Eugene Meltsner

Eugene Meltsner is a major character in Adventures in Odyssey, voiced by Will Ryan. A long-time employee at Whit's End, Eugene is the local "genius", possessing a reputation for erudition and a fondness for trivia. His most distinctive feature as a character is his unusual and remarkable pattern of speech, almost always utilizing the most complex sentence structure, extensive vocabulary and esoteric technical terminology possible to explain any idea on any occasion. (He may be considered a caricature of Asperger syndrome: absolute uncompromising technical knowledge, efficiency and competence at the expense of personal and social graces.) (On a side note, Eugene has difficulty with driving, which is something that people with autism can struggle with.) "To borrow the colloquialism," as he would say, Eugene is a geek. Major plot arcs involving Eugene include his conversion to Christianity, his courtship, engagement, and marriage to Katrina Shanks and the search for his father.

Eugene first entered Odyssey in the episode #51: “Connie, Part 1”, after Connie Kendall, a Whit's End employee, went to California. After a rather confusing introduction, Eugene was hired, and stayed on even after Connie's return. He attended Campbell County Community College, and eventually became a professor of computer science (#697: “A Penny Earned”) and chemistry (#729: “No Chemistry Whatsoever”). He finally became a Christian when he felt an incredible sense of loss when Regis Blackgaard was taking over Whit's End during #330: “The Time Has Come”. Although their relationship was rough, he finally married his sweetheart Katrina Shanks—first at her father's deathbed (#484: “Plan B, Part 1: Missing in Action”), and again for all their friends in Odyssey (#571: “For Better or For Worse, Part 2”).

Eugene disappeared from Odyssey for a great deal of time, spanning from #484: “Plan B, Part 1: Missing in Action” to #564: “A Most Intriguing Question”, in which he made a rather unusual entrance back into the world of Odyssey. (The episodes in which he appeared during this hiatus were clipped together from other episodes.) While continuing work for the National Institute of Health on the radio wave study, he accidentally wiped his memory of everything that happened in Odyssey. Frustrated at the failure of Whit's attempts to use the Imagination Station to restore his memory, Eugene—against the advice of his friends—overloaded his mind with the memories of Connie, Katrina, and Bernard Walton, which Whit had programmed into the Imagination Station, and prayed with Whit immediately afterwards when he was distraught that it did not work. A flood of memories overcame him after this, and in the end, Whit — though acknowledging that the Imagination Station may have played a small role — gave the credit to God.

In the more recent episodes, Eugene's adventures in Africa resulted in him coming into contact with his father, Leonard Meltsner, whom he thought to be dead. He also discovered that he has a brother still living, Everett Meltsner, who was kidnapped from his father by his father's nemesis, Dalton Kearn, at age two. Dalton was ultimately brought down by Eugene and his friends in the episodes entitled #611: “The Top Floor”.

After being dive-bombed by birds who wanted his hair for their nests, Eugene finally got a haircut in #660: “For the Birds”. But listeners still have one question: "How could Eugene see through all that hair?"