At My Whit’s End: My Deliverer is Recollectin’

(Photo: Connie “time travels” and meets Whit’s dead wife. No this doesn’t happen in the episode I’m covering but it did happen in a continuity-heavy comic published in 2023. This franchise truly defies description. Art by Brian Dawson, Focus on the Family. Image courtesy of Elsewhere in Odyssey Issue #32: Too Far Back!)

We’re skipping ahead to episode 19 of Odyssey USA, so now’s a good time to take stock of where we’re at with the franchise. Family Portraits established that Odyssey USA would feature morality plays for children, meant not as strict doctrine but a tool to spark conversation between kids and their parents. How has it fared with that format?

“Doing Unto Others” demonstrated that kind of story could work but most other episodes haven’t been able to reach its shaky but admirable heights. The closest since has been “Bobby’s Valentine,” which somehow didn’t mangle a story about girls crushing boys. Most though have been painful. Outside the episodes that’ve already received autopsy’s there’s been the morally bankrupt “Addictions Can Be Habit Forming,” the titular “Addiction” being eating. Dieting’s compared to resisting the temptation of the devil.

Odyssey USA? Come here, I got something to say you.

Fuck off with that anti-fat bullshit. Everyone, please read Aubrey Gordon’s “You Just Need to Lose Weight” and 19 Other Myths About Fat People instead of engaging with that episode. It’s much less triggering. Trust me.

Were “morality plays for children” the wrong format for the series? If this creative team (especially without Susan McBride) is incapable of making them work, what else can they do? Go back to the adult morality plays featured in the proto-pilots and Family Portraits? That can’t work with their intended kid audience, right? Maybe they should try something new? Can anything deliver this show from its current hellscape? All questions that could have been considered if Odyssey USA wasn’t in massive trouble.

The show was falling behind schedule and, to buy time, was forced to re-air the kid-centric episodes of Family Portraits.¹ This included “A Member of the Family,” which set the stage for another story about Whit’s past. This time though we couldn’t just hear about it, we’d get to experience it for ourselves.

Episode 19: Recollections

Connie learns the origins of Whit’s End and the sacrifice for it that nearly broke Whit’s spirit.

Connie, late, and fearing Whit will ball her up like a basketball and slam dunk her into hell, rushes in with an excuse but only finds Tom Riley behind the counter. Whit’s at the cemetery paying respects to his wife, Jenny, who passed away four years ago. Tom rattles off key backstory info.

1: Years ago Whit was “different” and “had his mind on other things.”

2: Whit used to be a middle school teacher for 13 years, single-handedly justifying the oft held belief that middle school is the worst time of your life. Imagine how many students he punted across the school yard for insubordination!

3: Jenny was an active member of the community and Whit’s End was “really her idea.”

This leads into a flashback story that covers Jenny’s fight to save the Fillmore Recreation Center. Phillip Glossman, a member of the city council, wants to tear down the building and sell the land to the Webster Development Firm (this name will be important in like 50 episodes, no I’m not kidding) so they can open a shopping center/mini-mall. Jenny argues the sentimental value of the building to all the families of Odyssey,. She attributes the lack of juvenile delinquency in the town to the Center being a place that doesn’t force children to grow up too fast. Glossman coldly tears down her arguments; the building is a drain on city resources and the shopping mall would bring in revenue.

City council meetings? Political maneuvering? Commercial development v. community development? Odyssey USA does remember it’s supposed to be a show for kids, right? On paper, yeah, this isn’t the most exciting thing but it is holding true to the writers’ goal of not talking down to their young audience. Does it mean the show is pivoting back to the more adult morality plays of Family Portraits? Not exactly.

Whit, in attendance at the meeting, reassures the worn-down Jenny but admits he can see Glossman’s point. The Fillmore is just a “broken down piece of real estate.” Jenny can’t believe Whit would side with Glossman but Whit maintains he’s just seeing it from a business perspective (he is a millionaire after all.) Jenny reminds him how much the building means to the people of Odyssey, “us included.” The implication being their own children played there.

Jenny’s fight doesn’t get much help when, instead of the Sheriff coming to testify on her behalf, we get CADET Harley.

