44. A Good and Doubtful Servant
Why Olivia's faith story arc was worth it.
By David Hilder | July 29, 2022
Why Olivia's faith story arc was worth it.
By David Hilder | July 29, 2022
There comes a time in a fictional character’s life when they must broaden their horizons, get out and experience the world—or experience the real-life challenges that are all too common in our fallen world. Any long-lasting character goes through this. Stories are about conflict, after all, and in a long-running series like Adventures in Odyssey those conflicts eventually ramp up, taking our characters into new directions that we haven’t heard before. That’s what puts the drama in audio drama. Our own Connie Kendall has experienced plenty of drama in her life. Her dramatic escape back to California and conversion to Christ, her rocky relationship and breakup with action-hero Robert Mitchell, and the loss of her mom to an unexpected heart attack—each of these moments hurled Connie headlong into a crisis. And out of every one of these trying times, Connie emerged a stronger person. Olivia Parker is the latest AIO character to go through such an experience.
In Albums 71 and 72, Olivia’s crisis of faith leads her down a dark road as she questions everything her parents have taught her about God and the Christian worldview. She isolates herself from everyone, her family, her friends, even Mr. Whittaker. She listens to the lies of the enemy, and heaps guilt upon herself for something that wasn’t her fault—the tragic death of her science teacher on a school ski trip. This is clearly the darkest place we have ever seen Olivia Parker.
Some listeners might object to Adventures in Odyssey telling such a story. A kid questioning and potentially losing their faith? That’s very serious. We’ve had atheist characters on the show before like Cryin’ Bryan Dern and Bart Rathbone. They certainly mocked Christianity, but they’ve never gone so far as to pose cogent arguments against it. In her quest for inclusion in Album 58, Miss Adelaide came into conflict with traditional Christian doctrine, but overall she had a positive motivation and agreed to compromise with Mr. Whittaker. But never before have we had a character voice the kind of sustained, potent objections to the Christian faith and belief in God that come from the mouth of atheist philosopher Leonid Sepanov: If God is real, is he all-powerful? Then how can he be all-good when evil and suffering exist in the world? How can we trust the Bible? Wasn’t it just made up by some random guys who had an interest in writing fairy tales? Don’t you believe in God only because your parents taught you? What’s so great about Christians anyway? Haven’t you heard about the Crusades and televangelist frauds?
Could such arguments cause listeners to question their own faith? It’s been said that when you experience a story you begin to feel empathy for the main character. You look at things from their perspective and begin to vicariously experience their thoughts, feelings, and encounters. When I listened to this story arc, I certainly felt I could understand the frustrations and questions Olivia had. Some of her questions were questions I’ve had myself in the past. But of course, Olivia isn’t the only character to feel empathy for. There’s Wilson Knox, Eva Parker, Connie Kendall, Mr. Whittaker, and perhaps most of all Zoe. Without Olivia’s friend Zoe, this story arc would have felt very different. Zoe tries so hard to get Olivia back on track, to help her see the truth, and yet again and again her efforts seem to end in failure. As I listened, I couldn’t help but feel empathy for Zoe. I felt Zoe’s hopes and fears; I felt her urgency to help Olivia. When Zoe says, “I lost her,” I think we all felt her heartbreak. I was struck by how much Zoe loves her friend Olivia, and the lengths she would go to bring her back from the brink. And as much as Zoe loved Olivia, I was reminded how a friend’s love is only a shadow compared to the magnificent love of God. He, more than anyone, wants his lost sheep to come home.
Even as Olivia is coming up with questions about faith in God, her friends in Odyssey are lovingly providing answers to every one of those questions. I think it was a great idea for writer Marshal Younger to plan out the story arc this way, providing supports for Christianity in each and every episode. That way we don’t have to wait until the end of the series to hear a Christian rebuttal. Rather than cause listeners to question their faith, I believe these episodes will help listeners to think through their faith. What do you believe and why do you believe it? A kid may not have a ready answer to that question. They may not have thought about it before. But after hearing these episodes and the arguments in favor of the Christian faith, they will definitely have a good place to start.
And let’s be honest. If kids are not already hearing atheist arguments, they soon will. Whether it’s from a friend, a movie or show, social media, or a teacher or college professor, opposition to Christianity is everywhere. It’s better that kids hear how to deal with these arguments in a venue like Adventures in Odyssey rather than encounter them somewhere else.
