NBC
The latest episode of Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist is called ‘Zoey’s Extraordinary Trip’, which I should’ve guessed the meaning of — a classic drug trip. After taking a much needed personal day, Zoey is given an unnamed pill by young Australian neighbor and slacker Aiden. Maybe the name of the drug can’t be mentioned in primetime, but the vagueness around it was weird, and the generic ‘high’ results were also a bit too vague.
It’s also not really considering anything in terms of potential dangers about whatever the drug is, especially since we don’t know what it was, instead offering a joint song from newly released CEO Danny Michael Davis, Zoey, and Aiden of ‘Starships’ by Nicki Minaj. The song isn’t really about getting high, they just picked a few lyrics that sort of talked about it — honestly I don’t get the point of the whole ‘trip’ angle, it feels odd and out of place.
Plus it also leads to Danny being very vulnerable with Zoey and allows her to be emotionally supportive to him, but why do we need to humanize the Zuckerberg parody again? This is the same dude that asked Simon, the black PR rep, to whitewash the IT issue of racist facial recognition (such things have indeed happened). Juxtaposing that sort of serious issue (which was mostly well handled) with the insane silliness of the ‘drug’ was a misfire.
Simon’s eventual choice (singing Nina Simone’s ‘Don’t Let Me Be Understood’, a direct lyrical song for him) to hold the company accountable is potentially a career ending move, and it’s the sort of cliffhanger I appreciate at least. On the lesser side of things, the show offers some realism by having all investors and potential press fall through for Max and Mo’s terrible restaurant idea.
NBC
Max’s storyline about not pleasing his father felt so dull and uninspired, much like Max the character, and his calling the app ‘groundbreaking’ gave me an eye roll. His song choice of ‘Numb’ by Linkin Park was fine as a performance, but it also made me annoyed again about him. Yet again Max chooses his particular principles over something stable, refusing money from his dad (who specifically says he can afford the loss) because his dad doesn’t actually think it’s a good idea — which it isn’t! Ugh, this storyline is a waste of time.
On the family front, the show decides (or maybe they had to) to kick Jenna off, even if they gave her both a contrived problem and a touching sendoff. Jenna added a real energy to the show, and I am already missing the character. Jee Young Han has such a natural charisma, I hope whatever she does next is worthy of her talents, because the show immediately feels less.
Aiden’s song of ‘Unwritten’ by Natasha Bedingfield was fine, but merely repeated his disinterest in the future, which Zoey simply does not have the luxury to bother with. It’s honestly unreasonable, even if I can sort of understand why the overly stressed and grieving Zoey would prefer not to care for a while. I just don’t think it was handled very well in this episode, just a bunch of things for Zoey to worry about in particular, which already happens every week.
Aside from Simon’s subplot and the bits with Jenna, kind of a mess of an episode, a real downturn from last week — this season has been all over the place so far and I hope they pull it together.
What did you think of this episode? Start a conversation in the comments section below.
Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist airs Tuesday at 8:00 PM on NBC.
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