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serendertothesquad · 5 months

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I can finally go off about the Odd Squad Season 3 pitch bible (AKA happy 9th anniversary to this big lil' franchise)

I had originally wanted to do a little analysis video on this thing, and maybe I will someday, but for now here's a text version of that video.

I have not found the overall series bible -- and oh you better believe me when I say I've tried, and oh you better believe me when I say I have found shit -- but if I die before it's unearthed, then it will be, perhaps, the greatest failure in my pseudo-career as Odd Squad fandom leader. We've had cast members reveal pink drafts of scripts, we've found deleted scenes in some episodes...I just wanna see the big old pitch bible for the entire show. (Why didn't Sinking Ship Entertainment give me that when they sent me a fan package in exchange for me not promoting watching the show via VPNs? The fan package was nice but if I got a copy of a nice thick happy show bible I think it'd cure my depression!)

"But Seren, you managed to get PBS's Metadata Bank wiped from public view of everyone on the Internet who isn't a PBS employee, won't the same thing happen aga-" Shhh. Shhhhhhh. The answer is no. Absolutely not. Not on your life. Worst-case scenario is that a Season 4 bible is decided to be kept locked in a vault that's tighter than anything Disney could ever craft.

Can we move on now? Right, cool. Then let's go.

Y'know, it's sad that they continue to uphold that Season 1 and Season 2 were set in Nondescript Town, Nondescript State despite any and all evidence pointing to both being set in Toronto. I don't care if it makes it seem more local to kids. Some kids don't really have a giant-ass replica of their town's name sitting in their town's main square.

"But it's in the backgro-" Shhhhh. We're talking about the demographic that weaponizes brutal honesty better than John Wick weaponizes his own two fists. Shhhhhh. I'm willing to bet some kid has noticed that sign.

Tim McKeon and Adam Peltzman had the balls to put in a merch pitch that would have made Hasbro execs slam their hands on the table and then immediately go in for the deal-closing handshake.

No but seriously, they could have made bank on selling miniature vans. Osmerelda had a mini-van toy of her own in "Monumental Oddness", even! Odd Squad's already just slightly toyetic, one more injection won't hu- wait, the chance has passed now. Well, fuck. Never mind.

But ohhhh no, that's not even the most egregious part. The most egregious part is the fact that they called Creature Room employees...ah..."creature wranglers". Quite obviously, we know that's not all they do...I mean look at Ocean, as one example.

...Okay that's not so egregious.

Also, I, uh...well...they're not so much "roles" so much as they are "departments". You don't really go into a job interview at the local Target saying you'd like to apply for the role of part-time cashier like it's a school play and you really wanna strut your stuff. Odd Squad is a workplace. It has always been a workplace. Let's stick to the roots.

And while you guys do that, let's move on to the characters! This is one of the things I most want to see from an Odd Squad show bible, because if PBS can hike up their belts and declare Oprah to be physically seven years old right on the Wild Wild Internet, for all we know Olive could have been named Olivia somewhere in pre-production and they wanted to make her a hell of a lot more fucked-up than she turned out to be.

You know what's also sad? The fact that no one has the balls to admit that Odd Squad has precincts and it's not just smaller offices also named Odd Squad under a Big Office that's probably named, oh no you better not guess it, Odd Squad.

Let's be honest here, Opal is by far and away the most "we erased only the small smudges but she's otherwise polished" character in here. Everyone else has characterization that differs wildly from the final products. Opal...not so much. Pretty much everything said about her here is right on the money.

Except for, uh...that third paragraph. Let me word-vomit about that.

It does not matter how hard the franchise will try and make you believe Opal is not the leader. The fact of the matter is, she is the leader, de facto, and as such, she takes charge in all kinds of situations. However, that doesn't necessarily mean she's not keen on passing the buck to her teammates, as she's done it before (see, blugh, "Odd Squad in the Shadows") and she's more than willing to do it if she has to. This is a trait I honestly would have loved to have seen in her -- an Opal who decides to go-off-queen on her teammates by saying that she's the boss and what she says goes would have been more entertaining to watch than the final product we got. Opal's an enjoyable character, but she could have used a lot more polishing to make her as perfect of a character as her predecessors. Yes, even with the story arc.