Cadet Harley: “And so I think you'll agree that the biggest single cause of juvenile delinquency in this country today is young people. Now I realize that may sound like a generalization, but if you were to take a look at a cross-section of all JDs, that stands for juvenile delinquents, you'd probably find that most of them, most of them are between 5 and 19 years of age. Coincidence? Maybe. But do we really want to take the chance? I, for one, don't think so!”²

Well, just reading that is… Uncomfortable. I should stress that actor Will Ryan performs Harley with the goofiest voice imaginable, meaning he’s not meant to be taken seriously. It’s still a “BIG YIKES” considering the politics of the Odyssey USA creative team but it’s at least attempting to be satire aimed at law enforcement. That idea I can get behind.

Harley’s reasoning only gives Glossman ammunition. With no juvenile delinquency problems in Odyssey there’s no need for the Fillmore. Plus, the shopping center will include facilities for children. Jenny rightly counters that Odyssey hasn’t had problems with its youth in part because of places like the Fillmore. She argues that the shopping center’s only places for kids will be “arcades and video rental stores.”

My first reaction to that?

Typical Dobson nonsense. Scare-mongering about anything he doesn’t have direct control over. There’s nothing wrong with arcades, I sunk a ton of money into The Simpsons Arcade Game at our local pizza place. Video rental stores were a bedrock of my childhood, only my mom can know how much money we spent at those over the years. But notice what both of those places need in order to take full advantage of them? Money.

What keeps this from being a Dobson-screed is that Jenny is right. Kids and families need and deserve places to go where you aren’t expected to spend money. There is some light finger-wagging at arcades and video rental stores implied there but it’s still mostly a worthwhile point. One I wish the current administration, hellbent on defunding libraries, would understand. We need places for everyone to go to that prioritize the betterment of communities, not revenues. Places where people can go to find resources to make their lives better, not trying to make them feel lesser for not having things. As much time (and money) I spent at arcades or video rental stores as a kid? I spent way, way more time at libraries and other free public places, which I still do to this day and I’m all the better for it. Thanks, Mom! (She reads the blog.)

Could Jenny’s plea of, “don’t let our children grow up in an atmosphere that doesn’t care what they do or believe” be a dog whistle for conservative ideologies? Perhaps, but when taken with the full context? I support it (it not the reason behind it.) We learn she fights for all sorts of causes with no attention paid to enriching her own wealth. Instead she spends her most precious commodity, time, in order to help the people and community she loves. So much so she’s running herself ragged. This endears Jenny to the listener and sets her up as the more pure hearted one in her relationship with Whit. She clearly loves him but we know, thanks to the Family Portraits episode “Whit’s Visitor” (it’s technically not canon but shhhhhhhhh), that they do fight and some that tension is on display here. Perhaps the reason she throws herself so much into helping others is partly because Whit isn’t always the easiest to be around, as we see with his tacit support of Glossman.

(Photo: Jenny’s probably at her “Whit’s End” with Whit. In this way we are the same. Art by Brian Dawson, Focus on the Family. Image courtesy of Elsewhere in Odyssey Issue #32: Too Far Back!)

Which makes it all the more heartbreaking when Jenny collapses before she can finish her defense of the Fillmore and needs to be rushed to the hospital. Whit’s informed that Jenny’s seriously ill with a disease that could have easily been treated… If she’d gone to see the doctor instead of focusing on saving the Fillmore. Now it’s too late, Jenny’s near death.

Odyssey USA doesn’t pull its punches here and the final conversation between Whit and Jenny’s devastating. Jenny regrets she can’t save the Fillmore and Whit tries to reassure it wasn’t that important anyway. Jenny, in her last moments, reminds him of the joy their kids felt as he was working on putting together his encyclopedia. There was something new for them to see and learn every day. And with that…

Whit: “Jenny?”

Jenny: “I love you, John.”³

Jenny’s death isn’t overplayed. There’s no talk of Jesus or eternal life. It’s two people, very much in love, quietly holding onto their last moments. Jenny, always using her time for others, uses those last moments to try and make Whit understand why the Fillmore is so important. She does that not through the same arguments she used on Glossman but a more personal tactic. Their children. This could be seen as warm and fuzzy, Jenny basically saying “remember how much our kids loved playing there? Don’t you want to give that to others?” But no, appealing to Whit with memories of their children has a rough edge.

Jenny oblique mention of their kids earlier and only bringing them up them on her deathbed makes me wonder if Whit doesn’t like talking about them. We know Jerry died years previously and Jana’s barely on speaking terms with him. Bringing them up, to me, is Jenny’s last resort to make Whit understand. Jenny threw herself into volunteer work so she could help people… Like she couldn’t with her loved ones. Saving the Fillmore, a place her kids loved, is the closest thing she has to saving them.

