The Starlet

I chose this episode to review, but my comments could apply to any Matlock episode beginning with Season 3 and continuing to the end of its TV run. My beef is with how they developed Matlock's character after year 1. In year 1, Matlock is portrayed as a smart, savvy, relatively sophisticated Atlanta attorney, as we would expect of someone who graduated from Harvard Law. But beginning in season 2, and continuing every year after that, they changed Matlock's character.

He is no longer smart, savvy, or sophisticated. In fact, outside the courtroom, he's an idiotic jackass. And in his dealings with women, especially his supposedly intimate relationship with prosecutor Julie March, he is an emotional cripple who is incapable of expressing his feelings about anything, especially love.

And most of his dialogue consists of continuous stuttering and repeating the same words over and over. That may be how some Southern people really talk, but it makes Matlock look like a damn fool. I don't know whose idea it was to develop his character in this direction, but whoever it was, they should've been fired. It ruins what otherwise could've been a great show.