Episode Description:
"Emily Jones begins her exhaustive investigation into the mastermind behind a number of mysterious occurrences in Odyssey, including the student council election, the opened lockers, the escape room, and more."
Episode Review:
My feelings towards “The Rydell Saga” have been complicated. I felt indifferent after “Parker for President,” intrigued after “The Key Suspect,” underwhelmed after “The Secret of the Writer’s Ruse,” curious after “The Good in People,” excited after “A Sacrificial Escape,” and frustrated after “Further from the Truth”. After such an array of different experiences, I had no clue what to expect from “The Rydell Revelations”. Now, four years after it began, the ability to judge this saga once and for all has arrived. And, after listening to these episodes a couple times, after thinking and pondering a great deal, I’ve concluded that “The Rydell Revelations” is emblematic of the entire saga's unevenness. Simply put, this episode has some of the series’ most exciting moments as well as some of its most head-scratching.
One of the most peculiar qualities of “The Rydell Revelations'' is that, by the end, it doesn't feel like a natural continuation of this Rydell saga. While part one gives us the impression that those previous Morrie episodes will have some great significance to the events in this episode (in the way that it spends the entire time rather ploddingly recapping those events), we discover about half-way that the Odyssey Team is, in fact, much more interested in dismissing those events and setting up a brand new story, with a brand new conflict and villain. While there are no rules against switching up primary antagonists late in a saga (see Star Wars’ Return of the Jedi for a time when this worked), the fact that this saga so abruptly veers its attention from Morrie’s actions towards the land of spies, international intrigue, and Tasha Forbes, might be a change that feels too jarring for some to accept.
Even though this switch in focus provides the saga with a much-needed jolt of energy, the fact that the “The Rydell Revelations” purposefully downplay the significance of those earlier episodes for the sake of setting up said “new story” is a little frustrating. Within the span of two minutes, the writer has Morrie ramble off a series of explanations for each of his actions; we’re told that Suzu opened the school lockers in “The Key Suspect” because she’s a kleptomaniac, that Morrie carried out the events in “The Good in People” to test people’s good choices, that the events in “The Sacrificial Escape” were Suzu’s idea to give Morrie and herself “a new challenge,” and that the events in “Further from the Truth” were set into motion in order to give Morrie’s “programming skills a workout”. Disappointingly, these answers reveal that there was very little connective tissue between these episodes -- that Morrie actually had no overarching plan that the listener could have figured out. This begs the question: if Morrie and Suzu had no dastardly grand plan, why on earth were their motivations kept secret from listeners to begin with?
Another way “The Rydell Revelations” seemingly rewrites past events for the sake of this “new story” is in its attempt to persuade us that Whit actually knew everything. And while it could be argued that Whit knowing everything all along aligns more with his character than him not knowing (and that it actually explains why he was under-reacting in those episode), I didn’t buy this reveal based on several key lines of dialogue: “There was something about that moment that wasn’t right,” Whit says at the end of “Writer’s Ruse”. “Morrie said that he wanted to make Emily and Matthew feel better. There’s more to it than that. There’s a secret here that feels unsettling...”.
Just the fact that “The Rydell Revelations” spends the remainder of its running time explaining how "Whit knowing" makes sense causes me to suspect that this wasn't part of the plan since the beginning. Suddenly, the episode finds itself needing to answer all sorts of questions: What exactly did Whit know and when? Why wouldn’t Whit have prevented the events in “The Sacrificial Escape” from happening if he knew they were going to happen? Did he know Morrie was going to trick Emily into the portable Imagination Station, and if so, why did he let him? Why did he never reach out to Morrie and Suzu at any point to prevent them from emotionally hurting other kids? Why did he never bother to tell them that he knew their father, or that he'd been tasked with looking out for them?