Such a good example of this unused trait in action would be with a plotline similar to "O For a Day" -- Opal is forced to fill in for an Odd Squad Director after they get ill or sick in some way, and as a result, she slowly begins to get drunk on her own power until it becomes full-blown alcoholism and it gets to be at its utter detrimental peak for the precinct and the agents that work there. Maybe she micromanages like a boss bitch so that it's micro-micromanaging. Maybe she has her sanity go weeeeeaaaaaaaow down the drain. Maybe she becomes what CEOs of corporations aspire to become. Whatever the outcome, it could have served as wonderful character development for her and showed that being a leader is no easy task and choosing one is not a "pick a name outta a hat" method.

Whereas Opal is a sort of weak expy of past characters (Olive/Otto) -- and even that could be a stretch -- Omar is explicitly referred to here as an expy of Olympia and Otto, which...well yeah, actually that's pretty accurate.

You know who he's also an expy of? Pinkie Pi- nah that joke got old fast in 2016, I'm not revivin' it again.

Omar is one agent out of the group whose personality remains largely the same, but also has something just a teeny-tiny bit...off. In this case, the thing that's off here is the fact that he's gullible. So let me word-vomit about this too, and throw some Pepto-Bismol into my Walmart shopping cart while I'm at it.

I'm going to be real with you guys, even though some of you might already be aware of this: Otto is not a gullible motherfucker. He's really not. If some random stranger on the street waddled on up to me and asked me what the first word I'd use to describe Otto would be, "gullible" would not be the first word that springs to mind. Has he had gullible moments? Oh abso-fuckin'-lutely without a doubt. He's a dum-dum blorbo sometimes and if I gotta be frank with Frank then I like him like that. But is he easily gullible? Yeah no.

Maybe Otto being gullible all the time was something that was planned for when he was nothing but an idea on paper. I've seen enough criticisms about his character development to where I could probably hang that guess out on a limb and pray to the oracle in "Nature of the Sandbeast" that I'm lucky.

But I digress. Omar's gullibility being exploited to hell and back by his teammates would have been amazing to see, but alas, it never really came to pass in Season 3. Would have made for great conflict with The Shadow when she didn't have an obsessive schtick for Opal and didn't decide to wake up and choose the "by proxy" option for her crimes.

Now where in the McFuck can I begin here? Can I start by going inside and telling the cook I'd like a McCrispy Lack of Facts with a side of large What the Fuck and a large WHOA AN ACTUAL ORIGINAL CHARACTER with no ice? Cool, thanks, card got approved and I'd like my receipt please.

To say Orla is a writers' pet is something that you could have some bobo respond to with "citation needed" and get citation...but not really enough citation. For a character that is no expy of any previous one in the franchise and is something birthed from the God of Originality in the Television Industry...well yeah, you could say that justifies it. But Orla is really a fantastic character through and through and she deserves all the love she can get. I mean it's not every day you get a character willing to make people spill their coffees by punching and kicking the ever-loving shit out of an octopus (for simplicity's sake, let's assume it's an octopus, okay? okay) on a network where physical violence can become weirdly memetic at best (I'm side-eyeing you, Arthur) and controversial at worst (I, uh...I can't name any controversies about that. I am sorry).

I'm not about to delve into the historical parts of that paragraph, largely because history is my worst subject. I can say for sure, however, that I see why they changed what she called cars. If we wanna get technical -- and I mean insufferably so -- then cars would technically be the carriage and the horse. The horse serves as the engine, and then you have the carriage as the main body of the vehicle. "Metal chariots" is a more broad term that is far more accurate, because when I, for one, think of a chariot, I think of the carriage and the horse.

Also, I'm pretty sure sandwiches were around back in her time...lemme see here...

Mmmmmhm. As I thought. And let me check the timeline of the show here...

...Oh! Well wouldja look at that! Not exactly 400 years, but close!

Yeah, something tells me a lot of writers on the crew might have gotten an A in comedy but got an F in history. That or they simply went "bitch, we don't give a fuck!"

Tim and Adam slipped in an absolutely beautiful burn that missed the show as much as that one guy who shows up to meetings several hours after conclusions.

