"Nightmares by Constance" (#878) is part of album 67: More than Meets the Eye Episode Description:
"Two days before a Dreams By Constance wedding, the grandmother of the bride approaches Connie with a proposal. She'll pay her double if she breaks up the ceremony." -AIO
Episode Review:
Probably the best decision made during the writing of “Nightmares by Constance” was to not include the word “mystery” in the title. I’m serious. With episodes like “Game For a Mystery”, “Sounds Like a Mystery”, or “The Mystery of the Clocktower”, the audience knows right away to put on their deerstalker caps and to analyze every bit of dialogue and to suspect everyone from the very beginning. “Nightmares by Constance”, on the other hand, wisely doesn’t let on that it’s an Agatha Christie-like mystery until quite late in the story, hoping, it appears, to disarm the audience and to keep them unaware of what questions they should be asking.
For the majority of the episode, I thought I was listening to a straightforward AIO wedding comedy. After all, the episode begins with a rather comical inciting incident (the bride’s grandmother offers to pay Connie double if she breaks up the wedding) similar to the absurdity found in those wedding-themed episodes like “A Very Bassett Wedding” and “For Better or For Worse”. As the episode switches focus from Connie onto Jason and Jillian, it drives home this impression even more. Given its lightheartedness, never am I trying to actively guess the culprit, or expecting the episode to pull out a twist, as I would with any other mystery.
Only much later does the story begin to prompt the audience to ask questions, as our characters discover more and more incriminating evidence against, and eventually arrest, Caleb, the groom. Around the halfway mark, I assumed that “Nightmares by Constance” was perhaps an “inverted detective story”, where the audience knows who the “bad-guy” is from the start, but doesn’t know the answers to other questions such as “how” or “why”, as seen in mysteries such as George Simenon's Maigret sets a trap or Father Gilbert’s Secrets. I thought the 2nd part of the story was going to focus primarily on trying to ascertain the groom’s confession or, perhaps, trying to persuade the bride of her fiance’s guilt.
It isn’t until our character’s suspicions fall onto the groom’s mother, that I finally realized that the episode was an actual traditional “whodunit” -- where the audience wasn’t supposed to know who the main “culprit” is. The problem, however, is that as soon as Jason starts to suspect the groom's mother, I immediately stopped trying to suspect anyone else in the story -- my mind instantly recalled her one suspiciously purposeless scene in the first half, and I became moderately satisfied with this conclusion, and assumed the episode was now speeding towards a denouement. With my eye now focused on this particular misdirection, the episode was able to fool me with its own big surprise.
Ingeniously, every aspect of this episode was constructed in a way that that dictates what the audience should think when, throwing out red-herrings to feast on at just the right moments. And like all good mysteries, if you go back and listen to it again, you realize that the clues were staring you right in the face; the lady’s vintage suitcase Jillian spots in the video, the fact that the groom Caleb had a clean background check..etc. If you have read Agatha Christie or Sherlock Holmes novels, you know to keep a lookout for these clues at the beginning, but with “Nightmares by Constance”, the genre is as much of a mystery as the mystery itself.
A list of the most memorable moments in this episode would naturally include the scene in which Jason and Jillian go undercover as a married couple to find out more about the groom (which, as I write this, I realize is quite similar to the Connie/Eugene undercover pairing in “A Very Bassett Wedding”). The lines about the “honeybun” and the “muffintop” had me laughing out loud. And while Jason and Jillian worked solidly as a “comedic duo”, I’m not exactly sure the show has yet convinced me that they would make a solid “marriage duo”. Although Jillian is certainly dynamic and bursting with personality and quirk, I suppose I would expect someone like Jason to eventually marry someone, euh, a little smarter.
It’s worth noting that the ending, for some, will require a significant amount of suspension of disbelief. Admittedly, it’s a little difficult to believe that a seemingly sweet septuagenarian-plus would orchestrate a - rather diabolical - scheme that involved framing her granddaughter’s fiancé for thievery and drugging people (yikes) just so that he wouldn’t end up marrying her granddaughter because of something horrible the groom’s mother did, or that she managed to also recruit two people, Mrs. McClaren and Uncle George, into this far fetched scheme. It’s also really hard to believe Claire’s reaction, who, upon learning the information, immediately barades her grandmother instead of taking a moment to consider the ramifications of such a revelation on her future/marriage. Most people, I think, would have at least postponed the wedding or chosen not to marry at all. And because the final ten minutes lean a little bit too into soap-opera territory, the ending isn’t quite as emotionally powerful as it otherwise might have been. But, really, that’s just a nitpick.
To be perfectly honest, Adventures in Odyssey hasn’t always had the most consistent track record when it comes to mysteries. They range from amazing (“The Mysterious Stranger”) to OK (“The Key Suspect”) to subpar (“Game For a Mystery”). So where does “Nightmares by Constance” rank? In my view: quite high. Look, nothing will exceed my personal favorites like “The Perfect Witness” or “The Case of the Secret Room” which thrive on their originality, mood, and noire-elements; however, as a pure “whodonit”, I think “Nightmares by Constance” might be one of Adventures in Odyssey’s most cleverly plotted mysteries yet.
