Recap / Odd Squad S 3 E 33 Odd Together Now

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Odd Together Now

Airdate: November 11, 2021 ^note CBBC premiere of Part 1, November 12, 2021 ^note CBBC premiere of Part 2, July 8, 2022 ^note PBS Kids premiere

In this two-part season finale, the Odd Squad Mobile Unit must stop a group of villains who want to break into Odd Squad Headquarters to steal an Ancient Artifact. Little do the agents know, their greatest challenge will come from someone inside!

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Tropes:

• Aesop Enforcer: Oswald will make sure the audience learns about squares and trapezoids or he'll die trying.
• The Alcoholic: True to her being a Suspiciously Similar Substitute of Oprah, Orpita's favorite department is the Juice Inspection department, and she has Olando work as a juice inspector there.
• All a Part of the Job: The Mobile Unit and Orpita get the idea to stretch the portal to allow the Zap-Me-Not to go through. Although Omar worriedly asks if it's safe to touch it, Osmerelda decides to try touching it for herself and finds that she loves the feel of the portal, with the others remarking that it feels like a massage for their hands and a hand moisturizer at the same time. Osmerelda then chimes in with "Did we pick the best job or what?"
• Always a Bigger Fish: The villains were set to be the main antagonists of the episode — that is, until the Zap-Me-Not came along, at which point they decide that stealing the Golden Sundial isn't worth it and immediately make a run for it.
• Ambiguous Time Period: The Mobile Unit and Orpita all time-travel to Precinct 13579 on November 24 at 8 o' clock in the morning, but Omar never specifies a year. Considering the date that's given, though, it's most likely 2014, two days before the show would premiere.
• Attack Reflector: Gadgets, whether ancient or modern-day ones, don't work on the Golden Sundial. When the Little O fires a couple gadgets at it, the laser beams bounce off of it and become Pinball Projectiles, zooming all over the place.
• Biography: Oprah apparently has one that chronicles her entire life from a fruit stand owner to being the head of the world's most powerful organization. The author of it is a mystery — it's never stated to be an autobiography — but considering the show's Medium Awareness, it does make one wonder...
• Body Double: Both Oprah and Oscar have one of these, played by Arabella Williams and Cameron James Nicoll, respectively. Although Williams's voice sounds similar enough to Millie Davis's voice, Cameron James Nicoll's voice has some Vocal Dissonance to it, being much higher-pitched and squeaky than Sean Michael Kyer's voice has ever been throughout all of his appearances. Also notable is that both body doubles are filmed from the back, while Stock Footage is used for all frontal shots.
• Book Ends: Zig-zagged as it's done quite confusingly. The first episode of the show, "Zero Effect", features Oprah (as an Odd Squad Director) opening a manila folder, the Episode Title Card, and beginning the episode. The last shot of this episode is a hand closing a teal folder instead with the Odd Squad seal on it — and it's Oprah's hand, who is now the Big O. This signifies the end of the show and implies that the entirety of it is a case in-universe, in spite of all episodes being considered cases in the world of the show and in spite of "Zero Effect" not beginning with Oprah opening up a folder with the Odd Squad seal on it. Essentially, this episode implies that all of the episodes across all three seasons would be considered a case inside of a case.
• Bound and Gagged: Olando incapacitates the Mobile Unit and Orpita by using his Rope-inator to tie them up. Orpita later frees everyone with an Un-Tangle-inator gadget that she (somehow) pulls from her Hammerspace spine.
• Breaking Old Trends: This is the first, and only, finale to not feature anyone leaving the main cast. It's also the first and only finale to not feature a Group Hug between the main characters at the end, although it does showcase all of the group hugs from past finales.
• Break the Haughty: Olando is incredibly egotistical and lets the comments of him being a brave warrior get to his head, with him tying up the Mobile Unit using his Rope-inator just so he can relive his Glory Days of being a brave strong warrior. When he's actually faced with the threat that he fought 500 years ago, however, he tries to fight back but gets a short but sweet chewing-out from the Little O that makes him have a Jerkass Realization.
• Breath Weapon: Both heads of the Zap-Me-Not can fire purple beams from their mouths that can change any cube to a solid brown substance that appears to be stone or dirt.
• Call-Back: This isn't the first finale to have villains team up to fulfill a goal. The only thing missing from this group, however, is an Enfant Terrible leader, the role of which the Puppy Master fills instead.
  • Speaking of the Puppy Master, she brings giant red blobs and an invisible dragon along with her as part of her villain group.