And, unfortunately, the answers provided (if they even are provided) are quite poor. In fact, the attempts made to justify Whit’s inaction in those episodes is somewhat comical. Whit argues that he didn’t say anything to Emily because “she asked me not to” -- which certainly doesn’t explain why he never said anything before “Further From the Truth.” He also says that he “would have stopped [Morrie and Suzu] if they had gone too far” -- which makes little sense given how serious certain moments got for Matthew, Emily and Olivia throughout the course of this saga. Then Whit explains that he didn’t intervene because Morrie, Emily and Suzu are “special” (poor Matthew!) and that they should be treated differently because they remind him of himself (huh?). The entire episode is made up of an illogical series of justifications -- almost as if the Odyssey team was brainstorming various excuses for Whit’s past inaction, then, after not being able to land on a 100% logically sound one, simply allowed each of those excuses to exit Whit’s mouth.
I think Whit acts contrary to how the show has depicted him in the past. Sure, someone can point to episodes as old as “The New Kid in Town” and as recent as “Angels in Horsehair” to argue how Whit could advocate for using deceptive-means to find "the good in people". The problem is that, based on what the show has also told me so far, Whit doesn’t let kids emotionally torment other kids. He cares for their safety, as shown in “Breaking Point”, when he showed up to Mr. Jefferson’s door feeling terrible about what happened to Alex in the Imagination Station. He wants kids to learn in controlled atmospheres, as shown in "Another Man’s Shoes”, when he tells Jared “the transmuter allows you to experience someone else’s life [...] in a controlled atmosphere -- I wouldn’t allow anyone to use it otherwise”. And he doesn’t believe that people should tempt others to sin in order to test their own personal theories, as shown in “The Bad Guy”, where he asks Nick not to play the role of Satan in someone’s life. It’d be one thing if Whit acknowledged that he was wrong (as he did so clearly at the ending of “The Mortal Coil”), but he admits no wrongdoing except for one brief moment of regret: “maybe I should have stepped in sooner.:
And because Whit doesn’t clearly state “I was wrong”, and because the episode has Morrie turn from a “villain” into "hero”, I didn’t really know what the episode was trying to say. Was Morrie right, or wasn’t he? While I’m not against AIO episodes incorporating some “moral ambiguity” once in a while, I’m only a proponent of moral ambiguity in storytelling when there’s a good reason for it. And, looking back, I don’t think this episode has a very good reason to try and justify Morrie’s actions. In fact, I suspect the only reason they had Morrie transform from “bad” to “less bad” was because the Odyssey team decided, at the very last second, that they wanted to keep his character around a little while longer. Think about it: nearly every minute of this episode is dedicated to persuading the audience that Morrie’s not as bad as we first thought -- whether it's by introducing us to an even worse villain, or by telling us that Morrie didn’t always know what Suzu was doing, or by telling us that he made sure his actions weren’t “illegal” (they were!), or by portraying Morrie and Whit as alike in their quest to find “the good in people”. Strangely, the episode spends far less time pointing out how alarming and “messed up” Morrie’s behavior was, offering a rather confusing lesson to younger listeners.
Honestly, this episode just makes Morrie look pathetic. He and Suzu turned out to be spoiled brats with zero empathy for others who just did whatever they wanted without any consequences. How underwhelming! The original draw of this saga was that they introduced a Moriarty-like villain who enjoyed psychologically tormenting people for the sake of some greater plan. Even Chris, at the end of the “Writer’s Ruse” hints at this: “It’s clear that Morrie’s up to something”. Guess what, he wasn't. By attributing Morrie’s motivations to a cacophony of underwhelming explanations -- from “just games” to “working out skills” to “that was Suzu” -- Morrie ends up looking like a much less powerful character. I didn’t really need Morrie to stick around for longer or to be redeemed -- I was much more interested in hearing him get defeated.
Look, “The Rydell Revelations” isn’t bad. I think there are actually a lot of great moments in it. It feels fresh and original and very different from the many multi-part mysteries that have aired in the past decade. I particularly liked its serious tone and numerous scenes of intensity (much credit, I think, should be given DePasquale’s unique score). I liked the dynamic between certain characters -- Morrie and Whit, especially. I liked how the portable technology “introduced” in “Further From the Truth'' was incorporated into the grand finale (making that episode feel much more relevant). I liked various structural choices (keeping us exclusively at Whit/Morrie’s perspective for the first 2 episodes) and how the episodes slowly peel back information till the very end, keeping us hooked. I liked Morrie and Suzu’s connection to Tasha (the new actress does a phenomenal job mimicking the performance of the original actress). Finally, I liked how the mystery grew bigger and more global, leading us to an ending that felt epic in scale.
