S01.E17: I Was That, Too

[Bastet]

5 hours ago, Ellee said:

Do we even know if his mother and father are still married?

They've been divorced a long time; the reason Julian hates Family Day at the firm is that's when Senior, in the bunny costume, chose to tell eight-year-old Julian oh, BTW, I'm divorcing your mom.

Edited April 13 by Bastet

[Good Queen Jane]

3 hours ago, SoMuchTV said:

By the way, another show I'm watching also just had a prenatal paternity test, and it just involved blood from the mother's veins, not from the fetus (plus the cheek swabs from the adults involved).

I checked this out and apparently there are now noninvasive prenatal paternity tests that work this way. Like Matty, I’ve been retired too long.

[Nashville]

19 hours ago, TimsLove25 said:

It's extremely unlikely that Olympia knew nothing about all of this if Julian was responsible.

Don’t know if I would agree; married or not, there could still be case-specific extenuating circumstances which would prevent Julian from discussing his case(s) with Olympia (or vice versa) for fear of violating attorney-client privilege - not to mention that if the course of a particular case was heading into ethically murky waters, then Julian might avoid saying anything to Olympia simply to protect her from potential future blowback.

[cameron]

So over Mattie beating a dead horse about her daughter's drug problems.  Maybe she should place the blame on her own daughter.  No one held a gun up to her head to start down the drug route.

[snarktini]

On 4/11/2025 at 10:56 AM, Dowel Jones said:

I don't follow Reddit, but would the site carry a post for 12 years?

I've never seen 12 but I've seen posts that are 10 years old, so sure. The post was about 10 years old when Alfie found it.

On 4/11/2025 at 8:30 AM, ItCouldBeWorse said:

I will, too. Mattie really did think ahead. Loved her emergency bracelet that would immediately bring security to her.

That was a touch of brilliance! She was going into a potentially dangerous situation and she dotted every "i" to make sure she could get out if things went sideways. I'm sure she hoped she could get what she needed and vanish but smart to consider all the ways she could get tangled up legally and physically. Showing why she's such a sharp lawyer.

On 4/11/2025 at 6:26 PM, possibilities said:

I thought Olympia kept shutting down talk about the daughter because she thought it was a lie to manipulate her into being sympathetic.

Potentially, yes. There was a bit when she called Mattie a "master manipulator and con man"  and my take was that she didn't know what to believe, what was a lie, and didn't trust herself not to get suckered by a good story. That was why the written statement rather than talking.

On 4/11/2025 at 9:13 PM, Lois Sandborne said:

Could they please just make the show about Olympia.

She'd be a good spin-off! My first thought was a 2nd season where our crew creates a new firm, except that while Mattie does love the work she is 75 years old with a pre-teen to look after so she wouldn't keep working realistically.

[Percysowner]

7 hours ago, snarktini said:

She'd be a good spin-off! My first thought was a 2nd season where our crew creates a new firm, except that while Mattie does love the work she is 75 years old with a pre-teen to look after so she wouldn't keep working realistically.

She also has a ton of money and a retired husband who takes care of Alfie. Pre-teen is a good age to go back to work. They can take care of themselves to some extent. They are in school 6 hours a day. Other than making sure there is someone there for emergencies, kids that age can be independent. Matty is pretty healthy so she can do most of the work, which is not highly physical.

[Chicago Redshirt]

7 hours ago, Ellee said:

Regarding ‘Julian being the culprit’, did anyone else find it interesting that Julian said his mother enabled him to access his trust fund in order to buy the brownstone?  
 

Do we even know if his mother and father are still married?  Could the mother have something to do with this?

IIRC. Julian's mother divorced Senior when Julian was a child. Senior delivered the news of the forthcoming divorce when he was dressed up as the Non-denominational Bunny during Jacobson Moore family day, which scarred Julian back. That led Olympia to do him a solid by stealing the head of the bunny costume. (Part of me hopes Olympia and Julian reconcile because of things like that).

Anyway, there's no particular reason to think Julian's mom has any involvement with the firm at all, let alone is enmeshed with the Wellbrexa conspiracy. 

[tv echo]

Lots of iffy legal stuff in this series. However, I enjoy the relationship between Matty and Olympia.

The more I watch Skye P. Marshall on this show, the more I think of that interview she did with Indiewire, where she talked about toiling away throughout her 30's (she's now 43) as a background actor by day and a catering waiter by night. Just makes you wonder how many very talented actors are out there waiting for their big break.

Edited April 13 by tv echo

[Sake614]

On 4/11/2025 at 2:13 PM, slowpoked said:

why couldn’t the judge just grant a temporary restraining order until they sort the whole thing out?  She can give birth and her baby wouldn’t be taken away.

TROs aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. And her husband is extremely wealthy and connected. He doesn’t have to go near her, just have his security team grab her.

15 hours ago, cameron said:

So over Mattie beating a dead horse about her daughter's drug problems.  Maybe she should place the blame on her own daughter.  No one held a gun up to her head to start down the drug route.

She did place the blame on Ellie by refusing to bail her out the last time and petitioning the court for custody of Allie. But her logic is that Ellie wouldn’t have become dependent on opioids if they’d been taken off the market sooner. It’s a hot button issue IRL as opioids have become the drug of choice in wealthy, white suburbs.

[shapeshifter]

1 hour ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

Anyway, there's no particular reason to think Julian's mom has any involvement with the firm at all, let alone is enmeshed with the Wellbrexa conspiracy. 