"Two days before a Dreams By Constance wedding, the grandmother of the bride approaches Connie with a proposal. She'll pay her double if she breaks up the ceremony." -AIO
Episode Review:
Probably the best decision made during the writing of “Nightmares by Constance” was to not include the word “mystery” in the title. I’m serious. With episodes like “Game For a Mystery”, “Sounds Like a Mystery”, or “The Mystery of the Clocktower”, the audience knows right away to put on their deerstalker caps and to analyze every bit of dialogue and to suspect everyone from the very beginning. “Nightmares by Constance”, on the other hand, wisely doesn’t let on that it’s an Agatha Christie-like mystery until quite late in the story, hoping, it appears, to disarm the audience and to keep them unaware of what questions they should be asking.
For the majority of the episode, I thought I was listening to a straightforward AIO wedding comedy. After all, the episode begins with a rather comical inciting incident (the bride’s grandmother offers to pay Connie double if she breaks up the wedding) similar to the absurdity found in those wedding-themed episodes like “A Very Bassett Wedding” and “For Better or For Worse”. As the episode switches focus from Connie onto Jason and Jillian, it drives home this impression even more. Given its lightheartedness, never am I trying to actively guess the culprit, or expecting the episode to pull out a twist, as I would with any other mystery.
Only much later does the story begin to prompt the audience to ask questions, as our characters discover more and more incriminating evidence against, and eventually arrest, Caleb, the groom. Around the halfway mark, I assumed that “Nightmares by Constance” was perhaps an “inverted detective story”, where the audience knows who the “bad-guy” is from the start, but doesn’t know the answers to other questions such as “how” or “why”, as seen in mysteries such as George Simenon's Maigret sets a trap or Father Gilbert’s Secrets. I thought the 2nd part of the story was going to focus primarily on trying to ascertain the groom’s confession or, perhaps, trying to persuade the bride of her fiance’s guilt.
It isn’t until our character’s suspicions fall onto the groom’s mother, that I finally realized that the episode was an actual traditional “whodunit” -- where the audience wasn’t supposed to know who the main “culprit” is. The problem, however, is that as soon as Jason starts to suspect the groom's mother, I immediately stopped trying to suspect anyone else in the story -- my mind instantly recalled her one suspiciously purposeless scene in the first half, and I became moderately satisfied with this conclusion, and assumed the episode was now speeding towards a denouement. With my eye now focused on this particular misdirection, the episode was able to fool me with its own big surprise.
Ingeniously, every aspect of this episode was constructed in a way that that dictates what the audience should think when, throwing out red-herrings to feast on at just the right moments. And like all good mysteries, if you go back and listen to it again, you realize that the clues were staring you right in the face; the lady’s vintage suitcase Jillian spots in the video, the fact that the groom Caleb had a clean background check..etc. If you have read Agatha Christie or Sherlock Holmes novels, you know to keep a lookout for these clues at the beginning, but with “Nightmares by Constance”, the genre is as much of a mystery as the mystery itself.
A list of the most memorable moments in this episode would naturally include the scene in which Jason and Jillian go undercover as a married couple to find out more about the groom (which, as I write this, I realize is quite similar to the Connie/Eugene undercover pairing in “A Very Bassett Wedding”). The lines about the “honeybun” and the “muffintop” had me laughing out loud. And while Jason and Jillian worked solidly as a “comedic duo”, I’m not exactly sure the show has yet convinced me that they would make a solid “marriage duo”. Although Jillian is certainly dynamic and bursting with personality and quirk, I suppose I would expect someone like Jason to eventually marry someone, euh, a little smarter.
It’s worth noting that the ending, for some, will require a significant amount of suspension of disbelief. Admittedly, it’s a little difficult to believe that a seemingly sweet septuagenarian-plus would orchestrate a - rather diabolical - scheme that involved framing her granddaughter’s fiancé for thievery and drugging people (yikes) just so that he wouldn’t end up marrying her granddaughter because of something horrible the groom’s mother did, or that she managed to also recruit two people, Mrs. McClaren and Uncle George, into this far fetched scheme. It’s also really hard to believe Claire’s reaction, who, upon learning the information, immediately barades her grandmother instead of taking a moment to consider the ramifications of such a revelation on her future/marriage. Most people, I think, would have at least postponed the wedding or chosen not to marry at all. And because the final ten minutes lean a little bit too into soap-opera territory, the ending isn’t quite as emotionally powerful as it otherwise might have been. But, really, that’s just a nitpick.
To be perfectly honest, Adventures in Odyssey hasn’t always had the most consistent track record when it comes to mysteries. They range from amazing (“The Mysterious Stranger”) to OK (“The Key Suspect”) to subpar (“Game For a Mystery”). So where does “Nightmares by Constance” rank? In my view: quite high. Look, nothing will exceed my personal favorites like “The Perfect Witness” or “The Case of the Secret Room” which thrive on their originality, mood, and noire-elements; however, as a pure “whodonit”, I think “Nightmares by Constance” might be one of Adventures in Odyssey’s most cleverly plotted mysteries yet.
Writer: Kathy Buchanan
Director: Kathy Buchanan
Executive Producer: Dave Arnold
Post-Production: Jonathan Crowe
Music: John Campbell
Original Release Date: 08/06/19
Review Published: 09/03/19