And while I didn’t really like how Whit was depicted, I know I’ll accept it someday. Listeners who heard “The Mortal Coil” for the first time probably said: “this doesn’t sound like Whit! ” But that particular episode wasn’t interested in following a list of preset rules about the character, it was interested in creating new rules. Who’s to say that Whit isn’t actually a huge fan of free-range parenting and believes that “special” kids ought to be allowed to run around emotionally manipulating each other up until -- gasp! -- one of them accuses another of kidnapping? Joking aside -- who’s to say that the Odyssey Team can’t challenge us on who Whit is at episode 900? Sure, I may not particularly like these new shadings on the character, but it’s canon now. (and, before I forget -- it’s an awfully good Stojka performance).
Here’s the thing. No matter how many criticisms fans end up throwing at “The Rydell Revelations”, one thing’s for sure: it isn’t boring. Throughout all three parts, I was glued to the speaker. This means that a lot of my initial disappointment will wash away in time, and Whit’s so-called inconsistencies will become permanent character traits that will be used to justify all sorts of future Whit behavior (or misbehavior). I can see this episode being seen on the same level as “Blackgaard’s Revenge”, a once promising episode that “didn't always work” but that has, twenty years later, been accepted by fans because it checks that one very important box: it’s entertaining. And, indeed, so is this one.
PS: So Eugene is raising Buck, Connie is raising Jules, and Whit will be raising Morrie and Suzu? Having a main character taking care of a problematic foster child is really how Odyssey decides to mix things up these days, eh?
PPS: Apparently whatever reason Whit had for not taking in Tony and Brianna in "Chains" doesn't apply to Morrie and Suzu.
"Emily Jones begins her exhaustive investigation into the mastermind behind a number of mysterious occurrences in Odyssey, including the student council election, the opened lockers, the escape room, and more."
Episode Review:
My feelings towards “The Rydell Saga” have been complicated. I felt indifferent after “Parker for President,” intrigued after “The Key Suspect,” underwhelmed after “The Secret of the Writer’s Ruse,” curious after “The Good in People,” excited after “A Sacrificial Escape,” and frustrated after “Further from the Truth”. After such an array of different experiences, I had no clue what to expect from “The Rydell Revelations”. Now, four years after it began, the ability to judge this saga once and for all has arrived. And, after listening to these episodes a couple times, after thinking and pondering a great deal, I’ve concluded that “The Rydell Revelations” is emblematic of the entire saga's unevenness. Simply put, this episode has some of the series’ most exciting moments as well as some of its most head-scratching.
One of the most peculiar qualities of “The Rydell Revelations'' is that, by the end, it doesn't feel like a natural continuation of this Rydell saga. While part one gives us the impression that those previous Morrie episodes will have some great significance to the events in this episode (in the way that it spends the entire time rather ploddingly recapping those events), we discover about half-way that the Odyssey Team is, in fact, much more interested in dismissing those events and setting up a brand new story, with a brand new conflict and villain. While there are no rules against switching up primary antagonists late in a saga (see Star Wars’ Return of the Jedi for a time when this worked), the fact that this saga so abruptly veers its attention from Morrie’s actions towards the land of spies, international intrigue, and Tasha Forbes, might be a change that feels too jarring for some to accept.
Even though this switch in focus provides the saga with a much-needed jolt of energy, the fact that the “The Rydell Revelations” purposefully downplay the significance of those earlier episodes for the sake of setting up said “new story” is a little frustrating. Within the span of two minutes, the writer has Morrie ramble off a series of explanations for each of his actions; we’re told that Suzu opened the school lockers in “The Key Suspect” because she’s a kleptomaniac, that Morrie carried out the events in “The Good in People” to test people’s good choices, that the events in “The Sacrificial Escape” were Suzu’s idea to give Morrie and herself “a new challenge,” and that the events in “Further from the Truth” were set into motion in order to give Morrie’s “programming skills a workout”. Disappointingly, these answers reveal that there was very little connective tissue between these episodes -- that Morrie actually had no overarching plan that the listener could have figured out. This begs the question: if Morrie and Suzu had no dastardly grand plan, why on earth were their motivations kept secret from listeners to begin with?