…except that Julian's mom was mentioned in this episode in a flashback in which Julian claimed she gave him the money to buy his and Olympia's home by freeing up money from a trust fund.
Could evil Senior have done some fancy family money laundering with a bonus from WellBrexa? 
And I'm still expecting Shae to be involved, since she's been out of sight for the last few episodes, which is a common plot ploy if a secondary character is going to be involved in The Big Reveal.

[Shrek]

16 hours ago, cameron said:

So over Mattie beating a dead horse about her daughter's drug problems.  Maybe she should place the blame on her own daughter.  No one held a gun up to her head to start down the drug route.

Sadly, that is not how these things (opioids) work. Unless you have been in severe dilapidating pain & had the need to use these things it is very hard to understand how they can get a hold of someone if you're not very careful, you just want the pain to stop even if it is only for an hour. 

Even 5 years ago some doctors were giving them out like they were candy & they can be very powerful. 

[nilyank]

With Ellie did she become an addict after being prescribed with the opiates? Or was she already an addict and started to use opiates later as her choice of drugs? 

I think of 3, Senior was always the character that seem most likely and most immoral to be the one responsible. He was the first one who was "cleared" because he was supposedly out of the country.

Olympia eventually gets cleared because she was in court.

That left Julian with circumstancial evidence of  not signing in for the fire drill and the money for the deposit on the brownstone. If he was really the guilty one, I would think that he would have sign in for the fire drill after the face in case anyone decide to change their name and get hired at the law firm and investigate the firm for its part in the Opiate Crisis.

[possibilities]

Regardless of whether Ellie got addicted one way or a different way, or even whether anyone else did, it is illegal and unethical to withold information the way someone at Jacobson Moore did, and that alone makes it a problem.

They are using Ellie's death to illustrate the seriousness of this behavior-- it's not just a bureaucratic technicality, it can change the course of lives when the legal system is corrupt.

If people want to shrug off the death of Matty's daughter, and say she's responsible for her addiction, that still would not exonerate Jacobson Moore for deceiving the jury of the facts in the opioid case they were defending. Whatever the case is, witholding information that is relevant and required to be disclosed is wrong and can lead to incorrect verdicts and that is wrong.

Also, if we are going to blame Ellie and totally ignore the responsibility of the drug company and their lawyers, we probably should start saying that applies to a lot of other situations-- like "nobody forced you to buy that food where the ingredients were misrepresented on the label and it had peanuts in it and so you died"  or "nobody forced you to live near that toxic waste dump that the company said was not a toxic waste dump".

 

[Noneofyourbusiness]

I'm glad Billy is breaking it off with Simone. It's funny, Andrea Londo played a character on The Winchesters whom I disliked and the show didn't seem to realize how unsympathetic it had made her, which irritated me more, but here's she's playing a character who's actually portrayed as untrustworthy.

Edited April 13 by Noneofyourbusiness

[shapeshifter]

5 minutes ago, Noneofyourbusiness said:

I'm glad Billy is breaking it off with Simone. It's funny, Andrea Londo played a character on The Winchesters whom I disliked and the show didn't seem to realize how unsympathetic it had made her, which irritated me more, but here's she's playing a character who's actually portrayed as untrustworthy.

I'm not previous familiar with Andrea Londo and didn't watch The Winchesters, but your post makes me wonder if she was cast for this role on the basis of video clips she submitted from that previous role of an unlikeable character. 
Regardless, add Simone to the list of mostly off screen characters who could be part of The Big Reveal. 

[Noneofyourbusiness]

48 minutes ago, shapeshifter said:

I'm not previous familiar with Andrea Londo and didn't watch The Winchesters, but your post makes me wonder if she was cast for this role on the basis of video clips she submitted from that previous role of an unlikeable character.

I doubt it, since Betty was supposedly likeable. She was John Winchester's ex-fiancée who had since become a policewoman. But arresting John would have been the wrong thing to do even if the Akrida hadn't been involved, because someone in authority had to be framing him if he didn't commit Kyle's murder and people get whacked in jail even without monsters possessing the lead cops. And following him and Mary for weeks without even trying to get answers out of him about what their group was up to first was wrong, too. 

And I don't like how Mary strangely didn't just knock her out when she arrested John even though nothing should have been stopping her (Betty was alone then), and didn't bother fighting her until later when John was already in danger (Mary tussled with her a bit and then proved her cohorts were possessed); waiting for John to already be in custody to offer resistance made no sense.

Edit: link https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Series/TheWinchesters

48 minutes ago, shapeshifter said:

Regardless, add Simone to the list of mostly off screen characters who could be part of The Big Reveal. 

Nah, she'd have been a little girl at the time. It was 14 years ago and she's a first-associate in her early twenties, like Billy and Sarah.

By the same token, Billy, Sarah and Kira are all too young to have been involved.

Edited April 13 by Noneofyourbusiness

[cameron]

3 hours ago, possibilities said:

Regardless of whether Ellie got addicted one way or a different way, or even whether anyone else did, it is illegal and unethical to withold information the way someone at Jacobson Moore did, and that alone makes it a problem.

They are using Ellie's death to illustrate the seriousness of this behavior-- it's not just a bureaucratic technicality, it can change the course of lives when the legal system is corrupt.

If people want to shrug off the death of Matty's daughter, and say she's responsible for her addiction, that still would not exonerate Jacobson Moore for deceiving the jury of the facts in the opioid case they were defending. Whatever the case is, witholding information that is relevant and required to be disclosed is wrong and can lead to incorrect verdicts and that is wrong.

Also, if we are going to blame Ellie and totally ignore the responsibility of the drug company and their lawyers, we probably should start saying that applies to a lot of other situations-- like "nobody forced you to buy that food where the ingredients were misrepresented on the label and it had peanuts in it and so you died"  or "nobody forced you to live near that toxic waste dump that the company said was not a toxic waste dump".

