Saga vs. One

Grab your AIO albums, and find a table! What makes your favorite episode the best? Have an episode you really dislike? This is the place to review and discuss AIO episodes and albums.

what do you like

Saga
7
64%
One episode
1
9%
2,3,4 episodes
1
9%
doesn't matter!
2
18%
 
Total votes: 11

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Blitz
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I actually agree with you Gooey98. The 40's were the golden age. Then AIO out of the blue decided to tweak things around.
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I feel like a weirdo… I hate sagas and too many 2 or 3 parters. I'm even more irritated of them because there's been 2 in the 50's. :|

The 10's-20's are my favorite. They're classics. :)
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I like Sagas but only if I can listen to all parts like on the same day.
Like, full GRC here.
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We have all the sagas completely. Novacom is pretty hard to listen to in one day.
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Especially since it's over 10 hours long. :-
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Ya, I kinda see what you mean Bethany but sagas are cooler!

In one part episodes they have only small problems that hey resolved quickly. But in sagas there are longer problems and they are longer. I just like sagas better but I will agree without slice of life episodes AIO would not be so cool. I also like it when they do like with Mandy and her family they bring up the problem then wait a few episodes to continue.

So that is my opinion anyone who disagrees feel free to post it!
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What I meant by saying sagas are "infinitely better" than slice of life shows is that they're always, always more consistently good as a genre, but only because they're less frequent, and thus, AIO has more time to think them out and really make them good. If AIO didn't have a big saga every 10 albums or so, it would be boring. If it had sagas all the time, it wouldn't be AIO, and it would probably still be boring. It's great to see that the writers have always maintained a nice balance between action and normal episodes, and it's also worth noting that, most of the time, the normal episodes have a hint of action, and the action episodes (excepting stuff like "The Black Veil" and "Passages") have plenty of hints of normal.

For he first time, in The Ties That Bind, AIO completely blended their two major genres together for something different, I just didn't consider it to be a successful blend. But I think it's a fabulous idea to do this again, just perhaps with a more cohesive storyline. Sometimes I actually think it might be nice for all AIO albums to follow a theme, the way good musical albums do, and the way they did "It All Started When...", "On Earth As It Is In Heaven", and "Clanging Cymbals". Some of them could be like those albums and some of them could be more like "The Ties That Bind". That way, there wouldn't even be a need to debate Saga Vs. SOF, since the Slice of life would always blend into the saga and vice versa.

In answer to your question regarding 51, PF, I will say it was actually the first AIO album that I anticipated before its' release, and I remember it well. I remember watching little videos about it before it came out: videos that introduced the Parker and Jones families, and then counting down to that fateful day when we would find out what happened when Connie pushed that red button. And I also clearly remembered a lingering feeling of disappointment: AIO had advertised something epic and unique, but it felt like they were just rehashing what they had done before. "Finish What You..." was embarrassingly similar to "The No Factor", "Clutter" seemed like "Treasures of the Heart" at first, until you realized it was actually a lot less original. "For the Birds" was unique enough for me to sort of appreciate it, but it will still remain ever in the shadow of "Pet Peeves". Even "The Inspiration Station" wasn't all it was cracked up to be, and that invention has gone nowhere since then. I didn't like any of the Emily episodes for obvious reasons, and "Target of the Week" was just a typical bully episode. That leaves "Grandma's Visit" and "The Jubilee Singers". "Grandma's Visit" was pleasant and unique enough, but it still felt like it was missing something, and wasn't enough to carry the whole album anyway. "The Jubilee Singers" is something of a masterpiece, and clearly the magnum opus of the album. However, the fact that it featured none of the new characters in the central storyline (it wouldn't of course, but still) worried me.

