On July 20th, 2024, our Twitter account put out a post with a one-sentence declaration:
This statement didn’t cause much of a ruckus. In fact, no one would bat an eye until almost exactly six-months later, when the W.E. Podcast put out a more…earth-shattering announcement. The four-slide Instagram post came out on January 10th to an unsavory assortment of agreement and disdain. It read as follows:
This is a serious announcement. Not necessarily because the W.E. Podcast’s opinion is oh-so-important, but because it reflects a general discontent that has been bubbling over the past couple years in regards to Adventures in Odyssey. Commentary on this announcement was filled with anything from mild defense to outright agreement. The Adventures in Odyssey team was one of a few individuals that asked for specifics, and they received this follow-up post in response:
At face value (pun not intended), these are perfectly reasonable responses to the recent direction of Odyssey in 2025. But again, if it were one rouge podcast, it wouldn’t be too much of a deal. However, over and over again this decade, the attitude from fans has been more of resentment than of enjoyment. Additionally, it is my belief that these comments from a somewhat popular set of AIO fans shouldn’t necessarily go unchallenged. So, what was initially intended to be a breakdown of Adventures in Odyssey will now be converted to a thorough defense of a 35-year-old storytelling rollercoaster. Let’s begin.
When someone comes after your favorite show, it’s hard not to defend it. I’ve run into my share of exvangelical anti-AIO fans who do everything they can to bash Christians and Christian media. This can be annoying, overbearing, and unnecessary. I also do not believe this is the intent of the W.E. team. On the flip side, there seems to be a resolution among some instinctive oppositions to this kind of criticism that it (the criticism, that is) stems from some kind of other inherent bitterness, perhaps that AIO didn’t take their show idea once or another relatively minuscule gripe. This is also simply untrue. In fact, it’s only because of a desire to continue to have this show be the best it can be that anyone is in this profession in the first place. Any critique, positive or negative, really only stems from an intense love for the program. That being said, takes on this issue should be as objective as possible. It is possible to go overboard in either direction. It’s also possible to make miscalculations in an argument. For fairness’ sake, we are going to cover the things the W.E. team hit right on the mark first.
For the past half-decade, Adventures in Odyssey has been on a historic run of misses. That is the blatant and honest truth. Yes, some of the best storylines ever have come out over that length of time. But we’re focused on the negative for now. Let’s turn to the number one example of storytelling catastrophe that AIO has been unable to overcome for the past couple of years: the Rydell saga. It’s apparent the visceral reaction that the series inspires among a solid number of AIO fans. Regardless what you feel, the arc has objectively been one of Odyssey’s biggest failures. We’ve already gone into extensive detail over what went wrong as an organization, most notably with What’s Odyssey’s “Rydell Reconstruction” episode. I think the resistance against the Rydell arc had more to do with a general inability to hear fans over the past few years. This is the first major pratfall. Adventures in Odyssey has typically been able to find the balance between fan opinion and what makes sense morally and artistically. They’ve said so multiple times. As an example, around two years ago, before their annual writing summit, the team requested that the Club members (notorious for immaturity and brash recommendations) for suggestions on what they would like to see in the show. That would likely still be the most popular Club bulletin ever, garnering over 10,000 responses as memory recounts. Of those, It’s possible not even 5% were artistically sound. It was funny because they asked these to kids, and the responses were easily satirized (as I found looking through our archives the other morning and reading the humorous “Albums 73 and 74 Revealed” or “AIO Team to Switch to 3-Episode Albums upon Club Member’s Request”). The consequences are much less enjoyable, though. It’s part of why we end up with seemingly haphazardly put-together albums and sagas with no apparent end in sight.
This leads to the next point: an overabundance of sagas. Over the past few years, domino effect after domino effect has provided us with at least over half a dozen sagas, most of which are unfinished to some degree. The way they’ve meshed together has led to fuzziness on where things break down era-wise (the impetus for our first AIO era-breakdown post, you may remember). Again, is this necessarily bad? Not when it’s done correctly. The mid-2000s were full of concurrent sagas, character arcs and introductions that only found their end in an Adventures in Odyssey hiatus. Of a truth, one can only wonder if fans then perhaps felt the same level of saga fatigue.