 

Labeling about the addictiveness of opiods drugs has been around since 2001.  Guess the abusers didn't read the back of the bottle.

 

[Percysowner]

29 minutes ago, cameron said:

Labeling about the addictiveness of opiods drugs has been around since 2001.  Guess the abusers didn't read the back of the bottle.

 

Many, many people don't read the back of a prescription medicine. The doctor says take this, it's what will work and they take it, expecting it to work. For example, I've been taking thyroid medicine for 45+ years. It's easier to take my meds at night, so I do. About 3 years ago, surfing the Internet I found out they say to take it in the morning. In 45+ years  NO ONE, not my doctor, not my pharmacist told me to take it in the mornings. I did ask my doctor and he basically said, since taking it at night is working and keeping my levels where they should be, keep doing it.

Like it or not, Purdue Pharmaceuticals er Wellbrexa (so we don't get sued) created a strong pain reliever, discovered it was very addictive and then got it on the market by LYING about it's addictiveness, in fact, it was marketed as being not very addictive and doctors should keep their patients on it as long as "necessary". They lied about how long it would control pain, claiming 12 hours when knowing it was only 8 hours and so people would take it more frequently. They recommended doctors prescribe high doses of the drug instead of lower doses making addiction more likely. They hid evidence of studies showing the issues with the drug. The company set out to MAKE addicts so that they could make money.

It's human nature to want to believe that addicts, alcoholics, substance abusers are BAD, WEAK people who just became addicts because of their own weakness. If that is the case then we, the strong, good people and our kids, the strong, good people will never fall victim to this. It really is far more complicated than this. Also, once someone becomes addicted, it is very, very hard to escape.

I am totally in favor of going after people who make a product, know it can and will cause addiction and death and who do everything they can to keep it on the market just to make more money. THEY are the BAD PEOPLE because their only "addiction" is to money.

[Chicago Redshirt]

15 hours ago, Nashville said:

Don’t know if I would agree; married or not, there could still be case-specific extenuating circumstances which would prevent Julian from discussing his case(s) with Olympia (or vice versa) for fear of violating attorney-client privilege - not to mention that if the course of a particular case was heading into ethically murky waters, then Julian might avoid saying anything to Olympia simply to protect her from potential future blowback.

Olympia and Julian were both part of the Wellbrexa defense team, so they should normally be able to talk freely about the case among themselves.

[Chicago Redshirt]

9 hours ago, shapeshifter said:

…except that Julian's mom was mentioned in this episode in a flashback in which Julian claimed she gave him the money to buy his and Olympia's home by freeing up money from a trust fund.
Could evil Senior have done some fancy family money laundering with a bonus from WellBrexa? 
And I'm still expecting Shae to be involved, since she's been out of sight for the last few episodes, which is a common plot ploy if a secondary character is going to be involved in The Big Reveal.

Julian is either telling the truth about the money for the brownstone coming from his mom releasing trust fund money to him, or he's not.

If he's telling the truth (which he probably is; I'd bet a sizeable amount of money that Julian is innocent), then the money likely has no connection with Wellbrexa. Everything we've seen suggests that the Markstons are pretty darn rich -- Senior had a picture hanging out with some high-falutin' Republican (I want to say W, but it could have been HW, or Cheney) and has gotten so many awards that Julian could steal a bunch for Olympia to smash with no danger of Senior realizing about it. And Senior has been working for this big firm for 30+ years apparently, and as a senior partner has been raking in millions presumably, in addition to any wealth from Mom's side and generational wealth from his they might have.

If Julian is lying and the money is really from Wellbrexa as a bonus for a job well done (which doesn't really make sense to me -- why would Wellbrexa feel the need to pay Julian extra for doing his job, let alone so much extra that it would be enough to put a down payment on a NYC brownstone? If they did, why would they or he feel the need to hide it?), then the mom is just a cover story with no direct involvement with the coverup.

Either way, it seems too far afield to suspect that she is somehow in cahoots with Sr/Wellbrexa to funnel money to Julian.

Putting on a genre-savvy hat, there is no chance that they would introduce a person as a major player in the coverup at the 11th hour without giving that person a presence and lines up to this point. It would be out of nowhere if they said "Oh BTW, Julian's mom was a Wellbrexa stan who helped JM beat the case."

The people involved have to be people a) we've spent time with b) who were potentially at the firm 14 years ago and c) who potentially had means, motive and opportunity to know about the incriminating nature of the Wellbrexa documents, cover up the documents and not have a moral problem with having done so.

The show has put Senior, Olympia and Julian as the primary suspects. From the get go, Senior has seemed too blatantly scummy to be the real culprit, and Olympia too good. (Although if after this episode they had her actually be the culprit and was playing dumb about the coverup and conning the conwoman, I'd be impressed). By the rules of genre-savviness, it can't be Julian because they have revealed his potential guilt too early without establishing 100 percent his actual guilt. In a two-hour season finale, there just has to be another twist.

Besides the big three, the only people we've come to know who might be in those categories:

Elijah - we haven't been told exactly how long he's been with JM, but it seems he is at least as old as Olympia and Julian, and he outranks them. He's my number one suspect. He seems cutthroat enough that he might have done it to get ahead.

Shae - She apparently worked directly for Wellbrexa, but there has been enough time pointing to her possibly being a suspect that she most likely is not the actual culprit.

Senior's assistant Stuart - we haven't specifically been told how long he's been with Senior or JM, but I could see him as a possibility.

