S01.E17: I Was That, Too

[Percysowner]

2 hours ago, cameron said:

 Think Mattie has been brainwashing him with the old opioid issue.

Nothing in the show supports this. We SAW Matty tell Alfie that her mother was an alcoholic and that the genetics that make addiction more likely were part of the reason Ellie became an addict. We saw Matty WIN CUSTODY OF ALFIE because she saw Ellie was unable to be a good mother to him.

We know that 14 years ago documents went missing that could have forced these opiates off the market, or at least increased regulation on them. So when Matty and Edwin took custody there was not HINT that Wellbrexa had played dirty to keep their cash cow on the market. It is POSSIBLE that once the problems of Wellbrexa's opioid became public, Matty blamed Wellbrexa. I think what we have been shown is when Alfie came across the Reddit post,THAT is when Matty and the family started focusing on putting the responsibility for the addictions on the law firm that helped Wellbrexa keep marketing a dangerous drug by hiding evidence. Yes, deaths plural, Matty has ALWAYS talked about ALL the hundreds of thousands of deaths that occurred, not just Ellie.

 

[AnimeMania]

2 hours ago, cameron said:

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.

There was that episode were Mattie visited the abandoned building where people "shot up" drugs. So Ellie didn't completely stick to pills made by Wellbrexa, street drugs are much more dangerous than pharmaceuticals, since you can not gauge the potency, purity, or contaminants of the drugs or the sterility of the items used to administer those drugs.

[possibilities]

Any kid whose mom died is going to have questions about it. Of course his new guardians, moreover his grandparents, would tell him about his mom. It's not a lie that she was addicted, and that she overdosed. 

I was recently diagnosed with sleep apnea and I went online to learn more about it and discovered there are forums with 10 year old posts about obscure aspects of the issue, and I didn't spend a lot of time before I found them. I didn't read all of them, but I think it's easy to find old stuff on the internet, and especially if you are a kid who is on a quest to learn about what killed your mom and are spending a lot of time on it, I can easily imagining falling down a rabbit hole that turns stuff up.

I find it less believeable that Belvin would make the post in the first place, but it's not the most outrageous thing I've ever seen on TV, either. We handwave people doing physical stunts no human could do, so I think we ought to be able to handwave bureaucratic ones sometimes. But I get the impulse to nitpick because I'm also doing it! 

[cameron]

28 minutes ago, possibilities said:

Any kid whose mom died is going to have questions about it. Of course his new guardians, moreover his grandparents, would tell him about his mom. It's not a lie that she was addicted, and that she overdosed. 

I was recently diagnosed with sleep apnea and I went online to learn more about it and discovered there are forums with 10 year old posts about obscure aspects of the issue, and I didn't spend a lot of time before I found them. I didn't read all of them, but I think it's easy to find old stuff on the internet, and especially if you are a kid who is on a quest to learn about what killed your mom and are spending a lot of time on it, I can easily imagining falling down a rabbit hole that turns stuff up.

I find it less believeable that Belvin would make the post in the first place, but it's not the most outrageous thing I've ever seen on TV, either. We handwave people doing physical stunts no human could do, so I think we ought to be able to handwave bureaucratic ones sometimes. But I get the impulse to nitpick because I'm also doing it! 

And Mattie just could have told him that his mother died of natural causes instead of hitting him with the fact that his mother overdosed on drugs.  Would have been a kinder, gentler way instead of hitting him with the heavy burden that his mother was a junkie.  

[Cowgirl]

On 4/12/2025 at 2:17 PM, Ellee said:

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

We've heard that Senior has been divorced 4 times, and told Julian he was divorcing his mother while he was wearing the Easter Bunny costume.

I love whichever poster above declared this something like BS NY legal state.  The legal portions of this show are SO bad, but otherwise, I think the writing and acting is great.

I still don't understand why Olympia has pics of the town car. Why would it be outside the law firm?  

Count me in the school of those hoping it's Senior's assistant who took the studies out of the record. However, I do like the idea that it might be Elias instead. 

[Chicago Redshirt]

9 minutes ago, Cowgirl said:

I still don't understand why Olympia has pics of the town car. Why would it be outside the law firm?  

A few episodes back, Matty forgot key documents and Bitsy brought them to court for her. 

This led to Olympia being "WTF is that?" Instead of just being like, "Matty, who is this rando who is showing up in court to give you documents from OUR case?" She started investigating on her own by talking to courthouse security. Apparently Bitsie got chauffeured to the courthouse by Matty's driver instead of taking an Uber. So Olympia got CCTV footage from outside the courthouse that showed Bitsie getting into the limo, and as per TV it could be enlarged/enhanced so that the license plate was readable. All that helped unravel Matty's cover story of being a poor grandmom who lives in Queens and needs to work at Jacobson Moore to make ends meet for an ungrateful grandson.

