Suspension of Belief Failures: Matlock

I'm such a mystery show junkie that I will watch shows that range from Diagnosis Murder to Elementary, from Death in Paradise to NCIS. Bones. Castle. Miss Marple. Jake & the Fatman. Even Criminal Minds in its initial seasons. Blue Bloods. The Closer. Major Crimes. Person of Interest. Murder, She Wrote. Poirot. Father Brown. Monk. Murder in Suburbia. Law & Order. Numb3rs. House, early seasons. Psych. The Mentalist (in parts). Rosemary & Thyme. Mysterious Ways. Now & Again. Various Star Trek episodes. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Jeremy Brett). Sherlock (for Martin Freeman).  Nero Wolfe. Columbo. Miss Fisher. Shakespeare & Hathaway. 

And Matlock. 

I enjoy Andy Griffith. I'm a big fan of the Andy Griffith Show. And I often enjoy the investigation part of Matlock episodes. 

The court scenes are silly. 

And I can't get past the silliness. 

I am aware that few murder mystery shows match "real life." While discussing the Wallace case, Dorothy Sayers makes a wry comment about mystery writers who want to get away with a single police detective and side-kick. In reality, there were over half-a dozen police wandering about the Wallace home the night of the murder. And some of the trace evidence might have been tracked about by at least one of them. 

(Point: I don't consider incredibly angsty mystery shows all that realistic either. The "hard-boiled" school has always seemed as contrived to me as the cozy manor house mystery--more-so in some cases.)

The problem is that there is not even the slightest itty-bitty possibility that Matlock would be allowed to do in real life even the tiniest amount of what he does in the fictional courtroom. 

And I can't ignore it the way I do with so many other shows where I allow for certain "givens" (like the incredibly short amount of time it takes for people to drive places in major cities). The list above indicates how many givens I will accept as givens. (I did entirely ignore "Red John" in The Mentalist.)

Yet by the time I reach Season 3 of Matlock, I find I'm watching the investigation--then fast-forwarding through the court scenes until the murderer's identity is confirmed. 

If Matlock's explanations of each problem were confined to his closing arguments, they would still be unrealistic but within the bounds of possibility.  Closing arguments are allowed more latitude than witness-questioning. And more bombast. 

But lawyers are simply not allowed to conduct the equivalent of police interrogations toward witnesses on the stand. Or produce radically new evidence. Or go off on tangents that lead nowhere. The truth is, when attorneys go to trial, they pretty much all know what is on the table. There just aren't that many surprises.

In real life, Matlock would never get more than two words into any of his questions. It would be like watching professional tennis, which I consider boring beyond belief since it entails watching people serve balls at each other. Every time Matlock opened his mouth...

"Objection!" 

"Sustained!"

Matlock scripts occasionally have the prosecutor stand up and make token objections. I actually find this more insulting and irritating than if the script just let Andy Griffith chew scenery, rather like the wrap-ups in Death in Paradise, which are allowed as an element of the genre and are therefore excusable. 

I don't particularly mind scene-chewing! But pretending, even for a second, that Matlock's type of questioning is even vaguely permissible in a courtroom by any standards of the modern world or, for that matter, history (and I am including the Middle Ages here) is so patently absurd--

I wish the episodes would end with the investigations.

Andy Griffith reputedly loved playing Matlock. So I'm happy for him.