Mr., Mrs., Ms., Master, and Jr. Barclay (The Barclays)--Part III

Sorry that I haven't written in a while, and that I haven't written a review in a few weeks. I've been kind of busy and distracted the last few weeks with a lot of school and cleaning around the house. But now I'm going to try to get to that third and last part of the review on the Barclays. And after this, I think I'm going to stop the character reviews for good. Not just because the new season starts next week, but because it takes a lot of time and thought to write these, and I just don't really have that time. Although I guess I can, after the season's over, try to write one about Mitch upon constant request of Brittini. Who knows? Maybe after writing that one I'll want to keep writing more. I guess you guys'll just have to keep coming back and reading. :)

Alright, we left the Barclays last time just before they were going to take a trip to Hawaii. Aloha, Oy! has been a fan favorite ever since it aired on the radio in 1994, and for good reason. It combines two of the most popular families in Odyssey's history in an unusual setting, making for a hilarious episode. There's the storyline of Rodney trying to impress Donna (which I think is handled very well for a kids show, and in a funny way), Jimmy, Lawrence, and Mr. Iowa (ee-O-way) searching for Lawrence's dad, whom he hasn't seen in six months, all while the parents of the families go out on a boat ride, only to get trapped in the middle of the ocean with a holey ship that threatens to take them down with no one else around. In the end, the parents are saved by the U.S. Marines (at least that's who I think it was), Donna finally convinces Rodney to stop trying to win her over because it couldn't ever work for them, and Lawrence finds his dad, making for one of the most touching scenes in Odyssey's history, which is probably one of the reasons this is such a fan favorite. And it all ends with Mr. Iowa teaching everybody how to sing "Aloha, Oy" as they sit around a campfire.

The next big chapter in the Barclays' lives is when George loses his job, and thinks that God may be calling him into the ministry. In Our Daily Bread, he is laid off from his job, and the family decides to take up part-time jobs to help pay the bills. In A Prayer for George Barclay, an episode similar to Where There's a Will..., Jimmy and Donna come together and pray earnestly for George to get the job he's interviewing for. He ends up turning down the offer because he feels like he's being called into the ministry. I never had any specific feelings about these episodes and the ones to come, because one of my early albums was Darkness Before Dawn, where George is already a pastor, so there wasn't really anything for me to get used to. Anyway, in George Under Pressure, we learn that George did follow the calling, and he is swamped in "schoolwork" for his classes at seminary. The Barclays have to learn to grow closer and support their husband and father in this episode, since George is really feeling beaten down because he still hasn't been offered any preaching or teaching jobs. So the family comes together in prayer, and almost immediately, he is offered an interim pastorate at the local church. (Also in this episode, we find out that Mary is pregnant.)

So throughout the next few Barclay episodes, there are stories about Jimmy and Donna's lives as "preacher's kids." Jimmy starts feeling pressured by people at church to follow in his father's footsteps as a pastor, but after trying to teach Lawrence's Sunday School class, and obviously failing, he decides that he should probably wait for a while before trying to do anything of that sort again. In the same episode, A Call for Reverend Jimmy, Donna is distressed because of all the times George keeps telling embarrassing stories about her in his sermons. And one of them ends up being a story about her and her boyfriend (who is fairly unaware of her admiration), Jack Davis, which she treats as the last straw. Things are eventually settled when George tells Donna that he'll ask her permission before sharing any more stories, and the episode ends with a very loud sound covering over Mary telling the gender of the upcoming baby.

By the second-to-next Barclay show, Stuart/Stewart Reed has been born (he was named by popular opinion in letters from fans who suggested the name), and his first word is "carrot", according to Jimmy. :) In this episode, there's again a problem with Donna about being a "preacher's kid", which is the title of the episode. This is the episode after which I think the Odyssey writers decided that the Barclay kids were getting too old to be on a kids' show anymore. Donna has boys who want to go out with her, and she gets into trouble when she is involved in the burning down of a house in Gower's Field. The episode ends similar to The Barclay Family Ski Vacation with George explains to Donna that he still loves her, and that being a pastor's daughter doesn't mean you have to be perfect.