Of course, the characters were a big problem too. Vance was nothing back then, just a bully. Jay was even less developed. Barrett was whiny, annoying, and boring, and Matthew hadn't quite become what he was pre-Sizmore. Hope Levy's Olivia was nothing special. Red Hollard doesn't even deserve words : I don't get the Bernard comparisons, he's nothing like Bernard. He's almost like a combination of Harlow Doyle, Wooton, and Tom Riley, which is extremely unpleasant to even think about. I thought the characters would grow on me, and most of them did, in later albums. Thus, it would follow that when I went back to 51, I would enjoy the characters more, now that I knew them. That wasn't the case. When I went back to 51 a couple years later, I still found the new characters just as shallow and underdeveloped as before, if not more so, now that I knew who they really were. Connie and Eugene also descended into self-parody all too frequently during that album. It was a confusing and low time for AIO fans, especially after the high that was Album 50, and 52 only made the low lower. What would have been a better course of action than Album 51, then? Well, this might sound crazy, but I think perhaps the AIO writers should've just skipped right to 53 (not that they really could have necessarily, but hypothetically). Having a great saga straight off, would break the ice with the new characters and give the fans a new twist on a format they're familiar with. Then, having sufficiently fleshed ou the characters, they could've moved on. But... *sigh* it was not to be. :cry:
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Thank you Arnold. You describe my views almost exactly.

On a somewhat unrelated note...I've noticed that some albums seem to have an underlying theme that just isn't as blatant as in albums 17 or 54. For example, Album 49 seems to have an overall theme of family reconciliation. Only 2 episodes therein are unrelated to this overall theme. I can't think of any other examples at the moment, but I think there are others like that as well.
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ArnoldtheRubberDucky wrote: What would have been a better course of action than Album 51, then? Well, this might sound crazy, but I think perhaps the AIO writers should've just skipped right to 53 (not that they really could have necessarily, but hypothetically). Having a great saga straight off, would break the ice with the new characters and give the fans a new twist on a format they're familiar with. Then, having sufficiently fleshed out the characters, they could've moved on. But... *sigh* it was not to be. :cry:
But had they done that, an Album 51 or 52-esque album was bound to happen, and with something in the vein of GRC right off the bat, then the fans would have complained about how great Odyssey 2.0 started, but what a flop the next two albums were. I would rather have it the way it is, where we cringed the first two albums, and then we lifted our heads out of the dirt and said, "Hey, this can actually be pretty good," leaving us with the warm, fuzzy feeling we've had since Album 53.
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I don't think an Album 51-ish would have had to have happened right after 53. I don't see any reason why AIO couldn't have moved on to 54 and 55 after that, hypothetically.
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However, one wonders if perhaps the reason why GRC is higher quality than 51 and 52 is that the writers finally found their footing with the new characters and learned to write them in a way that isn't intolerable. It's entirely possible—and I think entirely probable—that without 51 and 52, we might not have had a 53.
Last edited by TigerShadow on Tue Dec 09, 2014 8:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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I find fault with your reasoning, Old Judge. I don't think it was necessary to have albums with shallow characters before having one with developed characters, and if they had done GRC first they wouldn't have needed to have 2 bad albums afterwards.
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By the same logic (that AIO needs a couple bad albums to find their footing with new characters), you would have to conclude that Albums 21 and 22 would be awful too, since Hal Smith had just died, they were bringing in two brand new major characters, and it was a generally confusing time. But that wasn't the case: in fact, I believe Album 21 to be in the Top 3 Best AIO Albums Ever, with Album 22 not trailing too far behind.

I don't think we should be excusing Album 51 and Album 52's mediocrity just because the AIO writers decided to hit the reset button around that time. I can totally picture Album 53 being Album 51 and them just going from there. Of course, that would mean that, at this point in time, we would have two extra albums to replace 51 and 52 somewhere in between. Hypothetically, those would be good too.

But it's probably not very productive to get into a debate on what AIO could've hypothetically done in the past. The point is, Album 51 and 52 happened, and most of us can agree they weren't as good as any album after them, but all is forgiven, and all we can do now is hope AIO will never repeat that sort of lackluster material.
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Oh yeah, I'm in no way getting mad at AIO, I'm just trying to explain why those albums were bad.

Good example with albums 21 and 22. Jack and Jason were good, multi-dimensional characters from the beginning.
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ArnoldtheRubberDucky wrote:I don't think we should be excusing Album 51 and Album 52's mediocrity just because the AIO writers decided to hit the reset button around that time.
True, we can't excuse it just because of new characters. But didn't we get a bunch of new writers at that time? I think that also might have contributed to it, although I can't say for certain.

Re: Albums 21 and 22, I think that when Hal Smith died and Jack and Jason took over, we already had established veteran writers who could integrate those characters. Additionally, I think it's worth noting that during the Jack and Jason era, the only two really "new" characters were...Jack and Jason. We still had Lucy, Bernard, Tom, Connie, Eugene, Katrina, the Rathbones, Sam, the Barclays...we had a full and consistent cast of characters by that time who could help us familiarize ourselves with Jack and Jason as they were doing so themselves. It was a more easy transition than wiping the show clean of all but four characters and basically starting over, and I think the contrast there is telling.

