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AIO is a Christian show for ages 8-12. Consequently, clean is an understatement, you really can't get cleaner than something that is both for little kids and Christian. So, why does aio have a history of banned episodes? Usually it's because parents complain. IN yesteryear complaints, in those physical letter things, were taken seriously and episodes were removed. Today though, we've learned one thing it's that if people want to voice their disapproval in text they shall and thinking through their reasons for said disapproval be hanged. Here are some of the episodes that have met with disapproval, usually to the detriment of aio. Note:All episodes below with the exception of the last one listed have been released in some form.

1. All the Harley Episodes

We all know the story kids, Harley was a policeman character beloved by writers and no doubt kids. But they received some complaints about him, and even Dr. Dobson, who was head honcho at Focus then, said Harley mocked adult authority, was a bad example of a policeman, and should be removed. He was, and all the episodes that prominently featured him were removed and most of them were later remade without him.

Well, thanks to the OAC, we now have the episodes that paint policemen so poorly. And guess what? Harley is a competent policeman who takes his job seriously. He is goofy and often clueless. But he is certainly good at his job. In one episode and two two-parters, Harley even solves the case. Not by accidental bumbling but by intelligence and skill. He also has wisdom to share. He also has a heartwarming fondness for children, anticipating Wooton. The result is a lovable balance of cluelessness with capability and dedication. In this day and age, it's especially refreshing to see a policeman who is anything but a bully or a one dimensional buffoon. A policeman who is a friend to the people of Odyssey, where so many today think they are enemies. That this character was removed is a great pity. Victoria often says on the Oddcast, "I love Harley" and I must concur. Hopefully the episodes will eventually be released to the general public.

2. You Go to School Where?

The writers tried to write about homeschooling when it wasn't understood by a lot of people (you know, unlike today.) People objected it showed homeshcooling as "doing nothjing all day." Is this unfair? Yes and no. The mom in the episode does try to teach Robin school subjects. Still, the mom's lax attitude and suggesting they start by just having a conversation come off wrong. Personally I'm not bothered by it but I don't see it as a huge loss to Odyssians either, it's nothing special and can be heard on an Official Adventures in Odyssey Podcast.

3. Train Ride

This is as perfect a case as any of how carefully people see that their position is reasonable before writing in. This episode one of those "gotcha" episodes every show has where the mystery turns out to be a hoax. Turns out, complainers didn't listen carefully enough to even catch the hoax! But they "respected the letters they got" and the show was discarded. It was later released on the Lost Episodes album. Thank gosh, as this is a clever, entertaining, unique episode.

4. Pamela Has a Problem

Famously, this episode got banned for featuring Pamela getting pregnant and considering an abortion. The fandom has almost unanimously agreed it is an excellent episode and acceptable for listening for kids. It is on The Lost Episodes. (All children are different and can listen to different content so it's fortunate the episode includes a parental warning.)

5. BTV: Grace

This episode. This episode features a performance by our dearly departed Dave Madden and Paul Herlinger.

And it is banned.

This episode is a treasure to Odyssians. When this episode is withheld from us, beloved actors are withheld, beloved characters are withheld, friends are withheld. It was banned because it might be offensive to the Amish. No you tell me, is aio likely to make offensive material? Are they known for their edgy comedy? NO. No they're not. AIO makes Jerry Senfield look like a vile pottymouth.

Also, it would seem the Amish are acceptable targets and here's why. Humor needs to punch up not down. Poke fun of celebrities and whatnot, not the downtrodden. Well, especially with Christian fiction, making jokes about the Amish is punching up. The Amish are super stars in to Christians. The huge explosion of Christian Amish books and movies is crazy huge for the niche market of Christian fiction. It's still dying out, you still see a new Amish book hoping grab the tips of the coat tails from time to time. So not only are the Amish not underdogs so far as Christians are concerned, they're in the spotlight. So long as jokes about the Amish were done tastefully, I don't see any reason to ban this episode.

I call for it's release and I suggest my friends join my in writing to (no, it's not that address we've heard a zillion times anymore)
Adventures in Odyssey
8605 Explorer Drive
Colorado Springs, CO 80920

So in conclusion, banning episodes has done little to help aio and much to hurt it. It's been done to satiate complainers who rarely have well considered opinions. The episodes range from harmless to excellent treasures that are a great loss to our community.

