And now Audio Theater Central. Hello, welcome to Audio Theater Central. This
is the show that explores family friendly audio drama through news, reviews and interviews.
I'm your host, JD. Sutter, and this is episode one hundred
and ninety eight, jam packed episode as usual. We've got a review of
Adventures and Odyssey album seventy four coming up with Austin Peachey. I'll be responding
to some feedback from Mark Henry Cooney. I've got a bunch of audio drama
updates coming up here shortly, and a little bit of a monologue where I'm
going to address a question that I'm guessing that some of you out there have
had. What's the deal with the Seneca Awards and the ATC reviews? What's
going on? JD? Well, we'll get into all of that here in
a moment, but before we get to that, just a quick reminder that
episode two hundred is coming up. Some really fun stuff in that episode and
I'm really excited about it. But I would love to have you be involved.
So if you would like to record an audio message to be included in
that episode, please do so. You can either record it with a memo
app on your phone, and email it to us, or there are a
couple of different other methods for recording right on our contact page on our website,
so be sure to do that very very soon. As this episode is
already in the works, we interrupt this program to bring you a special report
and in other news tonight, a brief look at the headlines now they want
exciting, fast piece news that's relevant and entertaining like this. Well, as
a reminder, if you have any news about an audio drama, please send
it to us so we can get it into this update segment. You can
send it to us via the new submission form that we created and you can
access that by going to PFM dot link slash atc News or by clicking the
button in the sidebar on our website at audiotheatercentral dot com. Well, first
up, I just want to say a big congrats to your Story Hour on
their seventy fifth anniversary. That is just an amazing, amazing milestone. You
know, their slogan or their theme is making boys and girls of today better
men and women tomorrow, and I love that and they have been a stalwart
in this space for so long now. So March of twenty twenty four marked
their seventy fifth year. Julie Clayburn, the president of Your Story Hour,
wrote an article in their newsletter and there is a link in the show notes
if you want to check that out and just again want to say congratulations to
Your Story Hour. Well. Next up are a couple of recent releases,
and actually these are recent podcast appearances that will get to first in case you
missed it. Story Chat had two episodes with Tory Martin, who was a
writer for Adventures Ndyssey and was the creative behind the character of Wotton Bassett,
which I know is a big fan favorite and a lot of people love that
character. So there are two episodes that were released in February, and so
those are both linked in the show notes if you want to check those out.
And also another podcast, this time the official Adventures Nadyssey podcast. Will
Ryan's widow, Nancy, made an appearance on that show talking about some stories
and memories of Will. Great great episode there and that was also released in
February. Nancy, I haven't met her in person, but we've had some
email communications in recent years, and she seems to be such a sweetheart and
I'm so grateful that she was a minimal to the AIO team's proposal to use
the AI software to clone Will's voice for those episodes that we heard, and
it would just been so so much harder to say goodbye to that character without
having that, you know, that sound of Will's voice at least one more
time. So that is a really interesting episode that you'll probably want to check
out if you haven't heard already. Now a couple of recent audio drama releases.
First off is episode two of the Heritage series from LRT Media. It
is called Pony Bob and it released on March eighteenth, has a runtime of
about fourteen minutes, and here is the summary. Saddle up and hold on
tight as you experience the ride of a lifetime. Step into the wild frontier
of the eighteen sixties with Pony Bob, the gripping tale of a young rider
for the legendary Pony Express. It's a journey filled with heart pounding action,
daring escapes, and the true grit of a hero who risked everything to deliver
the mail. Follow the harrowing adventures of young Robert Bob Haslam as he battles
raging storms, hostile tribes, injuries, and the unforgiving wilderness, brimming with
historical details and a cast of unforgettable characters. Pony Bob is a must listen
for anyone who craves adventure, courage, and a glimpse into the making of
American legend. Wow, that is a big summary for a short audio drama,
but it's accurate. I've heard this episode. It's a lot of fun.
Really enjoyed it. So link is in the show notes if you want
to go ahead and grab yourself a copy of pony Bob from the Heritage series
from LRT Media. Also recently released was an episode of The Main Street Music
Show. Now, don't let that title deceive you. This is not a
music show. It does have some music, but it is a sketch comedy
show with music interspersed in it. Now, the episode that was just recently
released is the one that they recorded live at Sonicicon twenty twenty three, and
it is part of season two of this show. Definitely worth a listen.
Has Kara O'Brien in it, Sam Van Fawsen, and Daniel Cross and it's
just a really really fun show that I think you're going to really enjoy if
you like sketch comedy. Some very very funny things in this one. Now,
I heard from several people that this was one of the highlights of their
Sonicicon weekend, outside of the sessions where they were learning things, but in
terms of the entertainment sessions, this was one of the highlights. And so
I think it's a one that you're going to really enjoy. Links in the
show notes if you want to check that out. All right, Now,
moving into a couple of items that are still yet to come, but ones
that I'm very excited for. First up, Generations two from Sergeant Family Productions.
Now, we did an interview with Kinney Sargent not too long ago talking
about their first couple of releases, Generations and Wayfarer, and he did tease
that they were working on Generations two. Well, it is almost done.
It is called Generations to the DC Gambit, and I happen to have a
little bit of inside info on the cast, but I'm not sure if I'm
allowed to share that yet, But just rest assured there's some really great talent
involved in this cast this time around. Not to mention the core cast of
Generations one will be reprising their roles, but at the time of the release
of this episode. They have either just completed all of the final pickup lines
that they had to record or are nearly finished with that. So it's almost
one recorded and about two thirds of the music has been written, and they're
about one fifth of the way through the sound design phase, so in post
production now. But they are shooting for a release sometime in June, though
that is not a concrete date, so don't hold them to that, but
that's what their goal is. And this is shaping up to be a really
exciting, exciting audio production. Now, remember this is not a straight audio
drama. This is a dramatic performance of an audio book with sound design and
music and a full cast. But it's really really cool, and I have
a little teaser for you. Here's a couple of minutes from Generations two to
give you a little taste of what you can expect. The men of power
must think of himself as a chess master. Are you saying that you have
a task that requires three of the best hit contract fulfillment operators on the East
Coast? Let's call it a tale of two senators. I don't care anymore
what people think. It's time to clean up the hill. You've done nothing
except take up space in this chamber for nine years. Isn't he planning to
run for president? He is? We wanted to win. He organizes the
X and manipulates from outside the game. Hey, gedge, I'm picking up
some really weird vibes. Kingston has also hired a world class hacker spy versus
spy something like that. But how does it help us? The enemy of
my enemy is my friend. We're going to run a high stakes gammit Ryberry,
blackmail and intimidation become the presdent, the butter for the want to be
emperor. I think it's time for us to turn up the heat. That's
it. What is They're going to assassinate Senator Smith. It's the riskiest part
of the overall plan. It always is when it's time to kill. Who
are you? I'm a man who's looking for some men information. Don't they
teach you anything in hacker school? If you want to live longer than fifteen
seconds, you'll tell me everything you know. There's got to be a way
out. I don't think so. Bro Melankey's right outside the door. Release
her or die, kill them, sir, stop dad. Every so often,
however, it remains only what it course elimination. Hello, mister Nolan
God, if you don't help me now, I might be seeing you in
a few minutes. Generations two the DC gambit. Oh my goodness, that
is so amazing. I'm on the edge of my seat already, just waiting
to hear how this all plays out. Now, if you haven't heard Generations
one, you're gonna want to do that first. So now is the perfect
time to go ahead and grab your copy of that and get all caught up
on what happened in that first volume, and then you can jump right into
Generations two. And lastly, also coming very soon is Brinkman Adventures season ten.
Been talking with Ian Boltman over there, and I'm really excited about what
they've got, what they've got planned for this season. Ian is in the
final mixing stage right now and it should be done very very shortly. The
title of season ten is Redemptive Velocity. It is six episodes, and Ian
said a little bit about this season is two families racing each other across the
US in their old RVs, with the race being broadcasted on social media.
We deal with apologetics, the truth of the Bible, AI robots, and
the craziness of an RV race where anything that could go wrong does. This
season was written by Ian Boltman and Darby Kern. Jared Dipasqual composed the score,
and Alan Hurley did the sound design. Some of the actors Josh Boltman
and Mike Landers our main some of our main characters from the series, but
they'll be joined by Daniel Cross, Josh Murray, Jonathan Cook, and mikeah
Touchet. So some great actors that we're all familiar with in this space joining
the Brinkmans for this release. So Ian added in a little note, he
said that he heard something like Jared spent about four days on one particular scene
where are d battles another artificial intelligence chatbot in the virtual realm. He said,
It's epic, and I think you're gonna love it. So I'm excited
to hear what the Brinkmans have cooked up for us in this new release.
And I'm sure you are as well. Testing one, two, three,
testing that was just me talking. I do that a lot. Where's my
how long you're gonna work with it? That's what I want to talk about.
So here's what I'm thinking this episode. This is gonna be a tough
one. It's not gonna be a fun monologue segment this time. I'm gonna
be answering the question what's up with the Senecas and the ATC reviews. I
don't usually talk about this stuff because I know you come here for audio drama
information, not for a play by play of my personal life, and so
I usually steer clear of this kind of stuff. And I shared a little
bit I think it was back in September, talking about the future of the
Seneca Awards and what needed to change. That was episode one eighty four.
If you missed it, you can go back to that. But due to
these health challenges that have been going through now for quite some time, it's
just been very difficult and just a couple of the things that I've been dealing
with are chronic fatigue and insomnia, and frankly, it's been all I can
do to keep ATC going at this point. Back in the day, I
don't know if you know this or not, but with a very few exceptions,
generally Audio Theater Central episodes were recorded from start to finish, all in
one go, and often with all of the segment transition audio, all of
that stuff live mixed in during the session, and I did all of that
myself, but things have had to shift to be more segmented, so it's
not recorded that way anymore. These days. The segments are generally recorded separately,
even at different times in different days, and that's just because of the
way my schedule has got to be. I try to make it as seamless
as possible, so hopefully you haven't even noticed that, But that's just the
reality of what I'm dealing with, and ATC is behind non reviews. I
mean, we're behind on Adventures Odyssey and Jonathan Park and Lamplighter Theater, and
it's partly because of I just don't know how I'm going to be feeling from
day to day, and that has affected my scheduling and how to get things
done. To bring on a co host to review something. I know that
I can do reviews on my own, and I have done that, but
I generally like to have someone to play off of and to bounce thoughts back
and forth with, and I think it makes for more of an engaging review.
And I don't like to do reruns. I know there are podcasts out
there that will sort of do best of episodes or clip shows or highlight reels
or whatever, or even just replay an entire episode. Again, I don't
like to do that. I make content for people. I make it for
you, not for algorithms, and so I always want to try to give
you something fresh. And you've probably noticed that there's been a few times where
I haven't quite hit the deadline and it's been a day or sometimes in a
couple of cases, I think a week late. I don't like doing that,
but sometimes that's just the way it happens. So I'm trying my best
to keep up with what's going on in the audio drama space and stay on
top of the reviews, trying to get caught up. I'm going to do
the best that we can on that. But what does all of this mean
for the future of the Seneca Awards, Well, at least for twenty twenty
four. Again, that conversation that I had in episode one eighty four outlined
several things that were just not feasible. We're not working with the existing system
of the Seneca Awards, and in order to to implement all of those things
that need to change for the awards to continue on and be sustainable, it
was going to require too much time and effort on me at this time because
of the way my health has gone. It has not improved, and in
fact has gotten worse in some ways, especially over the last few months.
So it would require you building some infrastructure on the website and all this kind
of stuff, and we don't have a budget hire somebody to do that,
so I would have to do all of that myself. So I thought about
trying to run a sort of really scaled back version of the awards, and
I just didn't feel feel right about doing that. I just thought, if
we're going to do it, let's do it right. I don't want to
phone it in, so to speak. And so I have had to make
the decision that there will not be a Seneca Awards in twenty twenty four unless
a miracle happens within the next month or so. That's looking like the way
things are going to play out this year, and I am deeply sorry.
I hate to disappoint this industry and the people that enjoy the Seneca Awards.
I enjoy the Cynic Awards myself, and I have tried to hold out for
as long as I could to see if things would improve, and unfortunately that's
just not the way things have played out. So this was not a fun
monologue segment. It's not a happy update, and I do apologize deeply,
deeply. I really hated to have to give this update, but that's just
the way things are at this point. If you have any questions about it,
you can feel free to reach out and I will try to answer them
to the best of my ability at this point, but again, I am
sorry, and I hope, I hope you'll stick with us and hold out
hope that we can relaunch a new, better improved Seneca Awards next year.
All right, well, let's move on to more positive things. Let's bring
Austin Peachey onto the show and let's talk about Adventures in Odyssey. What do
you think of our little plan? Your characters were weak, your dialogue was
cliched, and you didn't have much of a story. Wonderful, everyone,
We have a delightful show. It's the Michael, a true genius to use
symbolism in that way. You may even get a standing ovation well. As
per usual, it's always fun to talk about Adventures in Odyssey. You know,
this is the one audio drama where we kind of pull back all the
stops and we don't worry about spoilers in our reviews of Adventures Odyssey albums.
That's why we wait until it is completely aired and out publicly for everybody to
have consumed. However, they get theirs, whether they're on the club or
not, and in this case it's there's been plenty of time for that.
We're we're a little bit behind. But Austin Peachey is joining me to talk
about album seventy four of Adventures Odyssey. Buckle up, you're ready to do
this. I am ready. It's good to be back, all right.