• The Cameo: All of the main characters from Season 1 and Season 2 have cameos in this episode in one way or another.
• Casual Time Travel: The end of the episode has Orpita and the Mobile Unit going back in time to tell Oprah that her plan to use the Stretch-inators on the portal worked, and to meet the six other characters from the past two seasons in person. They even use the Golden Sundial just to do it.
• Changed My Jumper: Played straight and averted. When traveling back in time to Precinct 13579, Oprah asks the Mobile Unit about their outfits, since the Mobile Unit didn't exist back then, and they gladly explain the department to her. However, she doesn't think to inquire about the Little O's outfit. ^note Although it's possible that the Big O was an established character by that point — his outfit of which is identical to the Little O's — the fact that Oprah orders Orpita to refer to her as "Ms. O" instead of by Oprah suggests otherwise.
• Chekhov's Time Travel: Of course there's going to be time travel, even if it's partly for nostalgia purposes — Tim McKeon did co-write this episode, after all.
• Clock King: Played for laughs per Rule of Funny when Omar accurately predicts how long it will take for him and the others to stretch the portal to a fitting size. This earns him a look and a small "What?" from Oswald, and all Omar has to say in response is, "What? I like math."
• Combined Energy Attack: Orpita, Osmerelda, Omar and Oswald all fire their Stretch-inators at the portal to make it bigger, and manage to succeed.
• Continuity Cavalcade: The end of the episode features quite a bit of footage from past episodes across all three seasons, ending with a Crowded-Cast Shot comprised of all thirteen main characters.
• Continuity Nod: When Oswald expresses his distrust of Olando to Orla, she tells him that she believes everyone deserves a second chance — the same mentality that Otis had due to his past that was revealed in the Season 2 finale.
  • The painting of Oprah on a boat with a Unicorn, an alicorn and a regular horse, which was first seen in "Robert Plant", appears as the Zap-Me-Not escapes into the city.
  • Olando decides to make a cube using six flat squares, the same way that Otto made a cube out of Oprah's six paintings in "Flatastrophe".
  • The montage seen at the end of the episode has "Odd Squad Forever", the opening theme from Odd Squad: The Movie, playing in the background.
• Cringe Comedy: A brief Running Gag involves someone asking Olando what he's been up to since he fought a Zap-Me-Not many years ago, him stating that he's a juice inspector now, and there being an awkward silence for a brief moment before the asker then requests for someone to break the silence by talking. It's meant to be a joke, but mileage can vary among viewers on whether it's actually comedy or is just pure straight awkwardness.
• Deflector Shields: The Big Office where Orpita is currently located has the ability to produce a shield that will protect it from villains.
• Delayed Reaction: Just before the Puppy Master and the other villains prepare to go inside, Orpita arrives and surrenders, and it takes the villainess a moment for her to register what she just said.
  Puppy Master: On three, we're gonna charge through the door! One, two...
  Little O: Okay, villains! We give up.
  Puppy Master: Nice try, Little O, but you'll- [realizes] Wait, what? Really?
• Description Cut: While playing Keep Away with Orla's cube, she tells Olando that she's sure the Mobile Unit and Orpita are focused on making the portal bigger. Transition to Oswald telling Oprah about the Mobile Unit department's logo.
• Destroy the Security Camera: On the Puppy Master's command, Marty Marmalade destroys the security camera outside of the Big Office with marmalade directly after it's discovered and Puppy Master uses it to taunt Odd Squad.
• The Drag-Along: Olando is forcefully taken on the journey to find the Golden Sundial's activation crystals by Orla and Oswald because the former is afraid of leaving him in a room full of juice boxes when he's too incompetent to know where a straw goes into a juice box.
• Dynamic Entry: All of the villains initially plan on doing this, but Omar, Osmerelda and the Little O meet them at the door before they have a chance to.
  • Averted when they try to enter the Big Office a second time — instead of barging inside, they decide to form a single-file line and simply walk politely inside.
• Evil Is Hammy: The amount of ham that the Puppy Master brings in this episode could power an entire small town.
• Extra Digits: Logan the Ogre has 36 toes, and that's not counting the ones on his feet.
• Failed a Spot Check: Orla begins digging through her Hammerspace spine for another cube that she can use to lure the Zap-Me-Not to the portal, all while forgetting that she's in a room with quite a few three-dimensional things.
• Failure Hero: Orpita expresses concern that she and the Mobile Unit will fail in their mission. Oprah tells her that they might fail, but trying and failing to save the world is better than not trying at all.