Olivia’s crisis of faith works as a powerful addition to a show that has been telling great stories for decades, not least because the story arc itself fits well with Olivia’s character. Olivia has been on the show for over ten years now. So it makes sense dramatically that it would be time for her as a character to experience some new, more extreme challenges she hasn’t before. And more than that, the audience has gotten a chance to know and love her over the years. Imagine if Olivia’s story arc had started in Album 51 with Olivia as a brand-new character. It would have been a lot harder to get into as a listener.
But we know Olivia by now. We know her strengths and weaknesses, and her experience with the Christian faith. We know, for example, that Olivia has a lot of knowledge about the Bible, or at least it looks that way on the surface. In Wooton Knows Best (Album 54), Olivia memorizes Bible verses to win a competition to become Wooton’s camp assistant, but misses out on the fact that she needs to put those verses into practice, in contrast to her brother Matthew. In Hidden Gems (Season 2) Olivia prides herself in knowing all the stories in the Bible, but that turns out not to be the case. And in Met His Match (Season 5), Olivia twists the Bible to convince Penny to go along with her plans. Olivia has also been known to have an incomplete understanding of Christian beliefs, leading to a potential conflict with Mr. Whittaker. In Album 58, Olivia questions Mr. Whittaker’s teaching and asks, “What’s wrong with people living the way they want to, with whomever they want to marry or call a family? If that’s what they want to be happy?” Though Whit is able to clear up her confusion in this case, using the Room of Consequence, it points to the fact that Olivia hasn’t really thought through her Christian beliefs and made them her own. In this latest story arc Whit uses the Imagination Station to help Olivia, but I’m glad it doesn’t produce an immediate conversion like Digger Digwillow. Olivia clearly isn’t ready for that yet. And it leaves room for an even more impactful ending which ties the episodes together beautifully.
Besides being true to Olivia’s character, Olivia’s faith story arc is filled with numerous elements which build on AIO’s past. There are characters and incidents which mirror or tweak aspects that we’ve heard before on the show. So although the specifics of Olivia’s circumstances may be unprecedented, the whole story arc still feels very “Odyssey”. And it feels that way from the very beginning.
When I first listened to The Christmas Bells (Album 70), in which Pastor Wilson Knox seems to get the prophetic word that “one of three will fall”, I was intrigued. Though I was interested in the mystery of which character he could be referring to, I think I was more interested in the fact that Wilson had received this message at all, evidently from God. Mr. Whittaker himself has had similar moments, but it usual comes to him as a feeling in his spirit, rather than a direct message. Wilson is different. But he isn’t unique when you consider AIO’s past. Wilson has spiritual insights that we haven’t seen since, well, since the days of Jack Allen—or Jack the dreamer as I call him. It is Jack’s prophetic dreams during the Blackgaard saga that give our friends in Odyssey the guidance they need to pursue the good in the midst of the evil attack on Whit’s End. And when Jack meets the alleged angel Malachi in Album 32, Jack says that he’s seen him before. Where? In his dreams of course. How appropriate then that Wilson should have his revelation in Jack’s old antique shop. As Christians we know that there is a spiritual world, and a spiritual battle, all around us. Things are not always as they appear on the surface. We need the spiritual discernment we get from the Holy Spirit to help us navigate the world. Wilson’s message reminds us of this fact, setting the stage for Olivia’s new story arc, while at the same time recalling our minds back to Jack Allen’s experience.
On a side note, Wilson has to be one of AIO’s best-kept secrets. Of his twenty episodes, unfortunately only six are not AIO Club exclusives. Half of those six episodes are in the recent Olivia story arc, in which Wilson stages a well-deserved return to the regular shows. He also brings back the idea of having a pastor as a regular character, which you’d think would be a no-brainer for a Christian show. George Barclay did leave Odyssey over 25 years ago, so it’s about time. And like Jack Allen, he has a history with Mr. Whittaker and can tease, question, and challenge him as only an old friend can.
When I heard Wilson’s prophecy about someone’s “fall” I was also reminded of the Mandy episode Only by His Grace (Album 48), which was originally going to be titled Fall from Grace. According to page 484 of the 2012 Official Guide, the final scene was going to include a hopeless Mandy giving up on church altogether. In this version her parents’ breakup rocked Mandy to the core, disrupting her relationship with God. But the team then decided to go in a different direction. As they later said in the Official Podcast, they didn’t want to make it seem like Mandy had lost her salvation. So, before the episode was released, it was rerecorded with its current ending.