Like I said before, and I will repeat: Orla is not an expy of any one character. She is an original character made from scratch like your mother's baked bread. I find it hard to believe that she's a copy of Otis in any aspect outside of "hey, both of our seasons have us as the feature of story arcs". I can kinda sorta see the "surprising skills" aspect, but not by much outside of the season premiere. (Which, to be fair, had her scaling a wall with the same strings the Zephyr Heights royalty used to pull themselves up, but did not have her saying anywhere that she tamed a jaguar. Nowhere does it say she tamed a jaguar. Wrestled alligators, but the fun stops with big cats that can eat your face off.)

Perhaps I can blame that on poor execution within Season 3 itself. After all, it tried to gamble with character development and it failed. And that's just one flaw out of many.

Shifting subjects, though, the most hilarious thing I find about this paragraph is her ability to come up with ideas that are out-of-the-box. Which, for those that have not watched the horror that was the second half of the season and miraculously lived, is Osmerelda's schtick. She is explicitly labeled as the out-of-the-box member of the group. They did a theft-not-theft of something from the pitch bible and slapped it onto Osmerelda and ohhhhhh maybe that's part of the reason why she's terrible as a character.

Wow. Eureka moment! How about that?!

Before I get started on tearin' apart Oswald like a huge-ass Thanksgiving turkey from the supermarket, I'd like to address what has to be one of my biggest pet peeves of the season.

"Librarian/museum worker" is not a thing. Stop trying to make "librarian/museum worker" a thing, Gretchen. It will never be a thing.

If you want to call Oswald by the correct terminology, then allow the Seren to educate you.

He is an Odd Squad Security agent first and foremost. He's got the uniform, he's got the position, he's got the duties, he's got the competence to make Owen eat dirt and live, it's all right there.

Second and backmost...he's a museum curator. A "Curator" is what you call people who work in museums. I know this because I punched it into Google because I'm a petty bitch who eats reruns of A&E shows for every meal.

For what it's worth, I will also accept "museum archivist" and "archives technician". That too.

Okay, have we got that settled? Cool beans. Let's move on.

Oswald as a character is, for all intents and purposes in existence, what happens when you take Oscar, suck every last inch of science out of him, and then replace it with an obscene level of bookbookbookbookBOOKBOOKBOOKBOOK. He's still got the same "sacrifice your lives to the devil that births oddness, here I shall stay in my safe zone" mentality that Oscar does, and he's the smart guy of the team, but that's about it as far as comparisons go. I never really pinned Oscar as a nerdy ol' bookworm anyway, though it would have been amazing and hilarious to see.

That being said, Oswald applying the power of the writing gods' hands to real life and failing tremendously would have been a great trait for him. You know the lil' man would read a book on overcoming social anxiety and pull off a Shocked Pikachu Face when it doesn't work. And then he'd read on why it didn't work, try again with the opposite, and pull off another Shocked Pikachu Face when that fails.

Ah, now, see? These are other traits I would have loved to see in Oswald.

Him being an insufferable jerk who goes "well eckshuelleh" every 5 minutes -- yes, including with exposition, that market of which Oprah had cornered for 8 years -- would have probably made Season 3 more enjoyable, at least for me.

You know what would be a good thing to add to that batter, though? Him being meta.

In Season 3, especially in the second "kids are more forgetful than a backwards elephant" half, Oswald makes a few callbacks to earlier seasons. Which is nice and all, but imagine if he pried through particular cases and nabbed specific events and relayed them to people like it's his job and livelihood. If they had enough balls to make Xavier and Xena utter jerkasses, they could have grown two more to make Oswald an utter jerk, but one with redeemable qualities. As an example of one: he's a jerk who goes "well eckshuelleh" on people, but he does it because he loves the show. He loves Odd Squad lore and history. He's a fanatic.

I mean...well...he loves it already. He's enough of a fanatic and that shit has been proven. But they don't really lean into it all that much. It might as well be more informed than anything else.

But jerking the subject away from that...what if God gave you a character with all the autism traits, and you decided to come out and say "nah, he's not autistic, he's a quirky lil' man"?

