On So Help Me Todd Season 1 Episode 21, “Are You There, Todd? It’s Me, Margaret,” Todd is forced to step into his mother’s role representing clients. He instead creates chaos, but that turns out to be a good thing…at least until it isn’t.
In case you’re wondering just how much the show is determined to pack into the last outing of its first season, nearly everything above, including the fact it’s forced to happen when Margaret gets sick, occurs in the first ten minutes of the hour.
The fact that Todd going against his mother’s wishes (at least partially with reason) in the trial doesn’t result in scenes of open violence is as much of a shock to him as it is to us. It’s less of a surprise when the case soon seems doomed again after the brief reprieve.
There’s a period in which Todd and Margaret have been fired by their clients and fear their jobs at the firm will follow. Much as we know that will never happen, it’s hard to figure how they’ll get out of this corner. The answer, as we should expect, is complete chaos.
Todd is forced to keep playing a lawyer through a loophole that may or may not really exist. With his mother’s voice literally in his ear, he pulls off justice for a large group of clients in a scene worthy of Elle Woods from Legally Blonde.
Where do they go after a win like this? For Margaret, the answer is to being a named partner. It only takes her standing up to Beverly and nearly walking out of the firm once and for all. I’ll happily accept all of that and more, because: finally.
Along the way, we get plenty of reminders about all the relationships that have thrived or fallen throughout season one. The catalyst of the latter is a scene in which both Margaret and Allison receive their divorce papers at the same time.
For Allison, this is a severance from the role she’s played for so long. She spends much of the finale adrift in a way we haven’t yet seen. She seeks change and ends the season determined to find it. We won’t know what that will look like for some time.
Margaret’s own divorce is a little more anticlimactic, having been coming for so long. She’s already moving forward—just in time for the re-entrance of a certain rival lawyer. Forget everything I’ve said about she and Gus being doomed.
Instead, they share their first kiss while still bickering as we’ve seen them do for so many of their scenes together. Fans have mixed feelings about Gus, especially after his last appearance, but this feels like something real for better or for worse.
The second season-ending cliffhanger will better define what “for worse” could be. The first involves Todd, who gets two huge pieces of news at once: that he has won back his PI license, and that Susan and Peter are off to get married in Vegas.
These are both mixed bags, at least for how they’ll affect the show. He assures his mother that he won’t leave right away and Francey that he won’t run after Susan. Yet all we know for our title character’s closing moments is that he’s planning to do…something.
There’s no telling just what said thing will be, and as frustrating as that is, it’s nothing to the second and more bewildering reveal of the very last scene. Harry appears in Margaret’s apartment just as she plans a long-awaited romantic outing with Gus.
Of all the ways to end this season, seeing the mess of a man that abandoned Margaret back in full pathetic glory is…a choice. I’m not even sure what to say about it. With the writers of Hollywood on strike, all I can do is hope they win their fight so we get to address this madness sometime before 2024.