Review: Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist. Season One.

I really liked Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist, and I did so for reasons that I’m unsure translate to other people and that I can explain without giving away a lot of the show. But I think it’s because the show is an effort to be an emotional story and to lean into those emotions.

Jane Levy stars as the titular Zoey and she is amazing. I’ve watched her in different things over the years and interviewed her and she has never been better than she is here. The rest of the cast is uniformly good, from Lauren Graham as the hard edged boss who has a soft spot for Zoey and tries to mentor her in terms of work and in terms of dealing with the death of a parent, to Peter Gallagher as her father to Mary Steenburgen as her mother. Alex Newell as Mo and John Clarence Stewart as Simon are the heart of the show and in a uniformly excellent cast, are exceptional.

The pilot, which was expertly directed by Richard Shepard, bounces between a lot of tones and types of stories and has to find a way to balance them. Which is likely one reason they sought out a director like Separd, whose greatest skill is finding a way to thread the needle as far as tone. Think of his films like The Matador or The Perfection or the pilot to Ugly Betty. Also he manages to pull off the musical numbers and these masterful set pieces in exciting ways.

On the one hand, the show promises something light with lots of singing and dancing, but the entire conceit of the show is that these are “heart songs” as Zoey comes to call them, and are expressing something that the person cannot express in words. Which means that no matter how toe tappingly fun the song might be, it tends to mean that something deep and painful and repressed is behind it.

And that could describe the show in a lot of ways, as well. Because while on the one hand it is a show that is bright and full of color. Zoey and some other cast members work at a dot com company, which means it’s a strange looking set that you know is both a strange office space and yet, so far from a parody of how dot com offices are. But at the heart of the show is pain.

Because the illness of Zoey’s father is always there. And there are episodes where she’s able to hear him sing and she and Peter Gallagher dance around the room, and Jane Levy as Zoey manages to convey the joy of being able to connect with her father in this small way. That grasping at those moments of happiness.

And then when the doctor tells them that the end is near, she falls apart. And she begins to break out in song uncontrollably. In a way that threatens to throw off the balance of the show. But it doesn’t because it leans into the emotional nature of the show and that she is expressing what she can’t say. That she can’t face the news about her father and it’s thrown everything off. Her ability to function normally is off, which is something that people who have dealt with the loss of a loved one can relate to. How everything becomes raw and the struggle to think and filter and process what’s happening.

The way that the show manages to tie that episode and that feeling into the entirety of the show. Zoey is a show about trauma and grieving. And I don’t say that to discourage anyone from watching it, because I think it’s a very fun and enjoyable show. But it’s about how we struggle to deal with these issues as we go through our day to day, finding ways to deal with things that are almost overwhelming.

That episode and the one that follow really showcased the show’s strengths. The following one concerns a deaf character who with the helps of backup dancers performs to Fight Song, which is played without lyrics as the characters aren’t simply dancing, but signing the song lyrics as they dance. It was breathtaking to watch.

Through it all the show also made the point that even though Zoey had this insight into people’s inner lives, that didn’t mean she suddenly understood them or their lives. She’s a coder and has her own issues and biases and she doesn’t always understand what people are doing or what things mean or how best to deal with it. But she finds ways to work through it.

The final episode, which was a bit out of character compared to the rest, was brilliant. And devastating. The sad truth is that before the pilot was over, I knew what was coming. Zoey’s father wasn’t going to stick around for years, it wasn’t going to continue indefinitely. If it did, the show would have ended up being twee. And the show leaned into the feeling. Peter Gallagher and his son and daughter in law sang Lullaby, the Billy Joel song, which was heartbreaking and beautiful. There was a lovely goodbye as Zoey and her father danced, which ended as I expected, and yet that diminish the emotional impact of it.

The final scene of the final episode consisted of a single shot of a single song. The extended cast sang Don McLean’s American Pie. The camera weaved through the house as the cast walked around each talking a line or a few lines at a time, and quickly we see that as the camera moves around the house that time is passing, the song taking place over the wake as a few hours pass and people arrive and leave, as food is eaten and people circulate. Ending with the family together and as Zoey closes the door, she speaks the final line.

The final episode was clearly made by someone who’s lost people, who’s dealt with grief, and it threads that line of being sad and leaning into the pain and the loss without being overwhelmingly tragic or other other side, sappy and maudlin. And perhaps it’s because the show aired during a year where we’ve been surrounded by death. Surrounded by so many deaths at a time when we’re also mourning the loss of our lives and mourning so many things, and we never had a chance to grieve. Not really. I’m not sure that I would call Zoey the best show off the year (though it was one of them) but it was a show about 2020 in a strange way. A show about grief and pain and laughter and joy and finding a way to work through it. The show was not just good, it came out at just the right moment.