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 Episode
Reviewed:
Push the Red Button
(726)
Writer: Paul McCusker
Director: Paul McCusker
Sound Designer:
Rob Jorgensen
Music: John Campbell
Theme: Beauty, truth, and goodness
Scripture: Philippians 4:8-9
Original
Airdate: 12/22/12
Review Written by:
Ben Warren, Staff Writer
Rating (out of 5):
 
Episode
Summary
Eugene's merge
program for Whit's End has bizarre consequences
for Connie and Penny in the Imagination Station,
and for Wooton in the Kids' Radio studio.
The Review
At the end of the day,
Push the Red Button
is a difficult episode to review primarily because I know fans will have
vastly different opinions of it. There are those who were familiar with,
and entertained by, the "25th Anniversary Birthday Bash" show in Texas
that will enjoy owning this professionally recorded, abridged version.
And then there are fans who will listen to it without ever knowing that
a live show version ever existed. They're the ones I think will be
confused and, ultimately, disappointed.
The episode starts off with Eugene trying to unite all programs under
one system―even though he's already learned
the consequences of doing such a thing back in
A Bite of Applesauce.
Meanwhile, Penny ventures off to find inspiration watching Michealangelo
paint the Sistine chapel, and Wooton Bassett sets up a Captain
Absolutely KYDS Radio adventure. At this point in the episode―although
there may have been too many story-lines for my liking―I'm
still involved and listening.
What happens next, I never would have imagined. You can imagine my
surprise when the programs start to merge together in completely
illogical ways. How on earth can KYDS Radio merge with the
Imagination Station? Why is it that this merging affects Wooton
Bassett's voice? And why is it that Imagination Station was affecting
real-life historical events? The more I listened to the episode, the
more my heart began to sank and the angrier I became. They ruined
Odyssey...I started to think. They completely ruined it...
You see, I hadn't seen the live show or heard much
about it before listening to
Push the Red Button.
I didn't know what to expect at all. I should have been smart enough
to think, This is a dream. I did hope it was a dream;
however, there were simply no real clues to tell one way or another.
After all, this is the same show that once let a goldfish narrate
its own episode (Sunset
Bowlawater) so it was always in the realm
of possibility that it would someday double dip into the bowl of
ludicrousness again.
While Adventures in Odyssey is certainly
allowed to have mindless fun every so often, the reason I believe
Push the Red Button
fails as an Adventures in Odyssey episode, is that it didn't
properly frame its story. As some of you may know, framing is
a literary technique used to set up a story-within-a story. It can
be a useful tool in both literature and, in this case, audio drama.
Adventures in Odyssey episodes that have border-lined on
ridiculousness have succeeded through properly framing their story.
Mandy's Debut,
for instance, was able to get away with having Whit slide across a
waxed floor and Eugene getting electrocuted by placing those stories
inside a stage-play setting. We weren't bothered by the moments of
unrealism and preposterousness because we knew that those events
weren't happening in real-life Odyssey.
Likewise, in
I Slap Floor,
we could take comfort that Eugene probably hadn't really married
Connie, or that Edwin Blackgaard hadn't really become engaged
Margaret Faye, because facts were given second-handedly, through
story form, which allowed us to automatically doubt the validity of
Bernard's claims throughout the entire episode. Storytelling also
worked wonders in episodes such as
Snow Day
and
Called On in Class,
because, even though these moments are dramatized for us, we can
automatically choose to dismiss the episode's unrealistic moments
and, at the end of the day, attribute them as products of Alex
Jefferson and Trent DeWhite's imaginations.
Because Push the Red
Button holds off until the end of the episode to tell us these
events were part of Wooton's dream, it never allows us the pleasure
of enjoying the ridiculous moments and the wonderful voice acting as
they happen. Instead, I was all too busy worrying about whether
these events are real or not. Like those other sillier Adventures
in Odyssey episodes, I would have preferred it if the story was
told through someone's narration, or that the listener knew that it
was a dream from the beginning.
Wouldn't that have taken away from the ending? Of course. However,
as it is, Push the
Red Button is like when your family decides to pretend to forget
your birthday all day long until 11pm when they jump out and
surprise you. You've spent the entire day moping around, feeling
miserable, and thinking nobody love you for only a few minutes of
redemption at the end. Likewise, the surprise ending in
Push the Red Button
is more of a sigh of relief.
I would have preferred it if they'd recorded the episode Live during
the "25th Birthday Bash", along with the laughing audience,
distancing this show completely from the show's cannon and providing
it as more like a
500
or
Inside the Studio
or
Live at the 25
sort of episode. Not even Chris explains the context of the episode
in the wrap-up, which would have been nice.
As a re-creation of the live show,
Push the Red Button
also inadvertently strips away a lot of what made the live show work
so well. Some of the original script's best gags were the visual
ones―watching the sound designers making
sound effects out of simple items, seeing the actors interacting and
laughing with each other, and watching their facial expressions as
they'd disappear behind each ridiculous character. The story
actually works wonders for a live audience, giving actors various
situations to flex their vocal muscles. There's also a lot of great
lines in there, too ("She's like melted butter on the croissant of
life").
As an actual Adventures in Odyssey episode, I thought the
story works only mildly well. Because I'm not watching it as a
performance, I'm more focused on the story. I liked the overall
message―that inspiration can be found
through prayer to God, but I was bothered by how Truth, Goodness,
and Beauty was described using paintings, architecture, and
good-looks. It never really discussed the meaning of those words in
any real depth.
Again, someone not knowing about the live show will have a totally
different experience from someone who does. In my opinion, there are
more better, more entertaining ridiculous episodes out there―such
as Wooton's Broken
Pencil Show and A
Thankstaking Story, more recently―that
both show off the voice actors' talents and provide us with a more
suitable-for-radio story. Although, I wonder, how many of these
kinds of episodes do we really need?
Push the Red Button
will be enjoyed by younger listeners who enjoy hearing pure,
mindless chaos featuring their favorite actors. There's certainly a
group out there that likes that sort of thing. As a listener who
enjoys hearing from the grounded, believable, and relatable town of
Odyssey, this episode isn't my cup of tea. But, I'll be the first to
admit, once you know the surprise of the end, the second and third
listens are more, well...relaxing, than the first.
Rating
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