So Help Me Todd Season 1 Episode 19 Review: 86’d

So Help Me Todd Season 1 Episode 19, “86’d,” opens with a scene that might make us think we’re watching a kitchen reality show instead of a scripted drama. Let’s just say Margaret pestering Allison isn’t all that disrupts a mother/daughter dinner.

Head chef Jax treats everyone around him terribly, and our client, fellow chef Lauren, has had enough. Unfortunately, the man’s influence keeps any other co-workers from helping her. When he then turns up dead (surprisingly early in the episode), it’s not too much of a tragedy.

It is still very bad news for Lauren. Suddenly, Margaret is leading a defense of the prime suspect in a murder. She’s aided by the fact that there’s no shortage of people to want Jax dead, many of whom also work in the restaurant industry and have highly developed knife skills.

A comedy of errors ensues. Much of is centers on Todd getting sick while over-sampling in the food lab belonging to one of several red herrings. I really don’t want to touch on some of the gross-out humor that ensues except to question why in the world he comes into work afterwards at all.

By the time Margaret is posing as a dishwasher to replace Todd, who gets mistaken for a restaurant critic and pulled in anyway, we learn to stop questioning things. I really think they should just let that CSI guy we meet solve this one for them.

In the end, the true killer is the restaurant’s owner—the first person Margaret talks to, and one who flirts with her while claiming Jax “was like a brother to him”. That’s suspect enough to make him look guilty very early on, so of course Margaret winds up on a date with him.

With both Todd and Allison, who once again gets roped into the chaos, running to the rescue, Margaret learns the truth and bides for time. For someone as professional as she is, I question her choices. Why turn your back to someone who has a knife and knows how to use it?

Regardless, her kids and the police arrive in the nick of time, and the arrest that follows sets Lauren free. Will everything she went through, or the truth behind Jax’s lashing out (he had Parkinson’s), do anything to change the intense industry they work in? That’s probably wishful thinking.

Amidst investigative scenes and with Todd apparently* very close to getting his PI license back, there’s a lot of talk about things like career stability and five-year plans. While it’s fitting for Margaret, the need to push such a traditional and one-line path is frustrating.  

Everyone needs to provide for their current and future selves, but not everybody needs marriage, kids, a 9-5 requiring a college degree, or a two-story home. From Margaret’s date with a murderer to another nail in the coffin of Allison’s marriage, much of that fares poorly here, anyway.

There is still that romance that stands at the forefront in many fans’ minds. No matter what Susan tells her fiancé, Todd, or herself, the past that exists between her and our title character is something the writers are not going to let fade away.

I get the desire for a slow burn, “will they/won’t they” dynamic, but I have some hesitations here.  My feelings toward love triangles range from indifference to active dislike, and I don’t want this to be one. Peter is a good guy. He deserves the truth before this ship can set sail again.

Still, I’m not sure what we’ll have time for. The last two episodes of the season are likely to focus on high-stakes drama largely in the court. I’m sure both romance and heartbreak will happen, but they may be left to the stuff of cliffhangers.

*And in that same vein: the show has been renewed. There’s very little chance that season 2 will break the mold of Todd working in his mother’s office. Does that mean he won’t become a PI again after all? And worse, with all the drama so close at hand: if not, why?

 

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

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

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