So Help Me Todd Season 1 Episode 18 Review: Gloom and Boom

We’ve officially entered the run up to the season finale with the first of four straight episodes. If So Help Me Todd Season 1 Episode 18, “Gloom and Boom,” is anything to go by, it could be a wild ride.

We open on the day of a man’s scheduled execution, with Margaret sending Susan out on the frantic last-minute duties of trying to get a stay. This could make for an episode’s worth of real time tension as is. Then a woman pulls Margaret into her office and reveals she’s strapped with live explosives.

Over the course of sixty minutes—and just a few hours in the show’s time—the panic somehow compounds with each new development. The woman will blow the office up if Margaret’s client isn’t executed, but she’s really being controlled by a man who is the true killer in the case.

Tanya does an excellent job of keeping us on our toes. She’s convincing as the threat herself, but it’s because she’s playing a role with her daughter’s life on the line. It’s only by a hilariously lucky break that Todd inadvertently smashes the camera tracking her, giving our heroes an advantage.

Then, as the execution ticks nearer (Margaret having been ordered to reverse everything she’s done to stop it), the man himself comes into the picture, one hand on the bomb’s detonator and the other dragging Allison with him.

There’s never really a question about whether the bombing will be stopped. A detonation would kill everyone and leave us with no show. It’s a testament to the writing that we’re on the edge of our seats throughout, even knowing the day will be saved.

There are still moments of humor shoved in amidst the life-or-death stakes, and they’re as chaotic and slapstick as ever. It’s not so much that they don’t work as that our nerves are already so frayed whenever they pop up that they’re literally hysterical.

We can’t forget that, at the heart of this, there’s a man who spends the whole episode awaiting his own death for a crime he hasn’t committed. We only get a few moments with Jesse, but they’re enough for us to be desperate for his salvation, which comes at literally the last minute.

There’s also commentary about the racial aspects involved, which are poignant despite only taking up a scene or two. Lyle rightly points out the stigma of what would be Portland’s first execution in decades being for a single murder: that of a white woman and supposedly by a Black man.

To make things worse, an already-panicked Susan is sent by Margaret with little explanation to Jessie’s side. The thought she could see him die is gutting for everyone, and even with her far from the bombing, her race to use proof of it to save him is intense.

It ties too to a welcome moment in the aftermath when she lets Todd back in as a friend. (An episode promo tells us this is not the end of the story, but that will come later.) It’s one of a few sweet scenes between several characters reeling from almost getting blown up.

There’s so much more that gets briefly set aside in these dire circumstances, including the fate of Allison’s marriage. Those are sure to bring some more tense dynamics between our favorite characters, making it even more welcome to see them as a team united under pressure before that comes to pass.

 

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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