I completely agree on all accounts. Not only did I not find any of these episodes offensive or worrisome, I think I would rate most of them in the 90th percentile. It would be interesting to see Odyssey ignore the few troublesome reports they get from listeners on the small amount of episodes that has triggered such responses. I wonder what would happen if Odyssey brushed off sensitive listeners comments on a future episode... I feel like it would make much of a difference in the Odyssey fandom whether you're talking about a loss of listeners, good reviews or publishers. I simply don't think Focus would suffer much from it. Though I do have respect for how well they listen to their fans, few writers do it as much as the Odyssey writers do, and for that, I commend them for their commitment.

I actually haven't heard almost any of the episodes in question I remember a review from Shadowpaw on AIOSoda of "Bernard and Saul" that talked about how "Isaac the True Friend" was just a really badly done episode...but again, never having heard it, I can't state an objective opinion.

That "Pamela Has A Problem" has been pulled does kind of surprise me if for no other reason than the existence of "Sixties-Something", which not only directly references abortion itself, but also mentions AIDS and drug addiction and has a second-hand story of a band getting falling-down drunk and destroying a hotel. Yet it's featured normally, in "Meanwhile, in Another Part of Town". Ah, well. ("Sixties-Something" is really good in its own right, by the way; if you haven't heard it, I'd give it a listen.)

However, "BTV: Live" is actually not the episode being referred to here. "BTV: Live" is in fact a wonderful and charming episode, and has been promoted as its own album (I actually own a copy), and the only reason it hasn't been aired is because it's too long. The BTV episode that was pulled because of the Amish skit was "BTV: Grace". (I think there was another scene pulled from either a B-TV or a KYDS Radio episode because of the depiction of the Inquisition.)

There was also another episode pulled from around that time, "The Telltale Cat", because people thought the way David kills Fluffyface was too violent. (Although, imo, the fact that David Straussberg is murdering an animal seems to me like a good example of the show just straight-up jumping the shark.) What I find interesting is that so many unreleased episodes were aired so close to each other—"The Telltale Cat", "B-TV: Grace", "Sticks and Stones", and "Career Moves"—and they were all from the split era.

...Take that as you will.

TigerShadow wrote:There was also another episode pulled from around that time, "The Telltale Cat", because people thought the way David kills Fluffyface was too violent. (Although, imo, the fact that David Straussberg is murdering an animal seems to me like a good example of the show just straight-up jumping the shark.) What I find interesting is that so many unreleased episodes were aired so close to each other—"The Telltale Cat", "B-TV: Grace", "Sticks and Stones", and "Career Moves"—and they were all from the split era.

THERE ARE AIO EPISODES I'VE NEVER HEARD?!?! WHERE CAN I FIND THESE?

Whaaalllleee...some of these you can find on the OAC, but the ones I just mentioned and two others can't actually be found anywhere, as far as I know. They were pulled from future airings and never included on any albums for varying reasons. You can look them up on AIOWiki, if you'd like.

Good points, Penny.

Fixed, Madam Carnivore. Thanks for the correction!

Thank you. I've thought about this topic quite a bit and it was good to get it down in plain writing.

Huh. I never knew that "Train Ride" was banned.

Ya it was originally but they also put it in The Ultimate Road Trip Collection.

They also put it in the collection entitled The Lost Episodes.

Tiger, what years would those episodes have been? The split era was 1999-2000 (Reminesce. Think Al Janssen, Bethany's Flood; and Blackgaard's Revenge, which is actually a personal, though unrealistic, favorite of mine). I know that Mandy and David appeared in I Slap Floor, which would have been the latter half of the two-year period, but were they already established characters by then? As in, enough to get away with sending a cat to oblivion?

P.S. I don't normally laugh at posts on here. I laughed out loud when I read TigerShadiw's comment about David in The Tell-Tale Cat being a great example of AIO jumping the shark. With the mood they were in when they wrote that episode, they probably would've killed the shark if they got close enough to jump over it.

Jermaine Stewart made a really sensible observation with the title of this song. (1986)

The Old Judge wrote:Tiger, what years would those episodes have been? The split era was 1999-2000 (Reminesce. Think Al Janssen, Bethany's Flood; and Blackgaard's Revenge, which is actually a personal, though unrealistic, favorite of mine). I know that Mandy and David appeared in I Slap Floor, which would have been the latter half of the two-year period, but were they already established characters by then? As in, enough to get away with sending a cat to oblivion?