Now, Mandy’s story arc has obvious parallels to Olivia’s. Mandy had been on the show for over eight years and the writers were taking her in a new direction, letting her face a serious conflict that she had never faced before. It brought her to a very dark place in her life. But the issue of divorce had come up in a number of episodes before that. It’s interesting to note that at the time the AIO team wasn’t prepared to deal with the possibility of a kid character going through a time of turning her back on her faith. And I don’t blame them. Getting a story arc like that right for an 8-12 age group is a tall order. That’s why I’m so impressed with what they did with Olivia. I have to say that the Mandy story arc seems almost a little too sad and depressing at times, and just slow. With the Olivia arc I think they got the balance right, leaning into the dramatic angle and the tension of the spiritual battle. Mandy’s inner monologue in the third person, while enlightening as to her thought process, is not especially engaging. At times it feels more like an audiobook than an audio drama. The solution they come up with for revealing Olivia’s thoughts is far more creative.
Olivia’s conversations with Leonid Sepanov tell us a lot about what Olivia’s thinking, all without making us feel like we’re being fed exposition. Leonid is another element that seems familiar to AIO, and yet we’ve never heard someone quite like him. He’s whimsical, lighthearted, and funny. He sounds like he’s always smiling, albeit with a predatory smile no doubt. He’s often hungry, telling Olivia that he wants ice cream, or reheated pizza, or a triple decker sundae. His hunger for treats, though comical, could be an early clue that his desire is to devour, rather than to help Olivia. After all, in 1 Peter 5:8 the devil is described as a wandering lion who looks for someone to devour. As we find out, Leonid is the ultimate devil’s advocate, working tirelessly to draw Olivia away from faith in God. Now, some listeners might object to making the devil seem so silly. I mean, Leonid plays with soap bubbles for crying out loud. But AIO’s diabolical tempters have often been farcical. Just think of the game show Guilt Trip Jeopardy in the episode The Devil Made Me Do It (Album 32), in which demons slobber and chortle over the bad things that some kid named Joey did in the fourth grade. Or consider the talking weed in B-TV: Temptation (Album 49) who sounds suspiciously like comedian Bill Cosby and won’t stop cracking jokes.
Leonid is definitely a step up from those guys. He takes some cues from them, but combines their absurdity with the darker tones of Blackgaard’s Revenge (Album 33). Like Blackgaard, Leonid gets Olivia to question her trust in Mr. Whittaker. And Leonid flatters Olivia too, just as Blackgaard does with Aubrey, telling her she’s smart enough to detect manipulation, all the while doing his best to manipulate Olivia himself. And Leonid does it better than the computer program version of Dr. Blackgaard ever could. After all, Leonid doesn’t appear in this story arc as an arch villain with a checkered history which listeners will be familiar with. Blackgaard isn’t fooling anyone in the audience with his victimhood act. Leonid, on the other hand, isn’t so obviously evil, at least at first. Rather, he appears in the guise of a harmless, imaginary friend.
Again, this is an element we’ve seen before in past shows. Think of Trent’s trio of imaginary friends in The Present Long Ago (Album 44), or Lester’s invisible dog in the aptly-named episode, The Invisible Dog (Album 44), or Bethany’s imaginary friend in another aptly-named episode, Bethany’s Imaginary Friend (Album 33). The imaginations of Buddy Norman and Lawrence Hodges are full of elements that don’t exist in reality. And this is why I got tricked when I first heard the Olivia arc. Leonid’s silliness lured me into a false sense of security. It seems obvious in hindsight, but at the time I just accepted Leonid as yet another quirky, imaginary friend. Sure, he was a little eccentric and he didn’t believe in God, but I thought he was simply a means to give voice to Olivia’s inner thoughts and doubts. When the reveal came in that excellent moment of sound design magic, with Leonid’s voice shifting into a diabolical register, I may have audibly gasped. Suddenly everything made a lot more sense. The spiritual battle appeared front and center and I began to appreciate these episodes even more than I already did.
And of course, I should have remembered the importance of the spiritual battle in relation to these shows because Wilson keeps bringing it up, and because of Wilson’s spiritual insight at the beginning of the story arc. But that moment with Leonid’s voice change just makes it so clear in a powerful way. The spiritual battle is real and we have an enemy. It’s this revelation about the dark spiritual forces at play which then makes this story arc’s ending so appropriate.
