"Wish You Were Here!" is the 21st album release of the Adventures in Odyssey radio series. In this album, Eugene and Bernard find each other on a road trip together out to the western United States for the first half, and return home to an unexpected discovery for the second.
Episodes in this album:
- "First Hand Experience"
- "Second Thoughts"
- "Third Degree"
- "It Happened at Four Corners"
- "The Fifth House on the Left" (Parts 1 and 2)
- "Gone..."
- "...But Not Forgotten"
- "The Fundamentals"
- "A Book by its Cover"
- "The Election Deception"
- "The Twilife Zone"
The album contains examples of:
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All episodes
- Formula-Breaking Episode: This is one of the rare times an entire story arc happens completely far and away from Odyssey, with most of the series' regulars absent.
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: The first five episodes in the album contain the episode number in the title.
- Road Trip Plot
First Hand Experience
- Buses Are for Freaks: Eugene takes the bus to Bakersfield, where he not only never shuts up the entire way down, once he gets off he accidentally takes the knapsack of the woman sitting next to him, who thoroughly believes that he did it out of malicious intent and that it wasn't an honest mistake.
- Diegetic Soundtrack Usage: Bernard tries to find a radio station while he's out in the middle of nowhere, and comes across a station that plays the Odyssey theme song. However, it cuts out pretty quickly, much to Bernard's disappointment.
- Motor Mouth: Eugene on the bus, much to the woman sitting next to him's chagrin.
- Mythology Gag: Eugene's bus ticket is to Pomona, California, the original location of Focus on the Family's headquarters before 1991.
- Tempting Fate: "What else could make us more miserable?" Cue thunderstorm.
- The Trouble with Tickets: Thanks to Eugene accidentally grabbing the woman's knapsack, he's faced with the dilemma of contesting his ticket at the cost of having to stay longer than he can afford, or just pay it outright and thus put him in financial shortages then and there. Ultimately, he chooses the latter.
Second Thoughts
- I Am Not My Father: The entire driving force of the plot. Graham is interested in computers and cities, but his father wants him to take over the farm after he gets older, driving the conflict of the episode.
Third Degree
- Felony Misdemeanor: Bernard suffers this, having been accused of driving too slowly. He finds it so outrageous that he even believes it to be a scam.
- Honor Before Reason: The inmate next to Bernard's cell tries to convince him that fighting his traffic violation and standing by his belief that it's a scam is the best way to go about it, at the risk of staying in jail for longer. Ultimately, while Bernard has a lot of trouble coming to grips with it, he decides that it simply is not worth the pain it will bring him.
- Prison Episode: Ultimately turns out to be one of these for Bernard, even if it's only for three days.
- The Trouble with Tickets: For the second time in this album, and this time it's Bernard. He's pulled over for going too slow, even though he had a perfectly good reason for doing so (his truck doesn't handle high altitudes very well and they are passing through Colorado).
It Happened at Four Corners
- All Just a Dream: The listener is baited into believing all of the events in the episode are Eugene and Bernard's escapades. When the story finally reaches a point of no return though, it's at last revealed that it was just a story that Bernard was telling to Eugene.
- Bait-and-Switch: After the listener finds out the episode is All Just a Dream, it appears that the events that kickstarted the plot are going to happen once again. However, this time, they choose to ignore the driver and move onward.
- Compressed Vice: Eugene and Bernard are abnormally greedy and power-hungry in this episode, double crossing each other multiple times throughout. Perfectly sensible since it's all just an Indulgent Fantasy Segue, after all.
- Death By Greed: Virtually the entire episode runs on this. First off, the driver that whizzes past Bernard and Eugene suffers this fate quite early on. Then, as Bernard and Eugene try to pursue the gold on the map, both of them end up in this fate.
- Gold Fever: The entire episode runs on this.
- Here We Go Again!: Subverted. See Bait-and-Switch above.
- Indulgent Fantasy Segue: A rare case where the entire episode turns out to be one of these.
The Fifth House on the Left
- Horrible Hollywood: With a handful of exceptions, everyone Eugene and Bernard run into in Hollywood is a buffoon at best and a jerk at worst.
- Mood Whiplash: At the end of Part 1, when a giant earthquake hits.
- Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense: Just about everyone working in Hollywood in this episode. All of them live in their little movie-making bubble and are totally oblivious to the world around them.
- Unexpectedly Dark Episode: The second half of the story ends up being this, in the aftermath of a giant earthquake that strikes the area.
Gone...
- Bittersweet Ending: There isn't a whole lot of room for the episode to end on a happy note, but Whit does at least send a letter to Eugene to help bring some light on an otherwise emotional situation. In addition, this is one of the very rare times that the ending narration by Chris is completely somber and melancholic, which almost never happens even on episodes with a full-on Downer Ending.
- Never Got to Say Goodbye: Eugene and Bernard desperately try to avoid this when they rush to the airport to try and say goodbye to Whit. Bernard gives up early, but Eugene resorts to increasingly drastic measures and does get to say goodbye...to a very embarrassed Whit.
- Late-Arrival Spoiler: The episode leaves it rather ambiguous whether Whit is going to return or not. Obviously, if you're at all familiar with any of the episodes made after the mid-90s, you know good and well that he returns eventually.
- Put on a Bus: Mr. Whittaker has this fate in this episode, as he's put on a mission trip to the middle east, and doesn't return for the next six albums. This was done as a result of the unexpected death of actor Hal Smith.
...But Not Forgotten
- Replacement Scrappy: A very rare in-universe example. Connie initially views Jack as this to Whit, lamenting it through the whole episode even though they had pretty good reason to bring him onto the staff. However, she does later come around and copes with the changing times.
- You Didn't Ask: Jack never brings up the possibility of helping out at Whit's End for this reason. He later admits it wasn't a particularly good reason, however.
The Fundamentals
A Book by its Cover
- Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Melissa, so much. For the entire duration of the tutoring session she keeps sidetracking the conversation into asking about Katrina's life and family.
- Never My Fault: Melissa refuses to accept blame for flunking the pop quiz, even though she was pretty clearly at fault for making no effort to stay on topic through the entire tutoring session.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Katrina gives a pretty well-deserved one to her student Melissa, for pulling a Never My Fault on her and threatening her career.
The Election Deception
- Batman Gambit: Shannon is set up for one of these. Thanks to Courtney having memorized one of her speeches that she had penned down earlier, she reproduces the whole thing for the principal and hands it over to him, then has Shannon give her next speech in advance. He catches her red-handed and she is disqualified.
- Plagiarism in Fiction: Courtney falls victim to this. However, in a twist, due to it having resulted from a stolen diary that she cannot recover, she has no way of getting her caught or proving it.
The Twilife Zone
