S01.E09: Friends

[Bastet]

1 hour ago, possibilities said:

I thought Olympia told Elijah they couldn't see each other until after her divorce was final.

It wasn't seeing each other, it was going public.  There was no reason not to be together, since it was all over except finalizing details and getting the court order, but there was reason not to be messy at work while she and Julian were getting a grasp on how to continue working together as exes, or to be messy with personal feelings while they were settling into their apart but co-parenting dynamic, so they kept it on the DL.

She and Elijah caught feelings at work, and had to have been somewhat involved outside of it to be planning the Thanksgiving trip away together that didn't happen (what "Inhale November, exhale the cabin" from the "Previously" segment referred to), but to what extent is unknown.  She hurt Elijah by dismissing it, but "comparing an actual something [him fucking Shae, while they were together] to a theoretical nothing [whatever her relationship with Elijah became after she and Julian started divorce proceedings that she subsequently ended before it ever really got off the ground]" is telling.

[Bastet]

As part of my weekly phone call with a friend who also watches this show, we cracked up anew at Matty and Olympia getting drunk together.  She reminded me of something I neglected to mention as a favorite (in addition to the sweet potato fries line):  When they get to the apartment where the earbuds were last located, Olympia tells Matty to look on the entry intercom for a familiar name, like Khadija, Dimitry, etc.  Matty, spotting something (the dispatcher/union buster's name), says, "Dadgummit," and Olympia asks, "Who's that?"

[Yeah No]

9 hours ago, DearEvette said:

I actually disagree with this sentiment.

Morality is about right and wrong, not about a legal standard. If Julian slept with Shae while he and Olympia were married and they were still making a real go of their marriage, even if it was in trouble, then that was wrong of Julian.  At the time they were still a committed couple.

However, a separation where they have acknowledged and agreed the marriage is broken and they are over, then it isn't wrong of them to see other people.  Again we are talking right vs wrong , i.e morality, and not the legal standard of infidelity. 

Put into another context, if a couple were not married but in a committed relationship and living together and he slept with someone woudn't that be cheating even though they are not legally married?

I've known married people with open relationships that see other people. Like polyamorists. Not my cup of tea but wouldn't that change their status re: adultery? Some people might think it's adultery anyway even if they don't, but isn't it what they think that counts?

Although I have always known that from a legal perspective, people that have filed for legal separation/divorce are not at that point "cheating". And just because you decide to get back together it doesn't suddenly become adultery if that happened before that. I do understand her not wanting to parade around in front of her ex with a new guy, especially one that is around the ex like Elijah, though. That's a sticky situation and I don't envy it.

[Yeah No]

I have to say I don't remember half the stuff some of you here have recalled the characters saying to each other on this show in the short time it's been on the air. Some of that has become a little too convoluted and complicated for me but I continue to watch anyway. I watch for Kathy Bates as the the main character but this soap opera-like stuff with Olympia and her ex is a little exhausting and in my opinion shouldn't be upstaging the main plot unless it really figures into it somehow, which right now it doesn't appear to do. So I admit I tune some of it out. 

Right now I'd have to say that Olympia doesn't look guilty of hiding evidence but knowing this show it would want to introduce a complication between her and Matty's friendship for drama purposes so I'm thinking she's going to turn out to be at least partly responsible, but perhaps in a somewhat forgivable way because you know, TV shows don't want to ruin sweet friendships like that forever. Perhaps if Matty eventually confronts her she will want to redeem herself for her small part in it and make it right by helping to change the outcome. If that means that they combine forces and go out on their own next season to nail the real "bad guy" (hopefully Senior or Shae) that would be great.

Edited Monday at 08:52 AM by Yeah No

[shapeshifter]

Regardless of the ethics or legalities of the various hookups, the show began with the divorce hovering in the background, so it was likely always a key plot point, with this episode seeming to reveal how it might relate to the Welbrexa outcome for Mattie — especially if Olympia separates from Jacobson Moore.

[Yeah No]

5 hours ago, shapeshifter said:

Regardless of the ethics or legalities of the various hookups, the show began with the divorce hovering in the background, so it was likely always a key plot point, with this episode seeming to reveal how it might relate to the Welbrexa outcome for Mattie — especially if Olympia separates from Jacobson Moore.

Perhaps, but it's gotten a little too much screen time for me. They could make the same point with less. YMMV.

