Characters / Adventures In Odyssey Main Trio

Our lead Trio: Whit, Connie, and Eugene.

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John Avery “Whit” Whittaker

First appearance: "Whit's Flop" (AIO), "Whit's Visitor" (Family Portraits)

Voiced by: Hal Smith ("Whit’s Flop"-"Gone…"), Paul Herlinger ("The Search for Whit, Part 1"-"Kidsboro, Part 3"), Andre Stojka ("Welcome to Whit's End"-present), Jim Custer (young), Joseph Cammaroto ("Thank You, God"), Kyle Ellison ("Blackbeard’s Treasure"), Sage Ryan ("Great Expectations")

• Abhorrent Admirer: Has one in the form of Edith Sutton in “Here Today, Gone Tomorrow” and “Broken-Armed and Dangerous”.
• Adventurer Archaeologist: Subverted. Whit has been trained to do legitimate archaeological work; the adventure begins when he's forced to do it at gunpoint.
• Affectionate Nickname: "Whit", as most folks around Odyssey call him. Tom Riley often calls him "John Avery", especially when exasperated or frustrated with him.
• All-Loving Hero: He would certainly reject the trope's old label of "The Messiah", but as far as the concept of a nigh-upon universally kind, friendly character goes, he's up there.
• Allergic to Evil: He begins to feel faint in “Castles and Cauldrons”, the presence of Satanic forces making him feel weak. This also comes back in “The Ties That Bind” and is revealed to be an actual spiritual condition.
• Alliterative Family: John and his wife Jenny have three children: Jerry, Jana, and Jason.
• Badass Bookworm: It's not as prevalent as his love of inventing and the sciences, but Whit has a rather expansive repertoire of books and has even written a few.
• Batman Gambit: He is very fond of these for the purposes of teaching people lessons:
  • This type of thing from him is so prevelant that it even features in the first official episode, "Whit's Flop". In it, Davey Holcomb is a Butt-Monkey who seems to perpetually fail at everything, so Whit cobbles together one of his old inventions that was a failure of his own and tries to get him to see if he can fix it to a working state.
  • In "That's Not Fair!", he decides to contact the parents of several kids who complain about how things are always "not fair," knowing good and well the only way to fulfill their desires will backfire horribly.
  • In "Between You and Me", Connie begins to prioritize time with Mitch over all other aspects of her life, including God. Whit decides to try and turn this on her and begin ignoring her in return. Unlike his other plots, this one actually backfires on him in a way — his decision to ignore her comes at a time when she's sent into a distressed state over the fact that Mitch might be moving away for a new job soon. After Connie resorts to walking up to his front door out of desperation, he's genuinely horrified to see that she's running to his arms crying, though his original point that she can't just let worldly desires be her top priority still gets through.
  • For a non morally-driven example, he makes one of these to catch the Whisperer in "Accidental Dilemma". To wit:
    • Through untraceably anonymous means, he reveals to Rusty Gordon, who’s been blogging about Odyssey, that Jason was an NSA agent, knowing that Rusty would be foolish and malicious enough to expose Jason online.
    • Fully aware that the Whisperer would kidnap Jason to get at Applesauce, he allows them into Whit's End, where are were explosives rigged in the tunnels beneath Whit's End (sound familiar?) where a laptop programmed with Applesauce resides.
    • The laptop is (allegedly) rigged with an explosive that Jason claims is activated by him pressing a button on it; the tunnel bombs go off while Jason is in the tunnel, making it appear that Jason sacrificed himself to destroy the program and keep the Whisperer from getting at it.
    • In reality, Jason is alive and well and ends the episode living it up on the French Riviera. Not only does the plan lure the Whisperer to his own recapture, but it keeps Jason's old enemies from finding him by making it appear that he was dead.
• Because I Said So: Not always keen on explaining his plans...at least, not to Connie.
  • In "Accidental Dilemma", this is turned on its head, as she turns out to be the only one besides himself and Jason who knows about the Batman Gambit involving the Whisperer, when in the past Eugene was predominantly the one who knew what was going on.
• Beware the Nice Ones: While normally a kindly, warm-hearted man who simply wants to reach people for the Gospel, he is not one to be crossed. Regis Blackgaard, Dalton Kearn, the Whisperer, and just about everyone involved with Novacom found this out to their costs.
  • Newer fans hearing the early episode "A Member of the Family" for the first time may be shocked at how quickly Whit loses his patience - and his temper - with Monty's bratty behavior and snarkery. This, along with the revelation that his daughter Jana resents him because of his favoritism of Jason after Jerry's death, has the result of adding complexity to his character beyond the "male Mary Sue" persona most fans are familiar with and making him seem more relatable. Whit would be the first to admit he has imperfections, but most episodes don't highlight them as much as "A Member of the Family."
• Big Good: Unquestionably Odyssey's. One wonders why they even have mayoral elections when the town is basically run from an ice cream shop. (Arthur Dent even mentions in "Opportunity Knocks" that he was told that Whit, not then-mayor Margaret Faye, is the one who really knows what makes the town tick.)
• Blackmail Backfire: In “The One About Trust”, Bart Rathbone threatens to expose the information that Whit appears to pay Eugene more than Connie if Whit doesn’t endorse Bart for mayor, and Whit laughs it off because the only thing worse than endorsing Bart would be caving to his blackmail.
