Rydell Saga Retrospective

Whit's wiping down the counter, Connie's mopping the floor, and the kids are sipping on their milkshakes. If you want to talk about Adventures in Odyssey the radio drama, this is the spot to do just that!
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Monica Stone
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Rydell Saga Retrospective

Post by Monica Stone »

I spent a good portion of today thinking about all of the Rydell Saga episodes for the umpteenth time. I have some new thoughts. I did my own analysis on Morrie and Suzu's actions and the plot throughout the episodes. I considered posting this on the thread for "The Rydell Revelations", but it didn't quite fit. This is extremely long, but I hope this helps fill in some of the gaps of what happened. Big kudos to anyone who actually reads this. :lol:

(I originally deleted this because it had several big errors but I’m posting it again…)

Background: Over an undetermined amount of time, Morrie and Suzu befriend Tasha Forbes who is posing as a secretary named Natalie. Tasha is trying to pin down Mrs. Mado, whom she suspects of espionage. After his wife's death, it becomes abundantly clear to Raymond Rydell that he cannot raise his children while still doing his job at the embassy. His children are absolutely brilliant and recently caused chaos and conflict between the Canadian and Chinese delegations. During the commotion, Suzu stole a maple leaf figurine with a valuable government microfiche in it. The microfiche was bait to catch Mrs. Mado, but things went awry in Tasha's plan when Suzu stole it. At this point and for the following months, Tasha is unaware that Suzu has the figurine. After the incident, Raymond decides to contact his longtime friend, John Whittaker. Raymond decides Odyssey would be the perfect place for Morrie and Suzu to grow up and he thinks the influence of Whit and his shop could be a good thing for them. He sends Morrie, Suzu, and their nanny, Mrs. Mado, to Odyssey. Mrs. Mado continues to do spy work in Odyssey for her employers. An idyllic small town, far away from the embassy...what could happen?

Parker for President: This episode was mentioned the least in "The Rydell Revelations" and things are still fuzzy. Suzu writes a note that Olivia is talking to Matthew's voters and Morrie or Suzu puts it in Emily's locker. I don't really know what Morrie and Suzu were going for here. But Olivia and Matthew are completely to blame here. It starts going downhill before Emily receives the note. Matthew talks to Olivia's voters which motivates Olivia to talk to Matthew's voters. Then things get messy. As a campaign manager, Morrie actually offers pretty good advice. "Olivia, now is not the time to start a vendetta against your brother." Obviously, Morrie starts the write-in campaign to get Emily elected. It's probably somewhere "offscreen" in this episode that he realizes that most of the Odyssey kids are Christians. This could be when he decides to help Emily get elected and he uses her as his main puppet to see if she'll live out her Christian faith. Assumedly, the reason Morrie never really pays Zoe any mind is because she was really quick to write the dirt on Matthew and Olivia's drama and didn't really care what happened, good or bad, as long as it made for an eye-catching story.

The Key Suspect: Klepto Suzu uses her wits and her abilities to break into the school to steal things. Morrie finds out and probably goes, "Eh, it's not worth the risk of getting caught." He sneaks back into the school to return the stolen items. Due to his manual dexterity, he probably gets the help of Suzu, who doesn't want to be caught for stealing. This time they open the lockers, he gets information, including a secret against Dion (that Morrie uses for blackmail) and Emily's phone password. After the second break-in, Morrie suggests to Mr. Redekop to get better security. He wants Dion to be caught and the case to be dropped. Morrie gives Dion a master key and blackmail him into silence as he takes the fall for all three of the break-ins. Morrie and Suzu set up a mystery for Emily and Matthew so that they are certain Dion will be caught. Suzu knows she will likely be caught if she doesn't make up a fake story, so she claims to have been investigating the mystery innocently. I STILL DON'T UNDERSTAND THE LAST SCENE. "It’s too clever for Dion, who would do such a thing and why? [...] Morrie, please tell me you had nothing to do with the locker incident." Everything else makes sense to me except that line. Suzu was possibly not involved with the break-in on the second night? If someone could clear this up or figure out an explanation, I'd be forever grateful.