You're telling me you can't make the boy canonically autistic in the same way that, ohhhh, I dunno, AJ Gadgets is canonically autistic? Or that one Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood character whose name I forget? You're on a network that embraces diversity the same way wine moms embrace the triple-L of "Live, Laugh, Love" and you had an opportunity...and Tim and Adam both blew it. Out of the water. Nuclear explosion. Does autism exist in the world of Odd Squad? Is there air?! You don't know!

Okay, that's a dumb question. I was reminded that muscular dystrophy exists, along with whatever disability Xena has.

Instead, what they did with Oswald was make him so friendly and sociable with people you wouldn't believe he's been a hermit in the belly of the Big Apple for [REDACTED] years. Which is a waste, because I'd have liked for him to be canonically autistic. They spend so much time on gender and making sure girls and women triumph over men and boys that they forget about disability, y'know?

Ah well. There's always Season 4. But let's be honest, I'm fully prepared for them to laugh and say "there are no autistic people in Manchester, what a silly notion!"

Here's another pet peeve of mine when it comes to this show, and those who have followed me and my biz for a long time probably know this already.

I don't like the formality error on proud display here.

Let's set the record straight. You don't call your boss at work Manager, not unless they're one of those whoo-hoos who knows they're paying you minimum wage for busting your ass and is reveling in it. No one does. No one calls them that.

So exactly why call Oprah by Ms. O? Or even the Big O?

Yes, it's an easy identifier for popularity purposes. Yes, it's her title that everyone calls her by except for a few close pals.

But that's just it -- it's a title. It's not her actual name. It's not like her mom delivered her cesarean-style and decided to name her Ms. O to compete with Elon Musk and whatever gibberish he's named his kid this time. It's not like Oprah decided to get a legal name change to go with her meal of a free promotion. Oprah is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, her actual name, and to insinuate it's not puts you in a silly delusion with a silly mind that might not be so silly.

But, y'know...I've screamed this at people for nearly 9 years now and no one's listened. I was friends with Joshua Kilimnik and had the crew watch my stuff and still no one's listened.

...Maybe I'm the one who's deluded...

...Um.

...

Yeah okay, maybe I might have a point if they're not even bothering with title capitalization anymore.

Not much to spice up here, but if you're wondering where in the blue hell Onika came from: she's from Season 2 of OddTube. Is not an Odd Squad explorer or an oddness finder, but rather, she built an entire 2015 Mercedes-Benz Sprinter, threw some Odd Squad stuff on it, and called it half of a day, all with her own two hands.

Okay, it's hilarious that they're using teamwork and perseverance as an example of "broader themes". Yes, they are broader themes, but you also have:

Bullying

Trauma

Stop being like your family. You are not your family. You are you.

Friendship (is magic!)

Why going to work sucks ass on a daily basis

I could keep going, but I think I've made my point well with just these 5.

Nice justification for the set piece that is Oprah's office, though. That's clever. But...and it's a but bigger than any but Sir Mix-a-Lot has ever sung about in his career...this just highlights one of the problems with kids live-action shows. Had the show been animated in full, there would be no "I'll take seven slices of pizza and you can stuff your faces with the rest" to be found. Instead I must suffer in agony as I get whined at that "Odd Squad is not a cartoon".

One of the Odd Squad God's biggest mysteries is why, exactly, they axed Omar, yoted him into a single episode and a shitty-ass clickbait thumbnail, and decided to replace him with Orla.

...

No, no...actually I might know why. It may or may not have anything to do with the discussion of whether Orla is a "writers' pet" or not. No one @ me, I have theories.

But let me lay down Chris's crispy McNugget of truth for you all: while Orla does have appeal in her not understanding how technology works to save her life, Omar has somewhat equal appeal in him being a lover of traveling and buying souvenirs. Hell, if they wanted to grow balls that would make AC/DC weep, they could have cohosted the series. But alas, it was simply not meant to be.

Given how PBS Kids is planning to go the short-form route as a means of cutting costs while still aiming for quality, I'm kind of sad this never came to fruition. Imagine numerous seasons of OddTube, one for each country. All they would need to do was account for every Canadian in each country because if not then the bad guys have won.

...I mean it could come to fruition. Maybe. It might not. Maybe. Hopefully. It could be with Orli or something I dunno. She could shoot the shit or however British people say the phrase!

