." (Sound of small rocks rolling downhill, increasing in size and volume...)

[shapeshifter]

42 minutes ago, Dowel Jones said:

If my memory is correct, the massive DNC/Hillary Clinton email meltdown of 2016 started when a hacker sent an spoof email to the DNC chief requesting the password for security reasons, and he handed it off to the AA, saying "Handle this, please." (Sound of small rocks rolling downhill, increasing in size and volume...)

Which is an example of why I was able to accept that giving the password verbally would be more secure. Isn't electronic hacking more likely than a bugged phone these days?

What made me anxious was Matty not knowing that Senior has ever asked his assistant for a password previously, which could be a potential conversation starter between Senior and his assistant, with Senior saying: No, I didn't!
Matty might be banking on Senior being too busy to have such a conversation, but in TV shows, in this scenario, usually they would have had Matty overhear Senior asking his assistant for at least something similarly confidential.

This week I multitasked while watching, in hopes it would make the uncomfortable parts easier to get through so I don't just quit.
Kind of like when I used to put my barely parted fingers over my eyes to watch the gory parts of Bones.

[SnarkShark]

6 hours ago, schnauzergirl said:

Yes!  When Maddy sent the document to that printer, I assumed there would be safeguards against all the possibilities mentioned above so was surprised to see people milling around.  Those of you in the legal profession, is this common practice?

 

To a large degree anyone who works at a firm like that gets vetted with a full background check.  Which might explain the lack of security internally... but makes it even more ridiculous that a fictional person, "Madelyn Matlock" got hired in the first place.

Usually there would be printers either right inside the lawyer's office, or at their assistant's desk, although not necessarily any real security when those people are away from their desks.  But there'd also be a big difference between how legal documents are produced and how a mere email is printed.  The legal docs would be saved in a document management system, and official copies used for filings would be printed centrally by a documents department.  An email would just be routed to any old printer in or outside someone's office.

[Yeah No]

8 hours ago, possibilities said:

I'm shocked, honestly, that a law firm would have a printer room where someone could be printing (remotely) sensitive documents and there is no safeguard agansnt them being taken by the wrong person, or even just looked at by someone who has no business seeing them.

Is that something that really happens?

I haven't worked in a law firm but it looked to me like the document Matty was printing was set to print to that printer room as a fallback should the primary printer not be working for some reason. She didn't anticipate that, but it's something that can be changed. If I were in her situation I would have made sure to look first at which printer the document was set to print to and change it if necessary. I was used to doing stuff like that after a while. The story about the big printer room I told was before I figured out how to change the printer to another one closer to me. If my printer wasn't working I had my documents routed to the closest network printer, which in my case was right outside my boss's boss's admin's. alcove right around the corner from me. They had their own network printer just for that reason, so that they wouldn't have to print sensitive documents to the big printer room. I can only imagine that big law firms do similar things for similar reasons. Usually the big printer rooms are used by the cube people that don't have their own printers.

[possibilities]

The more I think about it, the more having a central printer room just seems so inefficient. Even if you don't have sensitive documents to worry about, it's such a waste of time to have people walking around the building every time they need to print something, and then walking it back to wherever they are going to be using it. Printers are cheap. People should have them at their desks, not in some remote location.

But okay. I get they were trying to create obstacles, to generate tension. If every time Maddie steals or snoops there is an easy way to do it, that doesn't work for dragging out the mystery all season.

How many episodes are there? Is it a full 22 episode mystery, or just 13, or what?

[Nashville]

1 hour ago, possibilities said:

The more I think about it, the more having a central printer room just seems so inefficient. Even if you don't have sensitive documents to worry about, it's such a waste of time to have people walking around the building every time they need to print something, and then walking it back to wherever they are going to be using it. Printers are cheap. People should have them at their desks, not in some remote location.

IANAL, but I am an IT guy - and for firms that live and die by their billable hours, such central service locations are often considered operational necessities:

• So far as the firm is concerned, every sheet of paper generated by one of their staff represents a billable opportunity; as such, the firm will be obsessively focused on ensuring every printed page can be tied to a billable entity.  A central print center can provide this tracking by forcing everyone to submit all print jobs through a single service/utility, which can be configured to require the operator to identity what case file is being billed for each print job.  The job can then be printed with a cover sheet (identifying the number of pages printed and the associated case file number) which can be used as a billing reference.
• Equally important in the hierarchy of corporate paranoia to maximizing billing is maximizing security; any legal firm which garners a reputation of being sloppy security-wise with their customers’ financial information and/or trade secrets isn’t likely to be burdened with responsibility for their care for very long.  This can be a serious issue for firms which have individual printers located in general staff areas, or other locations where clients and/or the general public could easily gain access to generated documents.  Having a secured central print room reduces opportunities for exposure of potentially sensitive client info to prying eyes.
• In security, the threat posed by external bad actors resides hand-in-hand with internal security threats, such as disgruntled employees taking advantage of their access to sensitive client information for personal financial gain.  A central print service can help in this respect also, by telling relevant staff (security staff, auditors, etc.) exactly who is printing what.

In truth, the primary oddity I noticed in the show’s “printer room” was the immense quantity of staff running around with access to every printer in the place - which kinda negates many of the reasons for setting up a segregated print area in the first place; access to most true dedicated print service areas would be tightly regulated, with only specific staff having direct access to the printers’ generated output.  Many such firms hire dedicated print management people to collect and collate the various outputs prior to delivering them to the staff who initiated the service request, so general staff are never in direct contact with the print equipment.

Not saying any of this is by rule of law, mind you - but the setup as portrayed looked sloppy as almighty fuck for a supposed top-flight legal firm.

[seacliffsal]

For all of the guilt that Matty may/may not be feeling regarding her daughter's death, she is repeating her greatest fear-that of 'neglecting' her child.  In this case, the 'chilc' is her grandson and she continually shows him that her dead daughter is more important than he.  She has pulled him out of school, interrupted his vacation with his grandfather, keeps him up late, and basically ensures that his dead mother is the most important thing in his life.  In this episode she prioritized helping her supervisor over him.  He is obviously having difficulties at school as in this episode we learned about bullying.  Lack of friends (being in a brand new school), bullying, focusing on violating laws and policies (hacking, etc.).  His life was already upended with his mother's death.  And while it would really appeal to a 12 year old to 'solve' his mother's death and enact vengeance, it may not be the best thing for him.  So, he is finally involved in a school activity, Matty tells him how important it is and how proud of him she is and that FOR SURE she will be there and then she isn't.

Alfie is the one who is really suffering IMO.  She needs to think about him IMO and not trying to make herself feel better that she will find those responsible for her daughter's death.

[GHScorpiosRule]

6 hours ago, possibilities said:

The more I think about it, the more having a central printer room just seems so inefficient. Even if you don't have sensitive documents to worry about, it's such a waste of time to have people walking around the building every time they need to print something, and then walking it back to wherever they are going to be using it. Printers are cheap. People should have them at their desks, not in some remote location.

But not everyone can have a printer at their cube or desk. Like I stated upthread, in the law firms I've worked at (the ones comparable to the size of the one on this show), there are central locations where secretaries, attorneys, and paralegals can print their documents. But there is either just one large printer or two. And if you have a large printing job, there is an internal service that can do the print job for you.

But it was done for drama and this is television, so there you go.