Prayer is an important part of the spiritual battle. That scene in the church, with all those people praying for Olivia, is so moving. It’s similar to the courtroom scene near the end of Novacom, which is intercut with snippets of people praying for Tom Riley. As Whit tells Olivia, “God gave you these people.” Including Zoe, who never gives up on the fight for her dear friend. Including Wilson, who directs Olivia and strengthens Zoe through the ordeal. Including Connie, who provides answers to important theological questions. And including Mrs. Norton, the wife of the science teacher Mr. Norton, who plays the comforter role to Olivia rather than it being the other way around. It’s worth noting that it was the power of prayer that Olivia didn’t want to believe in anymore. She got the mistaken idea that her prayer led to Mr. Norton’s death, and so she didn’t want to believe that her prayers meant anything anymore. But, in a perfect parallel, it’s the prayers of Olivia’s friends that draw her home.
Another important part of the spiritual battle is the reading of scripture. When Jesus was tempted by Satan in the wilderness, he quoted scripture in response. As Olivia reads the words of Jesus from the Bible, Leonid Sepanov has to leave. And good riddance. Olivia won’t be as easily fooled again by his line of attack, and I pray listeners won't be either.
What could have been just a series about intellectual arguments for and against the Christian faith becomes so much more. With the Olivia faith story arc, the Odyssey team has created a series of episodes which subtly reveals the ongoing spiritual battle affecting our ordinary lives. They did it in the context of dealing with doubt, which is a tough issue in itself, and were careful to address it with care and attention. They took into account legitimate parental concerns and created something which addresses real and serious issues, is dramatic and compelling as a story, and points to the hope we have in Christ, all while keeping with the feel and flavor of Adventures in Odyssey. I’m especially glad that the writers put so much thought and time—years in fact—into planning this arc.
And I’m hopeful that we will have many more episodes to come exploring the friendship of Zoe and Olivia, and their growing spiritual maturity. They have both gone through a lot in this series and it would be wonderful to see how that affects them as people. It should be noted that kid characters, if they’re popular, tend to last around ten years on the show. Characters like Mandy and Jimmy lasted about ten years. Lucy lasted eight and a half. Then we tend to shift into a new era of kids. So by that reasoning Olivia and the Parkers should be on her way out. But after this experience, I’d be happy to see Olivia continue in some capacity. Yes, we need to make room for new families. If somehow Olivia happens to outlast the Parker family, I think that would be a very positive thing for the show. Olivia has just been strengthened and reestablished in her faith. I’m excited to see where her faith takes her in the adventures to come.
In Albums 71 and 72, Olivia’s crisis of faith leads her down a dark road as she questions everything her parents have taught her about God and the Christian worldview. She isolates herself from everyone, her family, her friends, even Mr. Whittaker. She listens to the lies of the enemy, and heaps guilt upon herself for something that wasn’t her fault—the tragic death of her science teacher on a school ski trip. This is clearly the darkest place we have ever seen Olivia Parker.
Some listeners might object to Adventures in Odyssey telling such a story. A kid questioning and potentially losing their faith? That’s very serious. We’ve had atheist characters on the show before like Cryin’ Bryan Dern and Bart Rathbone. They certainly mocked Christianity, but they’ve never gone so far as to pose cogent arguments against it. In her quest for inclusion in Album 58, Miss Adelaide came into conflict with traditional Christian doctrine, but overall she had a positive motivation and agreed to compromise with Mr. Whittaker. But never before have we had a character voice the kind of sustained, potent objections to the Christian faith and belief in God that come from the mouth of atheist philosopher Leonid Sepanov: If God is real, is he all-powerful? Then how can he be all-good when evil and suffering exist in the world? How can we trust the Bible? Wasn’t it just made up by some random guys who had an interest in writing fairy tales? Don’t you believe in God only because your parents taught you? What’s so great about Christians anyway? Haven’t you heard about the Crusades and televangelist frauds?
