"Well We Don't Know Where the Time Has Gone, It Obviously Flew!"

I've been missing in action for a while--sorry about that. A few observations about what's been happening in the world of AIO lately:

• Album #54 aired, and was actually quite a good album. Hopefully I'll find some time to comment on each of the episodes individually soon, but you might be interested to know that for some reason I liked most of the episodes in Clanging Cymbals. This album may be my favorite of the new AIO era so far (with the possible exception of The Green Ring Conspiracy, although I like that album #54 has a bit more variety than that album). This is no doubt helped by the fact that Clanging Cymbals is a theme album: as Christian A. notes in his review of "Anger Mismanagement,"

  the reason many of the episodes in this season so far have such great morals and takeaway values is that, because the writers decided to base the album on 1 Corinthians 13, they had to start with the moral and then work out the episode--rather than working the other way around, starting with an entertaining episode idea and then fitting the moral into it.¹

  Right now the Avery Awards are on, and while there's no masterpieces to vote for there is still much to like about this season's nominations. I'm predicting that "Never for Nothing" will be the biggest winner this time around, and probably with good reason.
  
• Fans have gone off the deep end about The Deep End. It seems to me that with every new season now there are those who say, "Well, this season's definitely going to bring back that pre-hiatus magic," and wind up disappointed when it doesn't completely do that. So to avoid disappointment, let me put it plainly: For some of you, AIO may never achieve its "former glory." AIO is always in evolution and not everyone will like the stage that AIO is in at that particular moment. If you're one of those people who struggle with the new episodes, my advice is to change (or, dare I say it, lower) your expectations. AIO may not be the wonderful show that you grew up with anymore, but who said it should be? To put it bluntly, maybe the problem with pre-hiatus AIO is not the episodes, but the fans. Something to consider at least. :-)
  
• AIO has announced some vague plans to celebrate its 25th anniversary. These include the opportunity to audition to play a role on AIO and a live show in Dallas, Texas. What I'm most excited about, however, is the new official guide coming out in September. The "Get in the Show!" contest seems more gimmicky than anything to me, but naive young fans should be excited by it if nothing else. Live shows may be fun for those who go, but don't always transfer so well to radio. Take, for example, the rather poor AIO episode "B-TV: Live," spawned out of the last live show. I have no doubt it was really fun for the audience to watch (some of that can definitely be seen on the video clips in the CD/ DVD package), but to listen to it's weak. So the way I see celebrating AIO's anniversary is that it has to be done well and lead to quality entertainment for all AIO fans, not just for the relative few who might see the live show.

It looks like AIO has a lot of great stuff planned for 2012, but admittedly I'm a bit of a skeptic. Let's see if I can track this "rocky relationship with modern-day AIO" a bit better this year that I have been in recent months!