Well, this one came out in the spring of last year, twenty twenty
three, and it has a duration of right at two and a half hours,
and it also has a bonus track, which they have been doing quite
for quite some time now, this time just one, and we're going to
get into that a little bit later about why they did this particular one.
But before we do that, Austin, would you do us the honors and
share the summary with us. I'd be happy to the wheels of life futurn.
I feel I'm rolling down this track and no Downy's been set in my
heart a kid, No, it's heart desert on the fix from the bank.
You let me do this truth, and we have made a back west
we go through has a load mon sims good to no one. This next
green me say this. All of Constabard lives in a belon of coastal bad
stinging round around Hevern knows wherever you go, hold lower the lap bar and
buckle your seat belt. There's a wild ride ahead for everyone. In Odyssey.
Renee and Horace have a scientific breakthrough of monumental proportions. But there's a
catch. The technology is based on mister Whitaker's imagination station and he didn't give
them permission to use it. Will Renee risk her friendship with wit in the
name of science. Meanwhile, Olivia gives her testimony at church and big questions
are raised that she can't answer. Elsewhere in town, friendships are at stake
when Buck and Jules hit a rough patch that couldn't danger theirs, Mari and
Susi try to find healthy paths for making new friends, and Wooton faces a
courtroom struggle that may pay him against an old friend. It's a time of
next steps, both forward and backward, as the folks in Odyssey face all
sorts of twists and turns, keep her hands and arms inside the car at
all times, and buckle up. Lots of references there in that summary,
And interestingly, I don't know if they thought too much about this copy,
because I mean the reference there to the Renee Renewed episode, it basically gives
away a big point of that episode because you don't find that out until like
halfway through or something like that, and that's a big redeal. Yeah,
I did notice the twists and turns because the album artwork for this is an
homage to the original artwork for album twenty three twist and Turns yep, And
I had that in my noteses. I was going to mention that, and
that's specifically why I chose the song that I did to transition into the summary
here. It was the perfect song. As soon as I was trying to
think about which song to use for this episode, that one jumped into my
mind immediately and I knew I had to use it. By the way,
I haven't heard much feedback from people about the technique that I've started doing of
using a song to sort of encapsulate the theme of the audio drama in the
review, So let me know what you think of that. If you like
it, sure let me know. If you don't like it, let me
know that too. I've only heard from a couple of people and it's always
it's all been positive. So if you're not a fan of that, hey,
let me know. But anyway, back to album seventy four, I
did love that whole thing that with the artwork, it being sort of a
nod to and interestingly, they didn't do a current version of the artwork.
It was an old version of the of the Twists and Turns album artwork.
I mean, I mean I remember seeing that back on the cassette version of
the album, so kind of a cool thing. I liked that. Some
people I heard thought it was kind of dumb for them to do that,
but I thought it was cool. Yeah, people don't understand what homages and
throwbacks are. It's not a total ripoff copy kind of like with Sir Buddy
snowy Day. People had a lot of beef about that. It's like it's
an homage. People, they're not intentionally ripping it off. They're you know,
they're like, hey, how good this is and callbacks to it.
That's what homages are, people. Yeah, Yeah, yeah, it was
cool. So in this album, we have the episodes Game Night, Renee
Renewed Legally, Wooten Value in the Process, Tough Call, and King of
My Heart. So, as usual, we're going to go through these episode
by episode and we're just going to share our thoughts on these episodes. And
you know, you know how this thing works if you've been listening to the
show for any length of time. So we're just gonna get started with episode
nine fifty two, Game Night, written by Well, written and directed by
Marshall Younger, with post production by Luke Gano and music by John Campbell.
First off, one of the first thing I noted was Jason calls Jilly an
agent four four three seven, and then she says, that's not my number.
Now I know that you have a better Uh. I don't know what
the word is. You have a You retain a lot more of the details
of the series than I do. So I was like, is that a
reference to something that number, or is that just something that that Marshall just
pulled out at random, or you know, I don't think so. I
don't think we've ever heard Jillian's agent number. In twenty eight hours and again,
he's kind of just made it up, which is kind of fun jokes
like, oh, that's one thing you don't know about me. Okay,
Yeah, so I thought there has to be a reason why he's saying that,
but apparently not so. I don't know, maybe it's something that only
Marshall knows. But yeah, speaking of twenty eight hours, this episode is
kind of like I think I've read in the Fishy Guide in some other places
where when you've had these big sagas or this you know, big actually menu
or whatever stuff, you had this kind of aftermath or this kind of episode
to kind of like calm everything down again. And I thought this episode is
kind of like The Mortal Coil and Best Intentions, where the Mortal Coil is
a very serious, very kind of heavy episode, and then you have Best
Intentions falling after that that's very lighthearted, very comedic. Dealing with the aftermath
of that. That is a good observation. I didn't think about that.
Obviously. There's a connection, of course, because we have the whole The
entire theme of this episode is how Jillian can't let on. She has to
keep up this facade, you know, she can't let them know who she
really is so oh that that's really interesting. I hadn't thought about that,
huh. But the thing is, Jillian and I think Jason weren't originally part
of this. It was supposed to be think Eugenie Katrina. I heard a
yeah official podcast, I think Marshall talk about it was going to be that,
and then since you know, after all Ryan's passing, they did Jason
and Gillian, which works great for this, but this kind of episode,
it had been so cool to get one last episode with a lot of really
you know, classic Eugene and Connie bantering and bickering, and also have Katrina
in the mix, which we don't get that too often. Hmmm. Yeah,
yeah, that is a shame that that didn't happen. Hm. I
remember hearing that as well, and I didn't think too much about it,
but yeah, that would have been really cool. Another thing though about this
is, speaking of homages and callbacks and references, Wit says something about Inventor's
Corner and it's the first time the Inventor's corners that I mentioned in a very
long time, and it jumped out at me. And then when I was
prepping for this, I was looking at the wiki and there's a note there
saying that it's been several decades. Obviously, that can't be true because the
show hasn't been running for several decades, has been running for three that's not
several. But it's been several years for sure, right, Yeah, like
probably like pre album fifty one at least. Yeah, Yeah, that sounds
about right. But yeah, so that was kind of cool. The rules
that Connie had no talking about work, no grumbling about anything, and not
being too competitive, which is kind of nice. Like the last one is
should be a given at any game night. But I'm interested to hear what
you thought about this episode in this aspect, But you know, a lot
of people had issue with how Connie was being kind of, i don't know,
controlling a control freak and kind of being very you know, dictator like
in a lot of things, and being kind of overboard and that kind of
stuff, And I would say I would have an issue with that. I
think when I first heard it, I had a little bit of a problem,
but I heard like a lot of other people had some issues with it.
However, I think I can excuse that because almost everybody, all the
characters, not just Connie specifically, are kind of at this heightened sense of
comedic. I'm not sure what the phrase is, but basically, this whole
story is a comedy. It's not a drama. It's not like a Bible
storiates or anything like that. It's a comedy. It's meant to be kind
of that extra goofiness. So it's not just one character like in Millstones,
with Connie acting a way out of character and everyone else being kind of like
more than normal self where with this one, you know, people like Wits,
even Jason to a certain extent, and Woot and a Penny are pretty
much the same. Penny maybe a little bit more on edge than usual with
all those ants in her house. I can see why. But I think
because this whole episode is kind of geared to be funny and everybody being a
little unlike themselves, I think I can give it a pass. M Okay,
So here I I'll just say this was not a favorite episode for me.
And I don't remember if I did an initial reaction in ATC backstage on
this one or not, but I do remember the moment when I heard it
for the first time, and the whole time I was just I was not
in a good mood about it. I was just like, I hate this,
this is so dumb. I just kept thinking, this is just absolutely
stupid and on a repeat listen. You know, it's not as bad as
my first reaction to it was. I still don't care for it all that
much. It's it's it's definitely never gonna make a top list for me.
But I just thought that whole sit in the corner thing was just ridiculous.
It was ludicrous. These these are full grown adults here, like, come
on, act like adults, Like you can have fun and still be an
adult putting people in the corner, especially an old man like with like come
on, and yeah, the misbehaving man in the corner, as Wooten calls
him. Oh yeah, yeah, that was a funny line. Yeah.
So yeah. It just annoyed me because that whole thing I just thought was
just so ridiculous. And then of course they make that a part of the
episode where they just all start laughing and she says, we're all adults here.
You know, this is this is crazy. I don't remember what a
word kinna uses, but so they do recognize it. But I just thought
to even do that in the beginning was crazy. Like the rules that would
have been fun. I mean, I think that made sense for this.
There could have been other ways, other punishments that could have been enforced that
would make more sense and be more realistic. I just thought the whole sitting
in the corner thing, I don't know. It did again, it did
lend itself to some comedy there towards the end, and you know they're all
sitting there that's silent, you know, for several beats and so yeah,
but yeah, it just I thought it was crazy. It just didn't make
sense to me. It is odd, But I don't totally blame Connie.
I mean, yeah, she should have made that rule, but that wasn't
part of the original rule or the punishment. Jason was shooting off his mouth
there being sarcastic, So Jason, Jason got a little come uppance there.
Yeah, that's true. That's true. I honestly, I wasn't even thinking
about is this does this make sense for the characters? I was just like,
Marshall, what are you doing? I love Marshall's episodes normally like this
one. This one was just like why why? But there were lots of
funny moments throughout it, though, so, like I said on re listens,
it did grow on me a little bit more. But yeah, it's
still not a favorite for me. But I did like a couple of things
about it. Like Jason says to Wit right after like the first round of
the trivia game or something like that, he says something like We're coming for
you, you know, and the music cue there turns all militaristic and like
very march, you know, battle sound, and that was very fun.
I really liked that touch. And there are a few other moments like that.
But then right after that, Connie like steps in and it's like,
you know, confronts him for saying something that was competitive, and the music
instantly switches to a different sort of sound. I thought that was really cool
of John Campbell to do that. Yeah, and it's not necessarily a throwback
or call back, but when Jason brings up that is very competitive and as
as kids, you know, he was, you know what, didn't take
it easy on his kids. My mind went back to the Search for Wit,
where Jason says, you know, hide and Seek was a nightmare when
we were kids. We spent weeks looking for him. Oh I knew that
line was got had to be a reference to something, but I could not,
for the life of me think about what he was referring to there,
So I'm glad you brought that up. That's a good point. Well,
the thing is, in that episode he says, it's so deadpan with that,
it almost sounds like he actually did to a certain instead. But this
this sounds more realistic, like I can see probably some dad's being really competitive
and being hard on their kids. H Yeah, Well, I don't have
much else to say about this episode. Any final thoughts on this one for
you? Well, I thought it was really fun that back and forth with
Jillian. You kind of see how difficult it is, Like we haven't had
any episodes with Jillian since this has been released, but it shows in a
comical way, an extreme way of that switching back and forth. We can
hear both sides of Jillian there. And I don't know how long they'll continue
that into the future, but I thought it was really funny with that,
and also with Jason having to think like dumb Jillian basically like and Jason was
like, oh, this is killing me on the inside, just for not
just with losing but then trying to think like Jillian I loved like one of
the attributed questions, like oh, our country is named after this person,
Captain America the leaning tower of Eiffel exactly. Yeah. And also you know,
another old joke to Conya not came in a secret and like Conda is
you're supposed to draw a picture of a bubble bee. Oh right, you
don't say that out loud, but yeah, this episode, I think I
was laughing more at it, or laughing at the jokes more on the second
listen same. I guess after that kind of initial shock to certain extent of
how Conye was acting this kind of odd to a certain extent, I think
I enjoyed it a lot more and appreciate a little bit more. And again,
like I know it's a bit far fetched, but I don't think if
you, I don't think this episode would have been as good if it didn't
have those kind of hype and more a little less realistic elements, because it
was just a normal game night where just be discussion on hey you're cheating and
things like that, kind of like a slumber and slumber party. Just having
these extra elements, like you like with the music, like give that military
military whatever, military, like there I'll go with the military, like that's
that's safer. But those kind of things that because it's a comedy and it's
not quite like b TV or kids radio level, but because it's so much
a comedy through and through, I think it's okay. I just have a
problem with episodes like Millstones where Connie is totally out of characters like that and
everyone else is the same. But this, this person is different, pewp
were different because of what the story, in the style of the story calls
for. It's not my favorite episode by any means. I probably won't listen
to it a whole lot, but I don't think it's as bad as some
people said, including other people in this room with me. Yeah, and
I did like the moment at the end where Connie basically just lays it all
out. It's like, this is why I've been doing this, you know,
and that that felt very Connie to me, you know, so,
like you said, I mean, on the repeat listen to it did grow
on me a little bit. Well, I have to say, which I
know, not every episode has to be this way. I told about this
many times, Like Aloha Oi, there's really like a really weak moral and
there's actually no a verse given at the end of this episode, which is
fine, you don't have to have that all the time. But I'm glad
they didn't shoehorn it in because some stories a lesson can come naturally, but
some if you try to shoehorn it in, it comes off more stiff or
out of place. But I think the place to have more of a talk
about the lessons will be with Chris's wrap up outside of the story. Yeah,
I mean, and I thought it was very apparent. It's like,
hey, you need to be there for your friends when they're when they're going
through stuff. So yeah, don't give it to yourself. Let people help.
Yeah. Yeah, all right, Well let's move on to episode nine
fifty three. Renee Renewed written and directed by Phil Lawler, sound designed by
Nathan Jones, and music by John Campbell. So this is an interesting one.