  • Additionally, Whit knows it isn’t even true—because he doesn't pay Eugene more than Connie; the amount that doesn’t go to her paycheck goes to a trust fund for college that Whit set up for her when she first started working at Whit’s End; turns out, she actually earns slightly more than Eugene does.
• Break the Believer: Gets hit with a very hard dose of this in "What Happened to Silver Streak?", when the girl he stood by and tried very hard to keep from being falsely accused turned out to really be the culprit after all, and that she had completely duped Whit into believing she didn't do it. With Whit being one of the wisest and best-intentioned folks on the show, he naturally is stung very hard by this betrayal.
• Brutal Honesty: He could be very blunt in the Hal Smith era, such as when discussing why Edwin Blackgaard would want to produce a terrible play Connie has written in “A Class Act”:
  Connie: Obviously he knows talent when he sees it!
  Whit: I guess he does, but I’d like to know where he sees it in this idea!
• Bullying a Dragon: Any time someone like Bart Rathbone or Cryin' Bryan Dern tries to push him around. He maintains a clear head and patient air, but when sufficiently provoked, they regret their decision fast.
• The Bus Came Back: "The Search For Whit" centers around Whit's return to the show after two years' absence.
• Character Outlives Actor: Whit was infamously Put on a Bus in the mid-1990s because of Hal Smith's death, with the in-universe explanation being that he went on an archaeological expedition in Jerusalem. He returns in "The Search for Whit", voiced by Paul Herlinger, who continued in the role until his 2008 retirement (he died about a year later). Andre Stojka then took over the role and has been voicing the character ever since.
• Childhood Friends: He and Jack Allen have been best friends since they were little.
• Child Prodigy/ Teen Genius: Episodes shedding light on his past usually make this clear; “Around the Block” reveals that he was published in quite a few pages by the time he was Connie’s age.
• Compressed Vice: For Whit, it's TV. As he explains in "Isaac the Benevolent," it's why he doesn't keep a TV in the house: once he starts watching TV, he becomes a couch potato.
• Cool Old Guy:
  • He's at least in his sixties and has two grandchildren (one of whom is a young adult), but that doesn't stop him from going on archaeological expeditions, fighting an evil corporation (by occasionally less-than-clearly-legal means), sneaking into a notorious archaeologist crime lord's penthouse to retrieve vital information to arrest him (and taking a blow to the head with a heavy vase), or crafting a rather clever plan to put a B-list terrorist in jail while simultaneously faking his own son's death to keep him away from the agency and his old enemies.
  • He sky-dives in his spare time.
• Crazy-Prepared: There are secret security measures and fail-safes in everything he’s ever created, probably.
  • In “Breaking Point”, he finally relents and hands the blueprints to the Imagination Station to someone else to complete it, but he leaves out some essential parts as a precaution anyway—which turns out to have been a good idea, because the guy working on it steals the plans and inner circuitry.
  • He also sets up a final fail-safe to shut down the Imagination Station in “Exit”, one that even Novacom, who used the Station to launch their brainwashing technology worldwide, wouldn’t know how to block—simply the word "Applesauce".
• Deadpan Snarker: He doesn’t mince words when dealing with people whose attitudes he finds distasteful.
  Bart Rathbone (dressed in ‘60s attire): Great get-up, huh? Aw, they don’t make ‘em like this anymore.
  Whit: Small wonder.
  Bart: Imagine finding a pair of old bell-bottoms, paisley shirt, turtleneck, and a chic-a-dill-ick headband all in the same place!
  Whit: ...The dump?
• Eccentric Mentor: The wisest character on the show is the owner of "an ice cream shop and discovery emporium" that contains virtual reality technology that is enviable even today.
  • In “Broken Window”, he has Connie, Mitch, and the kids at Whit’s End put on a trial for who broke the window at the Whit’s End storefront, the three accused being Alex Jefferson, Rodney Rathbone, and Sarah Prachett. As it turns out, Whit accidentally broke it while sweeping; he had them put on the trial because the kids were all blaming each other without knowing all the facts, and that way, the facts came out.
• Encyclopedic Knowledge: He "dabbles" a bit.
• Friendly Address Privileges: His full name is John Avery Whittaker, but his friends call him “Whit”. (The kids very rarely do, though, and Eugene almost exclusively refers to him as “Mr. Whittaker”.)
  • He recounts having introduced himself this way to his future wife, Guinevere Morrow, in “The Triangle”; as he had only a little while beforehand gleefully insulted her abilities as a writer without knowing it, she responded that while her friends called her “Jenny”, he could call her “Guinevere”.
• Freudian Trio: Is the ego to Eugene's Superego and Connie's Id, especially in the earlier seasons when the two of them were constantly sniping at each other.
• Friend Versus Lover: In “The Triangle”, a flashback episode, he was caught between his feelings for Jenny and his friendship with Jack, who was in love with her.
• Full-Name Basis: Often introduces himself as "John Avery Whittaker" (but most folks around Odyssey call him "Whit").
• The Gadfly: He has a bit of a mischievous streak himself—he fools Curt with a hand buzzer in “Pranks for the Memories”, has a good laugh at Bart Rathbone’s expense after Bart sees the consequences for his corner-cutting in “A Rathbone of Contention”, and pretends to trip and fall in order to make a fake curse come true in “The Curse”.

