Reviews

Honestly, I think this was a fine episode, but there are a few things I wish they would have done differently. One of them would be the pre release description, originally it said “In the aftermath of the events of “A Sacrificial Escape,” Emily Jones is again pulled into the intrigue surrounding the Mysterious Voice”. But there is barely any mention of the mysterious voice in this episode. A fan named Garret told us that this would be a fake mystery, but almost no one believed him, but alas this was a fake mystery. Don’t take that the wrong way, I loved this episode, and thought that it was much better than “The Secret of the Writers Ruse”, which was also a fake mystery. 

This was a very well written episode, partly because I love Bob Hoose’s writing, and partly because the writing was very good.

Emily…..she was, in my opinion, very disrespectful in this episode. I get that she just went through a bad experience, but through the whole episode I was cringing, wanting Emily to stop.

The acting was very good, especially the last few scenes.

I do have a big problem with this episode. Throughout the whole episode Emily in particular sounded very fuzzy, like she was too close to the mic. Maybe I am the only one that noticed it, but please tell me if you noticed anything in the comments below.

The music was great, but I wish Odyssey would have put a little more emphasis on creating new music rather than just taking the music from “A Sacrificial Escape”.

Well finishing up here, I want to say that this episode was a fine, and I can’t wait to hear the next part of the Rydell Saga! Thanks for reading my reviews of album 68!

Signed, 

       Carl Reed😉

It wouldn’t be an understatement to say that “Always Home’ was probably my favorite odyssey episode of the last 3 years. This episode captures the emotion, humor, and everything else that goes into one of the best episodes Odyssey has made. Today and any reviews that I do forward from this will be more in depth, including more rating categories. 

First the music….. this episode  has ,in my opinion, one of the best musical scores ever in Odyssey. Aaron Fullan ,the composer, is a first time Odyssey composer and given that “Always Home” was his first episode I think that he did an amazing job.

This episode was excellently written! The dialog was perfect for the mood of this episode.

The acting was perfect, and all of the actors shined, but there were two that i thought were exceptionally good in this episode.  The first was Keely Marshall as Bridget Perkins. Her performance was perfect and much better than in “Playing Favorites”, also the attitude change was very well received from me. The second actor was Andre Stojke, given that he has never acted with Walker Edmiston, his emotion, tone and everything else was perfect.

The moral was good as well as the emotion. 

Was this episode memorable? Yes, Yes this was probably one of  the most memorable Odyssey episodes of the past decade. This may be the last episode centering around Tom Riley, and I’m very glad that Odyssey gave some closure to him, unlike many characters they have created.  Honestly I don’t have much more to say about this episode. So I hope you enjoyed this review and please leave a comment below. Join me next time for my review of “Further From the Truth”

Signed,

        Carl Reed😉

When Odyssey says “It is a hilarious episode” or “A very touching story”. Sometimes fans, including myself, have different opinions, but I think what Phil Lollar said describes this episode perfectly, it is hilarious. 

Going into this episode I wasn’t expecting much ,but once I finished this I can say that this is one of the best episodes in the album. 

Breaking News is the first episode centered around reporter Ted Humphries voiced by the talented Keith Furgeson. He debuted in “The Green Ring Conspiracy” and appeared as a supporting character in a few episodes after that. Unlike other supporting characters Ted Humphries has remained on the show for almost nine years, and Odyssey has finally given him an episode.

Let’s start with the theme of this episode. Journalistic integrity is something that Odyssey rarely touches on, and I thought that they handled it in a very funny but meaningful way. Zoe Grant returns in this episode, we last heard from her in “Not What I Expected”. Also Sky Feldstein makes a reappearance in this episode, I hope Odyssey pursues her character. The whole algae thing was very funny. There were a few voices that sounded familiar. A-Jax Manick sounds like Steve Burns, and the boy at the trampoline park sounded like Tony from the Novacom saga.