And I said earlier we're going to mention the bonus content for the album,
and it was a track. I think it was called Welcoming Renee or
Introducing Renee Carter or something like that. It was about four minutes of clips
from previous Renee episodes from the club. Because this is the first time this
character has made an appearance in a mainstream album. And I've said this before,
I've never really liked that to have a major even though I guess major's
probably overstating it a little bit, but I don't think of her as a
small character. I mean, it's not a bit part. She may maybe
just a minor character, but she's an employee at wits end or an intern,
and so it's like, I mean, I don't understand why she was
ever exclusive to the club to begin with, but I am so glad they
finally brought her out into the publicly released albums now and it was an interesting
time for them to do this because up until this point, she's been voiced
by Amy Pemberton, and this was the first episode where she was voiced by
Caitlin Thorburn. Both of them are British actresses doing Scottish accents, and they
did a great job with it. And I actually didn't even notice a difference.
I didn't pick up on the change at all until somebody else pointed it
out to me, and then I was like, oh, yeah, okay,
I can hear little subtle differences, but I would I don't think I
would have noticed it, so I think it was a pretty solid transition considering
some of the other ones that we've had in the past from actor to actor.
Yeah, I have a lot of thoughts about this episode, so going
to what you said of bringing her in into the mainstream episodes. Originally,
I think on the Q and A podcast her first episode, Things Is Not
Seen, was supposed to be an album sixty and for some reason they moved
into the Club, which I think was a mistake. They should have won
with the original plan with that, because I do like Renee. I do
like the character quite a bit. She's one of the best new characters up
there with Wilson and Jay. Like her and those two other characters are the
best new characters we've gotten on the show since the relaunch, and I'm glad
she's in the mainstream albums now. However, two things are really working against
that. One is it comes around the time that Eugene is being phased out,
and I'm just afraid people outside of the Club that have never heard any
Renee episodes will think of her as just a, oh, she's a Eugenie
replacement, when she's been on the show for quite a while with Eugene and
in some episodes with Eugene. But I think so that negativity will attach itself
to her character. And along with that, this episode shows Renee at her
absolute worst, and that's not a great introduction to a brand new character,
Like she's not a brand new character, but to the mainstream albums, she
is, and I think there's just a lot against her. Like if I
had as a guest, I would say, pray at least fifty percent of
the Odyssey listeners now have the Club or I've listened to the Club episodes and
pray I've heard to a couple episodes of Renee. They've seen her in the
comics and the elsepren Odyssey and the bite sized adventures and promotional material and things
like that. But I think I mentioned this as somebody before, is that
I wish they would have the essential Renee episodes from the Club, like her
first episode Things Not Seen, a Forgiving Heart. World of Wintonia and the
Boat People isn't as essential, but since that has so much ties to WIT's
past, that'd be nice. But those on the radio, and this is
before Renee Renewed came out and I was thinking it'd being it would have been
a great idea if when they aired this episode, to air like three or
four or five Renee episodes on the radio, like on Saturday, and then
play Renee Renewed. That way, people know her character leading up to that
a little bit more, get to like her a lot better before going into
this. And it's not an uncommon thing to happen that amount. But they
have aired a predicament of biblical proportions around bring About with a school Day,
and that's a club exclusive, and they've aired hidden gems on the folks on
any daily broadcast, I think for the thirtieth or thirty fifth anniversary of Odyssey
something like that, So it's not unheard of to do that. And they
don't necessarily have to put those Renee Club episodes into an album or air them
all the time. But for the first time for people listening to on the
radio to listen to those, I think it would been beneficial and a better
introduction to Renee rather than rather than have this episode be just the first introduction
to her. That is a really interesting point, and I want to talk
to your point about the Eugene correlation here in a minute. But I did
not realize that they have ever aired on the radio clubs episodes before. So
that's interesting to me, and I think you have a very valid point with
this. That would have been a really great way to introduce her now.
It's very true that she's definitely not at her best here. I don't know
if it's her worst, because she's had some pretty low moments, I think,
but this is definitely not her best, and so yeah, it is
an interesting point to introduce her now. I think it might have something to
do with the whole transition from being an intern to an official employee of witsand
so maybe that's why they decided to move her to the mainstream albums at this
point. But yeah, the timing with Eugene, that is interesting now.
So in that particular bonus track, they do have a point. They make
a point of using a clip of Phil lah Are saying, you know,
he doesn't explicitly say she's not replacing Eugene, but he compares these characters in
Odyssey to different characters on Star Trek, and they correlate to different ones,
and he mentions that Eugene is I'm not a Trekkie, so I don't remember
the characters. I'm sorry, don't hate me. You people who love Star
Trek out there, but he said, he said, specifically, Eugene is
X character. And then he said, but we didn't have an engineer,
and that's where Renee came in, and so Renee is X Star Trek character.
So he made a distinction to say, you know, these are two
very different characters correlating to their you know, Star Trek counterparts, so to
speak. So he was that. I think that was an intentional thing for
them to put in there. And then also Chris does come in at the
end of that track saying, if you'd like to hear more about Renee's journey
or something like that, listen to these episodes with her in the club.
So that whole thing was very interesting for them to do. And I think
that does sort of address the issue that you brought up. And also they
put that in front of this episode. A lot of times the bonus material
is at the end. I mean sometimes it is interspersed, but a lot
of times the bonus tracks are at the end of the album, and this
was right in front of the Renee renewed episode. So I think they were
thinking about a lot of these issues. But I do think that your point
about airing them on the radio would have made some really good sense. And
yeah, just because they may air them on the radio at some point doesn't
mean they have to put them in the regular rotation, like you said,
and it doesn't mean that they have to add it to an album release.
But I think you've got a really good point about that. You know,
to add them in right before this album went out, obviously, I mean,
we are you know, we're armchair quarterbacking a year behind, you know,
so this is obviously way too late. But I think that's a very
good point. But overall, I agree with you as well that I do
like the character of Renee. Generally speaking, I think she's a great addition.
I don't know if I like her as much as I like Wilson or
Jay, but I do think she's pretty solid and it'll be interesting to hear
where they go with a character, you know, in the future. So
now, one thing is when they announced the titles, because they, you
know, sometimes leak the titles out way before the albums, a lot of
people were thinking, oh, this is the episode where she's gonna get saved.
You know, she's going to become a Christian in this episode just because
of the title. Did you think about that at all? I think I
might have heard that theory, but I don't think I ever gave it much
thought or credibility to it, because it wouldn't make sense for a brand new
character quote unquote to become saved when in the club. All those episodesly up
to it is, and so unfortunately, we'll probably have to wait a lot
longer for Renee's conversion arc since this is starting. She's basically starting brand new
in the mainstream albums. But actually it wasn't until like were listening to this
episode for the review, is when I fully got the title, like Renee
renewed, like she's renewing her time there with Send kind of like you know,
you renewed contract and things like that. For some reason, if I
click with me, like, oh, yeah, that's that's part of the
meeting, like at least one of the meanings of it. Yeah, that's
what I took from it, and I suppose there might be something else,
but yeah, that's what I was thinking of too. Now I mentioned the
music in the last episode. There was a really cool thing in this one
too. There's an obvious Scottish feel and theme to the music in this episode.
And I mean it's not unusual for composers to do that, but I
always like it when they do. Because this is very much focused on Renee,
even though there are some subplots going on. It was just a cool
touch and I really liked it well, I think because not every episode with
Renee, even though even though she's been a main focus, I don't think
I've had the Scottish musical stylings. But again, I think it's part of
the setups. She's a Scottish character, like if you don't know by her
acts, and he had this music to go along with it for the people
that don't know her character that well. Yeah, but it's still cool listen
to mm hm. Another thing talking about, you know, the different elements
of the episode, all of those computer and gadget sound effects were quite cool
sounding, like with it when they were working on the gadget that Horace was
working on. I shout out to Nate Jones for that. It just sounded
really cool. Yeah. Although I could say to the end, but I'll
say now this is from my least favorite episode in the album Okay one because
of the way Renee acted in this and the kind of setup for her debut
in the mainstream albums. But I'm annoyed, even more so than Connie,
of how Horrace is in this episode. And he's not Horace. He is
not a clumsy individual. He's a very one note character, where in the
past he had the kind of more goofy sometimes like confident, but you know,
kind of quirky and clumsy and that kind of stuff. None of those
elements really, especially of the clumsiness, was part of this episode, So
it basically could have been any other brainy individual or even Eugene himself to a
certain extent. Well not quite because of the way the technology worked and you
know how it was designed or whatever. But that part of Horace's character was
gone. And it's also sad too because this is his first mainstream episode.
He's only been in the club before and did not have those elements that makes
them different and distinct not there was disappointing. Yeah, he was definitely more
subdued in this one for sure. Yeah, and I do like that character.
I think he's quite fun. Yeah, and again not a replacement for
Eugene, Like both him and Renee are very different like they're you know,
brainy individuals, but very different in how they approached stuff and of course their
voices and stuff. Yeah, I noticed that the AIO team made sure that
it was very clear that they had gotten the parents permission about this, this
whole little test with trade. Yeah. I had so many problems with this
episode because that's one thing. It's one thing is like a science experiment,
like you know, okay, you know, carry this thing around with you
all day and see how you know, how much you noticed it or something
like that. But this is brain function. This is like imagination station uses
some kind of you know, connection to brain waves and that kind of stuff
already, but having this and to change a personally. It's not like a
hologram of yourself or anything like that. It's actively working on your brain.
For that one, his parents should not have allowed it, and Wit definitely
did not want that to happen, even though his parents allowed. He didn't
want that happening at wits end for good reason. But with Horace, especially
with all this, they treat the tech as being so impressive but mundane,
like, oh, we work with brain activity all the time, like that's
becoming more than normal. Odyssey and unfortunately like in Our too, but it
felt like it was treated so not caligul nine. Yeah, it's like this
like it's altering your brain, it's altering your body. How is this not
a bigger deal? Well, that was the whole point is that they should
not have done that. So I agree that it was not a great thing
to do, and I think that was the point they should have never done
that. Wit did not support what they were doing, and obviously he said,
you know, you cannot use my technology in this thing. So yeah,
I thought I thought it was a pretty solid episode. Again, I
don't think there were any episodes in this album that jumped out at me as
like this is an absolutely amazing episode. But I thought this one was pretty
solid. Obviously I have issues with what they did, but I thought that
the lesson came out quite good. I mean, and Trey actually figured it
out on his own and he's like, you know, this is making me
not me. This is not who I am, and I don't like it.
I don't want to be this anymore. So I thought I thought it
was pretty solid. Another problem I have too, which I do agree with
people that mentioned this, is that the way that Renee broke with trust,
stealing his technology and then try almost get to the point where she almost did
it again is way far and above what Eugene and Connie did with Apple Sauce
and fired them. Yeah, and that was over something. I mean,
if the imagination station tech which we see that with Novacom, which he mentioned,
is kind of briefly that this kind of technology has had some bad experiences
because people miss using it, and honestly, Novacom, Blacker that kind of
stuff. But what Renee did was way far and beyond. And I don't
think he's just given a worse slack because she's not a Christian. Eugene was
not a Christian at the time when he got fired. Connie was what they
did, YAO, did break his trust, but it wasn't serious as getting
this really high and just very valuable, very misusable technology as the imagination station
tech into someone else's hands and using it so flippantly. And I just felt
like Wit wasn't hard enough on this. So that's another thing. I felt
like Wit I think would have been a lot more hard on that. But
since this again it's an introduction episode, you don't have her fired right away
because people that have never heard her character, probably wouldn't have that emotional attachment
to her to a certain extent. Yeah, yeah, he did go pretty
easy on her. I do remember having that thought passed through my mind too.
He's getting a little soft in his old age. Well sometimes he's very
back and forth these days. But I know to the elements they incorporated this
episode with Cogito, which for some reason, when I first listened to your
like, wait a minute, I thought you're raised that program, But I
think she just stopped using that or just shut it off and a forgiving heart.
I think it was let me get the explanation from Wit when she mentions
him, and the part about Professor Liberness. They have that flashback from World
of with Tonia. It felt a little bit shoehorn in a little bit.