Also, maybe it's just me, but I kind of feel like a twelve-episode tightly compacted saga containing almost entirely new characters/new iterations of characters immediately following a year-long hiatus would have been a bit jarring. Easing into the new AIO was a better idea...although the actual easing process could and should have been done much better than it was.
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No, Tiger. The only new writers were Kirby Atkins and one Phil Walton. Apart from that, it's good old Nathan Hoobler, Marshal Younger, Dave and Paul. Which is another thing that makes the whole thing so strange. They put more time into this album than previous ones, rather than less. Apparently, these trusted and beloved aio writers all simultaneously lost their abilities.

It's important to recall the beloved Jason and Jack era was no relaunch. It wasn't until after Whit returned that the team took a hiatus, let a bunch of actors go and brought in new characters, doing essentially what they did with 51. In that relaunch, we lost Lucy to gain... July and, shudder, Heather. Nobody even remembers them, except Mr. Thinker when he makes a Worst Characters Ever list. Think about it. Last time, we did get Jared and Dwayne, but also characters who faded away. This time, we got Emily, Matthew, Jay... characters we grew to love dearly. We all complained about them, but everyone loves em now. The assertion we should have skipped to straight to later albums with lots of action or character development makes no sense. Actions is not what aio is about and there has to be something to develop first. Emily the Genius would mean nothing if we were not thoroughly familiar with Emily the Grouchy Boss.

@ Gooey98
Wooton was in only two episodes in 51, and he acted like normal grown up but silly Wooton. To be honest, he was only mildly funny. Still, let's consider his activity in those two episodes. In For the Birds, he gave the Parkers advice on feeding Dexter and made little jokes. Nothing like "a hyper five year" old there. In Target of the Week, he talked about food mainly. My my, how childish. If only he had participated in such mature activities as those in previous albums, such as dressing up as bush and making Bernard and Whit do so as well.
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Pound Foolish wrote:No, Tiger. The only new writers were Kirby Atkins and one Phil Walton. Apart from that, it's good old Nathan Hoobler, Marshal Younger, Dave and Paul. Which is another thing that makes the whole thing so strange. They put more time into this album than previous ones, rather than less. Apparently, these trusted and beloved aio writers all simultaneously lost their abilities.
Oh, okay. For some reason I thought we'd suddenly lost all the old writers; that was the way that some ToOers sounded—when an episode was written by a writer we knew, it was such a big deal, and most people acted like "Target of the Week" was a magnificent slice-of-life because veteran Marshal Younger wrote it, as though this was a contrast to the n00bs. (That's probably a problem of my perspective, which I never bothered to correct because I thought I didn't need to, but still.)

As far as the perception that the writers suddenly lost their abilities, it's worth noting that these writers wrote some pretty bad episodes as well as some really great ones; it's just that a lot of people thought that they wrote a whole album of bad ones. I don't listen to Album 51 on a regular basis, so it's entirely probable that those episodes really weren't entirely bad, but rather that the bad ones really stuck out to people.