I wish Odyssey had put a commercial break when Zoe yells, “Mr. Humphries”! I think that would have been better use of the cliffhanger. I think the ending was appropriate and fun. Getting to the end of this review the music and sound effects were superb. The writing was excellent and so was the directing. Well that’s it, please join me next time for my review of “Always Home”,and leave a comment below.

I think “A Wise Surprise” was disappointing to almost everyone who listened to this episode. Don’t get me wrong this was a pretty good episode, but I felt that Odyssey built it up too much. Like they said “Meanwhile, Penny and Wooton have a wonderful surprise to share when her parents come for a visit―if they can ever find the right time to tell them”. Odyssey built it up way too much to the point of where almost everyone who read the description talked about Wooton and Penny having a baby. I was disappointed about the “real” surprise. I mean really a trip to Thailand, it is a good surprise but I wouldn’t call it a wonderful surprise. Behind all of that I think this episode was pretty good. I liked Charlotte and am glad that Odyssey is pursuing her character. I think it was very funny that Penny’s parents assumed the exact same thing that we assumed. The music was good and so was the sound design. Well that’s all for now go check out my review for #883 “Breaking News”, and please leave a comment below (no email required). 

Playing Favorites was definitely not one of my favorite episodes in album 68. While it was a somewhat funny episode it didn’t stand out as the best episode in the album. First I do like the new character Bridget Perkins, we previously heard her in “Man of the House”. I also think that she has an enormous character development potential. On the music side of things I recognized the theme from “Much ado about Jealousy”, and a few other parts of the music were vaguely familiar. Along the lines of the characters another reviewer said something that I actually didn’t think about before. The fact that Olivia is in late middle school or early high school raised the question. Would a girl of her age really believe a presumably 10 year old kid, and would she be immature enough to resort to a lie detector rather than just asking her father straight. The sound design was ok, about the same as “Good Job”.  Honestly this episode gets a thumbs down from me, because of the reasons that I listed. Well I hope you enjoyed this review. I would appreciate it if you would leave a comment below with your thoughts. Please join me next time for my review of #882 A Wise Surprise.

Good Job! Is the first episode of Album 68 written by Kathy Buchanan. I generally do not have many problems with this episode, but i’ll be pulling out my likes and dislikes of this episode.

In this  episode Jillian seemed more annoying than she did in “Nightmares by Constance” her previous episode, but that was more towards the beginning and end. She was mostly fine for the rest of the episode. I do like the new characters Trey Calhoun, Kayla Calhoun, and Skye Feldstein the daughter of Guy Feldstein, who was, or still is the producer of B-TV. This episode was moderately humorous. I think there were only a few places that stood out to me as humorous, including the scene when Jillian says ” You don’t know my landlord , she’s one tough cookie” as she is referring to Connie. Also the hospital and TV station scenes were funny. I do have a few problems with Jillian’s job search :

1: People shut Jillian out after one try, with no training.

2: The aspect of learning to be good at something was somewhat forgotten, as Jillian got the job that the was naturally good , but I guess that not a big problem.

Here are some problems with the Trey story line:

1:The description says that Trey tries to overcome his failures in school and step out of his older brothers shadow. But he does not do this, does not try to overcome anything, and he doesn’t try to step out of his older brothers shadow he just tries to fade away and not try anything because his brother is popular.

2: Kayla talks about how she had a bad experience as a meteorologist , but Kayla actually had something bad happen to her that gives her a reason to be afraid. While Trey is just building up something that he can overcome, and do something about, because he doesn’t feel that he can live up to how everyone one see’s his brother. Honestly i see a very faint connection between these reasons , and i think Odyssey could have pulled it off a little bit better. But I get that it had to fit in with Kayla getting the job as a meteorologist .

​

My last complaint is the wrap up. with the example of peter denying Jesus three times.  That was Peters own fault that he denied Jesus, that was something that Peter himself decided to do, and Jesus knew that he would do it. I do see where odyssey was heading, but i wouldn’t exactly call it failure.

In the end this episode is a standard odyssey episode much like The Shame about Fame, and Rightly Dividing. Since i don’t want to write a super long segment about the  writing, sound design….etc, there is a quick look below .

​