Then comes the episodes that were very sad for fans who were around at the time: Pokenberry Falls, R.F.D. I still honestly have no clue what "R.F.D." stands for. It might even say in the episode, but I wouldn't know, because I don't own it, so I don't know much about it. All I really know is that Pokenberry Falls was in need of a pastor, and so the Barclays reluctantly moved there, and that it still makes older fans sad to this day that they aren't in Odyssey, and every new family is compared to the Barclays. The only episode with the whole Barclay family in it after this one is It's a Pokenberry Christmas a few years later, which is one of my all-time favorite episodes because of all of its parallels to the movie It's a Wonderful Life. (If you want to see what I'm talking about go here.)

After that episode, the Barclays disappear off the face of the earth, except for the appearance of George and Jimmy around the time and after Connie almost got married. And then Jimmy appeared in The Triangled Web, another one of my all-time favorite episodes, in Album 50, along with a lot of other old characters.

I can't say that I was sad to see the Barclays go because they left in 1996, the year I was born. I really enjoy almost all of the episodes they're in, but I was okay when I was introduced to new families like the Straussbergs, Washingtons, and DeWhites. In fact, I would almost say that the Washingtons are like the Barclays to me, because when I started hearing new seasons as they aired on the radio for the first time, the Washingtons were the main family. I was very sad to hear that they wouldn't be on the show anymore when that was announced before Album 51. I especially liked Marvin, and I also thought that it was weird that they'd drop them off the show so soon after Kelly became a part of their family. But that's all in the past now and there's nothing I can do about it.

Thank you for reading my review! Be sure to check back next week when I review the first part of The Green Ring Conspiracy! Please comment!

Mr., Mrs., Ms., Master, and Jr. Barclay (The Barclays)--Part II

Picking up where I left off last week, the next popular Barclay show after Castles and Cauldrons was Wishful Thinking. This episode plays out what probably a lot of children wish on their siblings, but after hearing this episode would think twice before saying--"I wish you'd never been born!" I know at least I've thought that once or twice before, but after hearing this episode numerous times (as it was also in my first collection), I usually repent of thinking that after considering the implications. But this has always been a very enjoyable episode, kind of in the style of It's a Wonderful Life, the movie after which the Barclays were patterned.

The next few episodes are also interesting ones: Thanksgiving at Home being when Donna and Jimmy have to make Thanksgiving dinner for themselves because George and Mary are sick with the flu, and The Vow, when Donna is sure that George is considering a divorce with Mary. Now this episode, I think, handles the issue of divorce better than any other Odyssey episode so far, because, although it does have a lot of humor, it ends in a beautiful way with the kids witnessing their parents renew their wedding vows. But that's not to say that the AIO team didn't also do a great job with the Mandy saga; I just think this one was a little better.

Then comes Someone to Watch Over Me, one of Odyssey's most popular shows, and definitely on my Top 10 list. I could probably listen to this episode many times in a row without getting tired of it. It has amazing performances by Dave Griffin, Hal Smith, Chuck Bolte, and Chuck Robinson as Nagle. It is always a moving episode, and I remember absolutely loving it the first time I heard it. And it even gets deep and intense when Nagle tells Jimmy that Death has been chasing him. That line usually gives me the chills. So in a touching and surprising conclusion, Jimmy learns that there is a spiritual realm at work beyond his imagination and that his life is, and always has been, in the hands of God.

Over the next few shows, Jimmy and Donna learn lessons like: how to seek God's will, when they might have to move to Washington D.C.; the message behind Jesus' parable of the servants the hard way; and the meaning of sacrifice when they respectively choose to give up Zapazoids and soap operas (their "sacrifices" don't last very long).

