Melanie Lynskey is back on Matlock - Season 2 brings Melanie Lynskey back before the finale. Lynskey returns in Season 2 Episode 14, titled Day One, when it airs Thursday, April 16, on CBS, and TV Insider has an exclusive first look at her scene with Jason Ritter.
The clip shows Lynskey’s Debra Palmer arriving at the Jacobson Moore law firm and catching Matty, Olympia and Julian off guard. Matty whispers, “I knew Edwin came on too strong,” as the group reacts, while Senior introduces his ex to his son and Debra answers with, “Mr. Handsome and Mr. Handsomer! I’ll let you two guess which is which,” before Julian replies, “OK, we will,”.
That return matters because Debra is not just another visitor. Lynskey plays one of Senior’s former lovers, and Debra was with him years earlier in Australia. She also gave Julian the order to bury the Wellbrexa study, placing her directly inside the scandal that has driven Matty, Olympia and Julian’s secret mission to take Senior down. The episode logline says the team keeps tracing Senior’s money trail, arranges a delicate meeting with a key accomplice and also folds in a criminal justice student’s personal case involving a hit and run.
Lynskey made her Matlock debut in October and had not appeared again until now, making this her first return since that introduction. The appearance also marks the second straight week that a Matlock spouse has shown up on the CBS drama, after Edwin Hodge’s guest-star role in Episode 13 on April 9. With the show now in its penultimate stretch, the timing pushes the story closer to the endgame.
The remaining question is not whether Debra knows more than she has said. It is how much more damage the money trail will expose before Matlock reaches its back-to-back two-part finale on Thursday, April 23.