Another way “The Rydell Revelations” seemingly rewrites past events for the sake of this “new story” is in its attempt to persuade us that Whit actually knew everything. And while it could be argued that Whit knowing everything all along aligns more with his character than him not knowing (and that it actually explains why he was under-reacting in those episode), I didn’t buy this reveal based on several key lines of dialogue: “There was something about that moment that wasn’t right,” Whit says at the end of “Writer’s Ruse”. “Morrie said that he wanted to make Emily and Matthew feel better. There’s more to it than that. There’s a secret here that feels unsettling...”.
Just the fact that “The Rydell Revelations” spends the remainder of its running time explaining how "Whit knowing" makes sense causes me to suspect that this wasn't part of the plan since the beginning. Suddenly, the episode finds itself needing to answer all sorts of questions: What exactly did Whit know and when? Why wouldn’t Whit have prevented the events in “The Sacrificial Escape” from happening if he knew they were going to happen? Did he know Morrie was going to trick Emily into the portable Imagination Station, and if so, why did he let him? Why did he never reach out to Morrie and Suzu at any point to prevent them from emotionally hurting other kids? Why did he never bother to tell them that he knew their father, or that he'd been tasked with looking out for them?
And, unfortunately, the answers provided (if they even are provided) are quite poor. In fact, the attempts made to justify Whit’s inaction in those episodes is somewhat comical. Whit argues that he didn’t say anything to Emily because “she asked me not to” -- which certainly doesn’t explain why he never said anything before “Further From the Truth.” He also says that he “would have stopped [Morrie and Suzu] if they had gone too far” -- which makes little sense given how serious certain moments got for Matthew, Emily and Olivia throughout the course of this saga. Then Whit explains that he didn’t intervene because Morrie, Emily and Suzu are “special” (poor Matthew!) and that they should be treated differently because they remind him of himself (huh?). The entire episode is made up of an illogical series of justifications -- almost as if the Odyssey team was brainstorming various excuses for Whit’s past inaction, then, after not being able to land on a 100% logically sound one, simply allowed each of those excuses to exit Whit’s mouth.
I think Whit acts contrary to how the show has depicted him in the past. Sure, someone can point to episodes as old as “The New Kid in Town” and as recent as “Angels in Horsehair” to argue how Whit could advocate for using deceptive-means to find "the good in people". The problem is that, based on what the show has also told me so far, Whit doesn’t let kids emotionally torment other kids. He cares for their safety, as shown in “Breaking Point”, when he showed up to Mr. Jefferson’s door feeling terrible about what happened to Alex in the Imagination Station. He wants kids to learn in controlled atmospheres, as shown in "Another Man’s Shoes”, when he tells Jared “the transmuter allows you to experience someone else’s life [...] in a controlled atmosphere -- I wouldn’t allow anyone to use it otherwise”. And he doesn’t believe that people should tempt others to sin in order to test their own personal theories, as shown in “The Bad Guy”, where he asks Nick not to play the role of Satan in someone’s life. It’d be one thing if Whit acknowledged that he was wrong (as he did so clearly at the ending of “The Mortal Coil”), but he admits no wrongdoing except for one brief moment of regret: “maybe I should have stepped in sooner.:
And because Whit doesn’t clearly state “I was wrong”, and because the episode has Morrie turn from a “villain” into "hero”, I didn’t really know what the episode was trying to say. Was Morrie right, or wasn’t he? While I’m not against AIO episodes incorporating some “moral ambiguity” once in a while, I’m only a proponent of moral ambiguity in storytelling when there’s a good reason for it. And, looking back, I don’t think this episode has a very good reason to try and justify Morrie’s actions. In fact, I suspect the only reason they had Morrie transform from “bad” to “less bad” was because the Odyssey team decided, at the very last second, that they wanted to keep his character around a little while longer. Think about it: nearly every minute of this episode is dedicated to persuading the audience that Morrie’s not as bad as we first thought -- whether it's by introducing us to an even worse villain, or by telling us that Morrie didn’t always know what Suzu was doing, or by telling us that he made sure his actions weren’t “illegal” (they were!), or by portraying Morrie and Whit as alike in their quest to find “the good in people”. Strangely, the episode spends far less time pointing out how alarming and “messed up” Morrie’s behavior was, offering a rather confusing lesson to younger listeners.