Could such arguments cause listeners to question their own faith? It’s been said that when you experience a story you begin to feel empathy for the main character. You look at things from their perspective and begin to vicariously experience their thoughts, feelings, and encounters. When I listened to this story arc, I certainly felt I could understand the frustrations and questions Olivia had. Some of her questions were questions I’ve had myself in the past. But of course, Olivia isn’t the only character to feel empathy for. There’s Wilson Knox, Eva Parker, Connie Kendall, Mr. Whittaker, and perhaps most of all Zoe. Without Olivia’s friend Zoe, this story arc would have felt very different. Zoe tries so hard to get Olivia back on track, to help her see the truth, and yet again and again her efforts seem to end in failure. As I listened, I couldn’t help but feel empathy for Zoe. I felt Zoe’s hopes and fears; I felt her urgency to help Olivia. When Zoe says, “I lost her,” I think we all felt her heartbreak. I was struck by how much Zoe loves her friend Olivia, and the lengths she would go to bring her back from the brink. And as much as Zoe loved Olivia, I was reminded how a friend’s love is only a shadow compared to the magnificent love of God. He, more than anyone, wants his lost sheep to come home.
Even as Olivia is coming up with questions about faith in God, her friends in Odyssey are lovingly providing answers to every one of those questions. I think it was a great idea for writer Marshal Younger to plan out the story arc this way, providing supports for Christianity in each and every episode. That way we don’t have to wait until the end of the series to hear a Christian rebuttal. Rather than cause listeners to question their faith, I believe these episodes will help listeners to think through their faith. What do you believe and why do you believe it? A kid may not have a ready answer to that question. They may not have thought about it before. But after hearing these episodes and the arguments in favor of the Christian faith, they will definitely have a good place to start.
And let’s be honest. If kids are not already hearing atheist arguments, they soon will. Whether it’s from a friend, a movie or show, social media, or a teacher or college professor, opposition to Christianity is everywhere. It’s better that kids hear how to deal with these arguments in a venue like Adventures in Odyssey rather than encounter them somewhere else.
Olivia’s crisis of faith works as a powerful addition to a show that has been telling great stories for decades, not least because the story arc itself fits well with Olivia’s character. Olivia has been on the show for over ten years now. So it makes sense dramatically that it would be time for her as a character to experience some new, more extreme challenges she hasn’t before. And more than that, the audience has gotten a chance to know and love her over the years. Imagine if Olivia’s story arc had started in Album 51 with Olivia as a brand-new character. It would have been a lot harder to get into as a listener.
But we know Olivia by now. We know her strengths and weaknesses, and her experience with the Christian faith. We know, for example, that Olivia has a lot of knowledge about the Bible, or at least it looks that way on the surface. In Wooton Knows Best (Album 54), Olivia memorizes Bible verses to win a competition to become Wooton’s camp assistant, but misses out on the fact that she needs to put those verses into practice, in contrast to her brother Matthew. In Hidden Gems (Season 2) Olivia prides herself in knowing all the stories in the Bible, but that turns out not to be the case. And in Met His Match (Season 5), Olivia twists the Bible to convince Penny to go along with her plans. Olivia has also been known to have an incomplete understanding of Christian beliefs, leading to a potential conflict with Mr. Whittaker. In Album 58, Olivia questions Mr. Whittaker’s teaching and asks, “What’s wrong with people living the way they want to, with whomever they want to marry or call a family? If that’s what they want to be happy?” Though Whit is able to clear up her confusion in this case, using the Room of Consequence, it points to the fact that Olivia hasn’t really thought through her Christian beliefs and made them her own. In this latest story arc Whit uses the Imagination Station to help Olivia, but I’m glad it doesn’t produce an immediate conversion like Digger Digwillow. Olivia clearly isn’t ready for that yet. And it leaves room for an even more impactful ending which ties the episodes together beautifully.
Besides being true to Olivia’s character, Olivia’s faith story arc is filled with numerous elements which build on AIO’s past. There are characters and incidents which mirror or tweak aspects that we’ve heard before on the show. So although the specifics of Olivia’s circumstances may be unprecedented, the whole story arc still feels very “Odyssey”. And it feels that way from the very beginning.