[Bastet]

55 minutes ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

Senior had a picture hanging out with some high-falutin' Republican (I want to say W, but it could have been HW, or Cheney)

It was W.  And Karl Rove.

[Chicago Redshirt]

I did think of a scenario in which Julian (or whoever the cover-up person might be) could get paid off by Wellbrexa -- if they turned around to extort the company by saying something like, "I have copies of the Smoking Gun document that would reveal your EVIL -- pay me $$ or I leak them to the other side/the press/the government and wreck your billion-dollar business."

But it would be mutually assured destruction, as Wellbrexa could then point out that the lawyer should have turned it over and covered it up (and extorted them). Also it would seem hard to maintain a decade-plus representation with someone who extorted you.

[seacliffsal]

I just can't thinking about how the annulment case didn't make any sense at all to me.  Of course, I understand that t.v. law is different from real law (just like almost every other profession they show on a t.v. show), but the annulment case just seemed way over the line.  Even on Married at First Sight (yes, don't judge) the participants are told they have to get a divorce, not an annulment.  And, I just can't believe the judge would have believed everything the wife said in court without any hesitation (oh, he never mentioned that he would like his children to grow up in the church?).  This case kind of took the focus off of the Mattie reveal for me.

Anyway, thanks for letting me rant a bit.

[GHScorpiosRule]

1 hour ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

I did think of a scenario in which Julian (or whoever the cover-up person might be) could get paid off by Wellbrexa -- if they turned around to extort the company by saying something like, "I have copies of the Smoking Gun document that would reveal your EVIL -- pay me $$ or I leak them to the other side/the press/the government and wreck your billion-dollar business."

That makes absolutely no sense because they were hired to represent WellBrexa's interests. In your scenario, you want them to break attorney-client privilege. Even if after they were retained and discovered what they were lying about, and wanted to stop representing them, they would still be bound by the attorney-client privilege. And that's not how law firms work, anyway. Otherwise, non of the greedy corporations would ever have good lawyers.

[peachmangosteen]

14 minutes ago, GHScorpiosRule said:

And that's not how law firms work, anyway.

The show has proven time and again that it isn't working entirely in the real world lol.

[GHScorpiosRule]

Just now, peachmangosteen said:

The show has proven time and again that it isn't working entirely in the real world lol.

Oh, I know, but come on! Jacobson Moore are Wellbrexa's lawyers. It would be different if someone within Wellbrexa discovered this and wanted to blackmail them. Bad enough I'm banging my head over the quickie annulment side plot. 

[peachmangosteen]

But that's just it, the annulment plot proves the show can just do whatever it wants with regards to legalities. It does make it kinda of hard to speculate about things though.

They've been pretty good though, I think at least I personally don't know much about law, with the big Wellbrexa case so it's probably more likely the conclusion to it will be closer to realistic.

Edited April 14 by peachmangosteen

[shapeshifter]

10 hours ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

Julian is either telling the truth about the money for the brownstone coming from his mom releasing trust fund money to him, or he's not.

Isn't a 3rd option that Julian (or another player) is ignorant of some of the behind-the-scenes shenanigans? 
I keep imagining whoever took the file didn't actually examine its contents, just retrieved it by number for [insert name here] much like we saw Olympia going to the archives with just a number to locate a folder. 
It could even have been Mrs. Belvin.

And/or Julian's mother was given some "bonus" money by Senior who asked her to tell Julian the money was from a trust fund because it would hurt his ego (or some such excuse) to take it from Senior directly.
Or maybe Senior told his ex (Julian's mom) to actually take money out of the Trust Fund for Julian "for tax reasons," with "tax reasons" being secondary to giving Julian plausible deniability.

 

11 minutes ago, GHScorpiosRule said:

Bad enough I'm banging my head over the quickie annulment side plot. 

Family court issues are never good to dwell on. 
Well, unless you think it's a clue to this season's denouement. 

Edited April 14 by shapeshifter

[GHScorpiosRule]

5 minutes ago, shapeshifter said:

Family court issues are never good to dwell on. 
Well, unless you think it's a clue to this season's denouement. 

No, it's head banging because I've been through one-civil-based on fraud and it took about six months, because we'd never lived together, so didn't have to do the "live separately for a year" requirement in my state.

And I know, this show, along with others (The Good Wife, I'm looking at you, and at you, Boston Legal), we have to throw out suspension of disbelief, but they don't even give us a scintilla of believability. 

And I don't think the flashback to Julian saying his mother helped with the money for the Brownstone is any kind of hint for the finale. The good thing about this show is they have smartly laid the breadcrumbs, as last week's flashbacks showed, how Olympia figured everything out.

I feel bad for Matty, but when Olympia threw in her face, about how she, Matty, didn't think about Olympia's children when lying about Julian? How that would affect them? Skye was just freakin'FANTASTIC. And as much as I love Kathy Bates, I was totally on Olympia's side the whole episode. After all, Matty planned for EVERYTHING, right?

I'm also hoping it's not Julian, but Senior. After all, he butt his nose in and told Olympia to settle that S'MASHED case-to the point where he told her he spoke to the judge who agreed to sign off on it. Like that wasn't breaking any sort of Ex Parte or anything! And whatever he's holding over Julian's head.

Yeah, it seems too obvious, but sometimes it's the one that's clear and obvious that is the one. Or it could be Elijah.

[Chicago Redshirt]

37 minutes ago, GHScorpiosRule said:

That makes absolutely no sense because they were hired to represent WellBrexa's interests. In your scenario, you want them to break attorney-client privilege. Even if after they were retained and discovered what they were lying about, and wanted to stop representing them, they would still be bound by the attorney-client privilege. And that's not how law firms work, anyway. Otherwise, non of the greedy corporations would ever have good lawyers.