[DanaK]

16 minutes ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

Apparently Bitsie got chauffeured to the courthouse by Matty's driver instead of taking an Uber. So Olympia got CCTV footage from outside the courthouse that showed Bitsie getting into the limo, and as per TV it could be enlarged/enhanced so that the license plate was readable.

I did not make that connection!

[Percysowner]

37 minutes ago, cameron said:

And Mattie just could have told him that his mother died of natural causes instead of hitting him with the fact that his mother overdosed on drugs.  Would have been a kinder, gentler way instead of hitting him with the heavy burden that his mother was a junkie.  

NO! NO! NO! NO! Jeeze, you don't lie to your kids. Eventually they find out and they realize they can't trust you, because you LIED to them. Yes, he should have and probably was told in more gentle ways. Mommy took too much of some medicine and she died, when the kid is young. Later when being asked what medicine, get more specific, still truthful, but still gentle. Mom got sick and the medicine made her feel better, but she didn't stop taking it and eventually she took too much and died. At some point you bring up addiction.

[DanaK]

17 minutes ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

A few episodes back, Matty forgot key documents and Bitsy brought them to court for her. 

This led to Olympia being "WTF is that?" Instead of just being like, "Matty, who is this rando who is showing up in court to give you documents from OUR case?"

Also, did Bitsy bring the documents or did she just show up to see what Matty was like in court and Olympia was the one who had the document copies just in case?

[cameron]

1 minute ago, Percysowner said:

NO! NO! NO! NO! Jeeze, you don't lie to your kids. Eventually they find out and they realize they can't trust you, because you LIED to them. Yes, he should have and probably was told in more gentle ways. Mommy took too much of some medicine and she died, when the kid is young. Later when being asked what medicine, get more specific, still truthful, but still gentle. Mom got sick and the medicine made her feel better, but she didn't stop taking it and eventually she took too much and died. At some point you bring up addiction.

You're not lying; just not hitting him with the rotten truth about his mother.  Parents fudge the truth to their young children all the time:  think Easter Bunny and Santa Claus.  They don't exist but parents tell their young children that they do.  Comes a time and a place for the truth.

[MissLucas]

One thing that hasn't been addressed (correct me if I'm wrong) was how Ellie's opioid addiction started. Was she prescribed opioids after an injury/surgery and - partially due to her genetic disposition - got addicted or was it the end of a journey into addiction that had started 'harmless' by some experiments? 

[Cowgirl]

3 hours ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

Apparently Bitsie got chauffeured to the courthouse by Matty's driver instead of taking an Uber. So Olympia got CCTV footage from outside the courthouse that showed Bitsie getting into the limo, and as per TV it could be enlarged/enhanced so that the license plate was readable.

Thank you! I knew all the rest of this but it never dawned on me Bitsy would have taken the town car. 

3 hours ago, DanaK said:

Also, did Bitsy bring the documents or did she just show up to see what Matty was like in court and Olympia was the one who had the document copies just in case?

She did bring the documents, and Olympia had them as well. Bitsy heard Matty's impression of her, and was so shocked and upset, she left without giving them to Matty or anyone else. 

One other thing that never dawned on me was that Matty herself doesn't have much of a southern accent, but her sister does. I didn't realize that she was talking in an imitation of her sister's accent when she was at the law firm. It wasn't until Olympia asked her what happened to her accent that I realized that.

3 hours ago, MissLucas said:

One thing that hasn't been addressed (correct me if I'm wrong) was how Ellie's opioid addiction started. Was she prescribed opioids after an injury/surgery and - partially due to her genetic disposition - got addicted or was it the end of a journey into addiction that had started 'harmless' by some experiments? 

I thought early on they said she was prescribed them after a car crash, but am I imagining that? It was just a couple of lines and went by so quickly and was never mentioned again. 

Going with the old idea that the best lies have elements of the truth in them, then that's why they said Ellie died in a car crash. She was in one, but she didn't die in it.

[eel2178]

4 hours ago, AnimeMania said:

There was that episode were Mattie visited the abandoned building where people "shot up" drugs. So Ellie didn't completely stick to pills made by Wellbrexa, street drugs are much more dangerous than pharmaceuticals, since you can not gauge the potency, purity, or contaminants of the drugs or the sterility of the items used to administer those drugs.

Addicts will take the Wellbrexa pills and crush them up in order to snort them, shoot them or smoke them, so it becomes just as dangerous as street drugs. Everything you said about potency and purity would still apply even though it is technically still a prescription drug.

