Renee Renewed

Renee Carter's internship at Whit's End is almost over, and she still doesn't know what she wants - until her friend Horus asks for help with his broken "personality enhancer," a tiny device meant to boost confidence and focus. Renee gets it working overnight, and shy Trey Calhoun volunteers to test it, transforming into a dazzling talker after three days. But Renee has a secret: the part that made it work was borrowed from Mr. Whittaker's Imagination Station... without asking. When Whit finds out, he shuts the project down, and a furious Renee sneaks into his office to copy his designs for herself. Instead she finds Trey, who hands the device back with a simple wish: "I want to be me." Caught and ashamed, Renee learns that all her ethics training crumbled the moment it got in her way, and asks Whit's forgiveness - which he freely gives, along with something better than an internship: a job.

Found on Buckle Up! Album 74 · 6 episodes

The run See every episode

0947 Afternoon When Odyssey's most famous antique dealer vanishes without a trace, the people closest to him discover that nothing - and no one - around him is what it seems.

0948 Evening With Jason Whittaker missing after a double kidnapping, the people of Odyssey chase scattered clues - a green sweatshirt, a strange calendar, and a shady arms dealer - toward a truth hiding in plain sight.

0949 Dead of Night While hiding from enemies inside a television station, secret agent Jason Whittaker and his allies race to unmask a traitor as stolen launch codes put a fleet of Navy submarines in deadly peril.

0950 Daybreak With federal agents closing in and thousands of lives at stake, Jason Whittaker must race against his own mind to stop an enemy who can steal secrets straight from his thoughts.

0951 Final Minutes With a bomb ticking inside Odyssey Memorial Hospital, surgeons race to remove a mind-reading implant from Jason Whittaker's brain while a traitor hides among the rescuers.

0952 Game Night Connie's strictly rules-only game night - no work talk, no complaining, no competitiveness - proves harder to survive than anyone expects, even for the host.

0953 Renee Renewed A brilliant intern's shortcut to a breakthrough invention forces her to choose between scientific ambition and the trust of her mentor.

0954 Legally Wooton When Wooton discovers that a beloved cartoon character sweeping Odyssey's birthday-party scene is secretly his own long-lost creation, the gentle artist must decide how far mercy goes in fighting for what's his.

0955 Value in the Process A brilliant young programmer schemes to skip ahead of a class far beneath his abilities, only to find that the real lesson isn't in the curriculum.

0956 Tough Call When a video of her church testimony unexpectedly goes viral, Olivia Parker reluctantly steps into the role of online mentor - and connects with a mysterious caller hiding a secret that could upend her famous family.

0957 King of My Heart When Buck finally works up the nerve to ask his best friend Jules to homecoming, the school's golden boy beats him to it - and Buck must figure out what it really means to want the best for someone.

0958 Reporting Live from Mount Sinai A skeptical TV reporter obsessed with history's tragedies steps into the Imagination Station and lands at the foot of Mount Sinai, where a restless nation on the brink of rebellion forces him to question what stories are truly worth telling.

0959 Dose of Virtual Reality When her best friend backs out of the school's parent-child video game tournament, Molly recruits her seemingly hopeless grandfather - a police detective whose odd habit of studying the game's mysterious signs might be more than a distraction.

Featured characters

Minor characters & crew 1 more roles

1 supporting role

Astan Lebernis Jamieson Price

Made by

Chris Anthony Host Phil Lollar Writer · Director Nathan Jones Sound Designer Nathan Hoobler Producer Dave Arnold Executive Producer

The story

Read the full synopsis 3 min

Renee Carter's internship at Whit's End is nearly over, and Mr. Whittaker asks what she plans to do next. He tells her she has fit right in and is welcome to stay, but Renee, recording her thoughts in a journal with her computerized dog Cog, admits she isn't sure what she wants - or how she feels about the trust and faith that matter so much to Mr. Whittaker.

At the college, Renee finds her friend Horus Nernst frustrated to the point of quitting. He has spent a whole semester building a "personality enhancer," a tiny device worn behind the ear that is supposed to strengthen traits like confidence and focus, but he cannot get its sensor to connect with the brain's imagination. Renee asks to tinker with it, and in almost no time the device works perfectly. Horus is amazed and calls her a genius, though Renee stays vague about exactly what she added. When Horus tests it on himself, the setting makes him hopelessly flowery and flirtatious, so they agree it needs a neutral test subject.

They choose Trey Calhoun, a shy, quiet boy at Whit's End. With his parents' permission, Trey agrees to try it, and what he wants most is to "talk better," like Mr. Whittaker, Eugene, and his own family. The moment the enhancer switches on, plain-spoken Trey declares, "It is as though a great fog has lifted in my brain." After three days of testing, his communication skills have soared, and Horus is ready to report the invention, seek funding, and publish. That forces Renee to confess: the breakthrough piece she added isn't hers. It is a neural interface she took from the portable Imagination Station Mr. Whittaker lent her. Renee thinks they must scrap the project, but Horus begs her to go ask Mr. Whittaker for permission instead.

Mr. Whittaker congratulates them on the breakthrough - and then firmly says no. Renee ran an experiment at Whit's End, on a child, without his knowledge, and he doesn't believe personality should be developed artificially; Odyssey has seen that sort of thing go badly before. He tells her she broke his trust, and he orders his technology removed from the device. Stung, Renee announces that Friday will be her last day.

Fuming to Cog that night, Renee insists one man shouldn't be able to stand in the way of science that could help humanity. When Cog suggests she sounds like Professor Lebernis, who once schemed to get his hands on Mr. Whittaker's technology for his own gain, she brushes it off and hatches a plan: she will build her own version of the interface, changed just enough to be legal. All she needs is one look at Mr. Whittaker's design specifications.

She slips into his empty office, but the filing cabinet is locked - and then Trey walks in. He hands the enhancer back. It worked, he explains, but too well: it took him five minutes just to ask a friend to pass a spoon, and now the kids call him "Mini Eugene." More importantly, he has started wondering why anyone thought he needed fixing at all. "I want to be me," he says, and if he's going to grow, he should do it himself rather than let a machine do it for him. Ashamed, Renee tells him he is a fine person just as he is.

Mr. Whittaker has been listening. He gently reveals that Renee wouldn't have found the blueprints anyway - he removed them after their argument, because he recognized the look in her eye from Lebernis. Renee crumbles. Despite all her ethics training, she was ready to steal and lie the moment it suited her. Mr. Whittaker reminds her that ethics alone can only take a person so far, which is why everything at Whit's End always comes back around to God. Renee asks his forgiveness, and he freely gives it. She marvels that the personality enhancer changed her more than it ever changed Trey - and she never even put it on.

When Renee asks whether she might extend her internship after all, Mr. Whittaker says no - he doesn't need an intern. "But I do need an employee," he adds, one who is good with computers, machines, and math. Renee happily agrees that Whit's End is exactly where she belongs, because she still has a lot to learn.