In this scenario, Julian (or whoever) is already ethically compromised in that he would be willing to participate in a coverup that would lead to untold numbers of addictions and deaths. He is also willing to engage in extortion.

Breaking attorney-client privilege likely isn't going to be an obstacle to such a person.

6 minutes ago, GHScorpiosRule said:

No, it's head banging because I've been through one-civil-based on fraud and it took about six months, because we'd never lived together, so didn't have to do the "live separately for a year" requirement in my state.

And I know, this show, along with others (The Good Wife, I'm looking at you, and at you, Boston Legal), we have to throw out suspension of disbelief, but they don't even give us a scintilla of believability. 

And I don't think the flashback to Julian saying his mother helped with the money for the Brownstone is any kind of hint for the finale. The good thing about this show is they have smartly laid the breadcrumbs, as last week's flashbacks showed, how Olympia figured everything out.

I feel bad for Matty, but when Olympia threw in her face, about how she, Matty, didn't think about Olympia's children when lying about Julian? How that would affect them? Skye was just freakin'FANTASTIC. And as much as I love Kathy Bates, I was totally on Olympia's side the whole episode. After all, Matty planned for EVERYTHING, right?

I'm also hoping it's not Julian, but Senior. After all, he butt his nose in and told Olympia to settle that S'MASHED case-to the point where he told her he spoke to the judge who agreed to sign off on it. Like that wasn't breaking any sort of Ex Parte or anything! And whatever he's holding over Julian's head.

Yeah, it seems too obvious, but sometimes it's the one that's clear and obvious that is the one. Or it could be Elijah.

Another genre-savvy issue that might make it Senior is that typically, the suspect played by the most famous actor is the villain, and Beau Bridges is the second-most famous actor in the cast.

I think that Senior knew about Julian's affair. That and a lifetime of bullying and abuse was probably what he's got on Julian.

[shapeshifter]

23 minutes ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

think that Senior knew about Julian's affair.

Okay. One last speculation.
Didn’t Shae tell Olympia Julien didn’t instigate the affair?
So maybe Senior bribed or blackmailed or otherwise manipulated Shae into having an affair with Julien so Senior could then blackmail Julien into stealing the file.

And maybe Julien sent Mrs. B to fetch the file…

[AnimeMania]

It seems almost impossible that Mrs. Belvin would know that the file was there before the fire drill and missing after. The security for that files is not that good, and Olympia could have taken any files she wanted when she was in there checking Mattie's story.

[Chicago Redshirt]

22 minutes ago, AnimeMania said:

It seems almost impossible that Mrs. Belvin would know that the file was there before the fire drill and missing after. The security for that files is not that good, and Olympia could have taken any files she wanted when she was in there checking Mattie's story.

14 years ago, it's at least conceivable that Mrs. B could know, depending on what her position was. She could have made a mental note while working with the hardcopy Wellbrexa files that she needed to do something with subfile 123456 on the case immediately before the fire drill and know enough that there were documents there to be processed. And then there was the fire drill, and by the time she got back after the fire drill, she could have known that there were not documents present.

In the crazy conspiracy-laden world the show has created, it's entirely possible someone orchestrated the fire drill for the specific purpose of distracting Mrs. B and allowing them to cover up the documents before Mrs. B filed them, not thinking that their failure to check in would be a clue to their identity.

This raises the question about whether Mrs. B asked anyone about it at the time. I suppose the possibility was that she did not feel comfortable asking about it, given power dynamics. But it also seems unclear to me why she would whistleblow/vent on Reddit about it. It also seems like if she had pinpointed the coverup to that specific time, she should have on her own dismissed some combination of Senior and Olympia, since she should have been able to readily determine (if it's true) that Senior was on vacation at the time and Olympia was in court, and that was the reason why they didn't sign in. (Not that signing in, or not, should be as big a factor as she's making it out to be, since it's not tough to imagine faking a sign-in later or inadvertently forgetting a sign-in)

Olympia was checking Matty's story in the present day, so the file was long gone. The fact that Olympia did go to the file to check suggests that she's on the level, not involved in the coverup and concerned about the coverup possibility.

[crowceilidh]

Where have you all seen a fictional show that is believable if you know something about the job in question?  My cop friend is driven nuts by cop shows and lemme tell you that, as a teacher, I have never ever seen a show/film/doc that is realistic about what teaching is about.  And, as an 18th c. costume person, don't even get me started on the vast majority of tv/movies.  The shows are fiction and they have restrictive budgets.

Vague nods in the direction of authenticity are lovely, but generally story takes precedence.

Yes, for some individuals sometimes the lack of authenticity crowds out the story (looking at you, Gerry D.) and it becomes unwatchable.  

[Noneofyourbusiness]

7 hours ago, seacliffsal said:

And, I just can't believe the judge would have believed everything the wife said in court without any hesitation (oh, he never mentioned that he would like his children to grow up in the church?).

The judge didn't believe her without hesitation. Matty proved that she was telling the truth by providing copies of correspondences between her and her husband from before their wedding where he had assured her their children wouldn't grow up in the church, showing that he had lied to her because his priest testified he had been talking to him about raising them in the church at the same time.

16 hours ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

If Julian is lying and the money is really from Wellbrexa as a bonus for a job well done (which doesn't really make sense to me -- why would Wellbrexa feel the need to pay Julian extra for doing his job, let alone so much extra that it would be enough to put a down payment on a NYC brownstone? If they did, why would they or he feel the need to hide it?)