When I first listened to The Christmas Bells (Album 70), in which Pastor Wilson Knox seems to get the prophetic word that “one of three will fall”, I was intrigued. Though I was interested in the mystery of which character he could be referring to, I think I was more interested in the fact that Wilson had received this message at all, evidently from God. Mr. Whittaker himself has had similar moments, but it usual comes to him as a feeling in his spirit, rather than a direct message. Wilson is different. But he isn’t unique when you consider AIO’s past. Wilson has spiritual insights that we haven’t seen since, well, since the days of Jack Allen—or Jack the dreamer as I call him. It is Jack’s prophetic dreams during the Blackgaard saga that give our friends in Odyssey the guidance they need to pursue the good in the midst of the evil attack on Whit’s End. And when Jack meets the alleged angel Malachi in Album 32, Jack says that he’s seen him before. Where? In his dreams of course. How appropriate then that Wilson should have his revelation in Jack’s old antique shop. As Christians we know that there is a spiritual world, and a spiritual battle, all around us. Things are not always as they appear on the surface. We need the spiritual discernment we get from the Holy Spirit to help us navigate the world. Wilson’s message reminds us of this fact, setting the stage for Olivia’s new story arc, while at the same time recalling our minds back to Jack Allen’s experience.
On a side note, Wilson has to be one of AIO’s best-kept secrets. Of his twenty episodes, unfortunately only six are not AIO Club exclusives. Half of those six episodes are in the recent Olivia story arc, in which Wilson stages a well-deserved return to the regular shows. He also brings back the idea of having a pastor as a regular character, which you’d think would be a no-brainer for a Christian show. George Barclay did leave Odyssey over 25 years ago, so it’s about time. And like Jack Allen, he has a history with Mr. Whittaker and can tease, question, and challenge him as only an old friend can.
When I heard Wilson’s prophecy about someone’s “fall” I was also reminded of the Mandy episode Only by His Grace (Album 48), which was originally going to be titled Fall from Grace. According to page 484 of the 2012 Official Guide, the final scene was going to include a hopeless Mandy giving up on church altogether. In this version her parents’ breakup rocked Mandy to the core, disrupting her relationship with God. But the team then decided to go in a different direction. As they later said in the Official Podcast, they didn’t want to make it seem like Mandy had lost her salvation. So, before the episode was released, it was rerecorded with its current ending.
Now, Mandy’s story arc has obvious parallels to Olivia’s. Mandy had been on the show for over eight years and the writers were taking her in a new direction, letting her face a serious conflict that she had never faced before. It brought her to a very dark place in her life. But the issue of divorce had come up in a number of episodes before that. It’s interesting to note that at the time the AIO team wasn’t prepared to deal with the possibility of a kid character going through a time of turning her back on her faith. And I don’t blame them. Getting a story arc like that right for an 8-12 age group is a tall order. That’s why I’m so impressed with what they did with Olivia. I have to say that the Mandy story arc seems almost a little too sad and depressing at times, and just slow. With the Olivia arc I think they got the balance right, leaning into the dramatic angle and the tension of the spiritual battle. Mandy’s inner monologue in the third person, while enlightening as to her thought process, is not especially engaging. At times it feels more like an audiobook than an audio drama. The solution they come up with for revealing Olivia’s thoughts is far more creative.
Olivia’s conversations with Leonid Sepanov tell us a lot about what Olivia’s thinking, all without making us feel like we’re being fed exposition. Leonid is another element that seems familiar to AIO, and yet we’ve never heard someone quite like him. He’s whimsical, lighthearted, and funny. He sounds like he’s always smiling, albeit with a predatory smile no doubt. He’s often hungry, telling Olivia that he wants ice cream, or reheated pizza, or a triple decker sundae. His hunger for treats, though comical, could be an early clue that his desire is to devour, rather than to help Olivia. After all, in 1 Peter 5:8 the devil is described as a wandering lion who looks for someone to devour. As we find out, Leonid is the ultimate devil’s advocate, working tirelessly to draw Olivia away from faith in God. Now, some listeners might object to making the devil seem so silly. I mean, Leonid plays with soap bubbles for crying out loud. But AIO’s diabolical tempters have often been farcical. Just think of the game show Guilt Trip Jeopardy in the episode The Devil Made Me Do It (Album 32), in which demons slobber and chortle over the bad things that some kid named Joey did in the fourth grade. Or consider the talking weed in B-TV: Temptation (Album 49) who sounds suspiciously like comedian Bill Cosby and won’t stop cracking jokes.