Honestly, this episode just makes Morrie look pathetic. He and Suzu turned out to be spoiled brats with zero empathy for others who just did whatever they wanted without any consequences. How underwhelming! The original draw of this saga was that they introduced a Moriarty-like villain who enjoyed psychologically tormenting people for the sake of some greater plan. Even Chris, at the end of the “Writer’s Ruse” hints at this: “It’s clear that Morrie’s up to something”. Guess what, he wasn't. By attributing Morrie’s motivations to a cacophony of underwhelming explanations -- from “just games” to “working out skills” to “that was Suzu” -- Morrie ends up looking like a much less powerful character. I didn’t really need Morrie to stick around for longer or to be redeemed -- I was much more interested in hearing him get defeated.
Look, “The Rydell Revelations” isn’t bad. I think there are actually a lot of great moments in it. It feels fresh and original and very different from the many multi-part mysteries that have aired in the past decade. I particularly liked its serious tone and numerous scenes of intensity (much credit, I think, should be given DePasquale’s unique score). I liked the dynamic between certain characters -- Morrie and Whit, especially. I liked how the portable technology “introduced” in “Further From the Truth'' was incorporated into the grand finale (making that episode feel much more relevant). I liked various structural choices (keeping us exclusively at Whit/Morrie’s perspective for the first 2 episodes) and how the episodes slowly peel back information till the very end, keeping us hooked. I liked Morrie and Suzu’s connection to Tasha (the new actress does a phenomenal job mimicking the performance of the original actress). Finally, I liked how the mystery grew bigger and more global, leading us to an ending that felt epic in scale.
And while I didn’t really like how Whit was depicted, I know I’ll accept it someday. Listeners who heard “The Mortal Coil” for the first time probably said: “this doesn’t sound like Whit! ” But that particular episode wasn’t interested in following a list of preset rules about the character, it was interested in creating new rules. Who’s to say that Whit isn’t actually a huge fan of free-range parenting and believes that “special” kids ought to be allowed to run around emotionally manipulating each other up until -- gasp! -- one of them accuses another of kidnapping? Joking aside -- who’s to say that the Odyssey Team can’t challenge us on who Whit is at episode 900? Sure, I may not particularly like these new shadings on the character, but it’s canon now. (and, before I forget -- it’s an awfully good Stojka performance).
Here’s the thing. No matter how many criticisms fans end up throwing at “The Rydell Revelations”, one thing’s for sure: it isn’t boring. Throughout all three parts, I was glued to the speaker. This means that a lot of my initial disappointment will wash away in time, and Whit’s so-called inconsistencies will become permanent character traits that will be used to justify all sorts of future Whit behavior (or misbehavior). I can see this episode being seen on the same level as “Blackgaard’s Revenge”, a once promising episode that “didn't always work” but that has, twenty years later, been accepted by fans because it checks that one very important box: it’s entertaining. And, indeed, so is this one.
PS: So Eugene is raising Buck, Connie is raising Jules, and Whit will be raising Morrie and Suzu? Having a main character taking care of a problematic foster child is really how Odyssey decides to mix things up these days, eh?
PPS: Apparently whatever reason Whit had for not taking in Tony and Brianna in "Chains" doesn't apply to Morrie and Suzu.
Writer: Phil Lollar
Director; Phil Lollar
Executive Producer: Dave Arnold
Post Production: Luke Guenot
Sound Engineer: Jonathan Crowe
Music: Jared DePasquale
Scripture: Hebrews: 4-13
Theme: Faith, God's Protection
Original Airdate: 10.03.2020
Review published: 08.05.2020