The British DVD cover.
American Odyssey is an NBC TV series which centers around three separate milieux, exemplified in these characters:- Sergeant Odelle Ballard, who must escape out of Mali and who possesses critical information tying a large megacorporation to terrorist financing.
- Peter Decker, a corporate lawyer who has stumbled upon another piece of the conspiracy while trying to head off a potential IRS investigation into questionable tax avoidance behavior by said megacorporation.
- Harrison Walters, the young figurehead of the anti-corporate Occupy protesters based out of New York City, and Bob Offer, a fringe member of the group who has computing skills and sees conspiracies everywhere.
The series began airing on 5 April 2015 and ended its first (and only) season on 28 June 2015.
Tropes in this series:
- Affably Evil: Colonel Stephen Glenn, Odelle's commanding officer. It's never explained why he is absolutely determined to silence Odelle by any means necessary despite their close relationship prior to the drone attack, but he does everything he can to keep Odelle's survival a secret from her family. Failing that, he tries to plead with Odelle one last time to lie to the New York Times reporter.
- Batman Gambit: Luc's knock on Seydou's door causes Odelle to escape out the back way. Luc, having anticipated this, accosts her just after she leaves the house.
- Big Bad: A company named Societele is the mega corporation suspected of enabling terrorist financing.
- Big Secret: Bob Offer insistently refuses for some time to tell Harrison why he deleted Odelle's email (until Harrison finally badgers him into explaining, and even then he doesn't really tell the truth). It is since revealed that Ruby threatened his ailing mother.
- Bittersweet Ending: All three leads do fulfill their main goals, but not without a lot of fallout to deal with. Peter's quest for the truth is successful, but now he has to begin the process of putting his family back together. Harrison gets a byline in the New York Times, but is also severely traumatized and can barely come to terms with killing Ruby. Odelle has made it back to the United States using Isabel's identity, but she's still a fugitive, separated from her family, and is being hunted down by her former commanding officer.
- Cassandra Truth: Inverted. Harrison's father becomes convinced of the truth of Harrison's allegations about Odelle's e-mail. Peter Decker has a much more difficult time with this trope.
- Child Soldier: Aslam, a teenager impressed into guarding a prisoner.
- Cooperation Gambit: Aslam and Odelle start out this way, with wary, Teeth-Clenched Teamwork. By the third episode, "Drop King", they have evolved into calling each other friends.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Implied to be in play as the Big Bad is a mega corporation.
- Cringe Comedy: Bob Offer's awkward attempt to show he likes Harrison.
- Deadpan Snarker: Aslam, who rather downplays the armed aspect of the conflict at hand:Aslam: The Ansar Dine hate the Tuareg. Like your blue states and red states. We're used to it.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Almost all of the "good guys" go through varying degrees of hell over the course of the series.
- Fire-Forged Friends: After they finally flee Mali, Aslam struggles with his new and uncertain future, adamantly refusing to let Luc or Odelle make the decision for him. At the last second, he decides to go with Odelle.
- Honey Trap: Exploited in order to spy on Decker's family. Societele is paying Cameron, Maya's attractive boyfriend, to go out with her as a way to rattle her father and get information about the family.
- Idiot Ball:
- Peter Decker keeps making rookie espionage mistakes as he places phone calls from within corporate HQ and makes it fairly obvious he's investigating a conspiracy his legal firm is involved in and wants to keep quiet; later, when he meets Harrison, he doesn't immediately offer up the information that SOC was bankrolling the Ansar Dine and Al Qaeda, as well as other terrorist groups, in order to clear the way for their mining concerns in various countries as well as keeping control of their soverign debt holdings.
- General Diallo becomes too obvious that his desire to go after OSELA has more to do with a romantic relationship than anger over OSELA's kill squad acting with total disregard of Mali's government.
- Aslam is in Barcelona illegally, and hares off into the city after Odelle without even a basic map of the city and some money, never mind a working knowledge of Spanish in the event he meets someone who doesn't speak English.
- In Love with the Mark: The hired assassin Ruby admits this to Harrison, deviating from an apparently detached and sarcastic demeanor when it comes to dealing with OSELA's targets.
- Ironic Echo: When Odelle is being interrogated by Omar, he mentions studying at the University of Michigan, and says, "Go blue". Later, when Odelle reveals that she understands Arabic, she mockingly chants back, "Go blue!" in that language.
- Jail Bait Taboo: A 21-year old guy worries he's guilty of statutory rape for sleeping with a 17-year old girl. However, in New York the age of consent is 17, so he needn't be, though apparently he's unaware.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Luc points out to Odelle that OSELA probably won't care about him as they're so focussed on her. Also, he does have a reason to be truculent around her; OSELA mistakenly shot his girlfriend, believing her to be Odelle.
- Karmic Death: The CEO of SOC, who had a war veteran run over to protect his secrets, walks in front of a bus after they are exposed.
- Killed to Uphold the Masquerade: Invoked in the case of Odelle Ballard's unit and Harrison's father.
- Lover Tug of War: Anna is visibly annoyed at the way Ruby is rather openly hitting on Harrison in front of her.
- The Mole: The hired assassin Ruby, who masquerades as a freelance reporter.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: If Odelle hadn't given the pills to the wounded boy, she wouldn't have ended up needing to kill his father.
- Oh, Crap!: Harrison is so hyped up that he doesn't check the email sent to him by Bob, which completely wrecks his credibility, when he live-tweets the equivalent of a rickrolling.
- Private Military Contractors: A PMC named OSELA features in the series. They're reputed to play fast and loose, with basic courtesies and standard procedures.
- Properly Paranoid: Peter Decker realizes his family is at risk when he discovers that Societele and Simons-Wachtel have detailed knowledge of his son's and daughter's movements and social circles. It gets worse when he (correctly) suspects that a teenage boy flirting with his daughter is also tied to said companies.
- Rape as Backstory: Ruby reveals that she was sexually abused as a child to Harrison.
- Ripped from the Headlines: A subplot in Season 1 involves a populist Greek politician, who intends to use any leverage she can get over Societele in order to repudiate all or part of outstanding Greek debt. As of 2015, a left-wing government in Greece is making Euro sovereign debt holders nervous over the legitimacy of the Greek national debt.
- Scylla and Charybdis: Odelle and her companion Aslam (who is Tuareg) have to choose between her certain death at the hands of the Tuareg pilgrims, or being captured alive by the Ansar Dine militants. Appropriately, the writers did intend the series to be a modernized, American retelling of Homer's epic.
- Sequel Hook: Some plot lines are left purposely unresolved, such as what Odelle was doing to hide before she got back to the USA, as well as where Aslam went after going into Barcelona.
- Suicide by Cop: How Ruby decides to go out. Harrison's flashbacks in the finale, however, imply that he might have been the real killer."There are only two ways this can end: Jail or death. I'm not going to jail."
- Wholesome Crossdresser: Aslam's uncle in Bamako, Shakir Khan.