[Bastet]

2 hours ago, Cowgirl said:

She did bring the documents, and Olympia had them as well. Bitsy heard Matty's impression of her, and was so shocked and upset, she left without giving them to Matty or anyone else. 

Right; we saw that Matty had left documents on the kitchen counter when she left for work, and that's what Bitsy brought to court for her.

2 hours ago, Cowgirl said:

I thought early on they said she was prescribed them after a car crash, but am I imagining that? It was just a couple of lines and went by so quickly and was never mentioned again.

We have never been told anything about how Ellie's addiction began.  My guess is you're remembering car crash from Matty's lie about how her daughter died -- she told Olympia Alfie's parents were killed in a car accident.

[possibilities]

I don't share the same vicious disgust toward people who overdose, so I don't think "telling the kid the awful truth" is what it would be to tell the kid that mom overdosed. You start with an age appropriate and not so scary way to describe it, but as they get older, they deserve to know the truth and you don't have to make it seem so hateful by calling her a junkie.

 

I know someone whose step-son's mom was an addict. They explained it similar to how Maddie described it, which I think is accurate, by describing it as "addiction sickness".

Maddie has also been shown to be telling Alfie that they all need to be careful about substances like that, because of the genetic predisposition, so she's actually also protecting him by teaching him about drugs before he gets old enough to be possibly influenced by peer pressure or other bad messaging that might encourage him to experiment as recklessly as many teens do.

There is no shame in mom dying of opioids any more than dying of cancer or a car accident. You can explain it in a loving way that simultaneously makes it clear that they need to be careful about the problem, just like people with the breast cancer gene need to be prepared to deal with that.

I don't think it's kind to lie to the kid. I think it's negligent, and eventually he would find out and it would just make him feel even worse, because "if you covered it up, then I should assume you think it's shameful".

Edited April 15 by possibilities
typos

[Percysowner]

2 minutes ago, possibilities said:

I don't share the same vicious disgust toward people who overdose, so I don't think "telling the kid the awful truth" is what it would be to tell the kid that mom overdosed. You start with an age appropriate and not so scary way to describe it, but as they get older, they deserve to know the truth and you don't have to make it seem so hateful by calling her a junkie.

Thank you! The intense negativity towards Ellie just baffles me. On one hand people want Matty to go on and on about how this was all Ellie's fault and she should not CARE that a billion dollar company deliberately made money by encouraging addiction because addicts don't deserve to be seen as anything other than wrong and weak. Addiction is a DISEASE, not a moral failing. I have never heard of a kid saying "I want to grow up to be an addict". I haven't had addicts in my life, but I'm pretty sure they didn't wake up one morning and decide that yes, they wanted to be an addict. I suspect they were in pain, either physical or emotional and they found something that they believed could take that pain away. What they chose is addictive. So in the end, I don't CARE if Ellie got started due to an accident and was prescribed the drug by a physician to control pain, although it does make Matty's crusade more explicable. I care that a young woman was in pain, tried to stop it and found a drug that was made to relieve pain AND MADE to addict, because the more they are addicted, the more you sell. See also cigarettes and alcohol.

 

3 minutes ago, possibilities said:

I don't think it's kind to live to the kid. I think it's negligent, and eventually he would find out and it would just make him feel even worse, because "if you covered it up, then I should assume you think it's shameful".

It is terribly negligent. My ex's mother always told the kids that her dad had heart issues that left him confined to bed and unable to work. That he finally died and her mother died shortly after. What really happened was her mother couldn't take the pressure and she killed him and then herself. The kids grew up with no idea that they might need to look out for signs of depression or other mental health issues. That led to my ex not being treated properly for years for depression. It led to my brother-in-law working on his hobby one night and having his teen aged son say "Dad, look at this" and show him that he had slit his wrists. Lying because it's gentler doesn't help. Yes, start small and give more details as they become age appropriate, but lying forever isn't kind, it's cruel.

[snarktini]

12 hours ago, cameron said:

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.

No, he wouldn't remember. But not knowing them doesn't stop kids from desperately missing parents they don't have and searching for answers about them and therefore themselves.

Mattie may certainly have influenced him, I don't know. But it's very common for orphans and abandoned/adopted kids to seek info.

[shapeshifter]

10 hours ago, snarktini said:

No, he wouldn't remember. But not knowing them doesn't stop kids from desperately missing parents they don't have and searching for answers about them and therefore themselves.

Mattie may certainly have influenced him, I don't know. But it's very common for orphans and abandoned/adopted kids to seek info.