Album 69, the impetus to this “downfall”, is a textbook example of this. Not a single episode in that six-episode collection could be considered a “one-off” episode. Again, saga-themed albums aren’t necessarily the problem. In this case, that fact clashed with two main characters that were belligerent and plainly unlikeable. You don’t find yourself cheering for Morrie Rydell, who is, we must repeat, the Rydell Saga’s protagonist. The same goes for Jules. These are characters who you find yourself booing and actually hoping the best for their unfortunately positioned companions. Aside from that, though, there are simply too many long-drawn-out arcs that would be unthinkable two decades ago. Again, we look at Rydell. This saga’s declared episodes have taken not two, not five, not even seven, but nine years to run with no significant endpoint. The bulk of Novacom, one of the best examples of storytelling anywhere, wrapped up within two. For a storyline as flimsy as Rydell to take five times as long is insulting. Buck and Jules, Rydell, the Perkins, and each involving salvation character arcs multiplied by five. There’s a difference between amazing stories involving characters we know and love and brute-forcing twenty sagas simultaneously.
The biggest link to this problem is six-episode albums. This format is killing Odyssey, and people in protest of it have all but given up. High-quality single-story episodes are more likely to be found in the Club than in a “mainstream” album. No episodes last season were linked to mission organizations. The twelve monthly Club episodes have now become the “fourth album” of the yearly releases. A 9.99 per-month price point is now the barrier of entry to Adventures in Odyssey’s better stories.
The thing is, limiting album size and bulking up on character arcs significantly increases the risk of putting out something fans aren’t going to like. When you’re dealing with entire sagas that are viewed unfavorably, continually putting out episodes in that arc guarantees the perpetuation of those unfavorable ratings. In the current format, even one or two negatively viewed episodes mean up to a third of an album is being dragged down by otherwise insignificant episodes. It is my belief that a major reason Adventures in Odyssey bounced back so well from their 2000s errors was the flexibility to experiment with little impact on the view of the overall album’s content. What fans seem to be missing is the curious observation that strange twists like Bethany’s Flood or I Slap Floor appeared in the same album as otherwise masterful and classic stories such as Fletcher’s Rebellion and Potlucks and Poetry. I guarantee that in a situation where Albums 77 and 78 were combined into one well-arranged saga album (which, let’s be honest, they almost are anyway) and the 2024 season, which doesn’t have a single mission-sponsored episode, released as one album, we’d be having a very different conversation right now. Or would we? There is one big issue that’s itching at the hearts of every AIO fan right now: the most consequential issue.
The biggest grievance levied from the W.E. was AIO’s departure from explicitly moral storytelling. This is the section I wish to defend against primarily. I hesitate to go on an all-in block when it comes to this because there’s a bit to validate. Again, using Rydell as an example, I found myself agreeing when Michael LaFaver began calling for an Adventures in Odyssey apology and retraction regarding Rydell. In the first place, the arc has simply gone on too long. Nearly an entire decade for a narrative that has been mediocre at best. Subsequently, the messages portrayed over this lengthy arc have been flimsy, if not completely unprofitable. As an AIO content reviewer, it’s been impossible not to notice this. There’s not much commentary to be made in AIO’s moral category recently, at least when it comes to explicit morals. One element I was going to point out in the original era one recap is the trend we’re moving towards in the “message” category. Over the years, we’ve gone from Chris saying the moral at the beginning and end of every episode to the message of the episode being more and more embedded in the episode itself. While fans may not realize it, it is for this reason the Revelations episodes present as annoying and facetious. Listeners, kids especially, aren’t exactly focused on Chris’s end wrap through this new sequence of storytelling. Rather, the huge dilemma here is when my hypothetical eight year-old turns to me and says, “Dad, why didn’t Mr. Whittaker punish Morrie for what he did to Emily?” Or even more of a nightmare, when he’s yelling at his sister and I hear, “But that kid in Odyssey was doing it!” Even writing this, LaFaver’s point becomes more resonant with me. I am a huge proponent of nuanced media, especially in the Christian space, where it has been lacking the most. But if one wants to engage with that medium, you must be careful about everything that will be picked up by engagement with that nuance. It is also at this point that I would like to announce AIO Writer’s Block’s inclusion of a “Message” category in its reviews, to supplant its current “Moral” category. What an episode is actually saying is arguably more important than what it presents up front.
