Why CBS has canceled so help me Todd

Does any large network make wacky show titles as well (or, depending on your sense of humor, as stimulating) as CBS? I don’t think so. It is home to such creative shows, named chaotic as “Jake and the Fatman,” “Gary unmarried,” “Joan of Arcadia,” “United States Al,” “Syzyszynk,” a-my favorite personal, name -To- “God made my friend.” The crazy network titles go all the way back to the golden age of the TV, but their schedule still features several strangely named shows. Without giving all of them a watch, it’s hard to tell your “Georgie & Mandy’s first wedding” from your “Bob Hearts Abishola,” but one unusual show made her mark recently with a short but dear two -season run : “So please help me.”

The name of “So Help Me Todd” gives a few tips for the show’s default, but was actually about a flashing private detective (Skylar Astin Alum “perfect pitch”) that finishes working in the law firm that gets was run by his-y-Book Mother (Oscar and Tony-Winner Marcia Gay Harden) in the northwest Pacific. Together, the mother-son couple joins to investigate the cases of the week (some of them are so Portland) and, in the second term, to reveal a larger conspiracy. The cast of the show also included Madeline Wise, Tristen J. Winger, Inga Schlingmann, and Rosa Evangelina Arredondo, with former “Glee” Heather Morris joining in the sophomore season. “So Help Me Todd” won mixed reviews, but also had millions of regular viewers, so it was canceled premature in April 2024 plenty of frustration. This is why it ended.

Canceling “So Help Me Todd” was published in April 2024, alongside the news that another CBS shows – this one that has links to a very popular franchise – also bites the bullet. “CSI: Vegas” briefly cut after only three seasons (compared to the leading “CSI” show, which ran for fifteen stunning), and “so I helped Todd” were ax on at the same time. This was, as The deadline was notedA relatively surprising cut because of the “general belt tightening by the media companies,” which has led to huge changes to television over the past few years. Display time and AMC has both stimulated significant staff layoffs since 2022While the CW is broken and hacked its way through its whole Preexisting lineup starting the same year. The least said about the An overwhelming number of changes made to HBO And his streamer during these slender times, the best.

CBS has not come out of the recent economic lumps that the industry has faced-including a pandemic, a long-standing Hollywood labor movement, and a huge-unharmed political turmoil. In a separate piece, The deadline specified that “financial pressure on (the) corporate level is among all traditional media companies to curb expenditure in the middle of a soft ads market.” Basically, at the time “So Help Me Todd” was canceled, more companies were trying to sell advertising space than advertisers were trying to buy, an issue that affects big networks more than streamers Subscribers based. It also probably does not help that a parent -gni CBS, paramount, in the middle Long mergers with Skydance media At about this time, corporate mergers usually lead to some level of internal change, if not a complete haemorrhage.

All of this led to the network’s decision to cancel several shows. 2024 He saw an end not only “so help me Todd” and “NCIS: Vegas,” but also from the programming of a long -standing main structure like “Young Sheldon,” “Blue Bloods,” and “The Talk,” along with additional shows including ” Bob Hearts Abishola, “” Unleashed comics, “and” Ncis: Hawai’i. “

Of course, in terms of television programming, the “in with the new” often have to balance “out with the old” part of the equation. The deadline also referred to a “shelf space” in CBS when talking about the cancellation of spring 2024, making it clear that canceling the show was part of a business decision with the intention of bringing in new programs. This, too, is quite typical for media merger periods, and unfortunately, “Help me Todd” was at the lower end of the graduation chart compared to other CBS plays. “Todd” racked 7.7 million viewers across several platforms, number that would Way higher than a zeitgeist change show as “succession” If the title was on a pay cable, but relatively low for the Big Four channel with market share as huge as CBS.

So, CBC said goodbye to “So help me Todd,” and with no time to re -work his current story line before his end fell in a month, the show ended on a major cliff. “I think the main thing that worked against us was CBS has too many hour -long shows that work too well,” the creator of the Scott Prendergast series The deadline was told after the finale. “The real estate is not there.”

The 9pm slot on Thursday evening used to occupy “Elsbeth,” the remarkable and beautiful Spinoff “The Good Fight” with Carrie Preston as an attorney consulting with the NYPD on secret causes. With its format similar to “Columbo” and his fellow creators Robert and Robert and Michelle King’s unique talent, “Elsbeth” is much better than most of Network TV to offer, but It’s a shame that a unique show, another offbeat lost out because ever because of the ever -no -cutthroat nature of the media industry. CBS also continued to move its schedule around, with “Young Sheldon” and “Ghosts” both occupying the 9pm hour later in the 2023-24 broadcast year.

“So Help Me Todd” had plenty of fans when he was on, but the show’s own fandom made it known when it was briefly cut prematurely. After canceling, the cast and crew of the series revealed that “Todd” had a planned finale, news that caused fans to share their passion in the hope of landing it third season or new home. “What kill me most is that I know how the series was supposed to end,” star Skylar Astin Posted IX at the time. He continued: “It was perfect. Emotional, full circle, and perfectly melt.”

The viewers who end up instead were incomplete, with Margaret Marcia Gay Harden framed quite convincingly about raiding and other white collar crimes. The man behind the crimes, Merritt Folding, was a partner in the show’s central legal company that had never appeared throughout the show. However, his shoes stepped into a frame during the final seconds of the end of season 2, in a cliff -rendering that is a prendergast cliff at tvline Exec CBS encouraged him to pursue, believing the show was safe. He also said they had been hoping to cast “The Sopranos” and “Bound” Star Joe Pantoliano in the role of bending.

In response to the canceled news, fans set up at least two different Change.org petitions in the hope of having the other season show, and one even threaten a boycott. Together, the two petitions have approximately 55,000 signatures, but there has been no news of a return “So Help Me Todd” again, and most of the cast and crew have said goodbye to a fairly final farewell . In his own Farewell post on InstagramPrendergast wrote “Thank you to all participants, and to all our viewers. A million thanks will never be enough. Thank you, thanks, thanks to Todd for you. And goodbye.”

You can stream both seasons from “So Help Me Todd” on Paramount+, buy them digitally on Apple TV and Hamazonor bought on DVD now.