• Good Is Not Dumb: He is a conservative evangelical and he is no fool.
• Good Is Not Soft: He doesn't fool around when Novacom tries messing with Odyssey, or when Blackgaard attempts to harm his loved ones.
• Guile Hero/Science Hero: Tends to fight more with his wits and technological know-how than with physical skill.
  • Action Hero: In his WWII days, natch.
• Horrible Judge of Character: Not typically—he usually has a pretty shrewd idea of who is on his side and who isn't most of the time—but "What Happened to the Silver Streak" is an example of his second chances and kindness backfiring when he has been defending a girl accused of stealing a train. Not only is she revealed to be the one who took it, she also regrets nothing about lying and stringing him along.
• I Never Said It Was Poison: Becomes suspicious of Arthur Dent in "Opportunity Knocks" when Dent mentions Tom Riley's name in connection with land on which Novacom planned to build a tower after having acted as though he did not know who owned the property.
  • It's also how he sees through one of Bart's lies in "No Bones About It"—Bart claims that the Bones of Bigfoot that two kids thought they found were stolen, then Whit shows him a clip from the Bigfoot film that was shot at the site, explaining that the bones were fake. Bart then says that he’s relieved that the bones turned out to be plaster…which Whit never told him.
• Like a Son to Me: For Eugene; he also explicitly states that Connie is "like a daughter".
• Loved by All: Both kids and adults alike love and respect him.
• Non-Idle Rich: His successful businesses, his work with the government, his multiple publications, and his chairmanship of a well-known encyclopedia company that can afford to send people on international missions on a regular basis all combine to make him very wealthy, but he’s hardly extravagant about it and continues to put that money to better use than his own consumption.
  • “Tales of Moderation” discusses this directly: Whit knows he could have the pick of almost any lifestyle he wants, but he chooses not to indulge himself if for nothing else than prudence’s sake.
• Not Allowed to Grow Up: Or rather, not allowed to grow old. Though it is questionable as to how much time has actually passed in Odyssey, there's no doubt that Whit is perpetually somewhere around his sixties.
• One-Hour Work Week: Averted; the show is set primarily at his workplace, and he's usually doing his job there. Not only is he working the counter, but the show also regularly throws in lines about him having to do inventory and get ordering done.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: His employees and friends refer to him as "Whit". His introductory narration is the most notorious example:
  Whit: Hi, I'm John Avery Whittaker—but most folks around here call me "Whit".
• Papa Wolf: He does not take it well when the kids at Whit's End are put in danger.
  • Case in point: he spends almost the entirety of "Breaking Point" staunchly refusing to let any outsider get anywhere near the blueprints of the Imagination Station at Whit's End Connellsville, sacrificing his time in Odyssey and work at the Whit's End there as a result. He finally caves not because he was working himself to exhaustion, but because a child nearly got hurt in the Imagination Station back in Odyssey.
• Parental Substitute: For both Connie and Eugene, the latter of which was freely acknowledged by Eugene's father Leonard; Connie's father is neglectful and selfish, while Eugene's father was thought to be dead for twenty years.
  • Particularly evident in Connie's case, as Whit was the one who was going to walk her down the aisle in her almost wedding.
  • Shares the role of Grady’s father figure with Wooton.
• The Perfectionist: In attempting to make his proposal to Jenny picturesque, he accidentally ended up getting her physically injured.
• Playing Against Type: Does this in universe when playing Apollyon; son of The Devil in the 1993 episode "Pilgrim's Progress Revisited: Part 2" (a KYDS Radio re-telling of The Pilgrim's Progress).
• Put on a Bus: Famously in the episode "Gone" due to Hal Smith's death.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: There's a pretty good reason why most of the kids around town (and many adults as well) are nearly constantly coming to him for advice.
• Rags to Riches: A flashback in “Silent Night” reveals that as a young family, he and Jenny went through some tight financial times for a while; nowadays he could easily retire and live an independently wealthy lifestyle with no problem if he wanted to.

