If the first season of Todd Margaret already felt absurd, this second outing is taking that credulity and stretching it even further. While the 21 minute runtime has always felt brisk, this episode in particular flew through so many set-ups (not to mention jokes) that it almost felt like a different, larger show. But despite the busy plot machinations (which percolate a low-at-best level of intrigue) the humor at the core remains the same, and remains the only arbiter for your enjoyment of the show.

Personally, I think Todd Margaret (the character) is as funny in a low-stakes situation (visiting Alice’s restaurant) as he is in a off-the-wall high stakes one like finding himself in a rugby scrum while wearing a child’s outfit or crashing an 18 wheeler full of explosives into an strangely underused Peter Serafinowicz. It’s not that I don’t like those situations, but I almost want to tell them to save their money on set design.

I was a little bummed that we didn’t get much more of Todd’s father this week as Russ Tamblyn was such a standout last week, but we did get more of the mysterious Dave (though none of Jon Hamm as his manservant) and a healthy dose of Spike Jonze’s Whitney as well, who’s intellectual dandy persona has been played up much more in this episode than in past. Him and Arnett’s Brent Wiltes have now teamed up (presumably for the rest of the season, which is only 6 episodes) to get to the bottom of all the plotting.

Which, thankfully, leaves Todd to blunder around ignorantly as he does, hopefully only vaguely embroiled in any sort of expository action and instead left free to make an ass of himself and generally be the idiotic beating heart of the show. There were two stupendously cringe worthy scenes this week, the first being his plea to the head chef of Le Molecule to bring Alice on as a sous chef, because she’s “dying of retardation”.

The second, even more gutbusting encounter was his disastrous meeting with the Yorkshire Sports Club owners as he tried to sell them Thunder Muscle. When implemented correctly, a fart joke can still be funny, and Cross debased himself with aplomb. His rapid-fire monologue about not being a rapist nor the infamous Yorkshire ripper were the highlight of the episode.

I hope next week slows down a little bit, but I understood the necessity of an episode like this to get all the moving parts active, if only because they have almost no other time to do so. I continue to enjoy this series, but I also understand why it’s not for everyone, especially a relative insular outing such as this.

- Whole Milk