675: A Thankstaking Story

[Laura Ingalls]

What did you think of today's episode? I will give my review after I listen to it in 15 minutes.

[Peachey Keen]

You can listen to it hear!

[Marvin D.]

Oh, snap, Laura beat me to it.

I'll review after listening.

[Laura Ingalls]

You can listen to it hear!

Thanks, PK!

I really liked this one! It was just an enjoyable holiday spoof, and I liked the addition of the songs as well. There was a little reference to I Love Lucy in there with the "You have some 'splainin to do!" line. I'm glad Katrina was at least talked about, if not heard.

All in all, this was 4/5 stars, and I would like to listen to it again.

[Jimmy Barclay Fan]

I really enjoyed it. It was the 2nd Thanksgiving episode to spoof a Christmas story and change it. It was enjoyable and fun and a little silly.
Uncle Wally sounded like he was doing a Cliff from Cheers imitation.

[Peachey Keen]

After having my hopes dashed about the eps which I thought would be the best, but turned out differently, I was really happy when I heard this episode.

All the characters (Odyssey characters) were great and not a single one was annoying. The acting was up to par and so was the music.
I loved it that AIO again spoofed a Christmas story and made it into a Thanksgiving story. I love listening to it again cause there's a lot of things you catch later on, like "God is faithful 100%" from Horton Hears a Who, "An elephant's faithful %100."

Dave Arnold is a really great writer. He's been hiding his talent all these years by doing sound design. Way to go Dave!

This has to be my favorite show of this season. 5 out of 5 for me.

[DanP740]

This episode just didn't catch and hold my attention, so I kind of tuned out during parts, so later on I was a little lost...
3/5

EDIT: Katrina finally being mentioned was a plus, though...

(the little things in the poll after the rating number like "only a few redeeming qualities" slightly annoy me because it makes me want to rate it with the option that says what I thought, rather than my rating...)

[Dave]

"Earlier this week I was listening to a wonderful Thanksgiving show from one of my favorite radio dramas. It was funny, heart-warming, and the occasional moment even brought tears to my eyes. I was entranced from beginning to end, wrapped up in the drama and loving how well-written the characters were.

The only problem for this review is that the show wasn't 'A Thankstaking Story,'..."

Read the rest of my review here.

[Bones]

I thought that it was good!
I listened to the show this morning with my sister. We both enjoyed it a lot.
I thought it was a funny and light-hearted spoof. I like all the characters in this one.
I gave it a 5/5

[31899]

I listened to it on the weekend of Canadian Thanksgiving and I thought it was rather tacky. I also thought that it is a bit odd that Whit's End Doesn't have a fire place. I also thought it was rather unfair to the casual listener to throw in the Captain Absolutely when they never aired The Truth Chronicles (to my knowledge.) The episode also seemed like patchwork writing that started out as one thing but ended as something completely differently from first draft to final draft. 2/5

31899

[Laura Ingalls]

Captain Absolutely? I didn't hear him make any appearance...did I miss something?

[31899]

Maybe I got my episodes mixed up... I'll go relisten...

Edit: so I relistened to part of it and this was the episode with the "The Grinch" type episode, so I'm not sure where I got Captain absolutely from

Episode Review Revised

Another one of AIO use someone else's idea and twist it for their own purpose, but I found it rather interesting. I found it different that they had multiple villains and the moral was right their in front of you (unlike Mystery of the Clock Tower. This episode seemed almost like a kids radio adventure, and I'm sort of sad it wasn't. (It seems like one of the adventures Mandy would have produced)

31899

[jennifertwt]

This was one of my last hopes for redeeming this album after the disappointment of The Mystery of the Clock Tower. In reading some of the above reviews, I don't think we listened to the same episode. I found the voices very irritating. The 'story' hard to follow. It seemed like Lights out At Whits End meets The Grinch. I like both of those, strangely enough, just not together.

By contrast, I LOVED A Thanksgiving Carol which was well-done, interesting, and one of my all time favorites.

I'm beginning to be less enthused about getting *Album 52 any time soon. If Album 53 does not redeem the 're-launch'. I may give up and stick with my Album 1-50 collection and call it done.

Take Two: after having listened to it a second time with my swedish husband, who doesn't have all the emotional attachment to 'thanskgiving' that Americans do, he said it was silly but not terrible. I guess I have to agree. I did enjoy Eugene's song at the end and Whit's speech about celebrating thanksgiving no matter where you are. So, I guess I could up grade my vote to a '2'.

[Marvin D.]

This episode was a fairly enjoyable one. I especially enjoyed all the music (as, I have mentioned before, I have a bias towards all musicals). Connie seemed like Connie again in the beginning, and Whit played the ordinary one I was used to. Jay seemed different in this episode, as in his voice quality and the way he talked. The episode was slightly...cheesy, but all in all good. The moral was one of the easier ones to expect, as what to be thankful for. I wish there could be episodes with a different sort of moral (not just limited to AIO). However, it was still nice. The girl (the one played by Connie) seemed a little too sweet at times...maybe that's just me? But, all in all, it was a good episode. I'd give it 7/10.

[Mark Prescott]

Am I the only one who didn't like this episode? I thought it was alright. It would have been better if they wouldhave taken all of the songs out. Most of them, I couldn't understand what they were sining. I didn't like the the Grinch parody. I thought that they might have been better off coming up with their own plot. On the other hand, it was nice to hear the mention of Katrina again, and also, I liked How they all got snowed in at Whit's end. Once again, my high hopes for this Album 52 episode was dashed to smitherines. I give this episode a 2/5.

[Bennett]

My review of today's show can be found here:

http://aio-thechangingtimes.blogspot.co ... story.html

[Dr. Watson]

A 3 star bonus gets added to any episode with Eugene's ukelele. That said, I rated it a "4".

[Dallas R.]

I'm surprised at how well this episode is being rated in the polls. I've actually started enjoying several of the episodes this season, and I've thought that's it's been nice to have some classic Odyssey episodes back. That said, I thought this episode was a pretty big disappointment. It might even be my least favorite on the album so far. I've never really been fan of the episodes where they tell stories in this fashion where we hear it come to life, sort of like they do in "Black Clouds" It seems a little cheesy, and I think it would work better as a kids radio episode. The Grinch spinoff was clever, but could have been done with a much funnier script that made a little more sense. It sort of felt like a Truth Chronicles episode. In redeeming qualities, each actor played their character well, but it took me a long time to figure out who the kid was. Eugene on the Ukulele was a nice added bonus, and the first reference to Katrina since the hiatus was nice as well. I'd be willing to bet post-hiatus fans of the show will now be like "What? Eugene is married?" Overall, I think I'd rate it a 2.5. I think the rating system should be rated in ten stars. I'm always wanting to give episodes half stars.

[Bennett]

I'm surprised at how well this episode is being rated in the polls.

I just finished comparing this episode to the rest of the season (and I went back and updated past episodes as well). "A Thankstaking Story" is currently the third lowest rated episode of the season:

http://aio-thechangingtimes.blogspot.co ... verys.html

So, not exactly the fan favorite that it was hyped up to be, that's for sure. And like you, I had high expectations, and expected this episode to be a new classic show. It isn't. But I think, at least the cut version, is still a very decent episode. I think people will warm up to this one in the future.

[Shennifer]

It was a good episode, in my opinion, but I was a bit distracted listening to all the details of the story, however I enjoyed it all the same. Nice to hear Eugene mention Katrina and also I was more used to Andre's voice this time. 4/5