• Retired Badass: He's perfectly content behind the counter at an ice cream shop, but he's quite willing to demonstrate just why he was once on retainer at the NSA if need be.
• Scars Are Forever: Well, this one is rather obvious; he was injured in WWII and is missing a piece of his right ear.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: He very rarely takes on this attitude, usually abiding by the law because it tends to be what’s right anyway. However, in "Exit", he and Tom are trying to get access to where Andromeda is housing its signal for the Launch Date, and the door is unfortunately locked; Whit casually mentions that there is a crowbar in his trunk, at which point Tom pointedly asks him if that qualifies as breaking and entering. Whit's response:
  Whit: I'll ask Agent Bourland for a search warrant...later.
• The Smart Guy: Eugene usually plays this role, especially when it comes to straight fact-recall, but Whit is overall easily the brightest person in the room much of the time.
• Stealth Insult: He was much more prone to this in the Hal Smith era:
  (about Jimmy Barclay) “Y’see, a couple of days ago, he really wanted to be like you, Mr. Dern. But by being no more than yourself, you made him realize what a horrible prospect that really is. And for that, you have my undying gratitude.”
• The Storyteller: Before Bernard became the primary yarn-spinner, Whit regularly told kids stories from the Bible and from history.
• Teen Genius: "Great Expectations" reveals him to have been one.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Well, for a relative value of kindness; he was always a welcoming, grandfatherly man, but he was a lot less likely to give snippy, sharp remarks to people after Paul Herlinger took on the role from Paul Herlinger.
• Undisclosed Funds: It’s never made clear exactly how expensive he is, but he’s made enough money off of his various businesses, writing ventures, and government work that he can comfortably finance people’s mission efforts and afford the near-constant travel that his adventures require; with that in mind, his financial success level is somewhere between extremely and obscenely. Not bad for a guy who was upset that he couldn’t afford to give his kids more than a couple of Christmas gifts each in “Silent Night”.
• Verbal Tic: He has a habit of making a very distinct "Awwww!" whenever someone says something that he immediately can shoot down.
• Weirdness Magnet: Whenever something is going on in Odyssey, expect him to be in some way involved.
• What Could Possibly Go Wrong?: In "The Mortal Coil", he makes an Imagination Station program that simulates the afterlife, not figuring that he could possibly get addicted to its effects.
• What the Hell, Hero?: In “The Mortal Coil”, Tom calls him out on his attempts to fool around with death and the afterlife through the Imagination Station, pointing out that death is something that will come on God’s terms and isn’t something that should be fiddled with via virtual reality technology.
  • Jack called him out as recounted in “Clara” for trying to adopt the titular orphan above the two-parent home she should have, believing that Whit is too blinded by his love for Clara and his grief over his recently-deceased wife to see what Clara really needs.
• You Wake Up in a Room: In "No Way Out" and "No Way In", he finds himself in a room with no doors or windows and alternates between slowly piecing together what happened to him and attempting to convince Lester (the mentally ill man who is trying to take care of him down there) to go get some medical help.

Constance Mildred “Connie” Kendall

First appearance: “Connie Comes to Town”

Voiced by: Katie Leigh (“Connie Comes to Town”-present), Meagan Smith (“The Champ of the Camp”)

• Absurd Phobia: Hers is the fear of using staplers, introduced in “Secrets”.
• Acting Unnatural: In "Grand Opening, Part 1", when she tries to act normal around Mitch when she finds out that he has a connection to the people who have been putting cameras in Whit’s office.
• Aesop Amnesia: In "Best Face Forward," she tries to get everyone to act much more professional than usual in anticipation for a writer she admires coming by to visit the shop, which Whit explains is completely silly and she should be already trying to act her best on all days of the year, and she comes around by the end. However, a later episode "Suspicious Finds" has her learning almost the exact same lesson when she does the same thing for the "Best Small Town" competition judges.