[DearEvette]

I'd be really disappointed in the show if they gave Olympia any real responsibility in this Wellbrexa thing. 

I am on record on how badly conceived I think the whole vendetta thing is anyway. But it is the conceit of the show so we live with it. However, to compound it by suggesting that a 'fresh out of law school' lawyer would have any real decision making or ownership on such a big money, high profile  case would be even more eye rolling.

As already suggested, if she was involved it would make more sense for it to have been under the umbrella of following orders of the partners. No brand new, young lawyer is going to tank their career fresh out of law school by defying their boss.

[Morrigan2575]

14 hours ago, shapeshifter said:

Similar to:

So, since we both arrived at the same basic conclusion independently of each other, it seems likely that's where it's going.
Or not.😉

 

I don't have a great track record with my predictions so 🤞🏻

[marceline]

10 hours ago, Yeah No said:

I have to say I don't remember half the stuff some of you here have recalled the characters saying to each other on this show in the short time it's been on the air.

Yeah, I tune out the stuff with Olympia and Julian. (Although I did like Matty telling Shae to mind her own business.) The only personal stuff I'm interested in is Matty, Edwin, and Alfie.

[possibilities]

15 hours ago, shapeshifter said:

Regardless of the ethics or legalities of the various hookups, the show began with the divorce hovering in the background, so it was likely always a key plot point, with this episode seeming to reveal how it might relate to the Welbrexa outcome for Mattie — especially if Olympia separates from Jacobson Moore.

Do we know what the problems were in their marriage that led to the divorce beginning?? Maybe they argued over ethics related to Wellbrexa, and that began the rift. It would at least give a reason other than TV habits, to feature the divorce squabbbles so prominently in anotherwise legal case-oriented show.

[Bastet]

16 minutes ago, possibilities said:

Do we know what the problems were in their marriage that led to the divorce beginning??

He wasn't there for her when her dad died, instead avoiding her by staying at the office, and their problems affected their judgment on the contaminated baby formula case, and they lost.  Olympia made big changes, asking Julian for a divorce and taking on more cases she could feel good about.

Edited Tuesday at 01:38 AM by Bastet

[shapeshifter]

22 minutes ago, Bastet said:

Olympia made big changes, asking Julian for a divorce and taking on more cases she could feel good about.

At the time, "taking on more cases she could feel good about" seemed like a throwaway line to me (or I just wasn't paying attention).
But now it seems to clarify Olympia's character development.

And now I almost want to lay bets on whether there will be a line in which someone says that Olivia leaving Jacobson Moore is the real divorce.

 

[Chicago Redshirt]

8 hours ago, DearEvette said:

I'd be really disappointed in the show if they gave Olympia any real responsibility in this Wellbrexa thing. 

I am on record on how badly conceived I think the whole vendetta thing is anyway. But it is the conceit of the show so we live with it. However, to compound it by suggesting that a 'fresh out of law school' lawyer would have any real decision making or ownership on such a big money, high profile  case would be even more eye rolling.

As already suggested, if she was involved it would make more sense for it to have been under the umbrella of following orders of the partners. No brand new, young lawyer is going to tank their career fresh out of law school by defying their boss.

I am hopeful that TPTB have realized that the "Opioid lawyers took my daughter" plotline is not sustainable and course correct by the end of the season. 

That said, there's still certainly the possibility that a junior lawyer could have made the decision without her supervisors having any clue. Just look at all the shiznit that Matty gets to week after week in service to the case and in her own vendetta.

To go into the weeds a bit, in legal cases there's a process called "discovery," in which each side is supposed to produce relevant documents to the other side about the subject of the lawsuit.

In major cases, there could be tens of thousands of pages worth of documents that are involved. Typically, there are several levels of review of those documents.

Low level attorneys do a first pass at the overall repository of documents to see what should and shouldn't be turned over. They screen the documents for such areas as relevance, privilege, duplication and so forth. It is not fun work. It is easy to lose focus as you are trying to click through documents at a pretty rapid pace.

Then at some point (ideally) more veteran attorneys look at the smaller pool of documents and possibly cull those down further before producing documents to the other side.

We don't really know much yet about what the smoking gun document was that was held up, why it was such a smoking gun, how Matty, Edwin and Alfie know about it (other than someone on Reddit posted about it), etc.

