Episode Description:
"When Olivia Parker makes a bold promise to the drama club about going to a festival, Morrie Rydell secretly decides to test just how far she is willing to go to keep her word." - AIO
Episode Review:
"The Good in People" continues the two-year long saga about Morrie Rydell and his propensity to mess with people's minds. Thus far, we've seen him thwart the Jones and Parker Detective Agency in "They Key Suspect" and "The Secret of the Writer's Ruse", but in "The Good in People", he shows he doesn't discriminate -- he's willing to make the lives of pretty much anyone miserable, including Olivia Parker's. This Morrie-saga is one of the more interesting serialized elements going on in Adventures in Odyssey these days, and these episodes have certainly ignited a flurry of questions among listeners.
Overall, "The Good in People" is pretty involving, but as an entry in the Morrie saga , I found it a little unsatisfying. Don't get me wrong - I didn't need Morrie to get caught or his storyline to be completely resolved. I just needed the episode to shed a little more light -- to learn something new about his character and what motivates him. Oddly, the episode neither addresses nor builds upon any elements raised from previous episodes; we receive no new information about why he does what he does, where he comes from, or whether Whit is any closer to catching him -- remember, Whit was certainly suspicious in Morrie's last episode, but there's strangely no mention of his suspicions here.
Even the specifics of how he carried out his plans within "The Good in People" -- including how he knows Jonah Winward and the Student Project Fund -- aren't fully explained, here. "Patience, you must have", some of you are probably saying. "They'll answer everything soon enough". But I wonder whether Adventures in Odyssey is writing themselves into a corner; they're creating such a lengthy series of episodes with unresolved endings that it seems unlikely they'll address the specifics of each of these episodes in a single episode. Will there be a future episode where each of the protagonists realize how Morrie played a part in each of these previous episode, including details about how he carried them out? Somehow, I don't think so.
As mentioned, "The Good in People" is certainly involving. But passive listeners may get confused as the episode takes overcomplicated ways of providing simple information. Specifically, there's a lot of set-up at the beginning of how much things cost -- characters describe how the festival costs 50 dollars a student, which means they have to raise a total of 500 dollars, but the festival needs 250 dollars by the end of the week, meaning everyone could put 25 dollars in each. But considering that Jonah Winward later talks to Olivia about also needing 250 by the end of a week, in order to double it, and that Olivia has saved 260 dollars for a mission trip, the episode should have eliminated the lengthy - and useless - numerical exposition at the beginning. The episode really just needed to establish that the festival costs 500 total and that the characters just don't know how they'll raise this amount. Done.
What makes Morrie's actions somewhat disturbing is that he doesn't actually seem to have a "grand plan" at all. His actions seem random, and carried out only for his own amusement -- he may turn out to be more of a Joker than a Moriarty. We'll see. As I mentioned in my last "Morrie"-centric episode review, the best way to judge these episodes is to wait until all the pieces fall into place and the larger story is resolved. That said, three cliff-hangers in a row is a lot. If an episode is not going to satisfy listeners with the protagonist actually catching the villain, it must satisfy in other ways -- by providing new information about its villain. A few more answers, and a greater hint of where this little saga is going, would have made "The Good in People" perhaps a little better.
"When Olivia Parker makes a bold promise to the drama club about going to a festival, Morrie Rydell secretly decides to test just how far she is willing to go to keep her word." - AIO
Episode Review:
"The Good in People" continues the two-year long saga about Morrie Rydell and his propensity to mess with people's minds. Thus far, we've seen him thwart the Jones and Parker Detective Agency in "They Key Suspect" and "The Secret of the Writer's Ruse", but in "The Good in People", he shows he doesn't discriminate -- he's willing to make the lives of pretty much anyone miserable, including Olivia Parker's. This Morrie-saga is one of the more interesting serialized elements going on in Adventures in Odyssey these days, and these episodes have certainly ignited a flurry of questions among listeners.
Overall, "The Good in People" is pretty involving, but as an entry in the Morrie saga , I found it a little unsatisfying. Don't get me wrong - I didn't need Morrie to get caught or his storyline to be completely resolved. I just needed the episode to shed a little more light -- to learn something new about his character and what motivates him. Oddly, the episode neither addresses nor builds upon any elements raised from previous episodes; we receive no new information about why he does what he does, where he comes from, or whether Whit is any closer to catching him -- remember, Whit was certainly suspicious in Morrie's last episode, but there's strangely no mention of his suspicions here.
Even the specifics of how he carried out his plans within "The Good in People" -- including how he knows Jonah Winward and the Student Project Fund -- aren't fully explained, here. "Patience, you must have", some of you are probably saying. "They'll answer everything soon enough". But I wonder whether Adventures in Odyssey is writing themselves into a corner; they're creating such a lengthy series of episodes with unresolved endings that it seems unlikely they'll address the specifics of each of these episodes in a single episode. Will there be a future episode where each of the protagonists realize how Morrie played a part in each of these previous episode, including details about how he carried them out? Somehow, I don't think so.
As mentioned, "The Good in People" is certainly involving. But passive listeners may get confused as the episode takes overcomplicated ways of providing simple information. Specifically, there's a lot of set-up at the beginning of how much things cost -- characters describe how the festival costs 50 dollars a student, which means they have to raise a total of 500 dollars, but the festival needs 250 dollars by the end of the week, meaning everyone could put 25 dollars in each. But considering that Jonah Winward later talks to Olivia about also needing 250 by the end of a week, in order to double it, and that Olivia has saved 260 dollars for a mission trip, the episode should have eliminated the lengthy - and useless - numerical exposition at the beginning. The episode really just needed to establish that the festival costs 500 total and that the characters just don't know how they'll raise this amount. Done.
What makes Morrie's actions somewhat disturbing is that he doesn't actually seem to have a "grand plan" at all. His actions seem random, and carried out only for his own amusement -- he may turn out to be more of a Joker than a Moriarty. We'll see. As I mentioned in my last "Morrie"-centric episode review, the best way to judge these episodes is to wait until all the pieces fall into place and the larger story is resolved. That said, three cliff-hangers in a row is a lot. If an episode is not going to satisfy listeners with the protagonist actually catching the villain, it must satisfy in other ways -- by providing new information about its villain. A few more answers, and a greater hint of where this little saga is going, would have made "The Good in People" perhaps a little better.
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Name: Phil Lollar
Director: Phil Lollar Executive Producer: Dave Arnold Post-Production: GAP Digital Music: John Campbell Theme: Practicing what you preach Original Airdate: 11/ 03/18 Review Published: 11/26/18 |
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