• Feed It with Fire: The Mobile Unit makes the mistake of firing Freeze-inator gadgets at the Zap-Me-Not, which causes it to grow bigger to the point where the portal it came out of is too small for it.
• Fish out of Temporal Water: Olando, quite obviously. He's so out of touch with modern society that he has to learn that straws do indeed come on the back of juice boxes.
  Olando: I fear my life has been wasted.
• For the Evulz: Subverted. The villains break into Headquarters with no real motive aside from the fact that it's an odd thing to do, but it's eventually revealed that they want the Golden Sundial.
• Gadgeteer Genius: It's already well-known that Oscar is this, but this episode has him building four Stretch-inators — an entirely new gadget of his own creation and his own idea — in the span of a few minutes.
• The Guards Must Be Crazy: Orpita receives the Golden Sundial, and instead of having agents guard it, she leaves the Artifact of Power completely out in the open, right near a window with nothing but stanchion ropes protecting it. It doesn't seem to be laser-protected either.
• Help, I'm Stuck!: Defied. The Mobile Unit realizes that the portal the Golden Sundial made is too small to fit the enlarged Zap-Me-Not, so they decide to make the portal bigger to accommodate its size.
• Hidden Depths: In spite of her being written as a Suspiciously Similar Substitute to Oprah, Orpita has self-confidence issues and feels let down that she doesn't know what to do regarding the Golden Sundial when Oprah could come up with a plan and beat back villains flawlessly.
• I Choose to Stay: At the end of the episode, Olando chooses to live in the present time instead of going back to over 500 years ago.
• Immediate Self-Contradiction: Osmerelda begins to ask why the villains would want to steal something that is basically an Ancient Artifact time machine, and then stops herself halfway through.
  Osmerelda: But why would villains want to steal something that would allow them to travel back in time and undo every good thing that Odd Squad ever...diiii- never mind, I got it.
• I Surrender, Suckers: Omar's plan for beating the villain group is to have him, Orpita and Osmerelda immediately give up. This is before they revert to merely providing a distraction for the villains and keeping them as far from the Golden Sundial as possible.
• Jaded Washout: Over 500 years ago, Olando was once considered the bravest warrior in Odd Squad and often did battle with dangerous creatures. In the present day, however, he's completely out of touch with modern customs, is unable to do something as simple as stick a straw into the top of a juice box, and can't find a stable job after his role of being an Odd Squad Protector of the Golden Sundial is no longer needed. His egotistical, I Work Alone nature also makes him come off as an insufferable Jerkass whom others find hard to trust, which doesn't help his case, and he seeks to return back to a time when he lived out his Glory Days so he can relive them again.
  Orla: We can find you a different job. We are a team, we can help.
  Olando: No. I am not like you, Orla. I cannot live in this time. That is why I am going back.
• Jerkass Realization: When Olando accidentally lets a Zap-Me-Not loose in modern times and gets told by Orpita that he's done enough to help the Mobile Unit out, he realizes just how much damage he's caused and doesn't want to do anything to help the Zap-Me-Not to avoid messing things up further. Orla, being an agent that believes in giving second chances to deserving people, tells him that he can make it right again, and he decides to go with her.
• Keep Away: Orla and Olando do this with the former's box of gadgets to lure the Zap-Me-Not back to the Big Office. Unfortunately, the creature is far quicker on the draw than the agents.
• Killer Rabbit: The Zap-Me-Not looks very cute and very goofy, but it's also very dangerous to both humans and cubes.
• Lazy Backup: Both played straight and averted. The Little O cries for her backup and the Mobile Unit immediately comes running onto the scene. This is despite the fact that "The Creature Whisperer" previously gave implications that important heads of the Big Office, like the Big O and (by extension) the Little O, have bodyguards to protect them and help them fight.
• The Leader: It's clear that the Puppy Master is the ringleader of the villain raid.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Omar predicts how long it will take to stretch the portal to a size fitting for the Zap-Me-Not with surprising accuracy. When he's met with weird looks from his teammates, Omar simply responds with, "I like math."
• Leeroy Jenkins: Once again given a deconstruction. Oswald is initially distrustful of Olando due to his impulsive behavior and how he managed to nearly kill him and the rest of the Mobile Unit because of it. Orla tells him that it's wise to give second chances to people like Olando and decides to have him come along with them on a mission to find shapes to make two new shape crystals for the Golden Sundial.