The Secret of the Writer's Ruse: Morrie wants to test and see how quickly Emily and Matthew can solve mysteries. He and Suzu know they need the help of others to accomplish this. At this point, Suzu still wants to do “what is right” for her new friends. She stays in the shadows while Morrie is very open about his scheme to Whit, Eugene, Connie, and Dale Jacobs. Suzu is surprised by her own feelings in the end when she realized how she brightened Emily and Matthew's lives with a new mystery. This is where Morrie really starts to cultivate the idea of testing the good in Emily, Matthew, and Olivia because he doesn't want Suzu to be duped by what he perceives to be their suspiciously innocent goodness. At the same time, Whit becomes more suspicious of Morrie. While praying, he mentions, "Morrie said he wanted to make Emily and Matthew feel better. There's more to it than that. There's a secret that feels unsettling." Considering the context in which he says it, Whit couldn't be talking about Mrs. Mado. He suspects there's more to Morrie's motivations. But there really isn't? Obviously, Morrie's main goal here is to see how good of detectives Emily and Matthew are. But the episode plays it as though Morrie has a deep scheme and this fits into his ultimate plan, but this is just one of the many weird, isolated things he does. And, of course, Morrie has the most confusing bit of dialogue in the entire episode: "I have to admit, they were good. It was a risk to show them a page of my playbook like that. But, it was worth it to see if they could keep up with me. And of course, they couldn't. No one could. I shouldn't have expected anyone to be that good. Not in this town...." This episode is where Morrie gets too confident and cocky in his abilities and assumes no one will catch him. That’s why he gets clumsy and reveals his voice (albeit modulated) in “A Sacrificial Escape.” But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The Good in People: Morrie decides to go a step further with his plan to test the Christian morals of the kids around him. He uses Olivia as his first guinea pig. He hires Roland Tomlinson to play Jordan Winword, a representative for a bogus organization called "The Student Project Fund." Morrie goes so far as to set up a fake website for the organization. He leaves Suzu out of this scheme. With the promise of getting the matching funds, Olivia is confident about getting to the festival and fulfilling her promise. She motivates the drama club members to help her make $250. When Jordan never gets back to Olivia, she gets upset. She considers using the church money briefly but knows it would be wrong. Instead, she decides to use her college fund to keep her promise. The last scene between Morrie and Suzu is self-explanatory. Morrie is impressed that Olivia kept her word and decides to go a step further with his tests. Morrie gives Suzu space to think about how his actions brought out the good in Olivia. Suzu initially has reservations about Morrie’s actions but ultimately sides with him and comes up with an even more ambitious and criminal scheme. Enter the escape room.

A Sacrificial Escape: Suzu hears that Whit is installing an escape room in his basement for a company, primarily run by a woman named Anya Popov. She also hears that Whit and Anya Popov have never met in person and decides to take advantage of that. She tells Morrie everything she knows and they decide it would be nice to have a challenge for themselves. They concoct a plan to get Emily and Matthew to play the escape room with, uh, heightened stakes. Morrie decides this is the perfect time to continue testing the Christian values of the kids around him. He wants to see if Emily and Matthew will live out John 15:13: "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." Morrie and Suzu use their respective skills and sabotage the escape room for their needs. Morrie hires Beatrice Coffman, an actress who specializes in accents, to impersonate Anya Popov and he directs her on what she needs to do. The trap is set and Suzu purposefully tells Emily and Matthew about the escape room on the right evening, when the imposter Popov would be meeting Whit. Ahead of time, Whit realizes what will occur but decides not to step in and just let things play out. He wants to allow Morrie & Suzu room to “use their abilities” (his words, not mine). Popov leads Emily, Matthew, Suzu, and Whit into the escape room and leaves. Morrie locks the escape room door behind Emily & Matthew and the basement door behind Whit & Suzu. He tells Emily & Matthew they have a limited oxygen supply and tells them tampering will result in penalties, namely losing more oxygen. He makes them play a game called “Search for Your Life” to escape the room. Throughout the episode, Suzu intentionally does little things to aid Morrie, including creating attention to herself when Whit asks her to subtly check the escape room for defects. When Whit & Suzu send a clue through morse code to Emily & Matthew, Morrie uses that as his opportunity for the ultimate test; will it be Emily or Matthew who chooses to die for the other? Emily is the one who decides to sacrifice her life. She does not die because Morrie was bluffing about the oxygen. Emily is still really shaken by the incident and begins obsessing over the night in the escape room.