• Big Eater: Her ideal day involves shopping and a four-course meal at the mall food court, and she's been known to pig out on ice cream under the guise of "testing it for freezer burns".
  Eugene: Six times a day?!
• Brainy Brunette: Has brown hair and was the valedictorian of her graduating class. Generally speaking, she’s the one with a lot of sophistication and social wisdom in addition to her academic capabilities.
  • In “Broken Window”, she resolves the question of who broke the window (Whit, incidentally) simply by looking at where the glass pieces are—on the outside, meaning that the window was broken from the inside.
  • In “Sixties-Something”, she sees through Jim Reeves’s attempts to cover for Josh Guthrie’s reclusiveness:
  Connie: Thank you for your time…Mr. Guthrie.
• Cannot Tell a Joke: Compared to Eugene and Katrina, her pun-making skills leave something to be desired, as shown in "A Book By Its Cover".
• Casual Danger Dialogue: In "Hold Up", Hank Murray is checking on the bindings he's put on Connie and Eugene, and Connie cheerfully snarks at him, "Yes, my fingers are quite numb, thank you."
• Catchphrase: "Sorry I'm late!"
  • Some variation of "Nobody ever tells me anything!"
• Compressed Vice: Suffers a pretty bad case of this in "Fences" (which even the writer of the episode admitted as such later on and considers it an Old Shame), where she quite suddenly takes it extremely personally that her father didn't make his originally planned visit to see her and her family. This is done almost entirely for the sake of having a moral about not bottling up your anger lest you end up taking it out on the world around you, but this is so far from what she usually behaves like that it comes off this way.
• Constantly Curious: Especially in her early days; this is how she ends up accidentally running the Applesauce program in “A Bite of Applesauce” (and subsequently gets fired).
  • Tries putting her curiosity to the side in “The Curse”, then admits that not snooping around and finding out for herself is killing her.
• Contemplate Our Navels: Admits herself that she's notorious for this; in "Do Or Diet" she admits to having "one of those 'I need some purpose in my purposeless life' kind of days", and Eugene snipes in "Hear Me, Hear Me" that he's repeatedly sat through her ramblings about her purpose in life and what her future holds.
• Cracks in the Icy Façade: When Connie Kendal is first introduced, she is bitter and cynical after her parents' divorce, with her being dragged from her former home in California to the small town of Odyssey. She stops by Whit's End looking for a shop that had advertised a job, because she wanted to earn enough money to go back to California to live with her Father. Hearing her story, Mr. Whitaker offers to hire her on the spot and pay her the same amount that she would have made at the other shop. He had noticed that despite her cynical demeanor, she had a soft spot for kids.
• Credit Card Plot: At the center of one in "A Little Credit, Please".
• Crisis of Faith:
  • Connie briefly experiences one when visiting a Bible Study taught by a Dr. Grayson in the 1989 episode "Bad Company"; and struggles to respond to some of Grayson's teachings, such as his claim that Jesus never claimed to be God. Eventually; a conversation with Whit in which Whit advises her to be careful who she trusted.
  • Years later, in 2021's "The Lost One: Part 2"^note part of the "One in Three Will Fall" saga, Connie attempts to intervene in Olivia Parker's crisis of faith following the death of a teacher during a skiing accident (and Olivia studying a fictitious atheist Russian philosopher named Leonid Sepanov) by listing evidences used to defend Christianity.
• Cute, but Cacophonous: She’s normally cheerful and upbeat, but she can be quite shrill and loud when riled.
• Damsel in Distress: In "Waylaid in the Windy City" (by Regis Blackgaard), "Exit" (by Bennett Charles), and "Accidental Dilemma, Part 2" (by the Whisperer).
• Deadpan Snarker: When she isn't The Ditz.
• Defiant Captive: She may get held hostage more than any other character on the show, but she’ll at least annoy her captors in the process.
• Depending on the Writer: Oscillates between being either the sanest, most levelheaded member of the cast sans Whit or the flightiest, depending on what the writers require for the episode.
  • This may have been her undoing in the post-Novacom episodes; without Eugene around and no mysteries or technological thrillers to fill in the gaps, Connie was forced to carry much more of the weight of the show on her shoulders while also being Mitch’s love interest, and this trope became much more pronounced.
• Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: Plenty of her episodes revolve around this, most notoriously “What Are You Gonna Do With Your Life?”.
• The Ditz: Whenever the show calls for it, especially in episodes that require her to be flustered, like "A Christmas Conundrum" and "Secrets".
• Don't Explain the Joke: Has to explain her match pun in “A Book By Its Cover” to Eugene and Katrina.
• Drama Queen: When she gets worked up—and it's not hard to get her worked up.
• Dumpster Dive: Takes one in "Chip Off the Shoulder" to try to find Kelly's missing folder, which Kelly thinks was thrown away. Turns out it wasn't; a guest at a birthday party accidentally picked it up and took it with her, thinking that it was hers.
• Embarrassing Middle Name: "Mildred".
• The Empath: Right along with being The Heart, she’s really good at reading people’s emotions and helping them get through tough times.
• The Fashionista: She loves shopping and at least tries to stay aware of what’s trendy; if she’s not snarking about Eugene’s personality, she’s snarking about his clothing choices.
• Forgotten First Meeting: With Eugene, alias "Goggles", via prank war in "The Champ of the Camp".
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: Sanguine—outgoing, compassionate, and scatterbrained.
• Freudian Trio: The Id to Whit's Ego and Eugene's Superego.
• Friend to All Children: She may not be an inventing wiz or a science genius, but as Whit observes in "The One About Trust, Part 2", Whit's End wouldn't be the same without her willingness to reach out to everyone she meets.
• Gem-Encrusted: She gets a bejeweler in “You’re Two Kind”, which she uses to give Eugene an almost literal ton of bedazzled gifts.
• The Heart: Aside from Whit's grandfatherly and welcoming persona, Connie is the emotional center of Whit's End, always welcoming to the kids and able to be one of them while still acting as an authority figure. Even Whit is of the firm belief that Whit's End would never be the same without her.
• Hollywood Tone-Deaf: She's notoriously horrendous at singing (and songwriting).
• Intergenerational Friendship: With all the kids in town, but especially Lucy, Jimmy, and Mandy.
• Ironic Name: "Constance", as Connie herself proudly explains, means "firmness of mind".
• Large Ham: Whenever she has a freakout (and she has a lot of freakouts).
• Lethal Chef: The fire department has apparently responded to the results of her attempts to cook at least nine times, and her brownies once sent her father to the hospital.
  • She does, however, know how to broil a salmon in "It's All About Me".
• The Matchmaker: She's a hopeless romantic; she spends the entirety of “Naturally, I Assumed…” helping Eugene demonstrate his feelings for Katrina, and her primary role in "The Triangled Web" centers around her attempts to set up Jimmy and Lucy.