Thanks for that reminder, @snarktini!
Even though I have 2 adopted cousins,* I hadn't made the connection with Alfie's role in the story. It will be interesting to see how it pans out for him.

*One of those cousins passed in large part from an opiate overdose around the time Ellie did. (There were other health conditions too.)
The other cousin located and found both of their birth parents when the internet and browsers and DNA databases became available. 

Edited April 16 by shapeshifter

[Nashville]

I’ve seen how many here don’t particularly care for the Alfie character in general, but let’s look objectively at a couple of points presented to us (both directly and indirectly) by the writers:

1. Alfie does frequently tend to show indicators of somewhat-arrested emotional development; the same cannot be said of his intellectual development, however - when it comes to computers, the kid has some technical chops to flex (not really as much as the show tries to make it look/sound, but Hollywood is Hollywood).
2. From the timeline we’ve been presented, Alfie found the initiating Reddit post when he was around 13 or 14 - which means (a) Maddy and Erwin had already clarified for Alfie the specific details of his mother’s death, and (b) even at that age, Alfie was mature enough to digest that information and apply it objectively.

 
Otherwise:

• Alfie would wouldn’t have had the information necessary to search up the post in the first place.
• Even if Alfie had somehow defied the odds of the Internet gods and stumbled across the (then) 12yo Reddit post totally by accident, he’d have had zero cognizance of the post’s true relevance and significance.

 

In any case, it sounds (to me, anyway) like Edwin and Maddy did a fairly admirable job of explaining a delicate situation to a child in a way the child could not only handle, but also process intellectually.

Edited April 17 by Nashville
Clarification

[GHScorpiosRule]

1 hour ago, Nashville said:

From the timeline we’ve been presented, Alfie found the initiating Reddit post when he was around 13 or 14 -

Alfie just turned 13, and he discovered the reddit post two years ago. So he would have been around 10-11.

[Bastet]

I just read a tidbit about the actor who played the pregnant woman in this episode's ridiculous annulment case -- that wasn't padding, it was her actual pregnancy, and in fact she was having Braxton Hicks contractions while shooting the scene in which the character says oh, it's just Braxton Hicks.

Edited April 18 by Bastet

[mostlylurking]

On 4/13/2025 at 2:35 PM, possibilities said:

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.

This.  Would Ellie still have taken the drugs had she read the warning label?  Probably.  But that doesn’t make whoever withheld this information any less wrong.

Loved everything about Matty and Olympia in this episode.  They were so awesome.  I’ve never seen Skye Marshall in anything but she is just nailing every scene.  The only thing that was weird is even after pulling an all nighter and having to deal with not only the case but also the Matty betrayal, she still looked amazing.  Not even a hair out of place.  I can hand wave all the legal stuff but that just took me out of the scenes entirely!

[GHScorpiosRule]

3 minutes ago, mostlylurking said:

 The only thing that was weird is even after pulling an all nighter and having to deal with not only the case but also the Matty betrayal, she still looked amazing.  Not even a hair out of place.  I can hand wave all the legal stuff but that just took me out of the scenes entirely!

Not for me! I’ve pulled an all nighter-actually worked from 8:00 am until 1:00 pm the next day and my make-up still intact along with my hair!😂😂😂 Well, maybe my hair was a mussed.

[mostlylurking]

On 4/15/2025 at 10:54 AM, cameron said:

And Mattie just could have told him that his mother died of natural causes instead of hitting him with the fact that his mother overdosed on drugs.  Would have been a kinder, gentler way instead of hitting him with the heavy burden that his mother was a junkie.  

Why should she lie?  This is a part of Alfie’s history and he should know it.  It’s important to tell children the truth, albeit in an age appropriate way.  He will inevitably find out the truth anyway.  The only difference is if he’s been lied to, he will both be devastated by the truth and also lose trust in the two people he loves and trusts the most.

6 minutes ago, GHScorpiosRule said:

Not for me! I’ve pulled an all nighter-actually worked from 8:00 am until 1:00 pm the next day and my make-up still intact along with my hair!😂😂😂 Well, maybe my hair was a mussed.

Hahaha well maybe it’s just me then because I’m a mess within a few hours 😂🤪

On 4/15/2025 at 11:41 AM, cameron said:

You're not lying; just not hitting him with the rotten truth about his mother.

If his mother dies of a drug overdose and you’re telling him she died of natural causes…..yep you’re lying babe.

Of course there’s an age appropriate way of saying these things - “mommy got sick from taking too much medicine and she went to heaven” or something along those lines.  But outright lying is not good.