And then there's that famous episode, Coming of Age, where Jimmy loses his voice and begins to enter adolescence. This is another episode that I think the Odyssey team handled very well, and I think this is one of the episodes that makes the Barclays such a favorite of older fans. We teenagers can almost all relate to how Jimmy feels in this episode as his body seems to be falling apart, his chest hurts, his bones ache, he starts having real crushes on girls, and his voice sounds like a "cross between a frog with laryngitis and a country-western singer." He is finally growing up, and he doesn't like it. He starts having to shave, he can't seem to talk to his dad anymore, and he even blows up at Whit about losing a part in a play. He writes in a journal that he doesn't like having to deal with these changes and feelings. I think this is about the closest Odyssey ever got to dealing with the issues and problems that teenagers face as they grow up. Many people have complained as they got older that AIO continued to get more and more irrelevant to them, and that they wanted more shows that they could relate to. I think it's quite obvious why the Odyssey team never really decided to do that: there are continually new young listener who wouldn't be able to themselves relate to episodes featuring older kids. So I'm glad that the show has stayed at the right age level, but I'm also glad that we got to have this episode.

In the next Barclay episode, Moses: the Passover, the theme of George trying to communicate with his son continues when the two of them are whisked away on an Imagination Station adventure to Egypt on Jimmy's birthday. I think this is one of the most touching and entertaining Imagination Station adventures, but that's probably because I don't think we own it, so I don't hear it very often. This episode handles the subject of the atonement very well for a children's show. Jimmy, although a firstborn, is not killed by the Angel of Death, even though he's not in a house with blood on it, because he is already covered by the blood of Jesus. This kind of episode is one of the reasons my family sticks with Odyssey even when we have bad seasons like 51 and 52. Although Odyssey can get too modernized and worldly at times, they still have stuck to the old time Christian values, and don't seem to be moving too far away from them yet.

As Jimmy gets older, he becomes pretty much the central character in the Barclay family. During this period, he does things such as: ask to get his ears pierced (pretty much as a joke; I don't think the writers really meant for him to be serious), start a slightly coarse and vulgar talk show on Kids' Radio, and almost he almost uses all his money on a pair of tennis shes that "blow up!" But then comes Lawrence. In shows like Wonderworld and Terror from the Skies, Jimmy learns responsibility as he has to babysit a young boy named Lawrence Hodges with an enormous imagination. Together they go to places in Lawrence's imagination such as a prisoners-of-war camp, Nottingham Forest, the African veldt, and Destructo headquarters. Lawrence has such an influence on Jimmy that in Terror from the Skies, he (along with the help of Edwin Blackgaard's radio program) gets Jimmy to believe that aliens have landed in Odyssey and they are attacking Whit's End and Lawrence's mom! Lawrence's character comes to more importance when the Barclays get to go on vacation to Hawaii.

Well, that about gets through the next third of the Barclays' lives in Odyssey. I don't want to be making posts much longer than this anymore, so I'm going to stop it right here. Next week I'll get into the parts of the show when George is seeking to be a pastor, and how the family ultimately moves to Pokenberry Falls.

If you haven't checked it out yet, go listen to the clips from Album 53 that you can find here. They don't reveal too much about the new season, but they definitely got me excited.

Thanks for reading! Please comment!

Mr., Mrs., Ms., Master, and Jr. Barclay (The Barclays)--Part I

I was a little scared to do a post on the Barclays, because I was afraid I'd either make it way too long or way too short, and since the Barclays are the most popular family in Odyssey, I figured I should do it right if at all. But I think I got it figured out. I think I'm going to go through some of their biggest family events, and then go through character by character.

We first meet the Barclays in Family Vacation where we are immediately introduced to each one of the characters' personalities which remain almost exactly the same throughout the entire show. We learn that Jimmy and Donna love to argue, and aren't exactly best friends, we learn that George Barclay is the king of sarcasm, and that Mary Barclay is as pleasant and submissive and motherly as any man would want his wife to be. In this episode however, the parents were played by different actors than they would be for the rest of the show, but apparently due to their unpopularity, they were changed by the next show. Chuck Bolte, producer of Odyssey for a long time, has ever since been Mr. Barclay, and has been one of the best actors on the show. I don't know what it its about Mrs. Barclay though, because in the next show, she was played by an actress who was only around for the next four shows, and then she was changed again to an actress who played her for eleven shows. And finally, after those episodes, Carol Bilger came along who continued to play Mary until the Barclays went off the show on her eighteenth episode. I think this last Mrs. Barclay was my favorite one, but probably just because she's in the most episodes that I own.