And even though I'm ragging on a lot of these elements, I think for
all the things that Phil had going against him writing this episode and introducing this
character that's been in the show but not in the show, I think he
handled it really well in introducing the different history elements about her with you know,
Liberness, Cogito, even the ethical dilemmas for Millstones, which I kind
of like that follow up that she sees at and I brought this up to
and I reviewed Millstones on my podcast, is you can't just have ethical solutions,
like you know, practicing ethics. You need more than that. You
need a heart change and those kind of elements that made this story for those
that have heard her beginning, well, oh yeah, I recognize that,
and people that don't know get those little pieces here and there without being too
overly you know, oh, look at this, this is what this character
is like that you did not hear it before. I thought it was handled
in most every case very well. With that, I'm really certain here,
like we haven't heard at this point in time of this recording, introducing Renee
at this time and especially this you know brand technology, the Magination station technology
and Spoil Alert with album seventy five, with the technology in that album,
I'm thinking that whenever we get the Chairman back again, Renee is going to
be an important part of that story and I would not be sad about that,
be happy to have her a part of that. Interesting. That's an
interesting theory. Yeah, I could get behind that. Yeah. So overall,
I thought it was a solid episode, but not my favorite, and
there were some things that I didn't really care for, but overall, yeah,
it was it was okay. And I also did think that that sort
of flashback with leeberness. For a second, I was like, wait,
what what's he doing here? You know, And then you realize that it
was just sort of perhaps it was just her in her mind of remembering that
moment or something, But yeah, it did feel a little bit odd,
but overall, yeah, yeah, kind of how I feel about a lot
of the episodes in this album. Okay, Yeah, that's an episode,
you know, Yeah, it's it's yeah, it's an okay episode. Like
there were much better Renee episodes than this, And again, there's a lot
of things going against this character because of the mistake that some people made of
not having her in the mainstream and trying to directify things. But I think
once we get some more episodes after this with Renee and a better frame of
mind and interacting with people like part of the community a lot more, and
not being the way she is in this kind of disrespectful and stealing stuff and
things like that, just her normal self that's still learning some things. I
think I hope that people will come to know and love her. Yeah,
yeah, Well, that brings us to episode nine fifty four Legally Wooten,
written by Jesse Kellum, the fourth directed by Marshall Younger, sound designed by
Zack Schneider, and music by John Campbell. All the episodes in this in
this album were music by John Campbell. But so, I don't think I've
made it a secret that I'm not a super fan of Penny and the whole
Penny Wooten thing. Woodin was never a favorite character of mine. In fact,
I think I've even said in the past that when I first heard him
on the show back when I was a teenager, I just didn't like him
at all. But he has definitely grown on me. But there are certain
elements about his character that I just don't really care for, and so usually
when there are episodes that center around Penny and Wooten, they're just generally not
my favorites. Whoever, I did kind of like this one. I thought
it was pretty good. I think it's my favorite episode that Jesse has written
for sure. I don't know, he hasn't written all that many yet,
but of the ones he has that I've heard, I've liked this one the
best. And we had some interesting characters Terry Blaze. I thought it was
a really really fun character played by Terry Time. Yeah, his little catchphrases,
it's Terry dime and then what was the other one, slam dunk or
something like that. I think he said that a couple of different times.
But he was played by Neil Garjulo, and I really really liked him.
I thought he was fun. Jolly Dolphin versus happy porpoise, it was great.
I mean, the whole legal battle. I mean it seemed very realistic,
and to me it really fit with something that might realistically happen to Wooten
as a as an artist and a comics creator. So I thought it was
pretty good. Yeah, it was interesting. This episode had a cold open.
We don't get too many cold opens on Odyssey anymore. Yeah, yeah,
that's a good point too. It did jump out in me and that
made me think though, also, was it Game Night? I think it
had a Katie Lee opening or a Connie opening to the episode, which is
that something that we hear very often these days, either for some reason it's
like we do once or twice every twenty four episodes or something like it is
not Chris or wait. It's very really not anybody else. Yeah, so
that was kind of cool to have that. But so again, not a
huge Penny fan, but she did have some moments in this one that I
thought were quite fun. In fact, she wasn't nearly as annoying in this
one at all as she normally is to me. But the one of the
lines right near the beginning, when they're talking about the difference between the nose
and the rostrum and all that stuff, and then she says, those anti
rostrum people always get me steamed or something like that. It just that just
cracked me up. I love that. Well, this great obscure scientific trivia
for people to use in the future, you know, all those history and
scientific facts that we picked up as kids. You know, the people using
that when they do their biology exams exactly. I loved it. I think
this was the first episode I've heard that Jesse Calm the Fourth wrote. I'm
not sure if it's the first one released or the first one produced. I
think it's the first one, at least to the first one on the mainstream
albums. And I thought he did really well writing for Wooten and Penny and
Connie. They all seemed consistent with the average of their characters. Some people
not gonna say names, but some people sometimes write certain characters in a different
way than what's normally the norm, and it's usually for comedic effect and to
the detriment of the characters. And this is not just one writer. There's
other writers that have done this too, But for being a first time writer,
I thought he did really well with keeping the characters at their most likable
and grounded. So I like, I'm not a big Penny fan, I
do actually like a lot of the Woot and a Penny episodes that we get
from having to go Geiger. I think she does a really good job of
keeping those characters grounded where they're not just gonn make relief, and I think
this episode had a good nose of that too, and keeping Wuotin because sometimes
people write Woutin as really random, or they write them as you know,
these jokes that makes more sense or just fits with this character. It's when
it's just random, off the wall stuff that doesn't make sense. It's oh,
that's just crazy, that's funny, Like, no, that's not always
funny, And sometimes Jay's written like that too, So I think I think
Jesse did a great job with writing, you know, these three main characters
from Odyssey with this episode, And it's also cool to hear Simon Jones again
and an official capacity, which we only got that in BTV to tell the
truth, But that was a BTV segment, so I'm not sure if it
was actually I think it was probably happening in real life. I'm not sure
if he was like a segment or whatever. But it was nice to have
him involved in Odyssey outside of you know, being a dad to Emily.
Yeah. I had that in my notes too. It's good to hear him.
I mean, of course, there's this little tiny bit of him in
the team, and that was the first time in quite some time that we'd
actually heard from him. So yeah, I was glad that he showed up
here. And the whole thing in the beginning of the episode where all the
kids are like going crazy about this character. I thought that was an interesting
thing too, because it does sort of exemplify the way a particular media property
can explode in the public consciousness these days. Yeah, and people just kids
go crazy about it, you know, And I thought that was pretty realistic,
and so I liked that element, even though I think it's ridiculous that
some people go just nuts over certain things like that, but it did seem,
you know, it felt very genuine. And another thing that is interesting,
And I think I heard in I don't know where, if it was
on the official podcast or something, but I think I heard that Jesse said
that he grew up with the show, so he's listened to the show and
knows a lot of the older episodes. I think I remember hearing that,
and so there's an interesting thing there. And I don't know if this was
an intentional reference to like nineties era Odyssey or not, but Connie's yelling at
a kid named Marcia in the background in WIT's end there she mentions her a
couple of different times. Now again, I don't know if that was a
thing. Obviously it could be. We have had some characters that don't ever
seem to age, and then we have others that age up and then they
disappear, like the Barkley kids, they grew up. So I don't know.
It's just kind of funny that there is a kid named Marcia, because
that is not a name you really hear very often. It's not like a
common one like Jessica or a Jennifer or something like that. I don't know,
So I don't know if he was just tossing me in the little thing
there that didn't really matter at all to the plot, but I don't know,
just a mention of a girl named Marsha just I thought it was kind
of interesting. Well, we have had some out of control birthday parties.
We've had one in a groundhog jay yep, for sure. And there were
quite a few funny lines in this episode. I mean, Tara is quite
funny, this kind of very he's very I don't know what's the what's the
word. I don't want to call him a loser, but very uh,
you know, very insecure, I guess I should say, and something over
himself, and just very much just not like his mom probably isn't the greatest
at encouraging him, Like he has a lot of quips about or some jabs
at his mom. I guess I do feel kind of bad for him.
And it's also the same time, he's kind of sympathetic to a certain extent.
He's not like this big bad uh you know, CEO or whatever,
this company trying to take away this creation of his No, it's just this
really kind of insecure, stumbling over himself kind of guy, and you kind
of feel sympathetic to you and like, yeah, you're rooting for Wooten,
but you also feel kind of bad for this guy. Like we hear about
this basically, this is his chance to break away from just living with his
mom and you know, getting some money and things like that, which,
yeah, he's s fish by the same time, he's not like this,
you know, big bad villain that you're just love to hate. Yeah,
yeah, exactly. It's like, I mean, what he did was awful,
but it was like, you know, if you look at it through
his eyes, it's like, well, Wooten abandoned this character. It's it's
he's not doing anything with it. He's moved on to other things now,
so maybe maybe I can do this, you know, And he knew that
he shouldn't, but yeah. And I also liked all of his little nicknames
for Wooten, like called him the Wootster and wood Tennyson, and I guess
there were several Whooper Scooper I think at one point or something like that.
I loved all of those. I thought that was great and it sort of
fit with his like quirky nature. It seemed like so I liked it.
Yeah. And also one of the funny lines bring up the recess thing,
does Yeah, I like I talk of milk and amery around call back to
you know, broken window. Yeah, when the going gets tough, the
tough gets goes out and plays on the swings. Oh yeah, yeah,
I like that and speak you know funny lines too, is Penny says to
Wooten after they you know, they discover this whole thing that he's been plotting
Terry's you know, he actually did steal the character and all this. She
says, when you said Terry was the brother you never had, did you
mean in a canaanable sort of way, Yeah, I mean a Wutin talks
about like him being encouraging brother he never had, which Terry turned out to
be a good bit like Willington. Uh, that's true, that's true.
But I did. I really like the moral in this and the kind of
the inciting action, not just from like a technical level like this, we
had quite something quite like this copyright wise, Like again, there's information with
this that people might know going into certain stuff, and that's a big things
happening now with like you know, generative AI and things like that about what
copyright is and how it can be used. But the lesson too, I
like about mercy turn the other cheek and when to either stand up for yourself
or to read wrong or keep people from hurting themselves or the people. So
like with this character, he was using it for ill purposes, you know,
being very mean, you know, basically being a bad example to kids.
Like it's supposedly like a hero role model, but this person is a
jerk basically, And we didn't like something, you know, something innocent and
something that was supposed to be good. We've heard this about, you know,
Wooton in the past, like Wutensberg and pencil Show and the ties at
Buy and how he wants this to be good art to help shape you know,
people's minds in good ways, and he doesn't want to get make it
edgy and things like that for just a sake of being edgy or you know,
making more money and things like that. So I thought that the lesson
was really good with that because it's one of those you know, murky or
kind of gray areas a certain extent, like at what point do you just
don't do anything about it? Which I know there's times which he had to
have to be you know, discerning and pray for wisdom on these situations.
Because there are some situations where I know my pastor was talk about there was
something that happened that he mentioned that, you know, So that happened and
he was going to go do something, and him and his wife prayed,
and then after they're done praying, she said, just don't do anything about
it. And he went with that, and God just cleared that situation all
up. He didn't have to do anything. So I know there's times to
let God fight your battles, but there are times that we have to do
something and make the effort to make a make a write out of something wrong.
Yeah, yeah, I agree with that. I really liked that whole
thing. Now you mentioned that, you know, there might be some actual
information here. Now, this was something that was I found interesting because I
have looked into this stuff before as as a creative individual and working on different
brands and projects and things over the years. So Terry said that he had
copyrighted Happy Porpoise. Well, I think I think it's very smart to think
no, no, no, no no, He specifically said, copyrighted because
I'm like, okay, interesting because I think it is true that comic books
are copyrighted, and I thought that that characters and their names were treated more
like logos, and those are trademarked, and like you know, think like
Mickey Mouse or Batman or big intellectual properties like that, those are typically trademark
It's it's a different thing. And then I'd written all this stuff down because
I'm like, you know, that's interesting, you know, And then at
about the twenty minute mark, then he mentions trademark. So the whole time
they've been talking about copyright, copyright, copyright, and then towards like we're
like two thirds of the way in, then he mentions one time he says
I trademarked it or something like that. So it's like, okay, did
you can't copyright it or did you trademark it? So anyway, those are
two different things, and they do different things for different types of media.
So yeah, it's it's as interesting. So don't take an adventures od asy
episode like that as advice. Talk to the lawyer. Yeah, this odesty
episode is not giving you legal advice, just life advice. Yeah, that
and it could be one a plot hole or like a writing error, or
it could just be Terry not the brightest bulb in the bunch. Very well
could be either one of those things. And I'm certainly not an expert either,
and I think there are certain times where copyright and trademark can apply to
the same sort of thing. So yeah, if you know, feel free
to reach out and let us know what did I get wrong here. But
I just thought it was interesting that nothing was mentioned about trademark the entire time
until near almost the whole thing was concluded. But overall, I thought there
was nice pacing throughout this episode too, because you know, the tension sort
of starts to ratchet up and then suddenly there's this deadline and they're trying to
find this proof before they have to go back in, and so I thought
that was really really nicely done. So again, this is my favorite episode
that I've heard from Jesse Kellum fourth thus far. Yeah, it is a
very solid episode, and good Wooten and Penny episode and Connie, you know,
like I said, was written properly, I think, And yeah,
it's a fun episode, Like it's not super super high stakes, like it's
probably pretty uh obvious that Woutin will win, but also at the same time,
like even after he wins, he's not like a sore loser about It's
like he extends mercy like hey, once you have it with this, Like
that's one of the things that is so good about Wutin. He can be
a bit naive, but he has a heart of gold, yep, and
he will do whatever he can to help someone out because his backstory, his
life is a family, Like a lot of people did not show him that,
but he's with God in his life. He's able to do that to
other people and not show animosity toward them. Yeah, to his own detriment.
I mean, I think back to the episode where he lost his job
because he was being too kind and nice to people and always helping him out
with their their stuff and you know, the whole speedy package delivery thing.
I mean, that's such a classic episode. I like that one a lot.
But I'm sure I'm sure Woton wouldn't have any animosity towards you for him
not being your your favorite character. Thank you, Thank you Wutin for having
mercy and yeah, you know what another thing, last thing that I have
on this one, I thought it was funny. This is the only I
mean, it's probably been mentioned other times before, but this is this is
only the second time I ever can think about hearing the word filibuster in uh
one of the family friendly audio dramas, Like Terry said, Yeah, so
Terry says to him, because he's just he's he's trying to delay everything until
Penny can show up with the proof, and so Wood is just yacking it,
you know, random stuff and hilarious stuff there. But Terry's like,
are you philibustering? This isn't the US Senate. And I loved it.