On the whole, I think that the hiatus and then the buildup to Album 51 gave people a lot of expectations that weren't filled, which is probably one of the primary reasons why it receives the hate that it does, though I don't think it should be taken for granted that some people just find the episodes to be bad regardless of their preconceived notions of what the new episodes were going to be.
Pound Foolish wrote:It's important to recall the beloved Jason and Jack era was no relaunch.
Exactly. It tweaked the format of the show a bit, but like I said, there were plenty of supporting characters to pick up the slack and help introduce Jack and Jason. (Of course, there's also the fact that we were introduced to Jason in "A Name, Not A Number", one of the most mature and engaging two-parters of the series (biochemical terrorism isn't something your run-of-the-mill kids' show tries to tangle with as a plot device), which I think definitely helped in terms of fan reception.) There's also the fact that putting Jack and Jason together was, if my understanding is correct, basically about putting two different aspects of Whit's personality at odds, which made for some very interesting storylines, and was something the writers could work with, given that they already had a pretty good idea of the duality of Whit.
Pound Foolish wrote:It wasn't until after Whit returned that the team took a hiatus, let a bunch of actors go, doing essentially what they did with 51.
Yes, I think the post-28 hiatus is far more comparable, though it's worth noting that the characters we lost were primarily child characters; unlike the post-50 hiatus, long-time characters like Tom, Bernard, the Rathbones, Jack, and Jason were able to stick around, not just Whit, Eugene, and Connie. (Wooton obviously stayed post-50, but he wasn't even around post-28.)
Pound Foolish wrote:In that relaunch, we lost Lucy to gain... July and, shudder, Heather. Nobody even remembers them, except Mr. Thinker when he makes a Worst Characters Ever list. Think about it. Last time, we did get Jared and Dwayne, but also characters who faded away.
I remember Heather, but mostly because it sounded like she was voiced by a girl who played one of the Ashleys on Disney's Recess. ;)
Pound Foolish wrote:This time, we got Emily, Matthew, Jay... characters we grew to love dearly. We all complained about them, but everyone loves em now.
I think it's a bit sweeping to say that "everyone" loves the new child characters, given the many people who have repeatedly vocalized their negative opinions about them—that's not to say that these characters are inherently bad as a result, but it just isn't a true statement when you think about how many people have spoken even now about how "annoying" Emily is or how "flat" the Parkers are. The new kids have grown on some people, but there are also people who still can't stand them (not unlike the numerous people back in the early 2000s who couldn't stand Mandy and Alex, even after they had been on the show for a few years). I think that the only new child character who is consistently praised is Jay, even though I personally think that the new child characters have come a long way (even if I don't like them as much as I did the generation before them).
Pound Foolish wrote:The assertion we should have skipped to straight to later albums with lots of action or character development makes no sense. Actions is not what aio is about and there has to be something to develop first.
Yeah, that's my problem with that particular argument. Whether or not you think 51 and 52 could have been done better, the sagas and ensuing episodes wouldn't have been nearly as big a deal in terms of emotional torque if we weren't familiar with the characters beforehand—it would be comparable to going straight into the events of "Plan B" without, say, "Green Eyes and Yellow Tulips" and "Secrets" beforehand.
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PF, I disagree that you need a couple albums of characters milling about and "developing" before you get to the action. Every single saga, AIO has introduced new characters, and a couple of those characters stuck around, at least for a little while. I think sagas are actually a great way to introduce new characters. Penny Wise was introduced during a saga: did her character suffer because of it?

And Tiger, your comparison with Green Eyes and Yellow Tulips and Plan B doesn't really apply to 51 and 52. Green Eyes and Yellow Tulips was a part of the Novacom Saga: a fundamental part, since it introduced the man who is perhaps the most iconic relic from that era. There was also a riot, which is hardly something you see on Odyssey too often. You needed that episode in order to understand Plan B and the rest of the saga.

The same logic doesn't apply to Albums 51 and 52 and The Green Ring Conspiracy at all. They weren't homogeneous in their stories: you can easily have one without the other. I don't see any reason why AIO needed a couple "normal" albums to ease us in. Why is it better development of character when Emily is introduced trying to find her brother's missing video game as opposed to introducing her searching for clues about a backpack full of counterfeit money? She was still in character, it wasn't like she wouldn't have developed the same way or we wouldn't have gotten used to her. She was just in a more dramatic situation.

One of the rules of writing a good novel is to always start your book with a bang, something that turns your characters' lives upside down. I understand that Odyssey is not supposed to be a novel, but I don't see why you would think that rule couldn't have applied with the relaunch.
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Pound Foolish wrote:This time, we got Emily, Matthew, Jay... characters we grew to love dearly.
To be honest, I think that most people have grown to love them as much as you have. I like Matthew, but I'm not very happy that they decided to replace Zach. Emily is still meh. :P However Jay is pretty much universally liked. \:D/
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I think that, in order to start with the GrC, everything would've probably had to be changed a little. The opening scene is with Emily and Mathew. The audience wouldn't have known them and things would've been very confusing. Like I said, things might have to be shifted around a little bit.

And if the writers had started withthe GRC, the characters wouldn't have been developed because album 51 and 52 hadn't been done. I think that, as part of their long break between 50 and 51, they should've written 51 and 52. They wouldn't have aired them, they would've just written them. Then they would get straight to the GRC! Take note, that idea is just me brainstorming. AIO probably wouldn't have done that, and it probably wouldn't work out even if they had.
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