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The latest episode of Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist is called ‘Zoey’s Extraordinary Failure’, which very unusually allows Zoey to completely fail at one of her ‘fix somebody’s problems’ tasks. But this leads to Zoey in the final scene to acknowledge that hard as it is to admit, we fail sometimes — unusual for the procedural TV episode, but hardly for real life.
I really do like the show doing the censoring trick of muddling Zoey’s profane exclamations by throwing on the title of the show — it’s one of the funnier consistent parts of the show. Also a stand out line was how Autumn ‘unironically chased a butterfly for 37 minutes’ — it’s just absurd enough to be believable.
Naturally it made sense that Max and Autumn broke up, but also because it’s the classic ‘love triangle’ way to get things going.
The simplest ‘fix it’ issue is just to clarify things with her mother after getting the song ‘It’s Your Thing’ by the Isley Brothers from her father, expressing the clear point that he’s more than happy to see Maggie continue on with her work if it makes her happy. It’s an easy fix, because Zoey just has to hear the song and get her mother to ask about it.
In contrast, her idea about anonymous peer reviews still seems a failure by the end of the episode, causing both Max to break up with Autumn due to fears of ‘settling’ in work and life — it’s an easy thing to relate to, the comfort of the familiar. It’s probably easier to connect with than the overwhelming pressure of Leif (Michael Thomas Grant), always feeling like he has to try harder and using his overwhelming ambition and smugness to mask his own feelings of failure.
This allows for the most emotional song, later reprised too, ‘Everybody Hurts’ by R.E.M, which is in fact not a song about depression, but of empathy — of understanding that you are not alone in your pain because everybody hurts too. Michael Thomas Grant gets to show off some range here with some complex pain in his eyes, despite the character’s often arrogant perspective.
Although the subplot fix-it ends with Leif thinking (or pretending to think) that Zoey was the one who wrote his negative review. If he truly thinks that, it would be easy for him to fall into a rationalization that it was an attack and that he doesn’t need to change at all. Either way, it’s not a complete success.
NBC
On the Simon side, Zoey has already managed to grow by simply knowing how to read Simon more effectively, and this new empathy and understanding is a powerful thing. That plus the fact that Zoey looks like Jane Levy, and no wonder Simon sings ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go Now?’ by The Clash. They certainly have a lot more chemistry than she does with Max, despite his great singing voice.
But Zoey doesn’t really salvage things with her brother David, despite her best efforts — although it’s fair to understand her misapprehensions, given that he sings ‘Fight for Your Right to Party’ by The Beastie Boys — doesn’t it seem like that would mean he’s feeling trapped in some way?
Instead he expresses legitimate concerns about not wanting to hurt his wife Emily, but after they duet P!nk’s ‘Just Give Me a Reason’ in a way that Zoey accurately describes as ‘tortured’, it’s almost like the magic song powers are tricking her. That, or she needs to be more careful and cautious on how she applies her powers.
But it was ultimately a very good episode, one that felt like it was really getting into some tough and interesting topics, while being brave enough to explain that you can’t always solve things even if you want to. We’ll see how well the show sticks to it.
Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist airs Sundays at 9:00 PM on NBC.
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