And the first thing that I thought of it brought to mine was that line
from Jungle Jam years and years ago. When I first heard that, I
didn't have a clue what a senate philibuster was, and at the time,
I mean, that line just passed right over my head when Marve Snuffelson says
that he's watching a senate filibuster and just and so listening to that later as
a grown up, it's so funny. I love that line, and then
so having it the same thing mentioned here, I was like, I love
that. I love that. Yeah, It's very much an episode that anyone
of any age. It's definitely one of those episodes that it's good for the
entire family. But there's jokes in there, some references that you interest or
even be understood by kids, but adults will get it. Yeah. Yeah,
Well let's move on to episode nine fifty five, Value in the Process.
Written and directed by Phil Lawler, sound designed by Luke Gano, and
music by John Campbell. And uh, what I heard there was this was
gonna be a right L episode. I was just like, huh, okay,
here we go. I'm not I'm not a big fan of the right
ls. Same and and this one starts right off with Maury be Moory scheming
and doing stuff without permission and all those star than ever and yeah, super
whiny. And of course that was intentional because with even makes a point about
it, you know there whining you are you know I can't hear you or
something like that. I forget the line, but of something like that,
And so I was like, yeah, you put him in his place.
Yeah. I went like I've talked about this on I think this podcast and
autossey Geek and other places like I don't have any love for the Rodel's and
every RIGHTE episode I go with low expectations, which has helped, because this
episode is probably the best. I'm not looking at future episodes after this,
but this is the best rede O episode after Redever Revelations, and one that
I actually liked one. It put more in his place, It showed them
more outside of that scheming to a certain extent, and the mystery aspect and
that kind of stuff. Just normal kids, well they're not quite normal kids,
but just those interactions, and also finally seeing them at home with Wit,
which we haven't heard in those interactions. There was a comic else We're
in Odyssey for one of the free monthly comic scripts that took place at the
Whitaker House with on the Rodel's. But yeah, I was. I was
pleasantly surprised at this episode. And I like the moral with this one too.
Yeah, even though I don't like Maury that much, like I've always
liked Suzuo to a certain extent, as just like as a person, as
a character to a certain extent, as like not super evil or whatever,
so and she was kind of like that to a certain extent in this episode
still too. But yeah, I actually enjoyed this a decent amount. I
felt pretty much the same about this now I should say at this point,
at the at the time of this recording, I have not heard album seventy
six at all, so I haven't heard the Rydel realizations at all. So
I know nothing about what's going to happen with them, you know, in
the future, so I won't blurt that out. Yeah, so I'm we're
not obviously going to talk at all about any future development. So this is
all gauging on what we know about Maury up to this point and before we
dive into the nitty gritty on this episode. One thing is, and I
know this is not the first time, but it just jumped out at me.
They mentioned Campbell College, not Campbell County Community College, And I was
just kind of curious if you remember when when did that change, because I
know it was some time back, but I don't remember exactly when did they
start, you know, calling it just Campbell College. I know, usually
if it's referenced more than once an episode, they might say Campbell College.
Because I'm thinking now Grand Opening Part two, when Cal and Alex and Sarah
get that print out about Eugene, I can remember here Cal saying it's the
project he's been working on at Campbell College or something like that. So I
know, usually the college Campbell College. I think it's interchangeably, like people
might say, you know, the full name, like in my home state,
Oklahoma State University might just call it State University or OSU or something like
that. It's not necessarily a specific one to say all the time because also
Campbell, Campbell County. There, I it's messed it up there. Campbell
County Community College is kind of a mouthful. Yeah. Oh, so you
think that it's more just a casual way to reference it rather than them actually
changing it to something else. Huh. Yeah, I think I believe the
official name is still Campbell County Community College, but I think they just use
it more informal way to refer to it. Oh okay, all right,
yeah, so I was thinking that maybe they just decided to rename it or
something. So yeah, okay, you're right, it is a mouthful,
but it just kind of jumped out at me that that usage at this point.
But anyways, a great sticker for that, you know, that's right,
that's right. If you can get those, and if you're in ATC
backstage, I'll send you one for free. But anyway, mister McBain the
teacher in the computer class there, perfect boring teacher performance there, Like I
had a professor in college that was just like that, and I liked him.
You know, It's like, I don't I don't think we've ever heard
from him before. I can't definitively say that because I don't know, but
I liked him a lot, and I hope that. You know, he's
very very minor in this episode, but it would be cool to hear fromim
again because I think he's very funny. Yeah, well, I think I
noticed pretty quickly that awesome, that's Matt Hurwitz. I don't think that was
my exact phrase. But we haven't heard Matt Hurwitz, I think since maybe
the Perfect Church. Like we don't hear him on Austin Year as much as
we used to. But he might have been in another Bible episode sometime after
that. No, no, no, I think he was in a Unsinkable.
I think he was one of the people in the ship. I think
it's an unsinkable. But even that's been what three four years something like that.
Yeah, it's been a while. He's a he's a great actor,
Hay. When he does he does just all these little these random parts,
you know, But he's great. He's really good. Yeah. He does
a great job playing Eliezer and an adventure in Bethany. Wow. I didn't
realize that he's been around for that long. Yeah, huh. About the
teacher character here that he plays. I liked how he kind of confronts Maury
there and we find out that Witt had sort of headed off Morey's attempt to
skip out of the class, and I was like, oh, yeah,
that's classic Wit. I love that he's kind of working behind the scenes.
Yeah, yeah, good for him. And we have another new character and
that's kind of new. We hear about Andy Rome and the Lost One from
album seventy two, but we get to hear him in this episode, and
it's a kid actor. We don't get too many kid characters played by kid
actors anymore. And it sounds like he will be a new episode. He
will be in more episodes. I think they did an interview with the actor
for him on the Fish of podcasts recently, so I'm interested to hear from
him more in the future. Totally, totally. His name is al Kothil,
and I really really liked him Andy Rome, and I'm like, yeah,
I hope, I hope we get to hear more from him because I
like that character. Now correct me if I'm wrong, because I can't remember
for sure which character it is. But as I'm listening to him, I
kept thinking, he sounds like a boy character from the past. And I
can't remember if it's Nathaniel Graham or Alex Jefferson. It's one of those boys,
because it's been a while since I've heard some of those episodes with them,
but there was a certain quality in some of the things that he said.
It kept reminding me of one of those boys from back in the day
You're not Alone, and thinking that because when I was listening to this for
the review, I thought that, yeah, that's not like an older like
an older character from the past, and some reason like Sam Johnson like that
came through my head. But when you said Nathaniel Graham, I think that
works like Nathaniel Graham when he's a lot more stilted in his speech, like
when he's more like his brainy kind of personality in the early episode like the
Tower or things like that. I can see that that kind of that tone
of voice, in that kind of delivery there. But also at same time
too, we hear way too few kid characters played by kids anymore, so
anytime there's a kid actor, like, oh, yeah, this is like
back in the day when the actually use a lot of kid actors. Yeah.
In any case, I liked him, and I hope we hear more
from him, And I think this is we've heard stuff like this from her
before. But Suzu confusing footwork with legwork that was pretty funny. Yeah,
And it was also nice daring Trey in this episode, which we heard him
in Renee Renewed, which we get a lot of Cooper in the Club and
the mainstream albums, and I think his only appearance in a mainstream album was
his first appearance in Good Job and Album sixty eight. So I'm glad he's
getting some more episodes outside the club. Yeah. I like him too.
I mean, we'll probably get into this a little bit more later, but
the whole dynamic there, he seemed like just a cool like a genuine kid,
like he's excited to work with a new kid that everybody thinks is like
really smart and and yeah, he just is a genuine fun kid and I
like him a lot. Now, I was going to ask you about this,
because I'm curious what your thoughts are on the sort of montage scene where
it cuts back and forth between Mari and Suzu. Now, this is not
you know again, I think I mentioned something earlier that it's not a technique
that's unusual. I mean, this is used in audio drama to show time
progression or to move the plot forward quickly. But what did you think about
this particular one. You just kept cutting back and forth between Mori and Suzu.
I don't know, is something just felt a little bit strange about it
this time for some reason to me, But I'm not sure if I can
put my finger on exactly what it was. Yeah, I know it's useful
for jumping back and forth and for seeing time progression. I didn't notice it
much on the first lesson, but when I was listening to it for the
review, I don't know, I just noticed it, like its sticking out
a little bit, Like it wasn't a bad thing, but it's stuck out
in an odd way to a certain extent, and possibly because not much happens
in those scenes probably one reason, Like they're not all that different to a
certain extent, and so short. It's like is this needed, which I
think it is needed for the storage to show that this is a progression of
time for this thing, rather than having these long scenes and then like a
scene here and then a saying like okay, you've done this for a week
now, and then we do this and they have well we did this,
and we did this, Like it's better than recounting to a certain extent like
that. But I'm thinking of the good people. That's really great use of
a montage there, which we have Mari, Suzu, Olivia and Zoe.
I think it is where they're doing different tasks raising money for the drama team,
and you have like you know, the car wash going door to door
or something like that. And each of those segments had different locations I think,
and different environments or like different things happening where this it was you know,
working on computers, working on computers, typing here and typing here whatever.
That's probably why it seemed kind of ovi because not as much was happening
as montages, which used with montages, you have a lot more jumping around
when it comes to locations and events. Yeah, that's that's I think you
nailed it right there. That's exactly what I think it was standing out to
me because yeah, it's just going back and forth from Maury working on his
project to Susu working on hers, and just goes back and forth between them.
There isn't a big range in location and type of activity and stuff,
so maybe that's what it was. And again not that it was bad and
the music behind it it moved it along and it worked, but for some
reason it just felt a tad clunky to me in this one. But I
was thinking, maybe I'm just being a little too nitpicky. But overall I
think it worked. Yeah, it worked for what it was. It wasn't
the most interesting montage, but it served as purpose. Yeh yep. Now
moving on to the scene with Wit in the office and Maury just just being
a complete jerk. I loved how firm Wit was with him, just like
go home. You know. It's like I've had it up to here with
you right now. Yeah, it's kind of a dynamic, which some people
may think that's not like Wit, but yeah, he has had some moments
which you don't get that we haven't had that many know Wit yelling or Wit
being super firm for a lot of Andre Stoikett episodes or even quite a bit
of Paul Lingers era. So it's kind of nice hearing that. And also
two other things too. Sometimes when you're around certain people, you know,
there's a differences with people like you seem at church or school and have fun
with them, and you know their normal people or whatever, and if like
you stay in their house or they stay with you or something like that,
for a while, it's a different dynamic, like, Okay, you're in
my house. We have rules here, Like you know, we have a
lot of fun at church in Sunday school or something like that, but here,
you know, we're gonna have some ground rules and that kind stuff like
little more stricter word or whatever or something like that. And also at the
same time too, this is probably there's this might have been it's parenting style
when he had kids as well, that we don't hear that much of him
parenting young kids, usually at the points where like Christmas, like a certain
happy event or something like that, but we don't hear We don't ever hear
wit disciplining his kids when they were younger, like we heard like him with
Manty with his grandson and a member of the family. But yeah, I
think it was warranted for sure. Yeah, And I mean, More's not
an easy kid to deal with, so I can totally see where he's coming
from there too. I mean some might even think he was he was a
little tame there, I mean, because because that kid was just mouthing off
like crazy and like yeah, so I liked that he was very firm there.
Now, it's not just the title of the episode, but the phrase
value in the process was used multiple times. Now. It was applied by
Wit to Maury about friendship and learning how to go through the process of learning
how to be a friend or even just friendly to people in order to gain
friends, rather than about learning to follow instructions and build skill upon skill,
which seemed like that's what he should have been talking about, considering the topic
of the class and him wanting to skip ahead or skip the class entirely.
And it felt like to me that it was a little bit misapplied there,
because it felt like it should have been you need to learn how to follow
instruction, follow direction. Yes, you might know some of the technical things
here, but sometimes learning the proper order of operations, so to speak,
it is beneficial when you get to more complex things and so I thought that
felt a little bit strange. But then we get to Chris's wrap up and
she talks about applying value in the process to the waiting, the working,
and the worship, and she says that's the value in the process that God
puts us through, and she doesn't mention the friendship aspect of it. So
I'm like, okay, so which is it? You know? So I
don't know what Chris said made more sense to me considering the topic of the
episode, though I guess it could apply to friendship, though it doesn't seem
to be as a tight hand in glove fit as the other application. So
I don't know. Yeah, I don't think I noticed that too much.
Listen to it, but you explain that. I get that because I think
at the beginning he mentions that, and you can kind of guess what that
might be. Like I think when says, you know, it's friendship specifically,
I don't think that's the only thing. It should be one of the
things. But I think me just the way the wording of the dialogue was
just that was what it was. It's kind of like with you know,
it's not the destination, it's the friends we made along the way or something
like that. But that, like with Chris says, you know things like
you know, through school, work, play, worship, all that kind
of stuff. Like there's value in those things. It's not just what you
can get out of it, it's what it can teach you and how you
can help others. So like being patient, like Okay, I gotta wait
until this time to do this specific thing. I don't have a time set
to do this thing or something like that. There's those things that help you
teach you discipline and put you in situations like with this, like with having
a group project, which you know a lot of people don't use to like
group projects, but with this, it forces him to work as a group,
not as an individual always doing things on his own over here, which
is great. Forcing him to be a part of this group and not being
alone ranger pretty much with that, and friendships might be a extra benefit from
that, but I don't think that's like the main thing that you go through
these processes to get the value out of it. Yeah. Yeah, so
again haven't heard ride Ale realizations yet, so not even taking those into consideration.