Anyway, in the next few episodes, Jimmy and Donna play minor parts in episodes, usually hanging out at Whit's End, helping with a play or asking Whit or Connie for advice. Also, Jimmy goes to camp where he is seen hanging out with the friends that he seems to have for this period in time. But the next big Barclay episode is one of most fans' all-time favorite episodes--Our Best Vacation Ever. In this episode, because the family doesn't have enough money, and all of the kids' friends are going somewhere, Whit suggests that they have a vacation at home. This results in a massive water fight, camping in the living room, a trip to the zoo and then Trickle Lake, and then helping out at Tom Riley's barn-raising party. I personally am not a huge fan of this episode, but that's just because I've listened to it countless times as a result of it being in my first Odyssey collection ever. However, I am fairly entertained every time I hear it, and it's a favorite of my younger siblings. We've even gone on local vacations of our own a few times, as I'm sure other listeners have.

Over the next couple episodes, Jimmy goes to Nicaragua and helps Dan Isidro, one of Whit's missionary friends (oh yeah, did I mention it's a dream? ;D), and Donna is forced to host the Fall Festival, which she is hesitant to do because of bad memories about her deceased friend Karen. The next Barclay family episode features them shuffling off a homeless family to Whit at Christmastime. But they are reminded of the bad Christmas they had the year before, and realize that they don't want that family to suffer the same way. Then, continuing the winter theme, in the next show, the Barclays go on yet another vacation to a ski resort, where the main concept of the story is a crush Donna has on her ski instructor, later leading to heartbreak when she realizes he already has a girlfriend. It kind of makes sense that the writer of this episode never wrote any others. :) Nevertheless, the escapade leads to a bonding between Donna and George, and George realizes that his daughter really is growing up.

Throughout the next section of the Barclays' lives in Odyssey, Jimmy goes on an Imagination Station adventure and meets Abraham Lincoln, the Barclay house almost burns down (not really, but according to the kids. ;D), Jimmy gets bad advice from Connie, has some Trouble with Girls, and then, in one of Odyssey's most intense shows, his cousin pulls him into a "fantasy, role-playing game" called Castles & Cauldrons. This is the only AIO episode that features a parental warning from Dr. James Dobson at the beginning of the show, telling parents about the danger of such games and how they often lead to contact with the spirit world. This episode scared me when I was younger, but now I think that it was one of the most well-done episodes Odyssey has ever produced. It really accomplishes its goal in getting kids concerned enough about these types of games, which were apparently popular back then, that they wouldn't want to follow other kids into these foolish activities. Whit ends up destroying the game, the Barclay family goes back to normal, and the game and the topic of spirits and demons, aren't really ever mentioned in Odyssey again.

Well, this gets us about one-third of the way through the Barclays' time in Odyssey, and I don't have any more time to write, and this'll probably get too long if I go any longer, so I'm going to save the rest for next week, and maybe even into the week after that.

I hope you enjoyed this first part of the review on the Barclay family, and Lordwilling, there will be more to come! Please comment!

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P.S. The Odyssey Scoop has reported that there is a new Odyssey collection that has been released on the FOTF store's website called The Adoption Collection that features the three Odyssey episodes about adoption: Clara, and The Chosen One Parts I and II. I'm pretty confident that it is legitimate, but I don't think it looks all that great, and it's weird that we haven't heard about it until now. But here it is if you're interested.

Also, on the latest Official Podcast, we were told that we should go back to the podcast page on February 1st for a big surprise. I'll post about it as soon as possible.

Thank you for reading!