But it's safe to say that even a low-level newb attorney could have seen the smoking gun document and decided independently "OMG, this would tank our case. Let's bury it."

It is perfectly plausible to me that she (or Julian or any low-level grunt lawyer, or any other suspect)

1. Independently came to the conclusion that the incriminating document should be buried, fully knowing that it should have been turned over under their ethical obligations as attorneys out of ambition, greed, a desire to fit in, etc;

2.  Independently was sloppy and misclicked while reviewing 

3. Flagged the Smoking Gun document for further review and had a supervisor make the decision to bury it and didn't sufficiently fight back.

Indeed, one of the things that raises a question for me is how Matty started off with only 3 suspects. In addition to Jacobson Moore, there are undoubtedly in-house counsel who would be familiar with the Smoking Gun document and who could have either ordered Jacobson Moore to bury it or who could have even not turned it over to Jacobson Moore in the first place. 

[Nashville]

Frankly the whole “Lookit what I found on Reddit” part of the storyline has never worked for me, simply because it exceeds my capacity to suspend disbelief:

• As anybody who’s had any degree of experience with Reddit can attest, the signal-to-noise ratio of most subreddits (Reddit’s “forums”) is generally fractional at best and infinitesimal at worst. Finding new valid data sources which haven’t already been exploited and burned to a crisp is like hunting for hen’s teeth.
• But let’s say you buck the odds and actually manage to find something worthwhile; guess what?  Your find is hardly an exclusive; you found out right alongside whatever chunk of the 90M+ Reddit daily user traffic happened to read some of the same subreddits as you.  Reddit is not exactly a place known for secrets (not keeping them, anyway).
• So your data looks good - but what do you know about its source?  Is it valid?  Does it have any integrity issues or associations which might bias results reporting?  Is it sane?

…and that’s just three straight off the top of my head.

tl;dr: Anybody basing major life decisions on Reddit posts should probably have their mental capacities evaluated - and for me, the unbelievability of this basic premise mars the show significantly.

[andromeda331]

On 2/2/2025 at 10:30 PM, Chicago Redshirt said:

It just occurred to me that Unionbuster is particularly bad at his job because in a normal world Client's friend would have come forward and said, "I had control of the truck when it was stolen." Not only should this have failed to get Client fired, but Client would have used this as a further union rallying cry: "The reason Friend was in charge of the truck was because this damn company works me to the bone so I couldn't even get a doctor's appointment without switching. That's why we need a damn union." 

I really thought that was where it was going. I was surprise it didn't.  

[Yeah No]

2 hours ago, Nashville said:

Frankly the whole “Lookit what I found on Reddit” part of the storyline has never worked for me, simply because it exceeds my capacity to suspend disbelief:

• As anybody who’s had any degree of experience with Reddit can attest, the signal-to-noise ratio of most subreddits (Reddit’s “forums”) is generally fractional at best and infinitesimal at worst. Finding new valid data sources which haven’t already been exploited and burned to a crisp is like hunting for hen’s teeth.
• But let’s say you buck the odds and actually manage to find something worthwhile; guess what?  Your find is hardly an exclusive; you found out right alongside whatever chunk of the 90M+ Reddit daily user traffic happened to read some of the same subreddits as you.  Reddit is not exactly a place known for secrets (not keeping them, anyway).
• So your data looks good - but what do you know about its source?  Is it valid?  Does it have any integrity issues or associations which might bias results reporting?  Is it sane?

…and that’s just three straight off the top of my head.

tl;dr: Anybody basing major life decisions on Reddit posts should probably have their mental capacities evaluated - and for me, the unbelievability of this basic premise mars the show significantly.

Yeah, I was carping on just that in a previous week myself. I felt that it showed Matty to be naive about the credibility of anonymous posts online, especially on Reddit. Her zeal to find a scapegoat exceeded her common sense on that one. It has made me wonder if there was no coverup and perhaps that post was made by someone with an axe to grind with the firm or someone in it. As the weeks go on and Matty is no closer to confirming it, the more I wonder.