They were from Spring 2000, and would have been released in Album 34, the latter half of the split era (which is also when "I Slap Floor" aired). And I'm not sure that any amount of character establishment would be enough to let you get away with a kid killing his sister's beloved pet.

The Old Judge wrote:I laughed out loud when I read TigerShadiw's comment about David in The Tell-Tale Cat being a great example of AIO jumping the shark. With the mood they were in when they wrote that episode, they probably would've killed the shark if they got close enough to jump over it.

I'll take that as quite the compliment. ^_^ Guess the shark would have been added to all those cows Marshal Younger wanted to off in "The Black Veil".

Teddy Roosevelt offed his neighbor's dog with his pistol, and no one hates on him for that. He is a national hero (though there are people who would debate about that status).

This is terrible, but I have lost so much of my Odyssian knowledge over the last year and a half. Life has been so hectic that I have sadly had little time for AIO. But what cows are you referring to in "The Black Veil?"

A dark-titled tribute to a classic song sung by Elvis Presley and Bobby Vinton. (1990)

The Old Judge wrote:Teddy Roosevelt offed his neighbor's dog with his pistol, and no one hates on him for that. He is a national hero (though there are people who would debate about that status).

But Theodore Roosevelt (apparently he hated being called Teddy? Who knew) is a real person, not a fictional character, and...this is actually the first I've heard about it; that's interesting. (Not surprising, but interesting, given. y'know. Teddy Roosevelt.) 8-12-year-olds and younger aren't likely to know that, and they're also never actually going to see it (or hear it) happen. David Straussberg is a child character on a kids' show who killed a cat in a manner disturbing enough to get the episode pulled. That's...going to be pretty scary and gruesome for an adult to listen to, never mind a child. ^_^;

The Old Judge wrote:This is terrible, but I have lost so much of my Odyssian knowledge over the last year and a half. Life has been so hectic that I have sadly had little time for AIO. But what cows are you referring to in "The Black Veil?"

Don't worry, it's not actual in-show knowledge. Apparently, according to the behind-the-scenes feature on the tenth disc of the Novacom Saga collection, Marshal Younger wanted to include a scene where, as a result of the effects of the cable boxes, this farmer randomly shoots all of his cows, and then I think another writer or a sound designer stood up and said that he wouldn't be able to support the show if they did that. Ultimately, of course, this was never written, and after the fact the writer who suggested it eventually felt pretty embarrassed that they'd ever suggested the scene in the first place. (Paul McCusker also mentioned being a little worried about the Novacom saga's body count.)

But, why would be throwing the cat into Trickle Lake be "disturbing" and "violent"?

Because a child is ending the life of his sister's beloved pet? I mean, on what level is deliberately drowning a cat—a pet that a good many of the listeners of this show own—not going to be scary to a kid?

But Tom saved it a few moments later.

You know what else kids might be afraid of? How about hearing the intense documentary of someone who is about to drive their car off a cliff?

Here's the problem with that, though—Justine was murdered by adults who were obviously villains, and were characterized as such from the beginning (Bennett Charles is name-dropped). David is a child who is meant to be seen as a good kid. It's a lot more disturbing coming from someone who's supposed to be a good kid than from someone who's meant to be an evil adult.

I'm not saying that the show has never done anything so disturbing before—let's not forget that Regis Blackgaard tells Abdul to commit murder-suicide at the end of "A Name, Not A Number, Part 2", and attempts to do the same to Jack at the end of "The Final Conflict". The show has covered disturbing things before. But it hasn't had children—at least, good children—doing those disturbing things, at least to my knowledge. I can see why some people wouldn't have a problem with it, but there's still a dissonance between what villains can get away with and what protagonists can get away with, and I think that's part of why the episode was pulled.

But in "The Telltale Cat" Tom appears a few moments later and saves Fluffyface.

TigerShadow wrote:Because a child is ending the life of his sister's beloved pet? I mean, on what level is deliberately drowning a cat—a pet that a good many of the listeners of this show own—not going to be scary to a kid?

Hm, I don't remember that ep. Is it on OAC?
The idea of killing a cat--no matter whether it's a beloved pet or not--horrifies me and I can't imagine not being horrified by it. Cats get a bad rap too often and if the AIO writers wrote this, I suspect them of being cat haters. Would they have done the same thing to a dog? (not sure--for some reason it seems that they're not the biggest animal lovers)
I hate it when hurting/killing animals is treated flippantly.