None of this is spoken directly. It’s all in the way Heather Sanders, as Jenny, plays her. Quietly shoring up the last of her strength to impart this to Whit. The way Hal Smith, through voice alone, communicates Whit holding back tears or his breaking heart after Jenny utters her final words.

Look, at this point I’m very jaded to anything to do with Odyssey. Even when the show does something well I wonder how Dobson’s gonna rip the floor out from under me. Basically I’m like-

Even with its heavy tinge of nostalgia, I know this show’s a propaganda tool. The whole “morality play” format doesn’t help with that. Here though? This scene between Whit and Jenny is, without question, the best the show has done yet. Where the voice actors aren’t saving mediocre material but elevating great writing. A scene that builds on what we’ve learned in other episodes and gives its characters real depth. It’s a moment packed with meaning and emotion that will touch anyone who’s ever lost someone. The music alone will get you weeping. Recently I lost my cat and this scene reminded me of my last moments with him. The pain and heartache, breaking me from the inside, but trying to put on a happy face so that would be the last thing he remembered before he passed.

Most importantly there’s no moral lesson being jackhammered into your idiot skull. It’s just a scene that’s allowed to be engaging as part of a story. Odyssey’s failed at morality plays… But maybe… Whatever it’s doing here holds the key to something else.

The vote to decide the Fillmore’s fate is delayed for a month because of Jenny’s death and Tom Riley and Cadet Harley try to convince Whit to continue the fight to save it. They share their memories of the Center but Whit snaps back with the same talking points as Glossman, that the value of the Fillmore is sentimental, nothing more. Tom’s appeal to what Jenny would have wanted fall on deaf ears. Whit bitterly attributes her death to the many causes “you people” got her involved in. Harley, in a rare moment of seriousness, points out Whit isn’t being fair but Whit doesn’t care.

Whit: “Will fairness bring back my wife? The people of Odyssey have taught me a really valuable lesson. Nothing lasts forever. Maybe it's time they learned it themselves.”⁴

It’s a side of Whit we haven’t, intentionally, seen much of since “A Member of the Family.” The bitter man who refused to take responsibility for his own actions. Now, if he can’t unleash that anger on his family, he’ll unleash it on the whole town. Why not let Glossman take their broken down old building?

Without Jenny, Whit’s moral compass is askew. Until now it seems he needed her to nudge him in the right direction, to remind him what really matters. For example, seeing the plight of the Fillmore not through the eyes of a businessman but from the heart. How else has she kept him on the right path? What did she do when he beat his own children? Would it have been worse without her? Without Jenny, is Whit doomed to fully assume the mantle of full Dobson-sona?

This could paint Whit as a giant man-baby who’s only kept from violence and anger by the “calming” influence of his wife. It’d be just like Odyssey USA to make Jenny dying some kind of moral flaw on her part. FOOLISH FEMALE, WITHOUT YOU WHIT CAN’T HELP BUT BE AN ASSHOLE!

Thankfully it doesn’t go that way as Tom, much like he did in “A Member of the Family,” calls Whit out on his bullshit.

Tom Riley: “Your wife and I had a lot of conversations about you. She seemed to think that if there was a way you could help us, you would. You say you knew your wife better than any of us? I'm sure that's true. It's too bad your wife couldn't say the same thing about you.”⁵

DAMMMMMMM!!! Get him, Tom! What a deliciously cold thing to say to a man in mourning. It’s the most Christian “fuck you” ever written. It does make me wonder why Jenny had such a positive view of Whit when he’s clearly got some demons. Maybe, like the Fillmore, she saw the potential in Whit. That he may be a little broken down but he’s still worth saving.

-AGGRESSIVELY TURNS CHAIR BACKWARDS. SLAMS ACOUSTIC GUITAR ON. CHUCKS BIBLES INTO TEENS FACES-

JUST LIKE JESUS! -plays a holy riff-

“Recollections” continually takes moments that earlier episodes would have turned into preachy drivel and veers in another direction.

Whit, alone, heads to the Fillmore. He hasn’t been there in years, if not decades, and still can’t see what Jenny saw in it. Things aren’t helped when one of Whit’s most dangerous enemies crosses his path. A female. He stumbles through the pretend house of a little girl and, rather than unleashing a United States of Smash attack on her, plays along.

