During her promotional campaign for her reboot of Matlock, Kathy Bates endeared herself to the retirees the show was courting by announcing that she had planned on retiring until the wily legal procedural came calling. Sadly, CBS had other plans for the actor and renewed the series after two episodes. Yes, Matlock got a second season renewal, which is great for a simple country lawyer, but doesn’t Kathy Bates deserve a Mai Tai and a beach chair after all these years? Still, this shouldn’t come as a surprise, considering, per The Hollywood Reporter, Matlock was CBS’ best debut series in over five years. She’s never going to retire at this rate.
Unfortunately, all the kids can’t stop gabbing about Matlock, even on Matlock. The new series, which comes from Jane The Virgin creator Jennie Snyder Urman, sees Matty Matlock (Bates) re-entering the workforce at 76 and landing at an elite law firm. The catch is, as in our universe, the original Matlock show exists in the world of Matlock (2024). This leads to all sorts of questions about the mechanics of the Matlockiverse, such as, do seasons seven through nine of Matlock (1986) feature Cliff Lewis, Ben Matlock’s final partner, played by Daniel Roebuck? Assuming Roebuck’s career continued apace, in the final season of Matlock, he was starring as Jay Leno opposite Kathy Bates in The Night Shift. This leaves us wondering: Does Kathy Bates exist in the Matlock universe, or is this a Last Action Hero situation where all Kathy Bates’ roles are recast with Sylvester Stallone? Misery would be a tad more interesting if Stallone were throwing the mallet, but it would be a shame to lose her performance.
Promoting the series last month, Bates told The New York Times how close she came to retirement and that it was the new series that convinced her not to. After a movie fell through, she called her agents and told them she was ready to retire. A few weeks later, they sent her the script for Matlock, which single-handedly revived Bates’ spirits. “Everything I’ve prayed for, worked for, clawed my way up for, I am suddenly able to be asked to use all of it, and it’s exhausting,” she said.
It’s true what they say: Don’t underestimate Matlock.