The bonus would be for illegally destroying documents, which isn't part of his job description as their lawyer. They'd probably have approached him (or whoever did do it) and offered him/them the money as an incentive to do it.

[Chicago Redshirt]

1 hour ago, Noneofyourbusiness said:

The bonus would be for illegally destroying documents, which isn't part of his job description as their lawyer. They'd probably have approached him (or whoever did do it) and offered him/them the money as an incentive to do it.

In my mind, if Wellbrexa realized in advance that this was a smoking gun, they would have simply have withheld the documents in the first place to their own attorneys.

It would have taken a lawyer to say "Hey this document is actually problematic so we have to do so something about it/I've already taken care of it." Why Wellbrexa would then say "we'll pay you extra to bury that report" doesn't fully make sense to me. "We'll stick with Jacobson Moore through thick and thin" and pay gazillions in legal fees, yes. We'll become a primary account for nepo-baby Julian and give him bunches of billable hours, sure. But making a large cash payment to anyone for their guilty behavior seems foolish, traceable and possibly a trigger to an investigation about propriety for them to volunteer such a payment when there are smarter ways to show appreciation for a job well done.

As a point of comparison, Wellbrexa didn't offer Matty a bonus for coming up with a loophole to get rid of the case she was on. That's part of her job.

[Nashville]

Although probably true in the vast majority of cases, why assume the motive for the coverup is financial?  I can easily see alternative motives for three likely suspects:

1. Senior: motivated not primarily by money - he already has more cash than Croesus - but by reinforcing drives to (a) win at all costs and (b) utterly destroy his competition.  Much is made of Senior’s Australia alibi, and it has stood longer than anybody else’s to date; given this series’ penchant for creating alibis only to break them in (usually) fairly short order, though, I figure Senior’s is overdue.
2. Julian: motivated to protect his family.  To me it seems pretty clear Julian feels continually compelled to go above and beyond in any dealings with his father, presumably to compensate for feelings of inadequacy - feelings intentionally amplified and weaponized by Senior, I have little doubt, to keep Julian scrambling for Senior’s approval/love.
3. Elijah: motivated by personal ambition.  Elijah is an equity partner in the firm now - but 14 years ago…?  It would not surprise me overmuch to find out some deft sleight-of-hand on Elijah’s part with the incriminating documents led directly to his equity partnership status with the firm - especially if such were done at the behest of Senior.

 

[nilyank]

6 hours ago, shapeshifter said:

Okay. One last speculation.
Didn’t Shae tell Olympia Julien didn’t instigate the affair?
So maybe Senior bribed or blackmailed or otherwise manipulated Shae into having an affair with Julien so Senior could then blackmail Julien into stealing the file.

I had just assumed that Julien had the affair with Shae around the time he and Olympia hit the rough patch 2 years ago when Alfie found the Reddit post and when to NYC to snoop around and accidentally bumped into Olympia.

While I can imagine Senior emotionally manipulating Julien to do his dirty work, he has other minions who would be desperate/greedy enough to curry Senior's favor.

[GHScorpiosRule]

7 hours ago, shapeshifter said:

Okay. One last speculation.
Didn’t Shae tell Olympia Julien didn’t instigate the affair?
So maybe Senior bribed or blackmailed or otherwise manipulated Shae into having an affair with Julien so Senior could then blackmail Julien into stealing the file.

37 minutes ago, nilyank said:

I had just assumed that Julien had the affair with Shae around the time he and Olympia hit the rough patch 2 years ago when Alfie found the Reddit post and when to NYC to snoop around and accidentally bumped into Olympia.

Julian confessed to Olympia that he had the affair with Shae right before they separated. So no, the affair didn't take place 14 years ago.

 

[Nashville]

20 hours ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

Olympia and Julian were both part of the Wellbrexa defense team, so they should normally be able to talk freely about the case among themselves.

For anything legit for lawyers to discuss, sure - but for anything crossing the line into illegality…?  I’d certainly have doubts on that score.

[Chicago Redshirt]

1 hour ago, Nashville said:

For anything legit for lawyers to discuss, sure - but for anything crossing the line into illegality…?  I’d certainly have doubts on that score.

Burying things in discovery is against ethical rules for lawyers (insert joke about oxymorons here). 

But in terms of being illegal or actually criminal such that Wellbrexa might feel like they need to pay the lawyers extra for breaking the law, that's a bit too far.

This might be one of the instances where there's a departure between the real world law and the law in Matlock.

Matty talks about making people pay, getting people sent to jail, sending things to the New York Times, etc. I tend to think that she'd be near-delusional on that score if things worked like they do in the real world. 

But even in the world of Matlock, you may remember a few episodes back where the manufacturers of Slamm'd were found to have committed a discovery violation by withholding documents. Did anyone from Slamm'd or the law firm representing them go to jail? Is there any apparent prospect of that happening? Not as far as we know. Instead, they apologized when caught and pretended to rectify the issue with a massive document dump. 

[Percysowner]

I guess it depends on when these documents were being withheld. In discovery for a lawsuit, yes, it's unlikely that there would be criminal repercussions. If, this is similar to what happened in real life, the FDA needed documents for approval of a drug, which is far more regulated than an Energy Drink. Again, IRL, at some point the FDA was getting complaints about the addictiveness of fentanyl and were asked for studies relevant to that question. Withholding documents that are subpoenaed by the  Federal Government is different from regular discovery. Whether there would be actual jail time is questionable, but it should have been a much more serious offense. Withholding those documents would possibly be aiding Wellbrexa in breaking the law.

[I Want My MBTV]

So, let me start by saying I love this show but I do find myself confused or thinking things are stretched too far (not even going to talk about the annulment pregnant lady).

