B-TV: Live!

Bernard Walton welcomes a studio audience to a special live episode of B-TV, recorded in the little theater with a cast that includes Connie Kendall, Eugene Meltsner, Wooton Bassett, Mandy Straussberg, and George Barclay. The theme of the show is God's calling: how each person can discover what God wants them to be and do. Before things get rolling, Harlow Doyle, private eye, barges in offering his special services. His specialty, he explains, is "finding things that are not missing," and he proudly locates the watch Connie is already wearing and the purse she is already holding, promising to add everything to her bill.

The cast turns to the Bible for examples of God calling people, starting with a comical sketch of Moses, who protests that he is too short, too tongue-tied, and too afraid of crowds to lead anyone out of Egypt, demanding, "Who do you think I am, Charlton Heston?" Bernard and Connie explain that for people who never hear God speak from a burning bush, a good place to start is the talents God has given them. Their example is Wooton, whose gifts for writing and drawing led him to create the Power Boy comic series. Wooton is horrified to be singled out, since he had hoped to keep his identity as Power Boy's creator a secret. Surprise guests quickly prove that hope is doomed. Lucy and Jack Davis, now married, admit they told their friends in Texas. A grown-up Jimmy Barclay confesses he let the news slip to a senator, who apparently mentioned it in the president's State of the Union address. Robyn Jacobs proudly says she has told no one, though she learned the secret from a boy in an isolated jungle village, which proves the whole world already knows. When Mandy reports an enormous crowd gathering outside, Wooton launches into his "Exaggerated Imaginings," picturing himself fleeing four hundred adoring fans on foot, on horseback, and finally off a cliff wearing water wings.

Meanwhile Eugene points out that Whit, whose own calling made Whit's End possible, is away teaching at a conference, and he proposes to fill Whit's shoes himself. The cast imagines the results. At "Eugene's End," customers are quizzed on their IQ, offered radish ripple ice cream, and sent to the basement if they fall short. At "Bernard's End," visitors surrender their shoes, get vacuumed off, pass through a decontamination unit, pay a fifty-cent spill fee, and find the Imagination Station converted into a Sanitation Station celebrating the janitorial arts. At "Woot's End," every single customer wins a free party, the menu is buried in sugary toppings, and poor Mandy is trapped on a never-ending slide. The lesson lands: God called Whit specifically, gifts and all, and everyone is glad Whit runs the place. Eugene makes one last attempt anyway, donning a Whit disguise while George Barclay wears an enormous Eugene costume, but he finally concedes that he can never be Whit, because answering God's call means being who and where God wants you to be.

The show also looks at people who resist their calling. On a talk-show sketch called The Grumpy Show, host Jane Contented interviews a wisecracking Israelite named Rash On My Feet, who grumbles about forty years in the wilderness and endless manna despite being freed from slavery, and then meets young Missy Podnick, a gifted pianist who refused to practice and hasn't touched a piano in a year, missing the ways God meant to bless her and others through her talent. As a contrast, the cast remembers the Apostle Paul, who suffered shipwreck and imprisonment yet urged believers to do everything without complaining and to shine in the world like bright stars. Eugene then expresses his gratitude for where God has placed him by bursting into a cheerful song, "Have You Ever Been to Odyssey?"

Wooton's imaginings conclude with a flop: he found a church that let him preach, and put the whole congregation to sleep with a testimony about licorice and sea monkeys. Bernard had only meant that Wooton should influence people for God, quipping, "If you can't beat them, teach them." Since Wooton is not called to preach, Connie encourages him to point people to God through what he does best, and Wooton delights the audience with a Power Boy story in which the hero selflessly saves a busload of children from the villainous Duckman.

Just as the show wraps up, Whit himself telephones from his conference. He reminds everyone that no one follows God's calling alone: "It isn't what I do, it's what we all do." Odyssey is what it is, he says, because everyone follows God's calling in their own unique way, together, as members of God's family, and he thanks God for every one of them.