In Review: Tom Swift (S1 – EP8) …And His Two Men and a Baby

Synopsis: When Rowen comes to Tom for Help. They inadvertently wind up looking after a baby while fending off some heavies from The Road Back.

The Story

Having disabled Tom’s A.I. Assistant Barclay in last week’s episode. Rowen goes to Tom for help and lays all his cards out on the table with regards to him being in the employ of The Road Back. Having realized the error of his ways. Rowen asks Toms to help in finding an important scientist and saving her before The Road Back can get to her. Tom agrees and they find the scientist just before The Road Back does and wind up looking after her baby while she gets to safety. Inevitably, The Road Back follow Tom and his friend back to Swift Manner and attempts to interrogate them by posing as FBI. 

Eventually. Tom, Rowen, and his team eventually stop the thread while helping Rowen to maintain his cover as their inside man.

The Acting

We get some lighter and more fun scenes as we see more onscreen chemistry develop between Tian Richards and Albert Mwangi as Tom and Rowen begin to work together. I particularly found the flight banter that they all shared on the plane to rescue scientist Andrita Lehman quite funny. Mwangi did a good job of showing Rowen’s more vulnerable side as he opened up to the team about his fears concerning The Road Back. 

We also get a strong performance from Ashleigh Murray as Zenzi who finally gets Eskol to tell her the truth about his being in the thrall of the Road Back. This scene really should have happened a couple of weeks back if truth be told.

The scenes involving the baby were a lot of fun and just played the right amount of cuteness to danger ratio.

Overall

As light-hearted drama, Tom Swift works pretty well, but the conspiracy stuff that it has Tom dealing with as well as all the extraneous relationship stuff really slows the main narrative down to a point where you will sometimes find yourself just switching off. I’d prefer they focused more on the conspiracy elements and cut back on the lighthearted comedy stuff. As it does not feel like a good mix given what is at stake. That said, we can hopefully expect things to pick up next week as we are close to the end game.