So Help Me Todd Season 1 Episode 9 Review: Swipe Wright

Issues of privacy feel, um, very timely as So Help Me Todd Season 1 Episode 9, “Swipe Wright” first airs. Tech gives access to personal information strangers shouldn’t have, and sometimes people learn things they’d rather not about those they know best.

Until now, Margaret and Co. have generally represented people who have the system stacked against them, and who we like. True, our client of the episode himself is a nice enough guy to root for, but the company he represents is in more of a gray area.

On the surface, it’s just a new breed of dating app, and the woman suing its owner for wrongful termination seems to display enough unstable public behavior to warrant her dismissal. That’s before we get into the software tracking every keystroke of its employees.

As Margaret rightly points out, she can’t work against her own client’s interest, even if his company may have stolen intellectual property. Good thing all these immoral doings can be tracked down to a single man playing mind games with everyone around him.

Mason is summarily fired and will face the appropriate legal consequences, but the episode raises a point. As defense attorneys, there’s only so long this firm can go before representing someone unquestionably in the wrong. What happens then?

That question will have to wait because we have bigger personal matters to attend to. To start, opposing council is the same Gus Easton who we’ve already seen representing an airline even more unethical than this company, and who has already had sparks with Margaret nonetheless.

Now that Gus isn’t standing behind that kind people who cover up mistakes that could cost lives, the biggest thing standing between him and the Wright matriarch is her own holdups involving her ex — you know, the one who has gone to Iceland to die in peace.

The narrative involving Harry has been an odd one, only seeming to rear up when necessary (like when kids need to be guilted into spending Thanksgiving with their mom.) Can this finally put it to bed? For now, it at least gets Margaret to finally take off her wedding ring.

This is all suitably dramatic, but none of it qualifies as a plot twist, and since this is officially a mid-season finale, we have standards to uphold. As such, the dating app gives us a much bigger and more personal revelation: Allison is on it under a false name.  

This isn’t entirely out of the blue, since the show’s pilot hinted heavily at potential trouble in her marriage to Chuck. Yet we’ve heard almost no mention of these issues since then, so there’s little to prepare us for them re-arising now and in this way.

I have Feelings about cheating storylines, but there’s a lot more going on here, mostly centered on how Allison feels like her entire life has been arranged for her. As good a mom as Margaret is, the commentary on her need to control does hit the mark.

It’s the most dramatic storyline we’ve seen on this show to date, and from Todd and Margaret withholding parts of what they know to Allison not deleting the app after saying she will, it’s going to be one that carries over once we return.

Finally, this hour also confirms that the business partner who threw Todd under the bus for her crimes is also an ex-girlfriend who likely manipulated their whole relationship. It puts a painful spin on the show’s biggest chunk of backstory. And guess who’s showing up in the next new episode?

Despite its hour-long runtime, So Help Me Todd has devoted more minutes to comedy than to drama. That might be expected when its title is a pun on words. It might also be about to change. There’s a lot of airing out still needed in this family, and now it all seems on the near horizon.

What did you think of this episode of So Help Me Todd? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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So Help Me Todd airs Thursdays at 9/8c on CBS.

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