• My Hair Came Out Green: She tries to dye her hair “raspberry chestnut” in “Secrets” in a jealous bid to try to look like Mitch’s old redheaded girlfriend…and it turns out purple.
• Not Allowed to Grow Up: Connie even hangs a lampshade on it, remarking that it feels like she's been "sixteen forever".
• Odd Name Out: Of the women in the life of her father Bill, Connie is the only one whose name is not at least indirectly related to a month of the year^note ex-wives April, May and June (June bring Connie's mother) and Connie's half-sister Jules (for July).
• Parental Substitute: Her parents divorced not long before she moved to Odyssey, and her father was rather neglectful and uncaring towards her; Whit became the father figure she never had, to the point where she asked him to walk her down the aisle at her (almost) wedding to Mitch (and probably would have done even if her biological father had bothered to show up).
  • She functions as one for Jules; when Jules shows up without any parent accompanying her in “The Ties That Bind”, Connie takes her in and basically has to introduce her to the concept of discipline and personal responsibility.
• Platonic Life-Partners: With Eugene. The evolution of their relationship from where they were in their first episodes to now is striking.
• Plot Allergy: Her allergy to walnuts kicks off the plot to “Hear Me, Hear Me”, where Eugene gives her brownies with walnuts in them, she accuses him of being a terrible listener, and Wooton sets up a game show contest between the two.
• Precocious Crush: Has been the object of this by some of the younger boys in Odyssey dating to the time of Jimmy Barclay. Subverted in 2021's "The Protector" where she assumes Wyatt Perkins' secret is this^note it's actually because Wyatt thinks of himself as a superhero with a protective instinct after Wyatt managed to help rescue older sister Bridget from drowning
• Put on a Bus: The only member of the main trio to not be a victim of this.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: She’s friendly and bubbly and she’s willing to give people second chances, but she knows when to put her foot down:
  • The first real example of this is in “Connie Goes to Camp”, where she has to send Lucy home because she’s been repeatedly breaking rules. This is actually a huge step forward in Connie’s character development; only a few episodes before, Whit had fired her for using the Applesauce program when he told her she wasn’t supposed to, and this episode shows Connie that being a responsible authority figure can be difficult but an important skill to learn.
    • Earlier in that episode, she calls out Donna and Robyn for their attempts to get Allison to stop obsessing over TV, pointing out that they were being competitive and mean-spirited rather than loving and friendly.
  • After she catches Aubrey skipping school in “Under the Influence”, she’s willing to give her a second chance as a Whit’s End employee, but when she later finds out that Aubrey did it again and was at a party, Connie—after talking it over with Whit—tells Aubrey that she’s been fired and sharply reprimands her for using Connie’s mercy to cover her tracks.
  • As a divorcees’ child, she empathizes with and gives advice to Mandy, whose parents are separating, but she still calls her out in “Out of Our Hands” on trying to manipulate her parents into getting back together and for writing off her brother David as uncaring—as Connie points out, you can’t force people to work through their issues, and just because David handles his hurt differently doesn’t mean he’s not hurting at all.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Red to Eugene, Whit, and almost everyone else’s Blue; Blue to Wooton and Penny’s Red.
  • As an indication of her character development, Connie has more recently played the Blue Oni to Eugene's Red, such as in "Blood, Sweat, and Fears", where she contrasts Eugene's neurotic phobia of needles and of giving blood by pointing out that, as the organizer of the blood drive, he’s obligated to donate, and if people find out that he refused out of fear, they might not want to volunteer themselves.
• Romantic Wingman: Plays this role for Eugene, beginning in “Naturally, I Assumed…”, in order to help him win over Katrina, frequently giving him advice about women and coming to his defense when she thinks Katrina is stringing him along.
• Running Gag: Being locked out of the loop of the mysterious goings-on around town. (Notably, in “Accidental Dilemma” from the commemorative 50th album, she’s finally privy to Whit’s plan and is the only one besides Whit who is aware that Jason actually faked his death.)
  • In “Odyssey Sings”, she repeatedly tries to sing her song, only getting through “IIIIII triiiiiiiiipped” before being cut off by another character.
• Secret-Keeper: In “Accidental Dilemma”, where she’s the only one besides Whit who knows that Jason faked his death.
• Self-Deprecation: In “It Began With A Rabbit’s Foot”:
  "You said you don’t have any particular skill, and good thing for me you don’t have to have any to work here!"
• Sickeningly Sweethearts: With Mitch. This did not escape the notice of any of the main cast, to whom it became prime snark fodder.
  • It actually ends up coming back to bite them in “Between You and Me” when they’re together so often and so gross with each other that they both end up neglecting their respective relationships with God.
• Shipper on Deck: Connie is a hopeless romantic; so far, OTPs include Eugene/Katrina, Wooton/Penny, Jimmy/Lucy (although she seems to have switched to Jack/Lucy upon seeing how much closer Jack is to Lucy than Jimmy), and Trent/Mandy.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Played for Laughs in “A Most Surprising Answer”, where she claims that she was the primary reason why Eugene and Katrina got together at all.
• Spy Speak: In “Hold Up!”, she knows to signal to a police officer that something is wrong while under threat by a line about being out of coffee.
• The Storyteller: She’s not the one who’s best known for it, but she’s got some chops, shown off in “Three Funerals and a Wedding” and “Black Clouds”.
• Suddenly Shouting: Invoked in “Waylaid in the Windy City, Part 1”; she’s the one who flags down a hotel van—by screaming her head off.
• Sweet Tooth: Her favorite food is cookie dough (although Eugene’s probably not too far off the mark to guess that it’s whipped cream), and he also mentions that she “tests ice cream for freezer burn”
• Thinks Like a Romance Novel: She knows what women want and she's emotionally sensitive, but her explicitly romantic advice to men seems like it came right out of a chick flick.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: Discussed and defied in "Hold Up'.
  Hank Murray: You two (Connie and Eugene) were made for each other.
  Eugene: We're Just Friends, actually.
  Connie: Barely!
• Vitriolic Best Buds: With Eugene, at least initially.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Multiple people call her out in “A…Is For Attitude” for pressuring people into doing things they aren’t necessarily good at by having a great attitude about it rather than actually practicing at it.
  • In “Thy Will Be Done”, Whit calls her out on trying to force Eugene into Christianity.
• Will They or Won't They?: With Mitch. They don't. It's either the best decision AIO ever made or the worst, depending on who you ask.
• Writer's Block: Suffers from it in “Around the Block” as she attempts to write her book about Odyssey.