[Chicago Redshirt]

7 hours ago, Nashville said:

Frankly the whole “Lookit what I found on Reddit” part of the storyline has never worked for me, simply because it exceeds my capacity to suspend disbelief:

• As anybody who’s had any degree of experience with Reddit can attest, the signal-to-noise ratio of most subreddits (Reddit’s “forums”) is generally fractional at best and infinitesimal at worst. Finding new valid data sources which haven’t already been exploited and burned to a crisp is like hunting for hen’s teeth.
• But let’s say you buck the odds and actually manage to find something worthwhile; guess what?  Your find is hardly an exclusive; you found out right alongside whatever chunk of the 90M+ Reddit daily user traffic happened to read some of the same subreddits as you.  Reddit is not exactly a place known for secrets (not keeping them, anyway).
• So your data looks good - but what do you know about its source?  Is it valid?  Does it have any integrity issues or associations which might bias results reporting?  Is it sane?

…and that’s just three straight off the top of my head.

tl;dr: Anybody basing major life decisions on Reddit posts should probably have their mental capacities evaluated - and for me, the unbelievability of this basic premise mars the show significantly.

I don't go on Reddit directly, but on my social media am fairly addicted to posts called AITA (Am I the Ass****) where people describe their situations and ask other Redditors to say answer that question. Most of them are so blatantly no they are not, some are blatantly yes they are, and there's a bunch that frankly are almost certainly false because no sane person would either put up with the situation or question who was in the wrong.

All this has me imagine Matty posting about her situation:

I (75F) lost my daughter to opioid addiction. I now care for my grandson, Freddie (13M) along with my husband Winnie (70sM). About two years ago, we learned through Reddit that a law firm, Jackson Less (35C) defending a lawsuit more than a decade earlier may have covered up documents from a pharmaceutical company, GoodBrexit (50C) and that if those documents had been divulged it could have stopped the opioid crisis before it started, and my daughter might still be alive. I also came to believe that one of three attorneys at Jackson Less might have been responsible for the cover up. Well, Freddie, Winnie and I came up with the only plan that made sense: I would pose as a septuagenarian lawyer with the fake identity, scam my way into an entry level job with Jackson Less, work a bunch of cases for them, while trying to uncover proof of which of the three suspects was responsible for the cover up. Along the way, I have to admit that I've done some things that I'm not comfortable with, like backstab Olivia (40sF), my boss and new friend, and even help GoodBrexit screw over a woman who took one of their drugs. I also may have broken a hacking law or two. And I've gotten Freddie's hopes up and caused him to stop paying attention to his schoolwork. Winnie thinks that there may be a problem with all this. I still think it will be all worth it in the end. But tell me, Reddit, AITA?

[shapeshifter]

36 minutes ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

I don't go on Reddit directly, but on my social media am fairly addicted to posts called AITA (Am I the Ass****) where people describe their situations and ask other Redditors to say answer that question. Most of them are so blatantly no they are not, some are blatantly yes they are, and there's a bunch that frankly are almost certainly false because no sane person would either put up with the situation or question who was in the wrong.

All this has me imagine Matty posting about her situation:

I (75F) lost my daughter to opioid addiction. I now care for my grandson, Freddie (13M) along with my husband Winnie (70sM). About two years ago, we learned through Reddit that a law firm, Jackson Less (35C) defending a lawsuit more than a decade earlier may have covered up documents from a pharmaceutical company, GoodBrexit (50C) and that if those documents had been divulged it could have stopped the opioid crisis before it started, and my daughter might still be alive. I also came to believe that one of three attorneys at Jackson Less might have been responsible for the cover up. Well, Freddie, Winnie and I came up with the only plan that made sense: I would pose as a septuagenarian lawyer with the fake identity, scam my way into an entry level job with Jackson Less, work a bunch of cases for them, while trying to uncover proof of which of the three suspects was responsible for the cover up. Along the way, I have to admit that I've done some things that I'm not comfortable with, like backstab Olivia (40sF), my boss and new friend, and even help GoodBrexit screw over a woman who took one of their drugs. I also may have broken a hacking law or two. And I've gotten Freddie's hopes up and caused him to stop paying attention to his schoolwork. Winnie thinks that there may be a problem with all this. I still think it will be all worth it in the end. But tell me, Reddit, AITA?

This is one of those rare posts I really, really hope someone connected with the show reads!

[DearEvette]

11 hours ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

I am hopeful that TPTB have realized that the "Opioid lawyers took my daughter" plotline is not sustainable and course correct by the end of the season. 

