Another Man's Shoes
Another Man's Shoes
Honestly, this is one of the better episodes on album 33. And it is a genius concept to have the Transmuter do that to Jared. This is a pretty good episode
I'm Monty Whittaker's greatest fan. member of the K.R.E
I really like this episode, but I feel like Mr Wittacker didn't have the right to tell Jared all that information about the kids life,(Sorry I don't remember his name.), without his permission. Though they never actually say he never asked permission, I don't think he would have been surprised when he got the flower seeds in the end, and I don't think anyone would give be okay with someone telling some kid at school all about his personal life, especially when there personal life is like that. I know it was to show that people aren't just mean for no reason, and you should consider there side of the story, but I still didn't like that. But besides that little rant, I really like the episode.
His name is 'Brock', for the record.
I suspect the writers might have agreed with you in the end, because they never reused the Transmuter. But the genre of stories that you can tell with it is roughly limited to what it is in the episode where it appears anyway. It's about seeing things from someone else's perspective, but not just the perspective of a person in a certain position (which you might expect to see in the Room of Consequence, e.g. "what if I had x job")), but the perspective of a specific person. That adds a lot of baggage with it that isn't conducive to telling too many new stories.
There are really a lot of requirements for the Transmuter concept to work. The characters in conflict have to be the same gender (for obvious reasons), and they have to be a similar enough maturity level that the protagonist can learn something instead of only making a fool out of themselves failing to live up to the other's responsibilities. Then, it's easier to move up or sideways, age-wise, than down. Fourthly, the understanding has to involve largely external circumstances, because while the device puts you in someone else's situation (and ostensibly their appearance, etc.), it can't do anything directly to help you understand their internal state. If you are trying to understand someone's thoughts or feelings, it's possible their circumstances won't give you any clue at all. In Jared's case that didn't matter much, because many of Brock's issues were external - a bad home life, and being a young man in a kids' school and having others react to you on that basis. But say, for a simple example, that Camilla* thought that Olivia was being a basketcase about the success of a drama program. Would being Olivia for a day help her? She's not interested in or apt in any of the things that Olivia is. She might see that there's a lot of work involved in Olivia's responsibilities, and that the work is actually stressful, but she wouldn't understand what it's like to be Olivia, because she wouldn't necessarily see why Olivia is interested in dramatic arts or why she prioritizes it. She might well come out saying, "It makes sense that Olivia is stressed, because all that stuff is really hard and a waste of time. She should just quit" - a simple and unhelpful conclusion, which Mr. Whittaker, or one of her parents, or maybe Olivia herself, would have to correct.
Most of the time, instead of dealing with all that and writing a script that works with it, it's easier to do what happens in real life: have the characters talk to each other, or to another trusted person who can offer insights. They can explain their thoughts and feelings, tell stories, make analogies, etc. And once they talk, it tends to take a lot less time to sort out than a full Transmuter episode would.
* I like Camilla; I just couldn't think of another recent younger sibling for whom this device works, given the parameters.
I suspect the writers might have agreed with you in the end, because they never reused the Transmuter. But the genre of stories that you can tell with it is roughly limited to what it is in the episode where it appears anyway. It's about seeing things from someone else's perspective, but not just the perspective of a person in a certain position (which you might expect to see in the Room of Consequence, e.g. "what if I had x job")), but the perspective of a specific person. That adds a lot of baggage with it that isn't conducive to telling too many new stories.
There are really a lot of requirements for the Transmuter concept to work. The characters in conflict have to be the same gender (for obvious reasons), and they have to be a similar enough maturity level that the protagonist can learn something instead of only making a fool out of themselves failing to live up to the other's responsibilities. Then, it's easier to move up or sideways, age-wise, than down. Fourthly, the understanding has to involve largely external circumstances, because while the device puts you in someone else's situation (and ostensibly their appearance, etc.), it can't do anything directly to help you understand their internal state. If you are trying to understand someone's thoughts or feelings, it's possible their circumstances won't give you any clue at all. In Jared's case that didn't matter much, because many of Brock's issues were external - a bad home life, and being a young man in a kids' school and having others react to you on that basis. But say, for a simple example, that Camilla* thought that Olivia was being a basketcase about the success of a drama program. Would being Olivia for a day help her? She's not interested in or apt in any of the things that Olivia is. She might see that there's a lot of work involved in Olivia's responsibilities, and that the work is actually stressful, but she wouldn't understand what it's like to be Olivia, because she wouldn't necessarily see why Olivia is interested in dramatic arts or why she prioritizes it. She might well come out saying, "It makes sense that Olivia is stressed, because all that stuff is really hard and a waste of time. She should just quit" - a simple and unhelpful conclusion, which Mr. Whittaker, or one of her parents, or maybe Olivia herself, would have to correct.
Most of the time, instead of dealing with all that and writing a script that works with it, it's easier to do what happens in real life: have the characters talk to each other, or to another trusted person who can offer insights. They can explain their thoughts and feelings, tell stories, make analogies, etc. And once they talk, it tends to take a lot less time to sort out than a full Transmuter episode would.
* I like Camilla; I just couldn't think of another recent younger sibling for whom this device works, given the parameters.
A classic never goes out of style.