• LEGO Body Parts: Defied by Olando, Orla and Oswald when Wanda offers to teleport them back to the Big Office but warns them that they might end up with their heads on each other's bodies, at which point they decline her offer and decide to run all the way back.
• Like a Duck Takes to Water: For being a creature hailing from over 500 years ago, the Zap-Me-Not gets quite used to the modern world and begins blasting all the cubes in sight. Justified, as blasting cubes is most likely pure instinct for them, so they'd be fine wherever in time they went so long as there are cubes for them to attack.
  • Olando is also very skilled with modern gadgets despite the fact that he was previously of the belief he couldn't live in modern times. Justified, as it's likely he learned about modern gadgets at the Odd Squad Academy during his retraining there.
• MacGuffin Guardian: Logan the Ogre and Wanda the Wizardess serve as protectors of the crystals needed for the Golden Sundial to work.
• Mood Whiplash: Olando switches from helping the Mobile Unit assemble the crystals in the Golden Sundial to becoming enemies with them so fast that it could potentially rival Oppo and Over's sudden alliance switch from "Three Portals Down".
• Montage Out: The episode ends with a montage of numerous episodes across all three seasons, ending on a Team Shot of all thirteen main characters and Oprah's hand closing a teal folder with the Odd Squad seal on it, all set to the opening theme of Odd Squad: The Movie, "Odd Squad Forever".
• Multi-Part Episode: The eleventh and final one of Season 3.
• Multiple Head Case: The Zap-Me-Not has two heads. Although they don't have separate personalities, they can both fire destructive beams that turn cubes into what appears to be stone.
• My Card: Orla is revealed to carry business cards on her. However, the cards only have a picture of her in uniform standing against the background, which is comprised of the Odd Squad seal, and her badge number on the bottom.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In his haste to activate the Golden Sundial to travel back in time to over 500 years ago, Olando lets a Zap-Me-Not loose in the present day.
• No Hero Discount: Averted. Orpita has an employee discount for the Big Office's gift shop despite the fact that she's technically the head of the entire organization and should have to pay nothing. Never mind the fact that salaries have already been confirmed not to exist in Odd Squad, so employee discounts (outside of basic benefits) shouldn't be a thing, and the only people we've seen in the Big Office are solely employees of the organization with not a client to be found.
• No-Sell: Gadget attacks can't hurt Zap-Me-Nots, as they simply absorb the attacks and grow bigger. The Mobile Unit (sans Orla) and Orpita learn this the hard way.
• Overcrank: Naturally used when Olando and Orla lure the Zap-Me-Not to the portal with a cube.
• Our Hydras Are Different: The Zap-Me-Not is a hydra-like creature that has two heads and has the ability to absorb gadget attacks. It mainly attacks things that are cube-shaped, turning them into dirt, but also doesn't hesitate to attack humans as well.
• Pintsized Powerhouse: Notably averted for Orpita. She doesn't have the strength that Oprah has and it takes her great effort (and the combined power of three other agents) to stretch out a portal.
• Power Crystal: The Golden Sundial can only be activated if a red square crystal and a teal trapezoid crystal are placed in their respective places. With them missing, Orla, Olando and Oswald go searching for replacements.
• Punny Name: Occidental, which is a pun on "accidental". Doubles as a Meaningful Name as well.
  • On a similar note, Ocular, whom Orpita orders to give a visual of the villains standing outside of the Big Office. "Ocular" is a term relating to vision.
• Put on a Bus: Surprisingly averted — no one leaves the main cast in this finale.
• Read the Map Upside Down: A variant with no map — Occidental tells Orpita that the shields are at 100% according to his tablet, and then he realizes that he had the tablet upside down, flips it over, and tells her that it's at (roughly speaking) 1% instead.
• Rule of Three: Defied by the Mobile Unit when Orpita begins to use a third gadget on the Golden Sundial in spite of the first two she used having no effect on it.
• Seen It All: Oprah's been in the business of fighting oddness for so long that when Orpita begins telling her why they've traveled back in time to see her, she's already on the ball.
  Orpita: Ms. O, this is going to sound unbelievable, but...
  Oprah: You traveled back in time to help fix a problem in the future. So, what's the problem?
• Series Continuity Error: Whoo boy, where do we begin...