But we get to the end and more sounds sincere when get to the
end of this episode and he's talking to the guys or you know, his
fellow students and he apologizes, you know, and he seems to be treating
them okay, so he seemed very sincere, but is he really I don't
know. I don't trust the kid, you know, trust the kid.
Yeah, there was some really cool thing. I'll get to the part about
Suzu's dilemma thing but not the right word. But there's a really cool effect
because you know, Maury had this you know, very surelock way of deducing
or whatever of what the projects will be, which you know, that's you
know, one of those people like be really annoying, like yeah, you're
not picking on social cues here, like you know, doing that. Nobody
likes to show off. But when Trey showing his project and you know,
like Moriage just you know, on edge, like basically seething and just like
you know, over the top and like all these things and then you have
rain coming down. If you listen to the music there you hear this guy.
I'm not sure what it's was that it kind of like symbolizes that rain
hearing it while he's playing that there, Like that was a really cool touch.
There. Oh I totally missed that. Yeah, I didn't notice it
the first time, I don't think, but I noticed it this time.
And I love it how Mary finally finds a limitation to his knowledge, like,
oh, it's gonna be this thank you mom, because he can't see
how much Trey looks up to him and idolizes him for lack of a better
term, there, so he's like, oh, thank you Mom. It's
like Maury like, ooh, there we go, there we go. That'll
that'll knock him down a few pegs yep. And it's just like one of
those moments where your knowledge on a technical level will only get you so far.
But if you don't know human emotions, don't think through things emotionally,
you're going to miss out on those things. Yeah. I liked that.
Yeah, you really put him in his place there, and I love that
moment. It was like, yes, get him, even though Trey was
not trying to get him, you know, was yeah, yeah, come
up, he's for him exactly exactly. Now. I forgot to mention this
on the last episode, so I'm gonna drop this in just because I think
it's a cool thing. You mentioned the music here doing that little cool thing
to sort of replicate the sound of rainfall or something. In the last episode
in Legally Wooten, there was that cool surfer Hawaiian vibe to this whole score
in this episode, because we're talking about marine animals, you know, and
so it's the sea with the purposes and stuff. And I just thought that
was a really cool little touch that John Campbell threw in there, and I
forgot to mention it before, so I had to throw it in now.
But I just thought that was cool. Yeah, and the Christmas music in
there too, and from out the Christmas ornament. Oh hey, I didn't
even notice that. That's cool. Yeah, great point. There's a lot
of things in the music pay attention to people. So about Suzu, I
feel, you know, she's much more humble. I mean, you know,
a little dragging her feet on some stuff. But for her especially,
like I'm glad they weren't both the same personalities, like they don't have the
same personality even before this episode, but like how hers is it is not
necessarily as dramatic, but on her level, like I's kind of sympathize with
her to a certain extent. And the thing about plagiarism and things like that,
which I know some people had some issues about that, like oh not
not everyody believes that, but it has not as much right now. But
culturally in some parts of Japan, I think that is there, like certain
types of plagiarism is ethically accepted, but not necessarily at every level. That's
nothing I'd never heard of before, but I know there are certain values in
certain cultural things that are different from the United States like US in a Western
culture may not realize or get in that area. Which also too, like
you know, Japanese are probably a lot more polite than we are, like
them in Canadians. Well, I know that's a stereotype. Yeah, and
I heard about that issue before, so that was not something new to me.
And also remember she is still just a kid. And also she hasn't
been over here in the US very long yet, so yeah, that's another
consideration there. And I thought she mentioned that, you know that she had
this you know, she's a cleft of maniac basically in the past, and
that she's trying not to do that anymore, which I think it's the first
time we've heard an indication about that since Part two or three of the Right
Over Relations I think so. I'm glad that was brought up. Yeah,
yeah, and I agree to I like her more than Maury. She she
has a little bit more likable ness. I know, that's not a word
to her than he does. I don't know, I don't I don't want
to beat a dead horse, but I mean, I think there was such
potential with the type of character that Maury could have been. Yeah. So
enough about that. But the last thing I have about this episode is something
that Chris said in the wrap up, and I loved it because she said
she had a question about did you ever have somebody ever say to you we're
taking the scenic rout or something like that? That made me smile so much
because that was my dad, Like, he used to say that all the
time. We did road trips all the time, you know, like long
cross country road trips, just day trips to different areas wherever we were living
at the time, and so that was something I heard so much growing up.
It just made me smile because that was exactly what he'd say. You
know, everybody else is like, we're lost, we don't know where we're
going. He'd say, we're just taking the scenic route. Yeah, that's
funny. We should mention that Trey is played by Paul mckel Williams, and
he's he's just a he's a great actor as well. All of the voice
actors on AIO we know are pretty solid. I mean these are professionals.
Yeah, lots of actors that we don't hear from on a super regular basis.
I mean, they're not like the main characters of you know, Connie
and Wooden nor Witt and so lots of other ones in here, So it
was cool to have a little bit of a variety of voices. Yeah,
overall, a solid episode. I think I would agree. It's one of
the stronger ones in this album, I think though. Moving on to episode
nine fifty six, Tough Call, I think this is probably my favorite of
this album. It was written and directed by Marshall Younger, post production by
Zack Schneider, and music by John Campbell. So we're sort of continuing this
Olivia faith arc and I've loved it. This is one of the strongest arcs
that the show has ever done in my opinion. Really glad to hear it
continue. Yeah, it's sort of similar, it's different, but it is
similar to what you mentioned at the top of this review in that it's sort
of a continuation of the previous thing. So in the other case, it
was sort of the aftermath of twenty eight Hours and sort of having a little
bit of a lighter moment. Now this is not necessarily a lighter moment,
but it's different. It's a transition. It's moving out of her main struggle,
and so now Olivia's in sort of the post struggle phase, you know
what I mean. That's probably not a great way to phrase it, but
it's different, you know, applying the things that she learned through that situation.
Yeah. Yeah, And so to hearing continue in this way, it
feels very natural and I really enjoyed it. Olivia as a character has has
gone through so many phases from when she was first introduced. You know,
this little kid who was all you know, gaga about a singer, Yeah,
Melissa Ciphers. Yeah. And so now, I mean there's a maturity
to her now that really happens in life. When you go through a deep
struggle like that, you're not the same person when you come out on the
other side. M Yeah. I was really happy that they were gonna follow
up with that, and I know some people were saying, Oh, he
wrapped up way too quickly, like this isn't realistic for me. If they
had stopped at the Lost One, I would have been fine with it.
It doesn't mean that everything is totally resolved, like there's more to come from
it, possibly like natural and real life. I've been fine with just any
of the Lost One. But I'm glad it didn't because we hear more Olivia
and Fallow up to that, and it's also cool that we finally get to
hear her testimony, which we didn't hear she was going to give in Triple
Dog or Sunday. We finally get to hear it, and it's a much
different testimony than what she would have given there mm hmmm hmm. Shout out
to Kelly Stables playing Olivia Parker and Natalie Lander as Zoe Grant. They are
just a great pairing. They play off of each other so well, and
if you listen to the official podcast, you can tell that they have a
nice chemistry with each other the actresses, and so it's really cool. Yeah,
there was just so much about this one that felt so genuine. There
were a couple of light moments too, like near the beginning when Zoe says
to her, like, you know, you're wise beyond your years or somebody
had made that comment, and so she repeats it, and Olivia says,
I'm unwise beneath my years. I have thought my notes that was a good
one. Yeah, But you know, speaking of the comments, it just,
you know, exemplifies the vitriol or negativity that can be online comment sections.
And so as with the frenzy about a media property that we saw earlier
in Legally Wooten, in this one we see another reflection of our current world
online comments. People are just downright jerks sometimes in online comments, and so
I mean, that's just unfortunately a reality these days. We're not gonna read
anything more from Jackson, Yeah, exactly that line from unrelatable Yeah reading comments
which now be brought it up. My biggest beef with this episode is the
use of technology in this and I think I pro I would have had this
to a certain extent before I started working at Heart Matters Full disclosure, I
work at a nonprofit that helps equip kids and parents to keep kids safe on
the Internet. And the things that a Living and Zoe were doing here,
Like I think if I got thirteen fourteen, something like that they should never
chat with a stranger online, let alone have a call with them. Sometimes
like people have like a public forum like a discord server or a message board
or something like that, and then sin as they'll get people pick certain people
out and I go into like private message or whatever, and then move them
off that platform into a less safe environment and get them away from that kind
of stuff, like, uh, this is not good. This is not
good. Like, I know it happens, but I don't think it's something
that kids should be doing. And kind of the use of technology on Odyssey.
I know it's the representation of what kids are doing now, but I
think there should be a balance of people saying, Okay, this isn't a
safe thing to do. Do this in moderation, things like that, you
know, get your parents, don't be on the internet alone. Things like
that I think will be beneficial. That's the only problem I have with this
episode. But yeah, and rant No, that is so so valid.
I'm glad you brought that up. There was a moment where it did register
to me, a moment where it's like I just realized that these are young
kids having completely unfettered access here. But then and I got into the story
again, and I forgot about it, and I never even put anything in
my notes about that. But I'm so glad you brought that up. You're
absolutely right, they are still very young, and yeah, the fact that
they're like, they don't know who this person is making the comment, and
they're like, well, let's just do a video call. You have no
clue what you're going to see on the other end. You know, in
this case, perhaps you could make the argument that they're on the they're obviously
on the church's page there watching the video of her testimony, so it's less
of a chance of there being something bad. But these these these bad actors
out there, and I don't mean voice actors, these bad actors online.
They they they will impersonate whatever they have to do to get a kid to
do something, you know, So I'm very glad you brought that up.
That is a good point. Yeah, there's a lot of there's a lot
of adoco pretend to be kids and then act like they're that, like they're
a kid and that kind of stuff, know the language. Impersonate somebody and
then get them to do some pretty terrible things, or get them away and
isolate them, which we hear about labor isolate them from other people. And
yeah, you gotta you gotta look out for those sigfree the spiders out there.
That's right. Yeah, And if you didn't hear a couple episodes back
where I talked with Austin and Christy Fromhart Matters about the very topic and what
they're doing to help in this area, you need to go back and listen
to that episode of ATC and go download the Heart Matters app. Listen to
the audio dramas and the other materials that they're working on. It's a it's
a great, great thing. So thank you for bringing that up. Oh
yeah, it's not just a plug for the organization. But no, I
know you weren't trying to do that. Yeah, yeah, I understand,
but I know that's one point I wrote down, Like I think I probably
would have said something, you know, if I didn't have the job I
have. But it's like, yeah, this is something that needs to be
addressed, and hopefully obviously we'll do something different at least see a balance of
that, because we see how things like internet fame and like how people will
follow you, like with a survivor boy with Wyatt doing his videos and that
kind of stuff, like they see like the negative aspects of what can come
from it, but like the kits shouldn't be on the internet that way anyway.
Mm hmm. Yeah, yep, good point. And I like that
early on in the episode because like Olivia feels like she's very unqualified to address
these questions and things like that. I like how I think it was Wit
saying something about like how like I just got in my notes here, not
just experience based on the Bible or base based on the Bible. So like
Olivia, some people might come through situation or not just her situation, but
other things, and just give this information to people like going by their own
emotions, their own opinions. But if you leave the Bible out of it,
if you leave out God out of the picture, those experiences may hurt
people if you don't back up with scripture, because everybody's experience in certain situations
are different and what worked one person may not work for another person. But
you got to make sure that one what you give them is based on scripture
and not just your own experience. And I appreciated that exactly. Yeah,
And overall, what Witt was saying to her was true. It was it
was accurate, and she needed to know, and she she realized that she
didn't feel equipped necessarily with all the knowledge that she might need to answer some
of the questions that were coming at her. But there was one thing,
one phrasing that I wish had been phrased differently, and Wit says to her,
you need to make sure you are sharing God's truth and not just your
own. And it just like there's a big thing these days of your truth,
my truth, and I'm like, there is no such thing as your
own truth. There are perceptions, there are opinions, there are thoughts,
but there's really only one truth. So that that my my hackles were up
a little bit about that. But I understood the context and everything else with
what he was saying to her was true, but that that phrasing there just
I wasn't too crazy about that. Yeah, I didn't pick that up before,
but yeah, like I I don't think that's what Marshall meant with that,
but I get that, like yeah, because again, like it's not
necessarily truth, Like, yes, this thing happened, it's a fact that
this happened to you. But whether or not there is the truth that you
can apply with it or from it. I'm not sure figuring it out right,
but yeah, I get what you're saying. And I did like that
he was saying to her, you know, maybe this is an opportunity.
