NBC
Episode 103: Zoey’s Extraordinary Boss
That latest episode of Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist is circled around Zoey’s often harsh boss Joan (Lauren Graham). Immediately the episode plays up by far the most expensive and recognizable song as ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’ by The Rolling Stones which Joan sings in the bathroom and elevator.
Of course, the episode soon gets its money’s worth with a few additional uses of the song, becoming a sort of ambient sentient force following Zoey around, from ringtones to cars honking to a marching band in the park. It does seem a bit unusual, and uncomfortable, to have Zoey listen in on the very intimate and troubling relationship of her boss. But hey, that’s Silicon Valley for you, and they’ve already crossed some of those boundaries already.
Zoey’s friend Mo, now an aspiring DJ, lampshades the love triangle trope by both deliberately calling it out and later switching between ‘Team Max’ and ‘Team Simon’. It’s cute, even if it doesn’t really erase that they seem to be doing the love triangle trope — lampshading it doesn’t mean it’s not played out. It does help, as Mo points out, that the two guys are compelling in different ways, with neither one an asshole or ‘bad guy’.
On the Zoey’s family storyline side, there’s a bit more expansion of those characters — learning more about Zoey’s lawyer brother and sister-in-law, and utilizing some older songs to give more characterization to the song choices. ‘Satisfaction’ is a song everybody knows, but ‘How Can You Mend a Broken Heart?’ by the Bee Gees I had to look up, and it makes sense that Zoey’s mother would channel it.
Zoey later explicitly points out the ‘lesson’, that you cannot simply solve problems by ignoring them, which applies also to Joan’s quandary — as Mo says later, Zoey is experiencing real ‘growth’, although it’s not quite as impactful because we never had a feeling that Zoey was selfish or self-obsessed.
The other three songs were direct situational contexts — a song from Jesus Christ Superstar as Joan’s famous jerk of a husband Charlie (Justin Kirk) arrives, a humorous juxtaposition of course, Simon singing Meghan Trainor’s ‘NO’ (which I also had to look up), another joke answer — and finally Joan belting out Katy Perry’s ‘Roar’, one of the most explicitly self-empowering songs in the last decade. It came out in 2013 if you’d like to feel old.
As usual, Jane Levy is so ridiculously fun to watch — I had to rewatch her awkward ‘Top of the morning to ya’ exchange a few times because of her delivery of the lines and even her super awkward physical gait. She also channels the deep emotions better than anyone else in the show except perhaps for Peter Gallagher. I know there’s not much of a chance anyone from this magical realism show to get awards consideration, but I can dream …
The ‘case of the week’ style is still working, because Joan is such a relevant presence in Zoey’s life. It remains to be seen how well that will continue to work when we run out of important people Zoey knows, but I’m into it so far.
Episode 104: Zoey’s Extraordinary Neighbor
NBC
The most recent episode of Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist is called ‘Zoey’s Extraordinary Neighbor’, with the obvious focus and primary plot on Zoey’s genderfluid neighbor Mo. Connecting through the episode is the parallel storyline of mysterious neighbor and shut-in Bonnie (Naoko Mori, who is a veteran of London’s West End stage) and the follow-up of Zoey’s brother David (Andrew Leeds) learning lessons too.
Overall, the theme of the episode is learning about having faith, not necessarily in a higher power, but in ‘signposts’ that are proof of pursuing a good path. A minor subplot and follow-up is Zoey’s boss Joan, who sings ‘Wrecking Ball’ by Miley Cyrus that particularly is focusing on the ‘I will always want you’ lyric to indicate that Joan isn’t entirely over her awful husband, despite kicking him out.
The resolution of Zoey’s continued ‘naive boundary overstepping and optimistic meddling’ (a standout funny line in the episode) for Joan is to give her a cake of catharsis and carbs, but it’s mainly representative of acceptance of imperfections and possibly faith about a new future.
There’s a bit on Zoey’s platonic buddy Max singing ‘Con te Partirò’ by Andrea Bocelli (translated mainly as ‘Time to Say Goodbye’), which is not particularly a happy song, but the joke here is that it is delivered ‘operatically’ to symbolize his joy of consummating his new relationship. Not the most clever of song choices, if even Skylar Astin does kill it with the very difficult to sing song.
On the Zoey’s family subplot, David doesn’t want to know the gender of his new child, unlike his wife and mother because he finds it more exciting and mysterious. There’s more exploration of Zoey’s family, which is good to expand them beyond mere accessories, and the emotional connection here is his realization that his father might miss upcoming milestones and he was being selfish about the ‘mystery’ of the gender reveal.
Normally I find gender reveal parties to be uniformly stupid and sometimes dangerous, but here it’s a way to share memories with Dad Mitch, mirroring his wedding video advice as a parent too. It’s less about faith, but more about learning choices that improve other people’s lives and lessening selfishness.
On the main plotline, Zoey uses Bonnie as a ‘miracle’, which was a bit of a stretch, although Mo’s explanation that it was about courage made a bit more sense. Bonnie sang Jimmy Buffet’s ‘Margaritaville’, which is on the surface about a tropical vacation but is actually deeply sad; naturally she later sings ‘Kokomo’, the neverending, too catchy song by the Beach Boys which means nothing at all.
More relevantly, Mo sings ‘The Great Pretender’ by The Platters (later covered by Freddie Mercury), explicitly about his impostor syndrome concerns and feelings of hypocrisy about passing as a man while singing in a church choir. This feels closer to the ‘fix-it of the week’ concept, seemingly a real showcase to show how well Alex Newell can sing outside the constraints of Alex’s terribly written character on Glee.
Overall, the episode has an interesting quality of change and movement, like following up from the past few plotlines and expanding on the side characters. Jane Levy is still the heart and soul of the show, but there’s nothing wrong with expanding the world here. I’m still a bit unsure on the conceit considering the ‘higher power’ potential complication. We’ll see, but it’s still a fun show to watch.
Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist airs Sundays at 9:00 PM on NBC.
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