The flip side of this is the defense that encapsulates the original intent of this article. It is to cover and justify an updated and ultimately improved style in Adventures in Odyssey’s storytelling and moral delivery. For every miss Adventures in Odyssey has had recently, there has been an abundance of some of the best stories they’ve ever put out. The Olivia arc rode pretty much concurrently with the worst of the Rydell saga, but if you ask any individual who knows their stuff, they’d agree the former is one of AIO’s best storylines. Contrary to the narrow claim of the W.E. Podcast, the entire saga was essentially Kathy Buchanan-free (as much as we love her over here). For all the flack “too many sagas” caught just two paragraphs ago, the Odyssey team has set in motion a powerful narrative involving Wooton and Penny’s relationship with the former’s mother and father. The show has also focused on former side-characters such as Jay in a way that’s not overbearing for listeners, even enjoyable. We’ve covered this approach to character development at length in the past. The team pulled off another touted album-length arc not two years ago in 28 Hours, even resolving the flaws of the very negatively viewed Jillian in a way that shows they are listening to us. And, of course, there’s the Olivia arc, truly one of AIO’s greatest hits with dynamic episodes following like Tough Call. All of this done with implicit moral truths that are fodder for thoughtful family conversations. This is also part of what puts AIO among the heights of Christian media, lessons made not just with children in mind but with adults. Indeed, Adventures in Odyssey is less of a kids’ show now than it was in the 1980s and 90s. One could argue, and I will, that it’s not even a kids’ show anymore, just a show that recognizes kids are in the room. The best children’s shows are. And of course, I believe the gospel is still very much present. Chris serves that role every time she’s on the mic, as well as this entire team. And because it seems it has to be pointed out again, we are in the midst of about five salvation character arcs right now.
Adventures in Odyssey has deviated from its original kid-walks-up-to-counter-and-gets-lesson format, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Of course, every show has its classic angles, but after about four decades, you can’t even blame the team at AIO for wanting to tell more dynamic stories. The fans deserve it too. It’d be one thing if they weren’t good at it, either. With any program, it’s possible and essentially guaranteed to wear a concept out. Are we perhaps fortunate that Odyssey decided to jump ship before that happened? Instead of this conversation, it is likely we would be complaining, “Adventures in Odyssey doesn’t switch it up enough. There’s not any variety in this format! Having kids go up to Whit for the first 200 episodes was fun for a little bit, but now it’s boring.” The five AIO fans left probably wouldn’t even be hosting websites or conventions, either. A little experimentation here and there is paramount to have a show like this run this long. In the grand scheme of things, a fluke here or there is just that, a fluke. The two years of the worst-rated episodes in Odyssey’s history amount to five percent of Odyssey’s run time. They’re negligible in the long-run. I wonder if anyone who swore off Odyssey in that time period regretted it when Novacom came out. And if AIO is still around in four years, it’s my confidence that we’ll look at flukes like Rydell and other lackluster episodes in the exact same way. Like I’ve said, the early 2000s, another historically negatively rated period for the Odyssey team had this sort of dichotomy with a pull between AIO’s worst flops and best narratives.
The true problem here seems to be a lack of patience from Odyssey fans. Most of the complaints from the W.E. are things that have already been resolved in some form or will be when one of multiple sagas wrap up. Of course, content creation is a trust process, and AIO has lost some of our trust recently. But even if they came out on Monday and made an apology for Rydell and brought back twelve-episode albums, there are people who will never truly be satisfied by it. In this business, you aren’t ever able to please everyone. Someone like Phil Lollar has taken that mentality to a poor extreme. On the other hand, a good fan will call them out, but isn’t going to condemn and disavow them simply because they’ve made a few mistakes recently.
The AIO staff, yes, including Phil Lollar, is completely capable of making excellent stories with great morals. How do we know that? Forty years of evidence proves it, up until recently. There have been missteps recently, but they are easily recoverable. First, saga fatigue is a real thing. If you don’t believe me, take any hate towards Adventures in Odyssey recently and multiply it in a Marvel scale. Promptly ending all sagas and yes, issuing an apology of some sort for the Rydell is the way to go. As this post is coming out after AIO’s announcement to wrap all current arcs by Album 80, it looks like this is already underway (Go figure). Secondly, for success regarding the future, six-episode albums absolutely have to go. Of all the mistakes Odyssey has made over the past ten years, this is for sure one of the most prominent. But most of all, continue to tell good stories. To both Odyssey and its fans, there is nothing we can do about any past mistakes Odyssey has made at this point (outside of perhaps the aforementioned apology). It is unclear what the goal of simply giving up on the show is, outside of a few lost bucks for Odyssey.
For this writer, the solution doesn’t lie in disowning his Odyssey fanship. This organization prides itself on being both a critical and optimistic voice for the show that it’s surrounded itself with. Too much good has come out of Odyssey to throw it out just yet. No, AIO Writer’s Block, while always at the ready to call this show out when it needs it, officially continues to stand by the audio program that has certainly been a source of joy for many and been the guide pointing children (and adults) to the Father. I leave you as I always do, but this time, take it to heart.
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