Maybe he said, have you considered God maybe calling you to share or whatever
the whatever the rest of the line was there, but he did say,
have you considered God maybe calling you? And she's like, I didn't ask
for a calling, you know, And it's like, yeah, there were
a lot of people in the Bible that didn't ask for a calling and God
called them anyway. It kind of goes goes back to worth it a little
bit, where like why did God allow these bad things to happen? It
was to glorify God. And you can look at this like, what again,
this is fictional story, but God allowed that happened to you, mister
Norton, allowed Olivia to go through these things to help Jade and possibly other
people with that kind of looking at that perspective to a certain extent, like
why these bad things happen? Yes, it could have went either way because
we all have a choice on things. But God has a plan and he
is like we talked about like Wit earlier, being step ahead Maury. You
know, God is, you know, millions of steps ahead of us on
those kind of things. And I just got kind of that vibe from that
were some of that lessons from Worth It kind of carries over. That's a
good parallel. I hadn't thought about that, but yeah, that's that's really
good. And you know, you mentioned the character of Jade Jade Radner played
by Samara Jackson. Fantastic, fantastic voice. Yes, the character, the
performance, there were some moments that were really deep. There weren't like boohoo
crying moments, but there were some really emotional moments there, and she was
fantastic, just just really good and I really appreciated that. And so to
your point about all of this may have been leading up to this point of
Olivia helping her, and she even says to her at the end of the
episode, she says, funny how God works that out? Huh, you
know, something like that. And because here, here we have an example
of a preacher who has a national and possibly international reach, and so this
story, I mean, we don't know where things are going, but hypothetically,
you know, Olivia influences Jade. Jade makes this decision, finally realizes
where she needs to be spiritually, and that in turn, because it became
this big news story, the resolution of it could be shared to a huge
amount of people and impact so many lives because of it, and it all
is a snowball or a butterfly effect, so to speak, from this earlier
thing. So yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, what you meant for evil,
God meant for good. Yeah. And there was some beautiful moments of
music in this episode too. I've pointed the music out several times, but
overall, John Campbell just really had some great moments throughout this album, peaceful
sounding, just beautiful, soothing music moments in this episode. And I can't
think of a particular scene right now, but just overall, it just fits
so nicely into the context of what was happening and the overall point of this
episode. Just a really great job on the music. Yeah. The one
scene I think that my favorite scene except for me, like the last scene,
is when Olivia is talking to Jade when she talks about the music that
she's listening to in the lyrics m hm, and how Olivia talks about like
I think basically she said that experience that the devil is very sneaky and speaks
to us in many ways, and what if you know, these hopeless lyrics
is a way that's disguise as being honest that's actually hindering you to coming to
God. And I think the music at that point is I don't know,
I have to really listen to it. I I wonder there's some elements I
don't think I heard any of that Russian style music that be here, like
with about Lenid in album seventy two and seventy one, but whet are there's
some notes from that that's interlaced in that. But I think it's one of
the scenes that the music like really somber and like really serious, but not
you know, over dramatic or anything like that. Yeah, and that particular
scene, those lines that you just referenced there, I actually had in my
notes too, because I wanted to make sure to hit on that such a
great valuable lesson and you know, this is something that honestly does really well
a lot of the time, and there are a few times where things might
be a little clunky over the years. I mean, they've been going for
so long, but everyone's not going to be a home run. But this
particular moment, it is teaching a lesson to their audience of the show.
But it fits so nicely into the context of this scene and what's happening in
the story. It didn't feel like we're trying to teach you something right at
this moment, you know, but they are. They are, And it's
such a valuable point too. What you listen to is so so important mm
hmm. Yeah. It's also important, you know, for like things that
you watch and read and things like that. But as we all know,
something like Adventures in Odyssey and just listening to people on the radio, there's
something very personal about hearing something directly into your ear, people talking to you
drecthly your ear, like you don't see the visual, you don't read the
words. There's something very I'm not sure how to describe it. I've read
some people talking about this about how personal that is, like podcasts, radio
shows something like that, and you know, Odyssey overall, there's something so
personal that can influence because you know, our imaginations mixed with just audio is
when I think that reading some of the when our brains are working at their
most and soak and stuff in so again, you gotta be very careful,
careful what you bring into your mind. And that coupled with later on Levia
saying, like, you know, the biggest mistake I had was shutting out
my friends and family. Keeping people away is not the answer, which is
what Olivia did from like set a Watchmen forward, I think, And again
it's it's showing how she learned her lesson in applying it now. And sometimes
usually we have like a one off episode of a character learning something that's not
usually applied to something later down the road, unless it's part of a story
arc, and sometimes even just in that story arc once that leaves, once
that's finished, then if that character does show up, you don't get much
reference to that or if there's another particular situation that's kind of similar. I
mean, I'll always get that, oh yeah, they learned their lesson,
but no, they're learning this lesson again. But I love it how those
things that she learned from those previous episodes are being applied here, kind of
distilling all those lessons that you learn from that series into this one episode.
And I love it, yeah, yep. And also I loved how the
father just dropped everything he left the conference that he was at and he rushed
home to talk to her. He's like, you know, this is the
most important thing my family right here. My daughter is going through a crisis
at this moment, and I need to be there. And I just thought
that that was a beautiful thing. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's very
great and just the idea of which I don't think we've had much of this
in Odyssey. Like again, like come with Olivia. Stuff is like just
like there's pray, a lot of people they are questioning is God real?
People that are doubting God, things like that, and you know, backsliding
or falling from their faith. And probably a lot of Odyssey's listeners, you
know, a lot of kids raising Christian families that aren't Christians themselves or don't
realize that, or just you know kind of hanging into the coattails of the
parents' faith, which we get. We get kind of that to a certain
extent with Jack, I think tells you Gene about that when he was not
a Christian. And also to a certain extent with Camilla, Olivia's sister and
your servant is listening where she's like, oh, I'm not much about reading
the Bible thing like that, and they bring out like, Okay, she's
not a Christian and she gets saved at the end of the Imagination Station adventure.
So having a character like this like part of a Christian family, like
all your family members may be a Christian, Like is there something wrong with
me? Is this not for me? Like? Can I even be a
Christian? Like this addresses something similar vain as Olivia's previous episodes, but then
in a different ways, like yes, I'm so glad Odyssey's addressing it and
they're doing it well with this exactly exactly these two they're different struggles, they're
different situations, but they dovetail together so nicely, and it just made the
perfect transition to this different phase. And yeah, it was just just extremely
well done. And I have to say, I admit I got a little
teary at the end of this episode. Yeah, me too. Yeah,
and the title too. I know for some reason, we'll get to the
next episode here soon, but such peop we are thinking that the episode title
for the one about Olivia is gonna be King of My Heart. And then
tough Call was me the Buck and Jewels one, but it was Flipps and
I loved like the meaning of tough call with that double meaning of tough call
as being like a tough thing to do, but also tough calls and calling
her dad she can't talk with her dad. I really like that. Yeah.
Have you heard the club episodes from this year yet? No? Okay,
so Olivia's continuing from this thing has not totally wrapped up. There's some
elements of it in one of the club episodes in this year that I liked,
so cool and look forward to. And speaking of the of the father,
Monty Radner played by Drew Rausch, great great performance there too. Just
some some new names in the in odyssey, which at least to me,
I don't think either of these actors have have participated before, and they were
both fantastic. And as I said, this was my favorite episode from this
from this album, and just just some really timely and important discussions. I
think, yeah, it's it's probably my favorite from the album. I think,
well, yeah, I think it's probably my favorite. I think it's
the best one and probably also the one that's the most rounded to a certain
extent or the most serious, and that's probably why you know it carries so
much weight. Yeah, it's grounded and you know gravity, and you know,
it's heavier matters and things like that. But yeah, yeah, like
some of the other ones, like Game Night legally wooten to a certain extent
the next episode like this one and value in the process or like more serious,
not as jovial and funny and that kind of stuff. But like this
one, of all of them, it shares the same gravitas that you know,
the preceding episodes for this story arc saga thing. And it's another stellar
episode, one of Odosty's best episodes. I think. Well, let's move
on to the final episode, nine fifty seven, King of My Heart,
written and directed by Kathy Buchanan, sound designed by Christopher Deal, and music
by John Campbell. So here, here's the thing. I'm not a big
fan of the of the teenage drama sort of stories. And I don't know
if that's just that I'm getting too old, Yeah, but it is.
I'm sure that's a factor. I'm not in the nine to twelve or the
eight to twelve demographic. And you know, but I know people love this
whole thing. I mean, they even gave a nod to the fan base
with the title of this album Buckle Up. It's a it's a it's a
reference to Buckles. The whole shipping mindset of fandoms in the last several years,
I don't get it. I I'm just gonna shoot straight. I don't
understand that whole mentality. Yes, I understand getting involved in Oh that's you
know, the whole Eugene and Katrina relationship arc. I mentioned on Daniel Roth's
podcast that that I really enjoyed that when it was playing out, but it
was never I never got so I don't know what the word is so in
deeply involved in it that you think about it, and I don't know.
It's just it seems like it's gone to a new level those kinds of things
in recent years, and people get so into it, and that's not my
thing at all, And so I didn't go into this one with high expectations.
However, I thought it was a pretty decent episode after I finally got
into it. I mean, there are still some things that I thought were
a little bit cheesy, but overall it was a pretty okay episode. Yeah.
Like, there are some episodes even from Odysty's past, like kid centric
episodes of issues at school, even some teenagers of like Aubrey and things like
that. Like, I'm glad they're doing these episodes, and I'm okay,
just a minute. I want to clarify something. When I say teenage drama,
I should have said specifically the teenage relationship drama. Now kid centric episodes.
I'm all about that. I'm totally cool with that. I like those
episodes because this is a show primarily for kids to listen to it with their
families. But yeah, just dealing with interpersonal relationships, go school things,
I'm cool with all of that. It's the teenage relationship drama, which I'm
not a big fan of, so I wanted to make sure I was clear
on that. So yeah, go go, go ahead. Sorry to interrupt,
Oh you're good. Yeah. Like I like this episode better than like
something like for a song that was very much about you know, all this
stuff online and things like that. Like, I like it that technology doesn't
have much to do with it and it's just basic the drama of you know,
who's gonna be homecoming king and yearbook stuff and things like that. Like
it felt like a normal episode, normal sense of life episode, kind of
that kind of thing. Yeah, And I think probably they know, like
you said, like how it seems to be a favorite pitch now. I
think because you know, back in the day, like you know, fifteen
twenty years ago, whatever, we didn't have the Internet like we have now,
and people are so so you know, Instagram pages, discord servers and
all this sudden on Facebook and things like that. Like, I think some
of this, some of these stories, if we looked at it more in
a vacuum outside of oh yeah, we see al LEAs post about oh how
I eventually I love this character or they're shipping this character with this character and
that kind of stuff, I don't think we would probably have that mentality as
much. But since we see so much of that as like, oh can
we please not have this where if it was just relegated just to the episodes
and just our thoughts around those episodes specifically, and not the fan chatter,
I think you and other people probably would have a little bit different opinion of
it. Well yeah, and it's not yeah, it's and it's maybe not
so much of the episode itself. It's it is the fandom. It's the
it's the how deeply they care about this character, being with that character and
coming up with these cute ye nicknames and stuff. It's just like I don't
understand it at all. Uh, And that's not actually and it's some people,
some people, some of the fans are actually using Jeweliver, and some
people are predicts of these buckles instead of that, because I think, like,
uh, I think Juliver might have been like a little more common than
buckles. So I guess they just chose I guess Kathy by Cannon. You
know, she's the one that has to break everybody's hearts and put everything through
all this romantic drama. Yeah, that's that's that's Kathy. I love you,
Kathy. You write great stuff. And I know, I know I'll
get off this after this. But I know this is not a new thing,
I mean necessarily, I mean it's not It's been going on for a
while. I mean in the entertainment world, you know. I mean,
I don't even remember how long ago it was when I first heard Branjelina,
you know, by somebody mentioning that, and I don't even remember where I
heard it. But so I know this is not a thing unique to the
Odyssey fandom. This is a thing that happens in culture. But yeah,
It's just something that I don't understand. But I do like the whole the
whole running gag about boy space friend versus boyfriend. I think that's kind of
funny. This is not the first time we've heard that, and it was
mentioned a couple of times in this episode, so that's kind of fun.
Yeah, it's interesting this episode. After the theme plays, it goes right
into the music. We don't always get that. Sometimes we get, you
know, just the fade out of the Odyssey theme and it's right into the
episode. But this had like almost right away you have the episode music kind
of playing, and every episode has that. But I really liked you know,
Cooper and Bucks repertoire and their conversation like he's trying to help him,
but he was also teasing him at the same time. And when they're all
imitating jewels, like putting their voices higher. Ohough, that was hilarious.
Yes, that was fun. And speaking of funny things, jewels to Connie
saying you get your fashion advice for magazines at the dentist office. Yeah.
But my favorite thing about this whole episode was Ryan Cummings is back. I
am so so happy he's back. I really like Ryan's character. We haven't
heard him since Unfair Game and one of the early Club seasons I think it
was, And I was so happy to hear him in this episode. And
I was having a conversation with a friend of mine about the character and he
brought something out about how much he likes I think he either is his favorite
character, like kid character like in modern day odysty like you that's a broad
term there modern, but is that Ryan, of any of the kid characters,
is just a normal kid where you know, you have like brandy kids
like Nelson or mister so offers like Emily. Ryan is kind of like the
Sam Johnson or Isaac Morton, Like he's just a kid. He doesn't have
this this you know, certain tick or this certain character followers like that or
like I think he's just a normal kid and he's relatable and he's again like
it's a normal kid. And in this episode now he's you know, very
like even before except for that you know scandal with kids Burl like he's an
upstanding guy like well he I guess, and you're too kind. He did
that thing to Brad with the video thing. But overall Ryan is really nice
guy. I love Adam Miley's voice. I love hearing him in Lesser's Detectives,
so I'm really happy he was in this episode, and I was really
happy to hear him in Alibis an episode after this, and I think I'm
not mistakeing. I think they're talking about him been in more episodes in the
future, so I'm all for that. Yeah, he's great and it's funny
too, because I mean, only an audio drama nerd like me would would
even think about something like this. But so he's in an episode here where
he's playing a kid who is the homecoming King here, therefore the episode title.
