How did “Widow” Mattie deal with this inevitable predicament?

Well, sooner or later it had to happen – the elderly gentleman took a liking to the widow Mattie Matlock.

On this week’s episode of CBS. already updated MatlockOlympia has taken on the case of widower Robert, whose wife Sandy died years ago from Legionella and they blame the owner of their apartment building.

Robert (played by John Billingsley) is an “eccentric” and “troubled” artist, Olympia tells Mattie, so she assigns her new employee to do some work figurative holding hands as they navigate the ups and downs of his business.

It has its “ups and downs”, starting with the fact that Jacobson Moore also has a developer who Robert is suing as a wealthy client of Senior’s. But instead of sending Robert somewhere else, Olympia suggests that she and Señor build a legal “firewall” between the two teams representing Robert and the developer.

Things are going well enough for Olympia and Company until Senior’s team presents evidence that toxins from the resins Robert uses in his artwork may have contributed to the respiratory illnesses and death of his own wife. This confuses Robert, but Mattie stays by his side, even helping the hoarding gun through his “storage room” to get vouchers for his resins. Along the way, Mattie and Robert discover severe water damage and, in turn, massive amounts of black mold. When EPA agents present claim that the developer failed to maintain his water pipes to code and is therefore at fault, Robert is not only offered a $9 million settlement through an intermediary, but the developer agrees to settle claims by residents of other buildings for a maximum of 300 thousand dollars each.

The thing is… Mattie realizes too late that Senior has quietly decided to bankrupt his developer client, rendering the agreement Robert agreed to literally worthless (even though the other plaintiffs will be reimbursed). After Mattie and Robert mull over this bad news, Robert decides, “Since I enjoyed spending time with you, I was wondering if you’d like to do it again, maybe at a restaurant.”

Mattie, maintaining her “poor widow of a cheating husband with a naughty grandson” persona, delicately replies, “That’s so kind, and if I were up to it, you’d be the perfect person to have lunch with.” But I’m not dating yet.”

Mattie starts to apologize further, but Robert charmingly interrupts her, saying with a wink, “I’ve known you less than a week. You didn’t break my heart.”

Robert’s overture comes just after Mattie and her (very much alive!) husband Edwin have locked horns and exchanged words about how her dependence on Alfie as “the man in the chair” is costing their grandson sleep and causing him to miss homework. However, Matty and Edwin make up and she agrees to rely less on Alfie, especially during school hours!

Regarding Matty’s mission.… Alfie downloaded the files from Olympia’s laptop and found four heavily redacted documents about Wellbrexa and their opioid-related lawsuits. Mattie intends to look at the real documents, which means she needs to invent the disease (and then dead) dog to ingratiate herself with Mrs. B and gain access to the document room. However, Mattie finds an empty accordion folder in the box she needs. Alfie helps Matty find a document disposal receipt, and the signature on it is… well, unfathomable. But after seeing John Hancox as an Olympian and Julian, Matty secretly takes a photo of Senior’s golf score card and the signature matches! Now she just needs to prove that he took the damned documents…

ElsewhereBilly chided Sarah for not knowing he had a girlfriend and not for a long time! And Elijah told Olympia that he couldn’t be with her and not be with her, so he was going to work in the Dallas office for a while. And at the end of the episode, Julian helped his ex vent her frustrations with Senior by making her take a golf club to many of his father’s favorite trophies/awards.

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