  • Despite having been fired by Orpita and surrendering his badge in the previous episode, Olando is still shown wearing his badge and works as a juice inspector in one of the Big Offices — presumably because sending him back to his Sahara Desert Headquarters with nothing to protect would be useless. Likewise, Osmerelda poses the idea of consulting him for help on the Golden Sundial even though he was previously antagonistic towards Odd Squad, showing little regard for the Mobile Unit agents' health and safety. The end of the episode also has Olando deciding to stay in the present time and declaring that he'll get a new agent suit, although Orpita never rehired him back onto Odd Squad.
  • The Mobile Unit seeks to destroy the sundial even though Olando previously stated that destroying it would bring a massive timetastrophe that could possibly alter the universe for the worse. Even Olando himself is on board with the idea — and he's definitely not regarded as an agent with a bad memory.
  • Olando is a recognized and respected figure by both Logan the Ogre and Wanda the Wizardess, although they only recognize him for one feat. Although it's justified since Wanda and Logan could both have the ability to live for a long time and we never hear about Olando's life prior to becoming an Odd Squad Protector, the Mobile Unit and their Rogues Gallery just learned of his existence not too long ago, and it seems quite farfetched that Wanda and Logan, of all people, would know about him and his brave deed.
  • A Featherite is among the group of villains who plan to break into the Big Office. In the Featherites' debut episode, they were introduced as being, at best, on neutral and friendly terms with Odd Squad, and filling the role of an ambassador of sorts to the organization.
• Series Fauxnale: This is the third part of the three-part Season 3 finale, thought to be a Grand Finale until a fourth season was announced.
• Stealth Hi/Bye: The Little O does this with Olando and Orla when their cube gets turned to stone and the Zap-Me-Not begins heading away from them.
• Stock Footage Failure: Fans of the show might have fun pointing out how much reused footage the show uses from previous episodes (for obvious reasons — Millie Davis and Sean Michael Kyer are too old to reprise their roles properly) when the Mobile Unit and Orpita travel back in time, but that doesn't make the fact that they reused Stock Footage any less painfully obvious.
• Suddenly Fluent in Gibberish: Subverted. Olando begins giving a series of "yips" to try and attract the Zap-Me-Not to the Big Office, and Orla is surprised that he knows the language of the creature. Olando states that he wasn't speaking the language of the Zap-Me-Not at all and doesn't know the language — he was just making a sound that people find annoying but are also intrigued by.
• Talking Is a Free Action: Defied by Orla, who says that she could go into a very long speech about how Olando deserves a second chance, but there's no time for her to do so and instead skips right to the end.
  Orla: You can do it! Now MOVE!!
• Team Shot: One is shown at the end of the episode that is comprised of every single main character in the series, with the Season 1 and Season 2 characters on one side, the Season 3 characters on the other, and Oprah (as the Big O) taking front and center.
• Team Spirit: After two episodes of denouncing the power of teamwork, Olando realizes that working as a team is fun.
• Teleportation with Drawbacks: Wanda has the ability to teleport people by using her Magic Staff, but it comes with the side effect of switching heads on people's bodies. Orla, Olando and Oswald immediately jump at her offer to teleport them back to the Big Office, but when they hear of her warning, they decide to go back to the Big Office on foot instead.
• They Call Me MISTER Tibbs!: Hilariously, Oprah orders the Mobile Unit and Orpita to call her "Ms. O", since she is an Odd Squad Director and not the Big O at the date the agents time-travel to. However, she scraps this order entirely once she gets to know them a little better and allows them to call her Oprah (even though it was implied that only those close to her could call her Oprah, and the Mobile Unit, nor Orpita, aren't really considered close when put in retrospect to others like Oscar and O'Donahue).
• Vague Age: It's implied that Olando is older than Orla at 500-plus years old, but his actual age is never revealed.
• [Verb] This!: The Puppy Master orders Marty Marmalade to cover the security camera by telling him to "marmalade this!"
• Villain Cred: The reason why the Puppy Master and the other villains want to break in and steal the sundial is implied to be because they want respect from the other villains — when Osmerelda states that they should sign the Big Office's visitor book so they can prove to other villains that they broke in, the Puppy Master orders everyone to sign the book.
• Vocal Dissonance: Oscar's voice is completely different from any of his past appearances, being high-pitched and squeaky to the extent of him sounding like one of the Buddy Bears. Justified, as it's understandably a Body Double providing the voice and the character, and not Sean Michael Kyer himself (outside of reused footage from past episodes).
• Voice of the Legion: Logan the Ogre briefly develops a deep booming voice that wouldn't be too out of place for Satan himself. According to Logan, having such a voice is commonplace for ogres like him.

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