But he also was the voice of Prince Hubert in Sir Malcolm and the
Missing Prince. So ah, some royalty theme going on there. Uh huh.
Yeah, that's from Lamplighter Theater in case you don't know. If you
haven't heard that, you need to go listen to it. It is fantastic.
Yeah, there's other Odyssey actors in that, hopefully h Jess Ornell and
I'm blanking on the guy that plays Barrett. He's in that one. But
yeah, I like how this episode. It's it's so funny, like the
comedy of errors kind of thing, like it wouldn't be as fun if you
know someone like I know she wouldn't go out with Jay, but someone like
Jay or someone that's not that good of a character, like any kind of
not necessarily mean or whatever. But like Ryan is such a good guy,
Like you can't hate him for doing this, Like you can't dislike him,
Like he's a really good guy. And it's like that's what makes it so
difficult. And then like and it's also not like the traditional trope is like,
oh he's doing this, I'm going to go out of my way to
make things miserable, try to break them up. Buck's not doing that.
He's just accidentally doing these things innocently, but still you know, trying to
kill Ryan, and but it's all on accident. Yeah, it is quite
a quite a good one. Now here's a question. You may know this
or you may not. Who was the voice of Sam. He's only has
like three lines there in the in the gym, the kid that Buck spoke
to. He didn't sound like a professional actor, And I'm like, I
don't know who he is, and he's not mentioned in the credits. Yeah,
it's probably one of these people that the pull from, like Focus or
a visitor or something like that, or like because I sometimes they had like
the getting the show people like I know, some people like the the nominees,
like the runners up or whatever, I'm gonna play some extra roles and
so it's probably just you know, I mean maybe a kid of one of
the workers there at Focus or something like that. But yeah, that he
had some pretty funny lines and some pretty funny lines directed at him. And
Buck's lines about Ryan at the bonfire there that he's griping about him to to
uh Cooper, those were really funny, like he was like overinflating like his
his personality or something like that, like he's just all that and everything.
Donated thought that he donated his kidney to five people, this great stuff.
And then Ryan when he's talking to his phone, he says instead of saying
you know, like hey Google or Siri or whatever, he says phone assistant,
like yeah, how how non Yeah, we just had the episode about
copyright infringement, so and dre Mark so like yeah, we're definitely not going
to day anything here. We're gonna be generic. Yeah, boys, and
mary ai Yah was funny. It's being a characters we haven't heard from in
a while, well not as long as Ryan. But I was really happy
to hear Katrina in this episode, which it makes sense because we don't have
Eugene around to be involved in it. It was nice hearing Katrina being in
a more printal mode, which we hear a lot of. We've heard a
lot of episodes of Eugene and Buck, but not so much Katrina and Buck.
So it's nice seeing that dynamic with just her and also her with Connie,
which you don't hear their friends, but they don't hang out that much
together. Mm hmmm, yeah, yeah, and she was really great with
him in those scenes. I mean, there aren't that many, but it
was. It was really nice. And speaking of parental mode, we have
Connie kind of going a little bit well being Connie, you know, overthinking
things, and but she had a valid point. It's like, yeah,
okay, you know she's Jules is not a Christian yet Ryan is a Christian.
No, I don't want her dating non Christians. But he's a Christian.
But why is he wanting to date a non Christian? And you know
the whole conundrum there, And they sort of played it off as as humor,
but I thought Hey, I can totally see where she's coming from there
for sure. Yeah, like Katrina is more like the new almost neutral space
like she has I know, even if with I think future episodes of some
earlier episodes, like Katrina seems to be of the parenting type. She's a
little bit more on the I don't know what you'd call it, less helicopter,
I guess to a certain extent with those kind of things like yeah,
like I kind of had very good points and I'm not quite certain why.
I know, some laughs with there, like the yoke thing was a little
bit funny, but they're valid things. But I think even Katrina kind of
brush them off, like it's not like more she was like trying to get
more out of her like explain her feelings to a certain extent, but it's
it is a valid thing and the same thing too, which I'm glad they
addressed it because we have Buck and Jewels, both non Christians and teenagers.
Like they're not gonna be role models, and hopefully they're not role models to
any kids, but they are a very popular character, especially with a lot
of the younger audience, and I'm glad that. And then the Steps of
the kind of addressed it to a certain extent, which as a story it
works, but then also like, hey, we need to have good role
models here, Like I know they're not role models, they're the characters for
that, but we need to have something pretty soon or one diverges to like
I'm seeing prayer Eugene Katrina situation here and I don't bet, but my money
would be on be on Buck if any of them getting said, I think
that would be the person to be kind of reversal with, like Eugene Katrina,
where Katrina became a Chrichtan first and then Eugene. So I'm if any
of them get saved, I think book, But that's just speculation. Yeah,
I could see that that makes sense. He does seem to be the
one that's a little more tender towards those those types of things, and it's
it's probably due to his past in a lot of ways, though neither one
of them have had great past, you know, family relationships, so they've
they've both had some struggles in terms of familial relationships and so yeah, they
have some similarities there. But speaking of parallels between Eugene and Katrina and Buck
and Jewels, now I don't know if I'm just completely misremembering here, but
this that whole scene where they say each other's name at the same time and
then say, oh, go ahead. What did that not happen to Eugene
and Katrina at some point in the past when they were going through their relationship
issues. I have a memory of that happening at some point, but I
cannot remember which episode. I'm not sure about Eugenie Katri, but I know
Connie and Mitch did that, and I think like one of the Novicom episodes,
it's like, so do you go ahead? Remember them both saying saying
that at one point. I have a distinct memory of them saying Eugene Katrina
at the same time. But maybe it's totally something that I just made up.
But if it is true, I would totally believe it that Kathy did
that intentionally because she likes those kinds of things, and to do a callback
and make it a sort of parallel, now, that would be something that
she would do. I think. So I don't know, let us know
in the comments or send in an email or whatever. Let us know if
you remember a moment like that or between any other characters that I might be
thinking of. I do remember the moment you're talking about with Mitch, with
Mitch and Connie, but that wasn't what I was thinking of, But again,
could be totally conflating things. Well, going along with that, it
was it was a cool callback offter like talking about, you know, dating
history. It is so funny, like, yeah, we're dating for like
one hundred years, which is kind of like of like they're such a long
relationship. That kind of stuff. That was really funny. And also this
episode is kind of a little bit of a parallel of naturally I assumed,
where like Eugene was giving candy and flowers and it was totally not the right
thing to do, like Katrium is logic and chocolate and alergies and things like
that with this, you know, don't give her flowers, don't give her
this whatever, like get her cookies instead and play her favorite band Angry Sandwich
is. Yeah, that's the callback. I think I can't remember which was
it. Maybe I can't remember which I know that's been mentioned before in the
past, but it was kind of cool here in that Oh yeah, gowers
flowers. That's another callback there from a to h Mister of the Clock tower
and just also those things too in the final scene with calling off the different
events like learning how to dry, you know, him flying out to California
and being kidnapped and things like that. Yeah, there's a lot of little
callbacks for people listening to Odyssey for a long like since the beginning, and
also those that you know in the past ten years or so. Yeah.
Yeah, well, I gotta say I ended up liking this one quite a
bit more than I thought I would. Yeah, it's a pretty solid episode.
I don't think I have any anything further to add, any final thoughts
from you, Austin on King of My Heart. I think most people were
probably thinking at pros. One of those people of this is probably the episode
they finally get together officially, and it was kind of a sweet moment there,
Like, I'm still not totally on board with you know, both being
non Christians and then being so prominent in the show and dating. But again
they can show like what happens while you shouldn't date non Christians, why both
people in the relationship should be Christians before you start dating things like that.
So I think there is some good things happening there that can happen. King
of my heart. I love the title, like that flip of again,
people thought that was gonna be a Livy episode and you know, Homecome King
and the heart issues anything like that. I know what the rep with Chris
saying like so many people rooting for it, like the fans are, but
I don't think people in their lives and actually Odyssey are rooting for it.
Was like, yeah, I don't think that's the thing. Like I'm sure
you Genia Katrin aren't great with that, and Connie certainly isn't. It's like,
yeah, this one was like the wrap up especially was very playing to
the fans, but the story itself I think was good. Like for me,
I wasn't mad. I wasn't disappointed that they finally did get together.
Like story wise, it was a natural progression. It was bound to happen.
Whether that, you know, contains on how much far into the future
we'll have to see. But it was a very fun episode. There were
some very comedic moments or some sweet moments in it, several callbacks older episodes,
so I had a lot of fun with it. Yeah, yeah,
I would agree with that assessment. Well, man, I knew that we
were going to enjoy talking about these episodes. But I expected to go this
long, But yeah, I think we did it longer than we did for
obstety two. I think, I think so, I think so. This
might be one of the longest AIO reviews of a six episode album ever.
Yeah, it's about as long as the whole rud title of the episode of
the whole album. Oh my goodness. But it's fun. Always a joy
having you on the show talking about audio drama in general, regardless of whatever
show it is. But yeah, thank you so much for coming on the
show talking about AIO and definitely have links in the show notes to Heart Matters
and that particular episode of ATC talking about Heart Matters, but also links to
this album. If you haven't got a copy and you want to get a
copy, of course, yes, you can just stream it on the club.
But you don't own that. You don't own that, you're just renting
access to it. So if you're if you're a true fan, no,
I can't say that. We go for another hour here talking about that.
Well, thank you again, Austin, appreciate it very much. Well,
I appreciate you having me back. I love getting to talk with you about
anything and talk about Odyssey with someone else and you both has been long time
listeners to Odyssey and all the references something like that. It's it's such a
joy to be able to talk about Odyssey with fans, and getting to talk
about it on ATC is always a blessing and I really appreciate it. Thank
you so much. Oh you bad? Oh yes, and there's also a
link to Odyssey geek. You need to check out that podcast too. No,
thank you appreciate that. So what are you think of the show?
Please leave your message after the showing. Hi, Audi Central, Hey guys,
this is awesome. Hell about j D Royan Andrew Minum is Victoria Now.
Yesterday I received a letter from a big fan. No time to try.
I've got an emails another package for me today. No, it's actually
just your mail. Well, if you would like to get in touch with
us, there are numerous ways to do that. You can always email us,
feedback at Audio Theatercentral dot com, comment on the show notes, love
to hear from me there and like to interact whenever we can, or you
can always send a voicemail. Send a voicemail, no, you call in
a leaf a voicemail and you can send a text to six two three six
eight eight two seven seven zero. That number is always open twenty four to
seven six three six eight eight two seven seven zero. Well, I just
wanted to highlight a comment that we received from Mark Henry Cooney regarding episode one
ninety seven, our review of the Lamb from Witnesses. In case you don't
know or you forgot, Mark Henry Cooney is the actor who plays Jesus in
Witnesses, but he sent in some feedback and said, phenomenal episode. JD
and Christopher, you guys shared some great insights that helped me appreciate the Witnesses
episodes all the more. I wholeheartedly join you in recognizing the god given gifts
and talents that Tracy Van Dolder brings to each and every episode. I'm just
blown away every time I hear a new episode. Each one sounds like a
big budget audio production. It's truly amazing. Thank you Audio Theater Central team
for helping Witnesses gain more exposure. The ATC podcast's faithful work in sharing great
content with its listeners has helped me personally in discovering some amazing audio dramas.
I'm extremely grateful for the hard work ATC puts into each and every episode.
Many thanks and God bless you guys. Thank you Mark. That comment was
was so uplifting to me. I deeply appreciated that, and it is my
pleasure to bring information about good quality audio drama. You know, I'm pretty
sure I've said this before, but if you don't know, I don't take
the time promoting audio dramas that I don't think are worth your time. I
value your time. That's why I try my best to not waste your time
while you're listening to our episodes. But also I don't want to recommend something
that I don't think is worth a listen. Now, on occasion over the
years, there may have been something mentioned in a news segment where we haven't
heard the production yet, and it's just something we heard about that we think
might be worth your looking into. But generally speaking, even the shows that
we mentioned in our updates are things that we have either already heard or know
enough about that we think are safe to say it's going to be worth your
time. Not every single instance, but generally speaking that is the case,
and certainly with any review on the podcast or on the website, we're not
going to post a review if we don't think it's worth your time. Now
we're going to critique and we're going to go into the details and share what
we thought worked and what we thought might have been improved. But at the
end of the day, these are shows that we think are worth your time.
So anyway, a little bit of a side trail there, but thank
you again Mark for the comment feedback. Really really appreciate it well. The
song at the top of the review segment was Ride of Life by for Him
from their nineteen ninety four album titled The Ride. If you would like to
get in touch with us, head over to audio Theatercentral dot com slash Contact.
All of the ways are mentioned there, and again we'd love to hear
from you an audio clip to include in episode two hundred. There will be
no text feedback included in that episode. I want to hear your voices,
so be sure to send that in. And of course, the show notes
for this episode with links to everything we talked about is at audio Theatercentral dot
com slash one ninety eight, including the news items, the review production,
and of course the links to Heart Matters and everything that Austin is working on
these days. Well, I hope you enjoyed this episode. It was a
lot of fun for me to put this together, and I hope you'll join
me in the next one and the next one. Keep listening to great audio
drama. I'll see you next time. Thank you for listening. Audio Theater
Central is a production of Porchlite Familymedia. Our theme music was composed by Sam
Avandano. The show is produced and edited by Yours Truly JD. Stter.
Our website is Audiotheatercentral dot com. Porch Light Familymedia your source for family centered
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