Further from the Truth: When Morrie set up the escape room, he did not anticipate Matthew quitting the detective agency. He decides to use that to his advantage. He steals Whit's portable Imagination Station technology and programs an adventure where Matthew and his family are supposedly kidnapped. The way to escape the program is for Emily to realize she does need Matthew, maybe not as a mystery-solving partner, but as a friend. He again wants to bring out the ~good~ in Emily. For the second time, Morrie keeps Suzu in the dark. He kinda just wants to flex his programming skills. He spills ice cream on Emily which prompts her to go to the Whit's End kitchen to clean herself off and unknowingly enters the program. She recognizes she does need Matthew and escapes the program. After some thought, Emily realizes Morrie was behind everything and asks Whit to allow her to investigate on her own. And again, Whit wants to give a "special" kid room to "use their abilities." (internally screams) Suzu becomes suspicious Morrie programmed the station at the end. Finally, we are introduced to something that will become important in the coming episodes: Suzu's notebook.

The Rydell Revelations, Part 1: At some point, Suzu writes in her journal about her hiding place at forest mountain. After school on Friday, Suzu receives an unexpected text from Tasha (who she still only knows as Natalie). Tasha and Mrs. Mado have both figured out that Suzu stole the maple leaf figurine with the microfiche. She also learns that her nanny, Mrs. Mado has been a spy who has been trying to track down the microfiche since its disappearance. Tasha warns Suzu that Mrs. Mado will be searching Suzu and her belongings for the microfiche. Then, Emily confronts Suzu, which comes as a surprise to Suzu. Suzu panics and runs home. Emily follows her into her room, which has been recently ransacked. For their safety, Suzu throws Emily out her bedroom window but accidently leaves her notebook behind. Things start spiraling out of Morrie's control when he suspects Suzu has kidnapped Emily. He finds Suzu's room ransacked. Additionally, he finds Emily's phone on the ground. Since Morrie had stolen Emily's password information in "The Key Suspect", he breaks into her phone and finds out Emily had done an exhaustive investigation into all of the suspicious activity he was tied into. Panicked, he decides to go to Whit, but tells Whit he believes Emily kidnapped Suzu, although it's vice versa. Whit hears all of Emily's recordings and decides to confront Morrie about everything he has learned.

The Rydell Revelations, Part 2: Whit confronts Morrie and forces the truth about the mysterious events out of him. Whit doesn't believe Morrie's story about the kidnapping but reluctantly goes to the Rydell house with Morrie. There, he, Mrs. Mado, and Morrie have a conversation where Morrie learns about how Whit has known about nearly everything all along and had a personal connection to the Rydell family even before Morrie’s birth. Mrs. Mado spots Suzu's notebook and gives Whit & Morrie false information, leading them to believe Emily & Suzu are at Wonderworld. Mrs. Mado claims to stay behind but instead goes to find the girls in the shack at Forest Mountain, where she knows they will be. During all of this, Emily and Suzu are running to Forest Mountain. Whit & Morrie do not find the girls at Wonderworld, but instead find Tasha Forbes.

The Rydell Revelations, Part 3: Emily & Suzu arrive at the hiding place and Suzu explains the situation with her nanny. Mrs. Mado shows up and tries to steal the figurine from Suzu. Emily gets kidnapped by Mrs. Mado but Suzu escapes with the figurine and goes to Whit's office to find Tasha, Morrie, and Whit. Everything is basically "A Name, Not a Number", but with the portable Imagination Station. Mado offers to exchange Emily for the microfiche, but Tasha and Whit aren't having it. Morrie & Whit program the station to simultaneously outwit Mrs. Mado, bring her to justice, and safely rescue Emily. Tasha leaves and Whit makes a big decision; he will become the temporary guardian of Morrie and Suzu. Emily appears to be not only distrusting of Morrie & Suzu, but also of Whit. And that's where we leave off.

