The Town of Odyssey

There has been a lot of controversy over the split episodes, mini half-shows which aired from 1999 to 2000. This is the spot where you can review split episodes. Any split episode will do, or you can share your thoughts on all of them as a whole. Some hate the split episodes, http://www.thetoo.com/posting.php?mode= ... 9a0fd5e3f5#
while others think they were a good idea. http://www.thetoo.com/posting.php?mode= ... 9a0fd5e3f5#
Post your thoughts!

Split episodes are one of the best things that ever happened to AIO. We got more jokes and character development per mile and thanks to the shorts various new writers got to give AIO a spin. Writers such such as John Bebee, co-writer of Odyssey Sings, writer and director of Fairy Tal-E-Vision. Without these episodes, he and others would never have been discovered.
It gave us a chance to enjoy more characters per gallon, which in particular helped round out the one and only Liz and establish her as a main character.

Pound Foolish wrote:We got more jokes and character development

Much of what could have been character development was thrown aside in favor of too many in-your-face, cringe-worthy attempts at humor. "Character development" isn't defined by "do they learn a lesson at the end" or adding on to character appearances; it's defined by a gradual change over a period of time. The characters didn't change and mature over the split era; in fact, I would say that some characters regressed instead of progressed, again for the sake of rather poor attempts at humor—Connie and Eugene, for example, reached a low point in maturity in such episodes as "Idol Minds" that they hadn't had in years.

Pound Foolish wrote:which in particular helped round out the one and only Liz and establish her as a main character.

I think you're in the minority if you find Liz to have been at all an enjoyable character during her first appearances. Her behavior was bratty, snobby, arrogant, pushy, immature, catty, and bossy—more so than your average child character, at any rate. I'm not exactly sure how a person can listen to "You Win Some, You Lose Some" or "Blind Girl's Bluff" and not have a certain amount of disdain for Liz. Yes, those are only two episodes, but they're still a part of Liz's history, and many of these character traits are reflected in episodes in which she's supposed to be the protagonist—she comes across in "Something Cliqued Between Us" as quite unsympathetic, owing less to the intentional hypocrisy of excluding Mandy while complaining about the Calvin Clone Clique and more to her obsession with Cassidy leading her to take action that's never really called out within the episode—trying to humiliate Cassidy by telling the boy she likes that she has a crush on him, for example. Quite a few people still haven't gotten over this, especially considering that the change in her character was considered by many to be quite jarring and unrealistic because of how sudden it was. I personally like Liz a lot as a character (I happen to appreciate a female character with a gift for leadership), but far from establish her character in a favorable way, many of the split episodes and others from that era ended up placing her in a very unfavorable light.

There are episodes from the split era that are enjoyable, though. "The Y.A.K. Problem" is always fun, "Something Cliqued Between Us" hits pretty close to home and has great character interactions (in spite of Liz's catty behavior), and "Changing Rodney" has a pretty solid lesson—and who could forget "I Slap Floor"? But many of the other episodes are either forgettable or are outright bad episodes ("Idol Minds", anyone?). The fact is that the split era is regarded by many as AIO's Dork Age, and some people even left the fandom because of how much they hated what AIO was doing at the time.

I do happen to like those episodes with Liz, but that's not the point. In the Eternal Birthday and such, she's fairly friendly and seems sociable. They seem an important part of her evolution.

I believe that you, Mr. Foolish, like the episodes that are largely hated by other people. But, as for the split episodes, they're pretty meh to me. I haven't heard to many of them, but what I have heard I thought they were below average.

Some of the attempts at humor were lame. (Abrey singing horribly and then someone performing the cliche of paying her to stop.)

But as far as character development, upon reflection, you're quite wrong there was nothing imature for example about making a Whit robot if the children wanted it. The only weird thing is the kids wildly screaming for a hug from a robotic replication of their friend rather than escaping out a window. But that has nothing to do with Eugene's character, only the kid's, and they weren't so firmly established. Though poorly used in that episode.

But we did truly get character development. Aubrey came somewhat more to terms with working in the Timothy Center. Nick has a tendency to decide exactly what he thinks of people right off, which he confronted when his ex-gangster friend arrived.

We got a bit of character development, but it wasn't the vast amounts of it that you implied in your earlier post. Aside from Aubrey and Nick—two characters out of the dozens who appeared in that era—most of the characters remained stagnant.

Pound Foolish wrote:there was nothing imature for example about making a Whit robot if the children wanted it.

How is it mature to make an animatronic version of Whit just because some kids want it? It seems to me like it would be more immature to just give the kids what they want instead of something that they need: a real person with real, solid advice—of which, as we see multiple times in AIO, we are never exactly short. A more solid, mature episode might have been Eugene and Connie teaching the kids what they learned throughout the Jack-and-Jason era—that although Whit is valuable, he isn't irreplaceable. Haven't we seen over and over again that it doesn't matter what makes you happy if it's something you either don't need or shouldn't have?

And that aside, the whole premise of the episode is thoroughly unbelievable. I really can't see the kids being as overjoyed as they were with the robo-Whit; they've been established as being in their preteens, and preteens are old enough to where that kind of thing would be less exciting and more annoying or creepy—think the robotronic animals from Chuck E Cheese's. I'm also pretty sure that Eugene and Connie wouldn't go to the lengths that they did to replicate Whit; he was gone for a comparatively short time, and they've proven many times before that they and the kids can adjust relatively easily to Whit not being present indefinitely—again, the DBD era.

I can believe Whit comparing the events of the episode to the golden calf, but I'd rather he have told the kids directly that they were idolizing him way too much instead of just telling them to go home and read the Bible. You don't have time to include that sequence? Well, then this is why the split episode formula is a waste of an idea—if you can't properly teach within the episode, which is what your show is designed to do, then don't bother with the splits and do a full twenty-minute episode. Besides, it's out of character for Whit, who freaked out over a role-playing game and spoke sharply to a kid for yelling at a virtual teacher, to take what he clearly considers a serious issue and condense it into "give the kids a Bible verse and send them home" rather than teach them what they did wrong himself.

I hate Bethany Shephard.