When I tell you folks this aged like milk, lemme tell you it aged like fucking milk. Like you could hear it churning at the grocery store while the manager does fuck-all about it.

Anyone who has absorbed enough of this franchise knows that episodes have absolutely been no stranger to rehashing mathematical concepts. And that's fine by me, because the episodes themselves aren't derivative outside of that regard. Each Season 1 and Season 2 episode is hand-crafted so it doesn't feel like a painfully obvious Xerox copy of a previous episode. Key word being "painfully obvious", keyer word being "painfully", because there are episode copies out there (see "The Trouble with Centigurps" and its mid little brother "Worst First Day Ever") that are obvious but don't actively make you say "I'm going to buy some Clorox and pour it into every facial orifice known to scientists who study human life".

Season 3 was absolutely no exception. However, instead of creating new plots and just sticking with that, they created new plots and also rehashed old ones in addition to reusing math (and science) concepts. Like plopping new pasta sauce on old shittily-cooked spaghett'. Is shit, tastes like shit.

One of the most glaring examples is with the infamous clip show episode, "Welcome to Odd Squad". Anyone can clearly see it's a rehash of "Odd Squad Needs You" from Season 2, just with new elements (a B-plot, Orpita instead of Oprah...No-Name who's essentially relatability personified). And, I mean, y'know...it's a clip show, which, in most cases, spells bad news for a series and/or a franchise. That too.

All in all, these comments are hilarious to me. Even if they are a stark reminder that in a show where comedy comes first and education comes second...there's still education.

If your first thought upon reading this wasn't "this seems more of a better fit for Wild Kratts or Cyberchase than Odd Squad" THEN WHAT THE MCFFFFFFFFFUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU GET BACK IN THE HOUSE. YOUR LITERACY IS O F F JIM YA GOTTA READ IT AGAIN.

Okay, but I digress. In a world where the rules of scientific concepts like biology and anatomy go completely out the fucking window and land right onto your uncle's Corvette, this is a very stupid lesson and I'm honestly glad they didn't go through with it. We don't need lessons on the ecosystem in a world that explicitly defies the rules of ecosystems as we know them in real life.

I just did an audible groan at that stupid-ass pun. "Mathience"? Really? Suck a peanut. Like 90% of the "odd" puns are better than that trash. Be the fuck for real.

This is a nice plot, really, but I dunno...something about it just doesn't sit right with me. Let's be realer than real here, one of the climates would have had to be the Arctic. Another one might have been in the Amazon somewhere, or another place that's humid. And the third one...yeah I dunno about that one. But this plot isn't sitting right with me. Like a bruised coccyx.

...Okay, my brain got fried there for a moment. Let's move on.

I guess it's time I air out my ire with this episode -- which is a good episode, but let me just take the time to talk about one of the things that bothers me about it.

The 44-Leaf Clover is supposed to grant whoever finds it magical powers. So where in the holy God of McFUCK are the magical powers of the Mobile Unit?

Let's be realer than realer than real here: the Mobile Unit having magical powers would have really spiced up Season 3. If not the entire Unit, then at the very least Opal and Omar, who initially went on the adventure. But that part of the Clover's lore is just dropped clear straight away like my dinner from last night. We have four normal humans with no powers who pissed off that one guy who called them politically correct. Which honestly sucks and is yet another thing we can throw into the "Odd Squad Missed Opportunities" bucket. Wow is that bucket getting full. Shall we dump it in preparation for Season 4?

...Yeh but oddness struck like a long-ass time ago. You don't get two of the same snowflakes and not find it odd. Confetti Betty's a step up, sure, but oddness is oddness. Let's try and keep continuity, hmm?

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So that's it. The Odd Squad Season 3 pitch bible, properly dissected and torn through and ripped to utter shreds like a dog to a slipper. Sorry not sorry. Had to be done.

Still holding out hope for an entire series pitch bible to unearth somewhere in life. Preferably sometime before my death. Preferably on the 'Net. Preferably stored on my computer somewhere. I can and will tear into that too if it ever pops up.

