6/10
Tiny step down in quality, but still very much worth watching
27 October 2021
Warning: Spoilers
This is the second episode from season 1 of "Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist" and this of course also makes it the second episode from the entire series. Zoey is still capable of hearing people's emotions and she has adapted to this "superpower" nicely now as if she had it all her life. This is a bit surprising. A bit too fast perhaps. I mean she still struggles with aspects of it, but this is really only because of what it is that people are singing to her and not because of the fact that they are singing to her. This mostly refers to her best (male) friend as you can see from the title of this episode as well. At the very end of the first episode, we found out in a bit of a cliffhanger ending that he may see more than a platonic in her and Zoey is not happy about it at all. You could wonder if she just does not want to allow herself to have feelings for him or if there aren't any. Future will tell. In any case, she is so busy with her promotion at work that she cannot really move forward in that department. As for her actual crush, she is interacting with him a lot still, not only when they hold a presentation together, but he is engaged to another woman, so no great opportunities there either. We will see in the coming episodes where all this is heading next. Of course, there is once again a solid amount of interaction between Zoey and her parents too with major focus on her father's illness and Peter Gallagher once again gets to perform a song to his daughter. These music numbers are really all he has in terms of spoken language. Otherwise, he is bound to sit there and cannot really do anything because of the aforementioned illness. The female new (best) friend / neighbor who is the only one that knows about Zoey's special ability is also featured throughout the episode, but still does not do a lot for me. Feels too stereotypical her character.

This episode is really a prime example of how everything seems messed up during an episode, but in the end it is somehow magically fixed. This applies mostly to the struggles at work though that are solved through a kinda sweet diary entry reading sequence and also Zoey's relationship with her best friend is not as stressful anymore as she does what she can to get him together with the female barista from the local coffee shop and he also seems to develop an interest in her. But even their friendship was at stake at some point. That's how serious it was. On a different note, I still wonder why and don't like it that Lauren Graham's character is standing there like some omnipresent character always right behind Zoey somewhere to see how she deals with difficult situations, basically when she manages to fix these situations. Okay, I am biased there because I do not like the actress. Sorry, Gilmore Girls fans. Okay, what else is there to say here? Jane Levy still has these pretty amazing looks and overall I think the second episode was a small step back in quality, but nothing too serious. Still some decent moments overall and all in all the positive outweighs the negative and I will keep watching and I am curious how the story continues for all the protagonists. Most of all for Zoey herself of course. Must also add that the songs used in here were a bit less impressive compared to the first episode, but no surprise at all because of course they started with a bang and cannot keep going with it every single episode. Absolutely fine this way. So this episode gets a thumbs-up from me too. Solid creativity overall, even if there is definitely potential for improvement still there and they need to find it if this show wants to be remembered fondly and also still seen by people 20 years from now. It's a positive recommendation, but a bit more on the cautious side now, even if Levy is really the epitome of likably quirky in this show, even if the scene with the coffee poured all over her shirt was too much again too. And even if the computer nerd component with Zoey is not exactly there, but then again why does she have to be a socially awkward nerd only because she is a programmer? That's maybe just in our minds. Go watch. And keep watching.
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