(This story contains spoilers from the October 24 episode of Food lid.)

Addressing sexual harassment in television and film is no longer taboo after#MeToo. But Food lidwith its third episode, “A Guy Named Greg,” added even greater nuance to the conversation.

Kathy Bates plays Madeline “Matty” Matlock in hit CBS series as the wily septuagenarian lawyer who shares the same last name as the iconic TV show hero. In the latest episode, which aired Thursday night, creator/showrunner Jennie Snyder Urman and her team went beyond just making the audience believe the accuser and instead highlighted lingering generational divides and prejudices surrounding how sexual harassment harms women.

The scene is set to unleash the larger conversation when Olympia (Skye Marshall) fails to connect with the jury as she represents Alex (Danielle Larracuente, Bosch: Heritage), a young, attractive attorney new to her firm, in her sexual harassment claim against senior colleague Jeremy Brooks (Chad Coe). To win the jury back, the firm Jacobson Moore’s jury consultant, aka “the Human Lie Detector” Shae Banfield (a new recurring role for Jane the Virgin favorite Yael Grobglas), recommends that Matty take over. As Olympia and her colleagues—her soon-to-be ex-husband Julian (Jason Ritter), whose father Senior (Beau Bridges) founded the company, and potential love interest Elijah (Eme Ikwuakor)—Matty, who hasn’t tried a case in 30 years, prepares to the mock trial room with a mock jury, she continues to falter. When Shae continues to question her, Matty responds with an emotional truth bomb.

“You’re not being honest, Matty, why?” Shae roars as she walks towards Bates’ character, repeatedly belittling her urge.

“Because I’m faking it,” Matty explodes. “The truth is, I don’t think we should have taken this case. In my day, we put up with comments like that all the time. And if it got bad, we avoided the guy. We didn’t get drunk at a holiday party and end up alone with him. “

A loud gasp comes from behind, causing Matty and Olympia to turn their heads as Shae continues to look straight ahead to reveal a very hurt Alex – who viewers had seen Matty talk into wearing a court suit that played down her breasts before the first court appearance – before she leaves the room. In the next scene, with the New York City landscape in the background, Matty apologizes to Olympia. “I am so sorry; it is generational; then we just put up with different things, she says. But Olympia passionately and convincingly tears into her that Alex doesn’t have to be perfect, telling her that she took the case because of the world she wants for her own young daughter.

Matty prepared for the case, her first argument in court, and remembers her own Jeremy, a guy she calls Greg who “crossed the line” and “got fresh” with her. She and her husband even joked about him. But the decision to stay out of Greg’s way, she reveals to the jury later, kept her out of litigation. Instead, she hid and swung to contract. “You know it’s funny,” she tells the jury. “It seemed like a small thing then,” shook his head, “completely encircled my dreams, which are not small at all, are they?”

Matty admits her own bias about Alex to the jury based on what it was like in her younger days as a working woman, and challenges the jurors to adjust their own thinking from the age-old attack “why did Alex wait so long to report what Jeremy Brooks did” to ” how bad must it have been for Alex to risk everything and finally report it?”

Urman tells The Hollywood Reporter that this episode is one of her favorites, especially because it accomplishes so many things at once. “Matty’s not always right, and we wanted to dramatize some of her blind spots,” she says. “The really hopeful part is how she changes.”

Urman explains, “If you had asked her if she had ever dealt with sexual harassment, she would have said no.” And then she realizes this event that happened in her life. She thought she was handling it, (but) she just swung. And she realizes through this younger woman’s story that, yes, she swung, but it cost her something. It changed her entire life and the type of law she practiced. These are things that you cannot quantify.”

Urman further explains Matty’s emotional state, saying, “It’s one of my favorite episodes because of that, because of how she learns and how emotional it is for her to realize what things like sexual harassment can cost you. It’s not always clear then, and it becomes clear later. In this case, it becomes clear 30, 40 years later, and it really changes the way she thinks. And it also lets her realize that she likes to be in the courtroom, and it opens a new path for her.”

Bates also praised the pivotal Matty episode and narrated THR“I really like that episode, not only because I get to argue a case in court that Matty wanted to do all these years, and didn’t realize until this came up, and then she remembers this event, this ruling event in her life that set her on a path that made her leave behind her dreams of becoming a litigator.”

The theme of sexual harassment, she reveals, struck a chord with her. “It’s something I identified with because I grew up sexually in the ’60s and ’70s. It was a different time, and it was just before AIDS brought down the boom of all sexual freedom that started in the ’60s,” shares Bates. “In those days, if you decided to go to a man’s hotel room, you knew why you were going. So when the #MeToo movement came out, my reaction was a very knee-jerk reaction based on my generational experience,” she admits.

“Seeing what young women are going through now, and the kind of sexual harassment they’re dealing with, not just going to a hotel room, but daily in the office, and how it affects their careers, I think that’s what Matty started to identify themselves with — that it’s not a one-time thing; it’s something they have to live with. And her eyes were opened to it the same way I think my eyes were opened. So it was a very powerful episode for me to delve into and understand what young women are going through, and that they want to be able to show their bodies and be sexy and have fun and flirt, but then not have to be harassed because of it.”

“It affects you in ways that you don’t always know because you protect yourself in different ways,” Urman emphasizes again. “I don’t know many women, unfortunately, who haven’t been through it. In the writer’s room there was very frank and honest discussion. One of our writers said that line that Matty says later, which is: The question isn’t why it’s taking her so long to report it, it’s, how bad must it have been for her to come forward?”

Urman continues, “So many times we don’t wallow in it, we swing, and we build boundaries that we don’t realize are affecting us too. Why should you have to shun someone for their bad behavior? And what situations and places of power (take) you out of because you have to avoid those bad situations? It’s not something Matty struggles with at all until this case and (she) realizes, ‘Oh, it changed my life.’

Urman is careful to note that women coming forward is still not easy, and that other factors play a role. “I think there’s still a level of privilege in who gets to report and how they’re seen and valued because it costs money; it puts the job at risk and depends on where you’re probably in this country, how serious or not serious those things taken,” she elaborates. “It’s hopeful and ambitious when women say something and they are believed, but I think there are so many calculations every day of ‘if I do this, then I won’t have that job’ or ” I won’t be able to support my family, and I won’t be able to pay my bills.’

“It’s devastating to me when I think about it,” she continues. “The benefit of being listened to is very real. And that’s why we just want to put more and more examples on the screen to say, ‘this is not okay,’ just so people realize they’re in a similar situation and feel seen.”

***

Food lid releases new episodes Thursdays at 9 p.m. on CBS.