“It’s over...for now.”

I guess I will share a few of my thoughts on this saga as a whole. I enjoyed the ride ("A Sacrificial Escape" and "The Rydell Revelations, Part 1", are definitely the best), but it isn't as cohesive as the other aio sagas. You can definitely tell that there was uncertainty about where the saga would go during the first three episodes. I think Phil Lollar did a commendable job tying everything together in the final three-parter. Of course, we have the dark cloud hanging over the saga that is the thematic absurdity that has been presented in part 2&3 of "The Rydell Revelations." Whit’s a terrible person. Please address this, aio. :( My feelings are all over the place with this saga, but I'm definitely invested. I don't know how to mentally reconcile episodes like "A Sacrificial Escape" and "Further from the Truth" knowing that Whit knew about everything and allowed Morrie & Suzu to commit crimes and basically ruin Emily's mental health. Like...what? Petition to have an episode where Simon Jones presses charges against Whit for negligence and emotional duress. I would LIVE for that.

I hope this retrospective helped fill in some of the gaps as well as point out a few! If you finished this reading this...you deserve a big cookie.
Last edited by Monica Stone on Sat Aug 29, 2020 8:24 am, edited 3 times in total.
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CarlR
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Post by CarlR »

Probably my biggest annoyance on the whole saga was that Mrs. Mado was introduced so late in the saga. I can see at least one way that Odyssey could end the saga. I guess that plan that Phil Lollar said that they dropped was the one that we wanted. I think a good place to introduce Mrs. Mado would have been in The Key Suspect, where she would come in after the Morrie/Suzu dialogue and say something, small, but it would have been better.
Buckles shipper, love Connie and Eugene. Visit my Odyssey website at http://odyssey-news.com/.


Trista: Isn't it great to be an indevidual now, not just someone who wears what society tells them to wear?
Jules: But your telling my what to wear.
Trista: Of course, I'm your publicist, it's my job.

~~#902 California Dreams, Part 1~~
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Monica Stone
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Post by Monica Stone »

CarlR wrote:Probably my biggest annoyance on the whole saga was that Mrs. Mado was introduced so late in the saga. I can see at least one way that Odyssey could end the saga. I guess that plan that Phil Lollar said that they dropped was the one that we wanted. I think a good place to introduce Mrs. Mado would have been in The Key Suspect, where she would come in after the Morrie/Suzu dialogue and say something, small, but it would have been better.
Considering that I don't think there was a plan for the saga until "The Good in People" was concieved, I don't think they knew what the Rydell home life looked like. It felt odd to switch gears mid three-parter from focusing on Morrie & Suzu's crimes to focusing on their nanny spy. The plot, someone getting kidnapped, was introduced from the beginning, but the Rydell investigation was (I guess?) a red herring to distract from Mrs. Mado? The plot is very unique. I hope future episodes appropriately deal with Morrie & Suzu since the focus shifted drastically by the end of the three-parter.
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CarlR
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Post by CarlR »

Monica Stone wrote: I hope future episodes appropriately deal with Morrie & Suzu since the focus shifted drastically by the end of the three-parter.
Yup!
Buckles shipper, love Connie and Eugene. Visit my Odyssey website at http://odyssey-news.com/.


Trista: Isn't it great to be an indevidual now, not just someone who wears what society tells them to wear?
Jules: But your telling my what to wear.
Trista: Of course, I'm your publicist, it's my job.

~~#902 California Dreams, Part 1~~
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Post by ByeByeBrownie »

Thanks so much for taking the time to put this together, Monica!! Your insight and analysis serve as a fantastic resource for all AIO fans in the continuing discussions surrounding the Rydell saga. :D
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