Where do Matty and Hubby get all their money?  They have a big house, an apartment, a driver on standby, private school, etc. etc. 

How could she get "security" hooked up to her medical ID?  Like is she ex-CIA or something?

How old is Alfie??  How old was he when Ellie passed away?  

Was the Reddit Post before or after Ellie passed away?

However old he is (he's played like both an old man and a toddler) what child is going on Reddit googling "Welbrexa"?

I think the thing with the missing file and the fire drill is the weakest thing there is.  Who would still a file but leave the file folder in the box so that there is clearly something missing?  

As others have said there could have been way more people in the building then were listed.   Matty only recently found out Olivia wasn't there so how does she actually know who was there?  

I don't think any of the three stole the documents.  At this point I don't think the documents were even stolen I think they just fell out of their folder or someone was copying or something and they're misplaced.  Hard copies like that can be literally anywhere.

Lastly, I know print media has gone downhill of late and doesn't have the manpower it used to but really what reputable person at the NYT would publish this story with the nothing burger Matty has?  Oh, some anonymous person posted 14 years ago a document went missing but they didn't do anything about it and my big proof as to who took it is a fire drill sign in sheet!  I mean seriously. 

Rant over - Olivia rocked this episode!  Can't believe this is Skye's first tv show!! 

 

[tvfanatic13]

20 minutes ago, I Want My MBTV said:

So, let me start by saying I love this show but I do find myself confused or thinking things are stretched too far (not even going to talk about the annulment pregnant lady).

Where do Matty and Hubby get all their money?  They have a big house, an apartment, a driver on standby, private school, etc. etc. 

How could she get "security" hooked up to her medical ID?  Like is she ex-CIA or something?

How old is Alfie??  How old was he when Ellie passed away?  

Was the Reddit Post before or after Ellie passed away?

However old he is (he's played like both an old man and a toddler) what child is going on Reddit googling "Welbrexa"?

I think the thing with the missing file and the fire drill is the weakest thing there is.  Who would still a file but leave the file folder in the box so that there is clearly something missing?  

As others have said there could have been way more people in the building then were listed.   Matty only recently found out Olivia wasn't there so how does she actually know who was there?  

I don't think any of the three stole the documents.  At this point I don't think the documents were even stolen I think they just fell out of their folder or someone was copying or something and they're misplaced.  Hard copies like that can be literally anywhere.

Lastly, I know print media has gone downhill of late and doesn't have the manpower it used to but really what reputable person at the NYT would publish this story with the nothing burger Matty has?  Oh, some anonymous person posted 14 years ago a document went missing but they didn't do anything about it and my big proof as to who took it is a fire drill sign in sheet!  I mean seriously. 

Rant over - Olivia rocked this episode!  Can't believe this is Skye's first tv show!! 

 

It’s not her first show per IMDb. She still rocked it though. 

[Noneofyourbusiness]

41 minutes ago, I Want My MBTV said:

Where do Matty and Hubby get all their money?  They have a big house, an apartment, a driver on standby, private school, etc. etc.

Generous retirement packages. She was a successful lawyer and he was a successful professor.

[Chicago Redshirt]

1 minute ago, I Want My MBTV said:

So, let me start by saying I love this show but I do find myself confused or thinking things are stretched too far (not even going to talk about the annulment pregnant lady).

Where do Matty and Hubby get all their money?  They have a big house, an apartment, a driver on standby, private school, etc. etc. 

How could she get "security" hooked up to her medical ID?  Like is she ex-CIA or something?

How old is Alfie??  How old was he when Ellie passed away?  

Was the Reddit Post before or after Ellie passed away?

However old he is (he's played like both an old man and a toddler) what child is going on Reddit googling "Welbrexa"?

I think the thing with the missing file and the fire drill is the weakest thing there is.  Who would still a file but leave the file folder in the box so that there is clearly something missing?  

As others have said there could have been way more people in the building then were listed.   Matty only recently found out Olivia wasn't there so how does she actually know who was there?  

I don't think any of the three stole the documents.  At this point I don't think the documents were even stolen I think they just fell out of their folder or someone was copying or something and they're misplaced.  Hard copies like that can be literally anywhere.

Lastly, I know print media has gone downhill of late and doesn't have the manpower it used to but really what reputable person at the NYT would publish this story with the nothing burger Matty has?  Oh, some anonymous person posted 14 years ago a document went missing but they didn't do anything about it and my big proof as to who took it is a fire drill sign in sheet!  I mean seriously. 

Rant over - Olivia rocked this episode!  Can't believe this is Skye's first tv show!! 

 

I'll do my best to answer the questions you have raised based on my admittedly imperfect memory.

We have not firmly been told/shown where all Matty got her money. It appears that Matty was an attorney as Madeline Kingston, so she could have made dough there. In this episode, she tells us that she was part of a firm in San Francisco. I'm assuming it was a pretty successful one. That's not a cheap place to live now. But it was once. As a former Silicon Valley resident prior to the tech boom, I'm jealous and bitter that if I had bought the crappiest property in the crappiest part of the Bay Area for like $50,000, it would have probably been worth a million today. C'est la vie.

I assume with the sort of money she apparently has, Matty can play James Bond and have whatever gadgets she wants. In this case, she apparently pre-arranged for a security firm to have people on standby to dress as EMTs and show up when she pressed the panic alert button. I think that do think that real-life rich people can purchase a similar service as an anti-kidnapping sort of thing. 

Alfie is 13-ish. He was about 18 months when his mother OD; we were told as part of the custody battle that she let him burn himself on a stove around that age.