Eugene Meltsner

First appearance: “Connie, Part 1”

Voiced by: Will Ryan (“Connie, Part 1”-present), John Charles Morris (“The Champ of the Camp”), Shane Baumel (“A New Era, Part 1”-“A New Era, Part 2”)

• Absent-Minded Professor: When sufficiently exhausted, such as in "The Impossible".
• The Ace: He’s absolutely brilliant in all areas of science bar none, and also holds extensive knowledge of literature, philosophy, history, and the ukulele.
• Acting Unnatural: Showcased in "The Ties That Bind, Part 12", when Buck requests that he and Katrina not tell Detective Polehaus that Buck was beaten up in McAlister Park. Eugene follows through on this promise by acting as suspicious around Detective Polehaus as he possibly can, with a side helping of I Never Said It Was Poison to round it all off.
• Aesop Amnesia: Suffers to an almost literal extent in "A Most Extraordinary Conclusion". He contracts amnesia as a result of an overload in the programming for a government-funded application of the radio wave study, then resorts to attempting an overload of all of the memories programmed into the Imagination Station by the same method.
• Afraid of Needles: Becomes a major plot point in "Blood, Sweat, and Fears".
• Always Second Best: Explains in "The Graduate" that he felt this way about high school classmate Larry Kent, who was selected valedictorian over him and was also the Big Man on Campus.
• Badass Bookworm: Not nearly as action oriented as Jason, but has been known to do some really awesome things, including keeping highly sought-after research safe from ruthless thugs for months on end and helping to stop an international crime lord.
• Bad Liar
• Badly Battered Babysitter: During "Child's Play".
• Brainy Brunette: Has brown hair and is infamous for his genius.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Occasionally a literal example; Eugene's competence is often hindered by his neuroses and tendencies to show off, such as in "All-Star Witness".
• Catchphrase: "To borrow the colloquialism..."
  • Less frequently, "In the vernacular..."
• Character Development: Eugene came to town an insufferable, arrogant, show-offy genius who, though respectful of faith, often acted fairly condescending when met with the idea of belief in a higher power; today, he is much more warm-hearted and friendly, and uses his intellect to help people. His character has developed to the point where his plot in "Tales of a Small Town Thug" centers around his disgust with and attempt to move away from all of the character traits he used to possess.
• Child Prodigy/Teen Genius: He was a bit of a handful as a kid, but there was no question that he was vastly intelligent all the same. He may have disintegrated a bathtub, but the fact that he was around seven years old and knew how to arrange chemicals from his garage to create a solvent still stands.
• Chocolate of Romance/Flowers of Romance: Tries to give both to Katrina in "Naturally, I Assumed..." but it turns out that she's allergic to the flowers and doesn't eat chocolate due to the high sugar content.
• City Mouse: He’s woefully inept at nature-based survival in “Flash Flood”—although bless him, he does want to learn.
  • A trait often mocked by Tom Riley, though the episode "Ice Fishing" demonstrates that Eugene can use fairly basic knowledge to adapt really well, such as catching more fish than everyone else combined including "Old Grundy" several times.
• Comically Missing the Point: In “For Whom the Wedding Bells Toll”:
  Katrina: I asked you to marry me, and you responded by conducting a survey?! Why didn’t you bring in a census bureau?
  Eugene: It’s an off-year for them in this district!
• Contemplate Our Navels: Indulges in some during his seeker phase, like in "Where Is Thy Sting?".
  "How can you reduce someone's life to eleven lines?"
• Country Cousin: Downplayed; Bernard is his distant relative, but he's not so much "country" as he is "down-to-earth and non-erudite".
• Crazy-Prepared: Brings along a compass, poison oak antidote, a snake bite kit, a tourniquet, purified water, a propane lamp, a waterproof tarp, a rope whistle, and a rappelling rope, among other things, on a camping trip in “Flash Flood”.
• Deadpan Snarker: Often in contrast to Connie's Drama Queen tendencies.
• Determinator: Where Connie is stubborn, and Whit at least knows his limits, when Eugene seriously puts himself to a task, it's fair to say that nothing short of physical debilitation or God Himself will stop him. And the first one's not a guarantee.
• Digging Yourself Deeper: In "Broken-Armed and Dangerous", the women arriving at June Kendall's birthday party all assume that Eugene is insulting them in some way when instead he is attempting to be polite and to reconcile the situation.
• Ditzy Genius: He is a tried-and-true genius, academically brilliant and logical to the core, but is incredibly socially inept.
• Drama Queen: Repeatedly descends into melodramatic fits when under emotional duress, especially about Katrina.
  • This is how he attempts to help drive off a bear in "Flash Flood":
    "Begone, O ursine creature! Begone, O forest dweller! Stay away! Get thee hence!"
• Drives Like Crazy: In “The Fifth House on the Left, Part 2”.
• Easy Evangelism: Averted. His conversion to Christianity, while inevitable, was the most well-known conversion arc on the show, and it took him years following his introduction, and a significant amount of soul-searching, to accept Christ.
• Encyclopedic Knowledge
• Entitled to Have You: Unwittingly holds this attitude toward Katrina in "The Right Choice", and has to learn to be aware of this selfishness and let go of it.
• Flashback: Has some in "The Time Has Come" to significant events in his life that happened at certain places, such as the first time he ever walked into Whit's End in "Connie, Part 1" and when Whit had a talk with him on a park bench about dealing with difficult emotions in "Last In A Long Line".
• Forgiven, but Not Forgotten: He “forgives” Richard Maxwell on a conditional basis in “The Homecoming”—he accepts the apology with the condition that they will never become more than acquaintances. He seems to have let this go and is actually quite pleased at the fact that Richard has turned over a new leaf and wants to help him in “Another Chance”, although this probably has a lot to do with the fact that he had become a Christian.
• Forgotten First Meeting: With Connie (a.k.a. "The Avenger") in the culmination of a series of prank wars in "The Champ of the Camp".
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: Melancholic—perfectionistic, meticulous, and possessing high expectations of himself and others.
• Freudian Trio: Superego to Whit's Ego and Connie's Id.
• Friendless Background: Implied; he accelerated through grade school at an almost alarming pace, and he started high school at age nine and was regularly picked on for being so young.
• From Bad to Worse: In "The Right Choice": he dramatically crashes Katrina's parents' renewal of their vows at an upscale hotel, believing that the wedding was Katrina's; she immediately calls him out for his assumption that she would get married without telling him; he continues to demand to talk to her to the point where he hacks into the hotel's computer system to get her room number and almost gets arrested for hacking into the system; he learns that Brandon Teller has asked Katrina to marry him, then desperately travels to her university to plead with her to change her mind; finally, he tries to ask her to marry him, only to be shot down. Fortunately, he learns that he has been very selfish and he and Katrina decide to take their relationship one step at a time, but he definitely trades out the shovel for the oil rig.
• Geek Physiques: Skinny enough that a partially-blind dog apparently once confused him for a tree sapling.
• Happily Married: To Katrina.
• Hero on Hiatus: During the Novacom arc; his Radio Wave Study and his attempts to keep the information from falling into the wrong hands are an integral part of the story, but Will Ryan’s absence prevented Eugene from actually making an appearance. He either appears in clips spliced together from old shows or the characters are simply talking about and being affected by the actions he takes off-air.
• Hidden Depths: The local genius is also the local ukulele aficionado.
• Iconic Sequel Character: In a sense: Whit and Connie both debuted in the first album. Eugene wasn't introduced until the third album.
• I Need to Go Iron My Dog: Delivers a rather blunt example in “It Began With A Rabbit’s Foot”:
  “If you’ll excuse me, I need to find a reasonable excuse with which to excuse myself.”
• If My Calculations Are Correct: Says this often.
• Innocent Bigot: He doesn’t understand that his comments to Dr. Pittske in “Broken-Armed and Dangerous” could be taken as not only disrespectful, but also sexist as well.
• Innocent Blue Eyes: Periwinkle blue, to be precise.
• Inspector Javert: In “Suspicious Minds”, where he believes someone has been stealing from Whit's End and accuses Bernard, Connie, and other customers; it culminates in him actually electrifying the cash register.
• Insufferable Genius: Oh, so very much. He dials it back as part of his Character Development to grow into being a Gentleman and a Scholar.