Now why did I read that bolded part with "a dingo ate my baby" bad Australian accent?

[cameron]

So over Matty blaming everyone else for her daughter's addiction.  Where was she when her daughter kept sneaking out of the house to score drugs..  The daughter could have gone into rehab, no one was forcing her to do drugs. Or Matty and her husband could have become involved and maybe do an intervention.

[shapeshifter]

20 minutes ago, cameron said:

So over Matty blaming everyone else for her daughter's addiction.  Where was she when her daughter kept sneaking out of the house to score drugs..  The daughter could have gone into rehab, no one was forcing her to do drugs. Or Matty and her husband could have become involved and maybe do an intervention.

IIRC (and I may not) Mattie and hubby did all of the above, and daughter went to rehab more than once. 

[possibilities]

Maybe that's the point: Maddie is off her rocker with grief, and will realize that by the end of the season. She could be perfectly capable in other ways, but has this one thing that she's being stupid about as a way of processing her trauma over her daughter's death.

Or, maybe whoever made the reddit post was actually telling the truth, knowing that nobody takes reddit posts seriously enough to actually launch an investigation. And she finds out it's Olympia, or maybe the IT person Sarah is dating, or someone who felt guilty about the malfeasance, but didn't have the guts to go public about it and was just venting in a way that felt safe to them.

Or, maybe someone is able to track down the source of the post, and it's not anyone from inside the firm, it's just a disgruntled relative of someone whose loved one was harmed by opioids.

[cameron]

5 hours ago, shapeshifter said:

IIRC (and I may not) Mattie and hubby did all of the above, and daughter went to rehab more than once. 

Don't remember that being brought up.  Thought from day one that it was all the fault of the law firm in her mind, not so much blame placed on the daughter.

[peachmangosteen]

I've said it already but it feels like some people just severely do not understand addiction and also have an empathy problem.

[shapeshifter]

5 hours ago, possibilities said:

Or, maybe whoever made the reddit post was actually telling the truth,…maybe the IT person Sarah is dating,

I like this possible plot development. 

[ItCouldBeWorse]

22 hours ago, andromeda331 said:

I really thought that was where it was going. I was surprise it didn't.  

I don't know.  I think admitting you handed over the truck to a non-employee (even without it being stolen) would be excellent grounds for termination, even if it was so you could go to the doctor.

What if the driver got into an accident?  They haven't had the appropriate training.

Edited Wednesday at 04:57 AM by ItCouldBeWorse

[Chicago Redshirt]

57 minutes ago, ItCouldBeWorse said:

I don't know.  I think admitting you handed over the truck to a non-employee (even without it being stolen) would be excellent grounds for termination, even if it was so you could go to the doctor.

What if the driver got into an accident?  They haven't had the appropriate training.

I was under the impression that they were friends from work. 

They could terminate her for whatever reason, given that it's a non-union shop. but it seems like it will be a pretty big headache if she were not responsible directly for the theft. 

[ItCouldBeWorse]

1 hour ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

I was under the impression that they were friends from work. 

They could terminate her for whatever reason, given that it's a non-union shop. but it seems like it will be a pretty big headache if she were not responsible directly for the theft. 

If it's not a friend from work (I don't remember them saying it was), then handing it over to the friend did contribute to the theft, because she wasn't watching the truck, which was her job.

Edited Wednesday at 07:21 AM by ItCouldBeWorse

[peachmangosteen]

I'm not sure if they outright said it but I believe it was implied that the friend was also a co-worker. She had on a uniform when she first appeared.

[Bastet]

5 hours ago, peachmangosteen said:

I'm not sure if they outright said it but I believe it was implied that the friend was also a co-worker. She had on a uniform when she first appeared.

I don't remember hearing it, either, but, yeah, she had the uniform with the company's name on when she came into the courtroom.

[christie]

On 2/5/2025 at 1:45 AM, shapeshifter said:

I like this possible plot development. 

Wouldn't the IT person that Sarah is dating be too young to be involved in the cover up?

[AnimeMania]

3 hours ago, christie said:

Wouldn't the IT person that Sarah is dating be too young to be involved in the cover up?

I think they are referring to the Reddit leak. I am not sure she would have enough legal knowledge to realize the importance of the document, so it was thinking that someone in that place where Mrs. Belvin works (print center?), they introduced two characters, then made you forget about them.