Friday, October 7, 2022

I Hope Marcia and Skylar Help Todd Become a Success: So Help Me Todd Review

 


            For more than a quarter of a century I have been one of Marcia Gay Harden’s greatest admirers. One of the great character actresses of our time, she’s had far more success than far too many of them in her craft. In a rarity for the Oscars, they absolutely made the right call when she won Best Supporting Actress for Ed Harris minor masterpiece Pollock. In what would be the first film in Clint Eastwood’s late career renaissance Mystic River, she was just as brilliant as Tim Robbins’ incredibly strained wife who suspects her husband might be capable of murder.  Like so many actresses, she has migrated to television not long after, every so often touching the brilliance she shows film and stage. In the second season of Damages, she very nearly stole the show from Glenn Close and Rose Byrne as Claire Maddox, a lawyer for an energy company just as skilled as Patty and Ellen, and far more sexual. I’ve never forgotten how well she wore a garter belt.  She was one of the few genuinely solid performers in Aaron Sorkin’s The Newsroom and was superb in the cancelled too-soon ABC sitcom Trophy Wife.  I may not like The Morning Show, but I was glad to see her get an Emmy nomination for it this year.

            I haven’t admired Skyler Astin for nearly as long as Harden, but my respect for him runs just as deep. His breaking on to the scene in the Pitch Perfect franchise was wonderful and he has made wonderful performances in two of the greatest unwatched series of the past decade: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist. In the former, he was recast as a fan favorite and made us forget how great Santino Fontana was; freed from a similar inhibition in the latter, he made us root for him and Zoey to get together from the start and our hearts were as broken when he lost her.  Obviously, he has one of the greatest singing voices I’ve heard in years, but he also has the innate ability to make himself instantly likable.

            It was a personal joy of mine to see two of my favorite actors of this century working together in CBS’ new drama-comedy-legal mix, So Help Me Todd. It troubled me quite a bit while, watching the pilot, the creators had decided to go out of their comfort zones by casting Harden and Astin, too truly likable people, as characters who do every in their power to rub the audience – and each other – the wrong way. Harden is Anne Brightman, a major partner at a Portland firm. Astin is her son Todd – big surprise – a former private investigator who lost his license before the series began, has been freelancing – for an insurance agency – has moved back in with his sister – who is not happy to have him in her basement  - ever since. He and his mother have spent the last two years going out of their way not to talk each other: she has lived her life playing by the rules, and  he goes out of his way to break them every chance he gets. There is also a larger problem that they don’t want to admit; they’ve had a lot of trouble speaking to each other since his father died, and she remarried. It therefore makes things very awkward when Anne’s second husband – who has Parkinson’s - disappears while they are moving into a new apartment and Todd must help her. The search for her ex-husband ends with Todd confronting him on a place to Iceland and he makes it very clear that he does not want the time he has left – with Anne. This conversation, in typical broadcast TV fashion, also makes it clear that Todd’s mother broke her code in fighting for her son to keep her license, something he never knew about.

            I won’t like to you; So Help Me Todd is, at least in its first two episodes, something of a mess. It’s still not sure how serious a drama it wants to be, how much it wants to lean into the comedy that’s occasionally funny, and how much awkwardness it wants to deal with. I respect both Harden and Astin for taking roles that go out of their comfort zones; it doesn’t make them any less grating. At this point, it’s a question which personality trait viewers will find more grating: Harden’s anal-retentive streak or Astin’s insistence of narrating into his watch like he’s the hero of his own film noir.  Most of the other regulars on the series we’ve met – apart from Todd’s sister, who is constantly being pulled between the two – aren’t much more fully drawn and in several cases, just as irksome. (I loathe Leonard, the investigator for Anne’s firm. Every sentence out of his mouth makes my skin crawl.)

            There are also some pleasures to be found; the most interesting of which is that for all Todd and Anne’s utter differences, the paths they seem devoted to taking have not brought them the rewards they thought. We already know this whenever we see Todd approach anything, but in the second episode we saw how obvious it is for Anne. Anne has spent more than thirty years at her firm and has been cultivating a relationship with the Mayor of Portland that she thinks will finally get her name on the letterhead. However, before she can meet with him, one of the partners takes over the case, reduces her to second chair, demeans her for hiring Todd, and sends her out to get food. It’s clear from the moment we meet this man that Anne has propping him and other partners for years and has gotten to the point where she’s used to her being diminished by them. When the case is successfully resolved at the end of the episode, that same partner gives half-hearted praise to Anne, and vaguely offers the possibility of senior partner, but lavishes praises on Todd without crediting her for hiring him. Even Todd knows how unfair this is.

            We’re all used to the oil and water partnerships of series, but credit where it’s due: I don’t remember the last time seeing a mother and son team anywhere. It helps matters that both Harden and Astin are gifted at playing both drama and comedy equally well and their delivery of the dialogue, especially in their scenes together, is usually the highlight of this series. And So Help Me Todd makes it very clear, though they will no doubt go to their respective graves denying it, just how alike they are. In my favorite sequences to date, both go to the hospital where Alice gives the same advice to her brother and her mother, and both utterly misconstrue the exact same way. (Alice actually tries to point this out, but neither listen to her: you get the feeling she’s used to this by now.)

            I also want to give credit to the fact that So Help Me Todd is appearing on CBS. This is the first drama I’ve seen on the network since Evil (which ended up migrating to Paramount Plus) that isn’t a procedural or an action series of some kind. Given how CBS tends to treat this kind of series, I can’t help but wonder how long So Help Me Todd is for this network before they replace it with yet another spinoff of NCIS or FBI.  Don’t get me wrong; it’s nowhere near as polished as Evil was fresh out of the gate, but there is potential and a certain level of variety that you don’t see on, well, almost any broadcast network these days, and are likely to see fewer of in the years to come. That’s the real help that Todd will need going forward, particularly as its airing against Law and Order: SVU and Grey’s Anatomy, two series that need to be put down but aren’t go anywhere. I hope viewers choose something different, even if a show like Todd is the opposite of the comfort its competition offers.

          My score: 3.75 stars.  

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