Whit: “Do you always play house here?”

Little Girl: “Uh huh. See, here's the living room where we live, and here's the dining room where we eat. And this is the kitchen.”

Whit: “Oh, and what do you do there?”

Little Girl: “Silly. That's where I watch soap operas.”

Whit: “Oh, hahahaha, yes, of course you do.”⁶

The little girl shares all the different ways she has fun at the Fillmore and how sad she’ll be when it’s done. Whit’s skeptical but his attitude shifts when the little girl’s mother calls for her by name. Jenny. Mercifully the episode doesn’t explain this away as a sign from God but instead just lets it be a magical little moment. One that helps finally lift the clouds from Whit’s darkened soul.

He rushes to the city council and stops them from approving Glossman’s plan at the last moment. The Universal Press Foundation, Whit’s company that produces his encyclopedia has given Whit permission to buy the Fillmore and the adjoining land for 3.5 million dollars, higher than what was offered by the Webster Development Firm.

Whit plans to rebuild the Fillmore so it embodies the same values Jenny found so heartening between Whit and their children. A place of “adventure and discovery” where “kids of all ages can just be kids.” A place where, hopefully, he won’t make the same mistakes he did with his family. Whit’s not a perfect person, there’s many things he wish he didn’t do, but he’ll continue learning.

And thus, Whit’s End was born. All thanks to that little girl. The little girl who, unbeknownst to anyone at the time, was the "deliverer" Odyssey needed. Who showed Whit and the show as a whole a way out of the darkness they’d both been living in. Remember what she did in her pretend kitchen?

“That's where I watch soap operas.”

After 18 episodes of decent to dreadful morality plays, Odyssey USA finally gave audiences a new format. A soap opera. A story that had a message, even themes, but didn’t prioritize them over the story. We didn’t need Whit to stop the action and explain why standing up for free community centers is holy, or whatever. When Whit lashed out in anger at the town we didn’t need Tom Riley to tell him he wasn’t being very godly. The show didn’t need to go out of its way to land that Whit buying the Fillmore was his way of making it up to Jenny. Instead of taking the many chances the story had to revert back to the “morality plays for adults” we got in the earliest parts of this franchise? “Recollections

This episode took what could have been the franchise reverting back to the “morality plays for adults” it started with in the proto-pilots like “Spare Tire and instead did something much more engaging. It told a real story, not a moral bludgeon disguised as a story. As much as the writers strove to not talk down to the kids, this is the story that finally managed it without endless caveats. (Okay, there is one. Whit is taking a public community center and turning it into a space filled with activities meant to lead kids to God? That’s… Not exactly the same as a general Recreation Center BUT WHATEVER CLOSE ENOUGH.)

“Recollections” expands what the series can do. It doesn’t just have to spurt out moral lessons in the most didactic way possible. It can tell actual stories, even long running ones, that reward listeners for their patience and attention. (And this episode does form the foundation for the show’s first massive story arc.) This is what saves Odyssey from complete ruin. It’s not the end of the franchise’s morality tales but now the show’s been opened up. What else can we learn about Whit’s past? What history did the Fillmore hold? If Odyssey can pull off soap operas, what else can it do?

Just as Whit’s daughter, Jana, was the deliverer of Family Portraits, helping it find a direction after a scattershot season of pilots? Then the little girl at the Fillmore was the deliverer of Odyssey USA, letting the show break free from its stale format and finally have the ability to become its true self.

The show’s title had been hotly debated within Focus on the Family for months. It was believed that the name Odyssey USA would, “alienate our Canadian listeners, as well as potential audiences overseas.”⁷ Considering the name of the show (and everything about it) was pretty much decided in the span of three weeks? This was a good move on Focus on the Family’s part. Wow, is that the first time I’ve ever mentioned the name “Focus on the Family” in a way that wasn’t ripping them a new one? Miracles do happen! Praise be!

So after two further episodes (and one Family Portraits re-air), Odyssey USA finally became Adventures in Odyssey.

Oh my God. It’s happening. It’s finally happening!

NEXT TIME: The prophesied day has come. Our coverage of Adventures in Odyssey truly begins.

Sources:

"The Complete Guide to Adventures in Odyssey” by Phil Lollar, Focus on the Family Publishing, 1997.

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Recollections: Written by Phil Lollar, Directed by Steve Harris, Production Engineer Bob Luttrell, Focus on the Family, 1988.

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