The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret: "What Could Only Be Considered a Dreadful Day for Todd"

After tonight’s finale, I wasn’t positive if that was it, that the audience was supposed to infer everything on its own (i.e., that Dave’s actually the creator of Global National, or that Todd’s interactions with the Turks will eventually be discovered) or if we were left with a “To Be Continued?” type of finale, meaning that the rest of the 9 days between tonight’s episode and Todd’s court appearance are meant to be covered at a future date. I called my contact at IFC, who told me that there’s nothing definitive planned yet for a season 2, so it’s possible that this could be it-it. Of course while I’d be happy to see a second season of the show, I also like it when a show’s premature finale also is insular enough to satisfy as a finale (see: Party Down) so I think it works either way.

I think tonight’s episode illustrated that while Todd’s the biggest asshole in the world, Alice is kind of an asshole herself (or an idiot, anyway) for always giving Todd a second chance. She might be kindly, but what does she see in him? Does she find the little knot on the top of his head cute? She repeatedly calls him out on his lying in this episode after bailing him out from last week’s shenanigans, and Todd just lies harder (he points to the Houses of Parliament and claims that’s where his apartment is). Yet she still gives him second chances.

The episode wasn’t terribly different from previous episodes, in that Todd lies, the lies escalate, and he fails at his job and is in trouble at the end, but I liked the way some stories got tied up. Doug Whitney (as in Spike Jonze, or “You just got Whitneyed!”) comes to Brent’s hotel room to fire him: It turns out that the company is just a shell and Brent doesn’t technically work for anyone—Brent confesses that all he knows about his job is that someone named Mr. Malford hired him. At the end of the episode, we see Dave, in a tuxedo, leaving an ambassador’s dinner party where he’s called “Mr. Malford.” This might explain how Dave was able to send a text message during Todd’s attempted resignation and elicit several phone orders for Thunder Muscle. It’s never totally clarified, but I like to imagine that Dave is simply filthy rich and uses his money to manipulate people like Todd, wreak havoc, and sit back under the guise of a lowly deskman (“Dave, I know this job means the world to you”) and observe his handiwork.

And while we don’t see what leads Todd to his sentencing, we saw the ball start to roll. In an attempt to prove to Alice that he lives in Parliament, he has Dave sign him up for the last tour, which turns out to be a tour for deaf people. What is there to say about this scene? It was just awful. Todd not only tries to fake sign language, but he speaks in what he thinks a deaf voice sounds like, and on top of that, he assumes for some reason that deaf people are mentally incapacitated. “WHAT, I SOWWY” he says when he’s caught and then says “POO POO” when someone finds him hiding in the bathroom. It was beyond cringeworthy: Just like Andy Capp, Todd’s always making things worse for himself.

Meanwhile, Sainsbury’s has a huge case against Thunder Muscle, the operation to prevent the Turks from making bombs out of Thunder Muscle is called “Operation Stop Apocalypse,” and Todd may eventually be linked to the death of a member of Parliament but only after he’s already in trouble with the police after they get a look at his apartment, which looks like a murder scene, since Pamela decided to give birth there. There’s also something called “ALICE RAPE KIT,” and the first time I’ve ever seen footage of a man making love to a woman who is simultaneously nursing a baby. This show is what happens when you take an old fashioned farce and mix in a lot of poo and sex. I mean that in the best way possible, of course.

I loved the ending of the episode: Todd’s dad inexplicably shows up, proving that he’s not dead and not from Leeds—Todd’s already in so much trouble but this will be the ultimate humiliation he’ll have to live down, that his lies about his fathers blew up in his face … unless everyone will believe Todd when he pretends his dad is a ghost.

Stray observations:

• Todd kissing the photo of his sweet Fanny makes me laugh every time.
• “God gave his son for thee.”
• I wonder if it was done on purpose that Todd Margaret and Doug Whitney both have lady-type surnames.
• Who here has attended an “Episcopalian driving school”?
• Did I ever mention my fondness for the titles of the episodes?