But for now...we wait for Season 4 news. Since I don't want to do anything big this year for the franchise's 9th anniversary because ADD and depression and ADD, you all can have this instead. You're welcome. This has rotted in my drafts for at least two months. Take it.

#odd squad pbs kids #odd squad #pbs kids #seren speaks (about odd squad)#pitch bible

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weirder-than-usual · 7 months

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"WEIRDER THAN USUAL" 🎃🌴💜

Comic coming in 2024. AGE RATING: 15+

The final product will feature themes of abuse, trauma, mental illness, and inappropriate language-- [IE: Swearing]

In the current day and age, somewhere in Florida, never mind where & how long exactly, sits the hidden town of Hollow Heights.

It's not invisible or anything! Just one of those small towns nobody really cares about. People don't really come by unless they're lost tourists with shitty GPS. And there isn't really much to note? It's your standard Florida suburb where everyone knows everyone; full of questionable adults, birds, bugs, casually insane crime, and some pretty cheap-yet-decent houses!

...Oh, yeah. And a magical curse that turns everyone who lives there into MONSTERS!

No one is ever born this way; Pax, Robin, Clinton & Ozzie sure weren't! But despite their looks, all Monsters maintain human brains & minds. And they're actually... pretty normal! 4 outcast teenagers simply doing their best (on a good day) to survive this hell-hole.

No one knows how it started. Most people don't even care anymore. All that everyone around here knows is that that the curse only effects people living in Hollow Heights specifically; and that it's only a matter of time before it gets to YOU.

They've also noticed that Monster forms primarily reflect the individual; they're NOT determined by genetics! In fact, whenever you become a Monster, & develop the powers that come with, there are 3 things the curse seems to always keeps in mind.

Who YOU are.

The things you've gone through.

And how you handled them!

More specifically... they tend to manifest after exposure to trauma.

There is cruelty for all of us. While only 1 in 4 people suffer with a mental illness, I think it is fair to say that everybody faces trauma at least once in their lives. Be it a loss, injury, or being met with somebody who doesn't love you like they should. It is very easy for us to get stuck on these experiences. They can make permanent changes to who we are, to the point where we may not recognize ourselves in the mirror anymore. Scary, ain't it?

And that's it. That's "the curse." It makes for an experience where simply existing begins to feel... Weirder Than Usual. And whether we heal / move on or not is a choice that only we can make, and a process only we can begin.

And while the trauma that induced it never truly goes away, there IS a way to get rid of the curse; and it's not as crazy as you'd think!

You can only heal so much inside of a toxic environment like HH. So the solution is simple: Get out of there. Free yourself & live freely somewhere else; ANYWHERE else! But of course, that's easier said than done. Especially in a world where things like money, power, oppression, and "being a child" still exist.

One of the poor souls trapped here for now is Pax Manalo: a down-on-their-luck martian violinist with strict parents, telekinetic & semi-psychic powers, adorable heart antennae, and a VERY charming & freaky clown boyfriend who swept them off their feet. And for months now, Pax (being the isolated wallflower & hopeless romantic of a 14-year-old that they are) has been certain that Florian Funnyman was THE ONE.

...Until Valentine's Day came around, and Florian puts his girlfriend through the unthinkable. Something so horrible that it broke her heart, changed her life forever, and left Pax wondering if there'd even be a point in ever speaking about it again.

She doesn't want to get in trouble. She doesn't know if she wants HIM to get in trouble. She doesn't even know if anyone will believe her! Especially since Florian & his family have pretty damn high reputations around town. It's a small place, he's only a grade above her, she's friends with his brother, she doesn't have any other good friends--!! and Florian's been keeping a very watchful eye to make sure nobody ever speaks of it.

But as time goes on... Pax realizes that they can't just stay here in Hollow Heights, or dating a guy like him. And that they need help, a support system, to help them through this. And thus, Pax is left no choice but to reach out and connect with the other Monsters around them; and it doesn't take long before she finally meets some kindred spirits along the way.

Kindred spirits who are willing to help keep her safe; Kindred spirits who will support her as she tries to get her life back, learns to better advocate for herself, share their own sorrows with her as well as they face other hardships & all grow together, and stand by her no matter what.

As she finally finds her voice and speaks out about the true monster, and seeks all the justice she can get. 💞

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