Episode
Reviewed: Stage
Fright
(670)
Writer: Kirby Atkins
Director: Dave Arnold
Sound Designer:
Nathan Jones
Music:
John Campbell
Theme: Fear
Original
Airdate: 10/23/10
Review Written by:
Ben Warren, Staff Writer
Rating (out of 5):
Episode
Summary
Barrett couldn't be more excited about getting
the lead role in the school play. But when his first practice is interrupted
by a mysterious booming voice, Emily Jones must investigate the "phantom of
the school play."
The Review
Stage Fright, the
unofficial sequel to
Game
for a Mystery, is a step up
for newcomer Kirby Atkins, but also a step down for the season. Not only
does this episode not bother to feature any characters that listeners care
about (Atkins hasn't used a character from pre-Album 51 yet) but it re-uses
the same irritating and uninteresting characters from his previous episodes.
One gets a vague sense they are listening to a show that isn't
Adventures in Odyssey but a cheap rip-off. Can the creators of
Adventures in Odyssey write a show about anybody, add it to a
season lineup, and then call it Adventures in Odyssey?
Although this makes a great start to a very mean and scathing
review, don't worry, this isn't one.
At the start of last season, the producers tried to communicate to its fans
that the show "will still be Adventures in Odyssey" despite all the
change taking place. This makes me wonder how one defines the show. What
is Adventures in Odyssey? If most fans were to answer this
question, we would be hearing a lot of different responses. If you say
"well, it's a show about characters that live in a small town called
Odyssey" then that would be the most accurate definition out there. This
vague definition excuses the making of an episode like
Stage Fright, which can
focus on anyone without bothering to find out whether the audience
would like to hear from these characters. And there lies the main problem:
the reason why I can't bring myself to enjoy
Stage Fright is because I
don't remotely care for the characters involved.
Stage Fright makes me
realize that the producers have gotten themselves into a strange predicament
by pushing the reset button last season. By getting rid of so much of what
the show had going for itself, they now have the difficult task of creating
new characters that can re-attract listeners.
Stage Fright is a awfully
presumptuous episode that reflects a lot of the mistakes "Take it From the
Top" made. Like
Game
for a Mystery and
When
You're Right, You're Right,
it takes no time to let the audience "fall in love" with its new characters,
but stuffs a lot of "newness" into one episode and hopes for the best. We've
seen what such optimism has done to harm the show. The program, for
instance, lost a lot of listeners around the album "Signed Sealed and
Committed" because of the ridiculous amount of new kid characters replacing
the previous ones. Thinking back, I realize that most of these new kids
didn't last very long. For instance,
Chores No More sticks out like a sore thumb for including so many
short-lived characters. Only half the children introduced after the 1997
hiatus stuck around for a considerable length of time. Essentially, episodes
that expect its newest characters to become fan-favorites overnight are a
little insulting to its listeners; we are often left with the remnants of
characters such as Colby Cabrera... and whole lot of adopted Mulligan
children, too.
This is all to say that the character of Emily Jones, specifically, does not
quite work for me yet. I had no idea until I listened to this episode that
she was played by an older actress. And the only reason I know this is
because her performance sounded so unnatural that I was forced to go and
look up her age; I discovered that my mind wandered during her narration,
and I found the "cute" way she finishes her sentences nauseating. Is Odyssey
so desperate to collect another Mandy and Lucy--children that never seem to
age-- that they've now decided to simply cast adults so that they can stick
around for a longer period of time? As the season progresses, fans will
notice that most of the kids in Odyssey are currently played by adults. The
list includes Adam Wylie as Ryan Cummings, Jason Earles as Vance King, Whit
Hertford as Jay, Marcus Toji as Pete, and of course Hope Levy as Olivia
Parker.
Honestly, casting older actors to play children is not a completely bad
idea... as long as the actors can pull it off. Sometimes it works,
especially if the actor, such as Adam Wylie, is supposed to sound like
they're on the verge of entering teenage-hood. However, the actress who
plays Emily Jones tries too hard and the end result sounds too unnatural,
even awkward. The reality is that Adventures in Odyssey isn't a
cartoon on TV; here, the audience can't be distracted from knowing an adult
is mimicking a child's voice by the image on screen; our attention is
wrapped up solely in what we hear. And we need it to sound legitimate. As
this season progresses, I think fans will need to make an important
decision; they will need to decide whether they want to be able to grow up
alongside the kids on the show and risk losing them after four or five
years, or whether they want to hear kids that can stick around for
the next ten years and never age. What do you think?
Considering how much I tried to
defend the faults of
Wooton's Broken Pencil Show for
doing exactly what it was meant to do, why am I being so hard on this one?
Isn't this episode doing what it wants, and that is, to provide a simple
kid-centric mystery? After all, no one expected this episode to be
especially brilliant. And that's true;
Stage Fright is not a
bad episode. Far from it. I'll admit that this show does a well enough
job setting up the clues and including an ending that I did not manage to
figure out until Emily Jones explained it all. But like any mystery,
it's not the final revelation that makes the mystery memorable, but the
journey that preceded it. USA's popular television series Monk, is an
example of a mystery series of that did not solely entertain its audiences
through its ridiculously clever endings, but rather, audiences watched it
because they grew to love the quirkiness of its main characters. We rarely
remember detective series for their endings, but we remember names
such as Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Father Brown, and the Hardy Boys.
Only a few mysteries such as "And Then their were None" and "Murder on the
Orient Express" are remembered for their original and mind-boggling endings.
Stage Fright needed
better stuffing between its interesting premise and decent ending; it
needed more reasons to make us care, including more interesting characters.
I appreciate this episode's (and this season's) attempt to situate more
episodes in a school setting. In High School, Musical Theatre was one of my
favorite classes, and I enjoyed hearing the multiple references to Broadway
musicals in today's show. For instance, the show Barrett was rehearsing
for-- the "Minestrone Man"--was probably alluding to 1957's "The Music Man";
the opening song "Twenty-Two Trombones led the marching band" was likely
inspired by the "The Music Man" song that begins with "Seventy-six Trombones
led the big parade"; Emily's line, "there's no business like show business"
is also the title for the signature tune of "Annie get your Gun" ;
Shakespeare famously uses the line "Rue the Day" in one his plays; and the
production of "The pirates of penance" is most likely a nod to Gilbert and
Sullivan's "Pirates of Penzance". On top of these references, John Campbell
does a great job at creating background music that matches the setting; the
opening number sung by Barrett was also very memorable. I look forward to
seeing Focus on the Family's real-life production of the "Minestrone man"
someday!
Unlike recent episodes in this season, there were no standout performances.
Not even Jess Harnell as Charlie Stolfitz struck me as a particularly
interesting character. At first I thought his character was simply a "red
herring"; the writer wanted us to immediately suspect him so would be
distracted from the real culprit: the parrot. Though I was wrong, I somewhat
wished they left it at that. His involvement in the overall scheme seemed a
little random and slightly unnecessary, but not enough to prevent me from
accepting it..
In the end, Stage Fright
is an interesting mystery with uninteresting characters attempting to solve
it. If you've already come to love these kids, then this episode is fairly
decent. If you haven't, then perhaps ten years from now we will come to
appreciate this episode after growing up and familiarizing ourselves with
its characters. But somehow I doubt it. After all, how are listeners
supposed to grow up with someone like Emily Jones if she can't naturally
grow up with us. I have a feeling
Stage Fright will become
the new
Chores No More; I would have enjoyed it if I could bother to remember
who starred in it....
Rating
More Information
Back to Reviews
