MATLOCK: THE FIGHTER (TV)

Summary

One in this legal drama about Ben Matlock, an expert yet unconventional lawyer and his experiences both in and out of the courtroom.

A press conference is held at Westwood Medical Center in Chicago to announce that Billy Leon, professional boxer and newly-crowned heavyweight champion, does not have steroids in his system. Nick Underwood, a sports magazine reporter who first broke the story accusing Billy of using steroids, calls his editor, believing that his sources lied to him and asking for time so that he can reveal the truth. Billy is enraged at Nick, whom he considered to be his friend, and becomes enraged when he spots him at the press conference. Three weeks later in Atlanta, Billy is appearing in an outdoor training exhibition in preparation for a title defense bout. Nick arrives asking to speak to Billy in private, but Billy angrily rebukes him and sends him off. That night, Nick attends a ballroom reception hosted by Clayton Ross, Billy's promoter. Nick confronts Clayton, Billy's wife Alana, and his trainer Mickey Callahan, implying that he has unearthed secrets about all of them which he wishes to pass on to Billy. Clayton has Nick thrown out of the party.

Nick returns to his bungalow, all the while recording his thoughts on his tape recorder. He receives a telephone call from someone asking to meet with him, and he believes this constitutes a breakthrough for his story. However, soon thereafter the hotel maid enters Nick's room and finds him dead at his desk via a gunshot wound to the back. Billy's lawyers call in Matlock to help represent him in court. Billy claims he was out running during the time of the murder, but his case is not helped by the fact that his gun has been identified as the murder weapon. He claims that anyone could have taken his gun, and insists that he wasn't even aware of Nick staying in the same bungalow complex as him. He becomes so angry at the suggestion that he murdered Nick that he throws a tantrum in the interrogation room. Despite this, Matlock believes that he is innocent and agrees to defend him in court.

Matlock inspects the scene of the crime, noting the bullet hole in the back of Nick's chair and the contents of Nick's briefcase, including his tape recorder. Nick's phone conversation was captured on tape, and police believe it was the killer who phoned him. Conrad and Michelle obtain transcripts of Nick's tapes for Matlock to sift through. He discovers that Nick's next story for the magazine was going to reveal potentially damaging secrets about Clayton, Alana, and Mickey. Matlock speaks with Clayton, accusing him of bribing various officials to lie to Nick in order to convince him of Billy's steroid use and then discredit Nick, thus earning millions of dollars' worth of free publicity. Clayton denies having done such a thing. Meanwhile, Michelle confronts Alana with Nick's accusation that she was having an affair. She admits to having cheated on Billy once while he was in Tokyo for an exhibition match, but deeply regrets it. Michelle points out that if Billy found out about the affair, he would divorce her immediately, cutting her off from his fortune. While this is going on, Conrad speaks to Mickey; Nick found out that Mickey fixed several fights in Billy's favor early in his career in order to build up his confidence. Mickey would be out of a job if Billy found out about it. All three of the suspects claim they were at the party at the time of the murder, although they have no specific witnesses to corroborate these claims except for each other. Matlock, Michelle, and Conrad each believe that the person they spoke to is the culprit.

As Matlock and company try to determine who the most likely suspect is, Matlock notices that a photograph of Nick depicts him wearing reading glasses. However, the police found Nick's reading glasses in his briefcase, raising Matlock's suspicions; he begins to believe that the chair Nick was sitting in at the time of his death was moved. However, they find that the chairs in the bungalow complex are all identical to each other, and that there is no apparent way to determine if any of them had been moved recently. On their way out they are approached by Clayton, who says he recalls seeing a mysterious red stain on Mickey's suit during the party just after the time of the murder. Matlock asks Conrad to monitor Clayton while he speaks to Mickey and Michelle speaks to Alana again. Mickey shows Matlock the stain on his suit, which turns out to merely be cocktail sauce. As Matlock exits Mickey's place, he notices a direction sign in the bungalow complex which gives him an idea. He inspects Nick's room and makes a cryptic comment about the position of the chair and the amount of sunlight the room's windows let in.

In court, Matlock calls Alana to the stand. He brings up the matter of her brief affair and points out that Nick was planning on revealing the affair in his upcoming article. He posits that Alana left the party at some point to call Nick and invite him to her bungalow to plead with him not to run his story. Matlock's theory is that Nick refused and she killed him with Billy's gun to keep him quiet. To prove this, Matlock replays Nick's final recorded message, hypothesizing that the number "nine" spoken by Nick in the message refers not to time, but to Alana's bungalow, numbered nine in the complex. He operates under the possibility that while Nick was found dead in his own bungalow, number seventeen, that is not necessarily where he was killed. As evidence of this, Matlock brings in a number of chairs from the complex, one from Alana's room, one from Nick's room, and two from the adjoining rooms. Matlock demonstrates that while apparently identical, each chair has subtle differences. His map of the area suggests that Alana's chair received far more sunlight than the others due to the relative position of her window, and he draws attention to the fact that the constant sunlight has faded the fabric of her chair to a greater extent than the others. However, the chair with the faded fabric was found in Nick's room by the police, since she switched the chairs after she murdered Nick in her room. In light of this evidence, Alana bursts into tears, revealing her identity as the culprit. Commercials deleted.

Details

• NETWORK: NBC
• DATE: December 11, 1990 8:00 PM
• RUNNING TIME: 0:47:20
• COLOR/B&W: Color
• CATALOG ID: B:22584
• GENRE: Drama, legal
• SUBJECT HEADING: Drama, legal
• SERIES RUN: NBC - TV series, 1986-1992; ABC, 1992-1995
• COMMERCIALS: N/A

CREDITS

• Joel Steiger … Executive Producer
• Fred Silverman … Executive Producer
• Dean Hargrove … Executive Producer, Created by
• Jeff Peters … Supervising Producer
• Joyce Burditt … Producer
• Richard Collins … Producer
• William S. Kerr … Co-Producer
• John M. McLean … Associate Producer
• Christopher Hibler … Director
• David Hoffman … Writer
• Leslie Daryl Zerg … Writer
• Phil Combest … Writer
• Artie Kane … Music by
• Dick de Benedictis … Theme Music by
• Andy Griffith … Cast, Ben Matlock
• Nancy Stafford … Cast, Michelle Thomas
• Julie Sommars … Cast, A.D.A. Julie March
• Clarence Gilyard Jr. … Cast, Conrad McMasters
• Christopher Allport … Cast, Nick Underwood
• Steven Anderson … Cast, Prosecutor David "Hangman" Hawkins
• Dick Bakalyan (See also: Richard Bakalyan) … Cast, Mickey Callahan
• Wanda de Jesus … Cast, Alana Leon
• Ken Foree … Cast, Billy Leon
• David Froman … Cast, Lt. Bob Brooks
• Stanley Kamel … Cast, Clayton Ross
• Tom Ruben … Cast, Monroe Weber
• Don Knotts … Cast, Les Calhoun
• James V. Christy … Cast, Freddy Romano
• John Petlock … Cast, Doctor
• Aurelia Sweeny … Cast, Maid
• Garth Wilson … Cast, Hotel Manager
• Alexander Zale … Cast, Judge Alden