Leonid is definitely a step up from those guys. He takes some cues from them, but combines their absurdity with the darker tones of Blackgaard’s Revenge (Album 33). Like Blackgaard, Leonid gets Olivia to question her trust in Mr. Whittaker. And Leonid flatters Olivia too, just as Blackgaard does with Aubrey, telling her she’s smart enough to detect manipulation, all the while doing his best to manipulate Olivia himself. And Leonid does it better than the computer program version of Dr. Blackgaard ever could. After all, Leonid doesn’t appear in this story arc as an arch villain with a checkered history which listeners will be familiar with. Blackgaard isn’t fooling anyone in the audience with his victimhood act. Leonid, on the other hand, isn’t so obviously evil, at least at first. Rather, he appears in the guise of a harmless, imaginary friend.
Again, this is an element we’ve seen before in past shows. Think of Trent’s trio of imaginary friends in The Present Long Ago (Album 44), or Lester’s invisible dog in the aptly-named episode, The Invisible Dog (Album 44), or Bethany’s imaginary friend in another aptly-named episode, Bethany’s Imaginary Friend (Album 33). The imaginations of Buddy Norman and Lawrence Hodges are full of elements that don’t exist in reality. And this is why I got tricked when I first heard the Olivia arc. Leonid’s silliness lured me into a false sense of security. It seems obvious in hindsight, but at the time I just accepted Leonid as yet another quirky, imaginary friend. Sure, he was a little eccentric and he didn’t believe in God, but I thought he was simply a means to give voice to Olivia’s inner thoughts and doubts. When the reveal came in that excellent moment of sound design magic, with Leonid’s voice shifting into a diabolical register, I may have audibly gasped. Suddenly everything made a lot more sense. The spiritual battle appeared front and center and I began to appreciate these episodes even more than I already did.
And of course, I should have remembered the importance of the spiritual battle in relation to these shows because Wilson keeps bringing it up, and because of Wilson’s spiritual insight at the beginning of the story arc. But that moment with Leonid’s voice change just makes it so clear in a powerful way. The spiritual battle is real and we have an enemy. It’s this revelation about the dark spiritual forces at play which then makes this story arc’s ending so appropriate.
Prayer is an important part of the spiritual battle. That scene in the church, with all those people praying for Olivia, is so moving. It’s similar to the courtroom scene near the end of Novacom, which is intercut with snippets of people praying for Tom Riley. As Whit tells Olivia, “God gave you these people.” Including Zoe, who never gives up on the fight for her dear friend. Including Wilson, who directs Olivia and strengthens Zoe through the ordeal. Including Connie, who provides answers to important theological questions. And including Mrs. Norton, the wife of the science teacher Mr. Norton, who plays the comforter role to Olivia rather than it being the other way around. It’s worth noting that it was the power of prayer that Olivia didn’t want to believe in anymore. She got the mistaken idea that her prayer led to Mr. Norton’s death, and so she didn’t want to believe that her prayers meant anything anymore. But, in a perfect parallel, it’s the prayers of Olivia’s friends that draw her home.
Another important part of the spiritual battle is the reading of scripture. When Jesus was tempted by Satan in the wilderness, he quoted scripture in response. As Olivia reads the words of Jesus from the Bible, Leonid Sepanov has to leave. And good riddance. Olivia won’t be as easily fooled again by his line of attack, and I pray listeners won't be either.
What could have been just a series about intellectual arguments for and against the Christian faith becomes so much more. With the Olivia faith story arc, the Odyssey team has created a series of episodes which subtly reveals the ongoing spiritual battle affecting our ordinary lives. They did it in the context of dealing with doubt, which is a tough issue in itself, and were careful to address it with care and attention. They took into account legitimate parental concerns and created something which addresses real and serious issues, is dramatic and compelling as a story, and points to the hope we have in Christ, all while keeping with the feel and flavor of Adventures in Odyssey. I’m especially glad that the writers put so much thought and time—years in fact—into planning this arc.
And I’m hopeful that we will have many more episodes to come exploring the friendship of Zoe and Olivia, and their growing spiritual maturity. They have both gone through a lot in this series and it would be wonderful to see how that affects them as people. It should be noted that kid characters, if they’re popular, tend to last around ten years on the show. Characters like Mandy and Jimmy lasted about ten years. Lucy lasted eight and a half. Then we tend to shift into a new era of kids. So by that reasoning Olivia and the Parkers should be on her way out. But after this experience, I’d be happy to see Olivia continue in some capacity. Yes, we need to make room for new families. If somehow Olivia happens to outlast the Parker family, I think that would be a very positive thing for the show. Olivia has just been strengthened and reestablished in her faith. I’m excited to see where her faith takes her in the adventures to come.
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