Kris Crossed Review:

  

 Episode 1000 of Adventures in Odyssey woo!!! Here is a quick summary for those who missed it. Student council president Emily Jones is accused of assaulting a Model UN rep from Connsville Middle School. The situation spirals and the Connsville paper picks it up and runs with it, which in turn could hurt her dad, Judge Simon Jones’ re-election campaign. Meanwhile, a sculpture is destroyed at the art gallery and somehow the stories intersect.

    I like these episodes because of the spy theme. The team is at work once again with Emily being the person in need instead of Morrie. Now realistically the team don’t make sense. In what universe would you need a star football player, a kleptomaniac detective, a Christian leader detective, and a computer hacker to help you solve crimes? But I digress. This world is better than ours and one I would want to live in. However, on a technical level the episodes do not make any sense. First of all, why is Emily forced to represent the Model UN as Student Body President? Those are two separate clubs, but I digress. According to the accuser she pushed her and berated her because she would vote for the plan to end world hunger. How is this not immediately disproven? School halls have security cameras that could have easily disproven this. Unfortunately for Em, because she lost her badge and the accuser had the badge, that was proof enough. Emily decided not to fight the charges to reduce publicity and help her dad’s election chance and was put on probation.

Previously at the art gallery, Cooper and Suzu meet Anthony, a former high school student, and Barbara, who is the runner-up in the gallery contest. A few days later Morrie and Cooper are on the golf range meeting her and they chat about the egg and how it is unworthy of its praise. Interestingly enough, the egg is destroyed shortly after.

    Part one ends with Suzu sending a letter to the Connsville student newspaper defending Emily. Unfortunately Suzu lied and somehow the photographer has proof of this, so the story is run saying the OMS is covering up the ‘assault.’ This leads to Emily being impeached and kicked out of office as president. The moral of the story is that you shouldn’t lie.

    Now, as much as I would like this to be possible—with full investigative journalism in student newspapers, local media reporting on it, and it swaying a real-life election—I have read student newspapers. SNO News, the agency that manages the bulk of student news websites, provides a nice list of all the sites in their network and those papers are a lot more topical. No scandals, no investigations. No intrepid detective using it to solve crimes.

    Onto part two. Emily is upset with Suzu for causing her to lose her office and Cooper and Morrie keep investigating the crime at the gallery. After unsuccessfully accusing Barbara of breaking the egg they go back home to regroup. There they find the accuser is Barbara’s niece and that the swing looks to be Anthony’s. Emily and Suzu help them tie it all together and they go confront them on the golf course. Unfortunately the plan doesn’t work and it looks like evil has prevailed—until Suzu somehow TRACKS THE ACCUSER’S PHONE, confronts her, and lies that Barbara confessed.

    Now this entire plot is so convoluted. Why would the news pick up the story that was run in a middle school paper? How would they all know each other? How would the egg being vandalized make it so that Barbara would win the contest? How would Barbara know that Suzu and Emily would be separated from each other? How would Anthony know that Emily is Student Body President? How on earth does Suzu track some random kid’s phone? The episode doesn’t answer these questions, but the moral is that Suzu was wrong for helping Emily and solving the case??? Was Emily just supposed to wait for the airtight scheme to crumble??

In any case these were good fun episodes.