• Just Fine Without You: In “Back to Abnormal”, he struggles with the fact that his absence during the Novacom saga and the brief period of time following it forced the citizens of Odyssey to move on without him and fill in the gaps he left behind.
• Just Friends: Tries to enforce this with Katrina in the early days of their relationship.
• Lady and Knight: Wants to imitate this with Katrina before their wedding in "For Better or For Worse". He keeps failing at it, but Katrina is quick to remind him when she catches on that she loves him for who he is, not for the idealized version of himself that he wants to be.
• Large Ham: His neuroses tend to lend themselves well to this—see "Blood, Sweat, and Fears" and "Poor Loser".
  • He delivers one of the most overwrought prayers ever offered, in fiction or out, in “Do, For A Change", and it lasts for almost a full minute:
    Jack Allen: Would you like to lead us in prayer, Eugene?
    Eugene: Delighted. Dearest Elohim: We know that you were with the army of Jehoshaphat in 2nd Chronicles 20:1 and following, and when he prepared his army to battle the Ammonites, which were of a great multitude, you told them not to fear; and though the Hebrew is slightly ambiguous in a few of the verses in this passage, we know you tell us the same. And we remember this today when we battle the Ammonites of anxiety, the Jebusites of injustice, the Perizzites of pride, and yea, the Syrians of sinfulness. Glorious Yahweh, we see in Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians how he uses eschatological references as the basis for hope that determines the nature of daily life, and in a sense, we should do the same. And we ask these things in the name of our precious Redeemer and Savior, Jesu Christe, Emmanu-el, i.e. “God with us.” Amen.
• Last-Name Basis: With almost everyone. If he uses someone's first name or nickname, it means something significant.
• Like Father, Like Son: Remarks that his father remains "surprisingly obstinate" on matters of faith. Mr. Whittaker isn't at all surprised.
  Whit: A Meltsner, being obstinate on matters of faith?
  Eugene (sheepishly): Oh.
• Long-Lost Relative: To Bernard.
• Loony Friends Improve Your Personality: Becomes gradually less insufferable and arrogant the longer he is influenced by the more down-to-earth townsfolk of Odyssey.
• Love at First Sight: Developed a crush on Katrina almost immediately upon meeting her.
• Love Letter: Wrote one to Katrina that likened her to a pentium processor.
• Motor Mouth: Used to do this a lot while rattling off scientific information, facts, and figures, or when nervous or excited.
  Whit: Eugene, drop in a punctuation mark, please?
• Mr. Exposition: Serves as this for a good portion of the academic knowledge the audience needs to understand what's going on, even some things that the conservative Christian audience might probably already know, like explaining who the Sadducees are in "The Search for Whit, Part 3". He also vocalizes a lot of the show's continuity nods and explains events that occurred in previous episodes in a saga.
• My Own Private "I Do": He and Katrina have the "elope first, plan later" variant; they elope at her father's deathbed, as recalled in "Plan B, Part I: Missing in Action", then have a ceremony for their friends and family back in Odyssey in "For Better or For Worse".
• No Social Skills: He may be a genius with a nigh-eidetic memory, but Eugene often finds himself slowly digging himself deeper in social situations.
• Not Quite the Right Thing: Is put through this dilemma during "As Buck Would Have It", when he learns that he was the one who reported Buck's father to the police after learning of a stolen car. Buck is absolutely livid with him when he comes to that discovery, believing that was the sole reason Buck's father never got his life back in shape after trying to be The Atoner, which sends Eugene into a morality crisis on whether what he did was the right thing.
• Odd Couple: Whenever paired with the more sensible and down-to-earth but technologically ignorant Bernard or Tom.
• Opaque Nerd Glasses: Sports a pair in his official artwork, although they seem to have been downgraded to regular-lensed Nerd Glasses in the relaunch Art Shift.
• Pair the Smart Ones: With Katrina.
• Phrase Catcher: When he indulges in Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness and Techno Babble, he is usually met with some variation of “In English, Eugene!”.
• Platonic Life-Partners: With Connie. Their relationship has developed considerably since their first meeting, from rivals to friends who love each other dearly and respect and admire one another.
• Put on a Bus: Will Ryan, who played Eugene, left the show for undisclosed reasons, and naturally, so did his character. This was explained in-universe by Eugene and Katrina fleeing Odyssey to keep Eugene's research about the Radio Wave Study safe from Andromeda and to prevent Andromeda from capturing him. He famously returned to the show in "A Most Intriguing Question" with amnesia as a result of a National Institute of Health experiment gone wrong.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The Blue to Connie's Red.
  • Occasionally plays the Red to Connie's Blue, such as in "Blood, Sweat, and Fears", where he is scared stiff of giving blood while she provides the voice of reason.
• Renaissance Man: Skilled in physics, computer science, inventing, programming, physics, biology, and the ukulele.
• Rogue Juror: In “Blind Justice”.
• Running Gag: When he grows a mustache as a symbol of his grief over Katrina leaving, various characters make numerous snarky comments about how pathetic it is.
  Bernard: Even those three hairs you call a mustache are drooping.
• Sacrificed Basic Skill for Awesome Training: Eugene's intellectual abilities are off the charts, but he also has almost no social graces and little experience interacting with average peers—which is probably partially due to the fact that he skipped several grades in his childhood instead of going through the usual thirteen years of schooling.
• Sanity Slippage: Played for Laughs; he becomes increasingly unhinged as Bernard effortlessly beats him at chess over and over again in "Poor Loser".
• Sand In My Eyes: He claims he’s only crying because his allergies are acting up at the end of the Birth of Jesus program in “Back to Bethlehem”.
• Secret-Keeper: Becomes one for Jason’s identity as an NSA agent in “The Search for Whit”.
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: A hallmark of his character. Though he still uses complex language, he is now much more inclined to speaking so that people can understand him rather than using long words for the sake of it.
• Smart People Play Chess: Turns out to be his downfall when he brings a chess set to pass the time during a slow day at Whit's End and is beaten several consecutive times by Bernard.
• Smart People Know Latin: He knows phrases in a variety of languages, but tends to use Latin terminology the most often. Justified, since his area of expertise is science, many branches of which tend to use a lot of Latin and Latin-based words.
• Techno Babble: Is inclined to indulge in this whenever he discusses computers or technological breakthroughs.
• That Reminds Me of a Song: Has the occasional tendency to break out his ukulele at random moments.
• Uncanny Family Resemblance: In Leonard’s flashbacks to Eugene’s childhood in “A New Era”, Eugene is voiced by Shane Baumel, who also voiced Eugene’s younger brother Everett in “The Top Floor”.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: He had a quasi-adversarial relationship with Tom, Bernard, and Connie in the early days, but there was no denying that each respected the other.
• Vocal Evolution: His first few appearances had him sounding a little less nerdy. A few albums in his mainstay voice slowly comes into play.
• Waistcoat of Style: Drawn with these, and he has a whole collection of vests for every occasion.
• What Could Possibly Go Wrong?: When at first he refuses to rat out Richard Maxwell’s grade-changing scheme in “Eugene’s Dilemma”, he suggests to Nicholas that the grades be changed back to what they were originally and does his best to help, not predicting the possibility that they could be monitored.
  • He doesn’t consider the possibility that maybe it’s not a good idea to drop beef jerky around in the woods in “Flash Flood”.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Katrina calls him out in “The Right Choice” for denying her agency and treating her like he deserves her, disrespecting and distrusting her multiple times, and allowing his emotions to fuel his actions.
• Will They or Won't They?: Had an infamously long and tumultuous relationship with Katrina. To no one's surprise, they get together; they first elope at Armitage Shanks's deathbed in "Plan B, Part 1: Missing in Action", then have an official ceremony for their friends back home in "For Better or For Worse, Part 2".
• You Didn't Ask: He gives Katrina a thoughtful gift (with a bungled romantic speech beforehand) in “Naturally, I Assumed…” but he never actually tells her that it’s because he likes her because “she didn’t ask”.