[cameron]

16 hours ago, mostlylurking said:

Why should she lie?  This is a part of Alfie’s history and he should know it.  It’s important to tell children the truth, albeit in an age appropriate way.  He will inevitably find out the truth anyway.  The only difference is if he’s been lied to, he will both be devastated by the truth and also lose trust in the two people he loves and trusts the most.

Hahaha well maybe it’s just me then because I’m a mess within a few hours 😂🤪

If his mother dies of a drug overdose and you’re telling him she died of natural causes…..yep you’re lying babe.

Of course there’s an age appropriate way of saying these things - “mommy got sick from taking too much medicine and she went to heaven” or something along those lines.  But outright lying is not good.

Guess you never talked about Santa Claus, the tooth fairy,  the Easter Bunny to children.

[mostlylurking]

5 hours ago, cameron said:

Guess you never talked about Santa Claus, the tooth fairy,  the Easter Bunny to children.

That’s pretend.  A child’s mother and the way she died is very real.  I’m not seeing the connection, but you do you!

[Nashville]

5 hours ago, cameron said:

Guess you never talked about Santa Claus, the tooth fairy,  the Easter Bunny to children.

Unless my childhood was somehow woefully bereft of wonderful tales everybody else has heard of a Dead Mom Fairy bringing loaded-up hypodermic syringes to good children and dirty needles to the bad ones, I fail to see the syllogism you’re attempting to assert here; it’s less apples & oranges, and more pomegranates & field hockey.

[Percysowner]

10 hours ago, cameron said:

Guess you never talked about Santa Claus, the tooth fairy,  the Easter Bunny to children.

Although I'm not, the real comeback here is "No, We're Jewish". Also I made the Santa thing so obviously a pretend that at age 3 my kid told me she didn't believe in Santa because we, her parents, gave her presents for all the other occasions and she couldn't see why some dude she never met would suddenly decide to sneak into her house and give her something. I was never big on the Easter Bunny, why should some very cute animal with long ears get credit for my work making Easter special. 

[possibilities]

My parents never told me bullshit about the Tooth Fairy or Santa. They told me that's pretend. It's one of the things I think they did right, and I think teaching kids the difference between reality and fantasy is good parenting.

If you want to create a sense of wonder, show them fireflies and take them to see the grand canyon or something.

Delusion doesn't make anybody smarter or more capable of appreciating life or art.

Edited April 24 by possibilities

[peachmangosteen]

I actually really hate the comparison between letting kids believe in Santa and telling them a whole ass lie about how their mother died. Like there's no comparison lol.

[ItCouldBeWorse]

On 4/15/2025 at 11:54 AM, cameron said:

And Mattie just could have told him that his mother died of natural causes instead of hitting him with the fact that his mother overdosed on drugs.  Would have been a kinder, gentler way instead of hitting him with the heavy burden that his mother was a junkie.  

Addiction can be inherited.  He needs to know to avoid unnecessary drug and alcohol use.  Once he's addicted, the warning is too late.

On 4/15/2025 at 7:00 PM, possibilities said:

Maddie has also been shown to be telling Alfie that they all need to be careful about substances like that, because of the genetic predisposition, so she's actually also protecting him by teaching him about drugs before he gets old enough to be possibly influenced by peer pressure or other bad messaging that might encourage him to experiment as recklessly as many teens do.

Correct.

On 4/15/2025 at 12:37 PM, Percysowner said:

NO! NO! NO! NO! Jeeze, you don't lie to your kids. Eventually they find out and they realize they can't trust you, because you LIED to them. Yes, he should have and probably was told in more gentle ways. Mommy took too much of some medicine and she died, when the kid is young. Later when being asked what medicine, get more specific, still truthful, but still gentle. Mom got sick and the medicine made her feel better, but she didn't stop taking it and eventually she took too much and died. At some point you bring up addiction.

Agreed.

On 4/15/2025 at 12:41 PM, cameron said:

You're not lying; just not hitting him with the rotten truth about his mother.

Telling Alfie that Ellie died of natural causes certainly is lying.  Was it her heart? Does he need to be under the supervision of a cardiologist in case he inherited the heart condition that killed her so very early? Did she have a brain aneurism? How many lies should they tell him?

 

[Shellgame]

On 4/11/2025 at 2:23 AM, Dowel Jones said:

filing for an annulment from his separated wife after something like 15 years of marriage and a few kids.  Divorce wasn't going to cut it, because he wanted to get remarried to his current girlfriend in the Catholic Church

You don’t need a legal annulment to remarry in the Catholic Church. You can get an annulment through the church. Nonconsummation is obviously grounds, but one partner being too emotionally immature at the time of the marriage is another.

Edited 21 hours ago by Shellgame