'Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist' Season 2 Episode 1: Zoey declares her love by kissing a man, is it Max or Simon?
What better way to begin the new year than watching a brand new season of your favorite musical TV series that hits all the right notes. After Zoey Clarke (Jane Levy) lost her father she has been having a hard time carrying on with her life and hasn’t been able to bring herself to go to work for six weeks. Mo (Alex Newell), who is Zoey’s friend, neighbor and musical genius whose help Zoey must seek to be able to understand her gift of being able to listen to other people’s thoughts through music, comes to the rescue. Like a good friend she gives Zoey the push and pep talk, she needs before her first day at work after the break.
Zoey’s brother David Clarke (Andrew Leeds) and his wife Emily (Alice Lee) are now parents to baby Milo and like all new parents, they are struggling. Andrew thought it would be a good idea for the family to be together during a time of such immense grief and a newborn baby, who he thinks got his father’s eyebrows, will lift everyone’s mood. But their mother Maggie (Mary Steenburgen) took the hardest blow from the tragedy of losing her dear husband who she was madly in love with and couldn’t bring herself to even hold the baby. She later confessed to Zoey that she felt guilty since her husband wasn’t there to experience the joy of being grandparents together.
Before getting back to work Zoey met Max (Skylar Astin), who quit his job in the last season to follow his dream of having his own company. Max, who is the only person after Mo to know the superpower Zoey has, gives Zoey a ring. Don’t worry! It wasn’t a wedding ring, even though he had confessed his love to Zoey and her response, well Max is still waiting for that and so are we. Max is not the only one who proposed though, her other colleague, Simon (John Clarence Stewart), also professed his love for Zoey in the last season and classic Zoey has put him on hold as well. We understand that when two exceptionally good-looking guys fall for you or as Zoey said at one point, “throwing themselves at me,” it must be a lot of pressure to choose one.
Back to the ring that Max gave to Zoey was a shield ring that would protect her from all evils and he carefully got a reversed musical note engraved on it to make it look like a ‘Z’ for Zoey. He gets full points for being a hopeless romantic. Zoey, however, was extremely overwhelmed the moment she stepped into the office. Leif, who is mad competitive, had taken over and changed everything according to his taste. He has installed standing desks for everyone and got dogs running around the office and remember the open display of baked goods and cereals from last season? Well, that’s gone too. He mentioned the company has run into some sort of bankruptcy and he also hired Howie to replace Max and that brings the first new character of the season.
Howie (Zak Orth) is a sweet and sensitive guy but people usually take advantage of his sweet nature and walk all over him. He was especially upset when Tobin (Kapil Talwalkar) played a cruel prank on him and got him to buy a baby tiger. Howie didn’t say anything to anyone since he was trying to fit in his new workplace. He even told Zoey that she could yell at him if she ever needed to yell at someone because he was so used to it. With her musical mind-reading power it comes to her notice that Howie was sad but she didn’t do anything about it until later since she had a lot of other stuff going on like her boss Joan (Lauren Graham) pushing her for the executive director position, newfound friendship among Mo, Max and Simon in her absence as she says, “I am glad my grief brought you together” and unseen messages left by her dad on his laptop for the family.
After hesitating Zoey decided to take up the new position and replace Joan who is going to Singapore to head the Asian branch of the company. She also took a stand for Howie and told Tobin to be kind to him and maintain civility in the workspace. Howie, who overheard the conversation, expressed his gratitude to Zoey and gave Zoey what she needed all this time, a hug.
Meanwhile, Max had a brilliant idea, or rather it was Mo’s idea of a business plan, to have a place that would order food from different restaurants and deliver it to a person’s home. Sounds like ‘Postmate’ to us, though more clarity on the idea is awaited. However, when he goes over to Zoey’s to tell her about it, Zoey had some other news waiting for him. She said she finally had the time to think about his proposal and kissed him.
Looks like Zoey had made her choice which means heartbreak for poor Simon or maybe a new character waiting to come into his life. We cannot wait to see how it unfolds.
Catch 'Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist' every Tuesday, January 5 at 8/7c on NBC.