The Reddit post was apparently from about 14 years ago. So the post and the case itself would have been before Ellie died.

Alfie discovered the Reddit post 2 years ago, and it launched the Kingstons on this crusade.

There are, I suppose, several ways Alfie could have gotten to the Reddit post. But it is somewhat strange that he came across it given its age. I suppose some sort of googling to "how the opioid epidemic happened" might have gotten there or something.

I suppose we'll see why the culprit did things the way they did later this week. I could see someone not having the time or presence of mind to filch the entire subfolder. I could see someone thinking that "Hey, who's going to make the time to doublecheck?" or not counting on Mrs. B having noticed that the file had something in it before. Anybody accessing the file might think "Oh, someone has borrowed the thing that was here before" and not think twice of it, or think it was left empty on purpose or just think "well, there go the paralegals screwing up again" (no offense to paralegals intended).

For better or worse, the plot has been premised on someone actually stealing the documents. So I can't see them doing a swerve of "actually, there's a purely innocent explanation for the documents not being there" or "the missing documents AREN'T a smoking gun after all, but a perfectly boring and unimportant marketing study."

Even if Matty unearthed a video of Senior/Julian/whoever looking into the camera and going "mwa-ha-ha! I hereby confess that I have taken a marketing study that I was supposed to turn over in discovery in my lawsuit defending Wellbrexa and hidden it because it shows that Wellbrexa is covering up how addictive their meds are. I know if this document got out, it would result in opioids going off the market, something that could save thousands of lives, but long hair, I don't care" I am not sure the NYT or the authorities or anyone would care all that much. Hate to be cynical but a) I don't think it breaks any criminal laws for this hypothetical Senior to have done that b) if there's not an actual statute of limitations, there's probably one in the court of public opinion about actions taken 14 years ago c) the real issue would not be Jacobson Moore's misconduct but the pharmaceutical companies. If Wellbrexa knew its products were way more addictive and hid that, is far more central than whatever the law firm it hired knew or did.

Skye's IMDB has her as an apparent regular on a show called Good Sam, she played a doctor who was the best friend of the lead, played by Sophia Bush. It lasted 13 episodes on CBS. Maybe I'll check it out during Matlock's break.

[Nashville]

1 hour ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

But in terms of being illegal or actually criminal such that Wellbrexa might feel like they need to pay the lawyers extra for breaking the law, that's a bit too far.

I was referring solely to why Julian might not want to discuss criminal culpability with Olympia, or vice versa.  Purely a personal take here, but IMHO the notion of any lawyer with a top-flight New York legal firm AND the majority of their career ahead of them, risking all for a quickie under-the-table payoff from a client of their firm…?  Non-starter, that; should everything come to light, I doubt Elon Musk could cut a check out-of-pocket big enough to replace all those lost years of earning potential - not to mention, laundering a chunk of money THAT big would be a stone-cold bitch.

[snarktini]

4 hours ago, I Want My MBTV said:

Where do Matty and Hubby get all their money?  They have a big house, an apartment, a driver on standby, private school, etc. etc. 

How could she get "security" hooked up to her medical ID?  Like is she ex-CIA or something?

However old he is (he's played like both an old man and a toddler) what child is going on Reddit googling "Welbrexa"?

I'll avoid covering much of @Chicago Redshirt comments.

Their wealth is the part I don't question at all! She spent almost 40 years as a contract lawyer. If she was an equity partner in a Big Law firm she could have been making millions per year, especially in an expensive city like San Francisco. Add in any golden parachutes, his pension, possibly even family money then multiply by decades of compound interest and boom.

Totally agree that wealthy people have access to private security who can rescue you from all sorts of situations like kidnapping. That's not far-fetched, just expensive!

I also buy that Alfie would have been Googling Wellbrexa once he was old enough, wanting to learn more about his mom and why she did. Kids who lose parents can be really focused on things like that. He's tech-oriented and he found it at 10/11 years old -- that's about the right age to be able to put it all together and dig in a smart way. Obviously the whole show hinges on them finding that one really old Reddit post which is tenuous at best but *waves hands*


 

Edited April 15 by snarktini

[Nashville]

14 hours ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

Matty talks about making people pay, getting people sent to jail, sending things to the New York Times, etc. I tend to think that she'd be near-delusional on that score if things worked like they do in the real world.

Yeah, sure - no doubt whoever was implicit at J/M, they will be swiftly convicted in a speedy trial and end up sharing a cell with one of the Sacklers.

Oh, what’s that you say…?  🙄

Edited April 15 by Nashville
Explanatory link added

[cameron]

7 hours ago, snarktini said:

I'll avoid covering much of @Chicago Redshirt comments.

Their wealth is the part I don't question at all! She spent almost 40 years as a contract lawyer. If she was an equity partner in a Big Law firm she could have been making millions per year, especially in an expensive city like San Francisco. Add in any golden parachutes, his pension, possibly even family money then multiply by decades of compound interest and boom.

Totally agree that wealthy people have access to private security who can rescue you from all sorts of situations like kidnapping. That's not far-fetched, just expensive!

I also buy that Alfie would have been Googling Wellbrexa once he was old enough, wanting to learn more about his mom and why she did. Kids who lose parents can be really focused on things like that. He's tech-oriented and he found it at 10/11 years old -- that's about the right age to be able to put it all together and dig in a smart way. Obviously the whole show hinges on them finding that one really old Reddit post which is tenuous at best but *waves hands*


 

If Alfie was around 18 months when his Mom "OD", he probably doesn't even remember her.   His grandparents would be the only substitute parents that he has really known.  Think Mattie has been brainwashing him with the old opioid issue.