It seems like a dream the moment the show begins, or maybe it’s just similar to the kind of dreams my love of movies set on the west coast has manifested. Zoey lives in beautiful San Francisco, a software engineer vying for a promotion in a room full of men in a crazy modern tech company. It all turns into a bit of a nightmare really quickly, with Zoey’s family crisis becoming a forefront of the story. Her father is dying of a neurological disease, and he has become completely nonverbal, unable to communicate any of his symptoms, thoughts, or feelings. When Zoey goes in for a medical procedure, an earthquake strikes, and she suddenly finds herself struck with a fever dreamlike ability: to hear the people around her “sing to her” when they’re in need of help, and we’re back in dreamland again.
The story sounds ridiculous. It is. It’s Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist.
The words “single camera musical comedy-drama” tend to whisper–or, rather, sing–my name whenever they hit television, but something kept me from this one. Maybe it was seeing Skylar Astin in the 700th musical thing I had ever seen him in, recognizing his face from the likes of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, the Pitch Perfect films, and a guest stint on Glee. It could have been the inherent silliness of a show once described to me as “adult Glee,” or the backdrop of a city that has always seemed far fetched to me, like the kind of dreams you never reach.
Surely it couldn’t be all of the things that always draw me in. Anything that Lauren Graham breathes near is the kind of project I’m willing to invest a lot of time into (I own all of her books and could probably quote to you the entirety of a number of Gilmore Girls episodes from start to finish. Revival episodes included. There’s a Gilmore Girls calendar in my bedroom.) Mary Steenburgen is the world’s best romantic comedy mom and an Oscar winner to boot! Jane Levy, the show’s lead, absolutely rules, and Alex Newell, alum of both The Glee Project and Glee, brings light to issues of gender performativity on network television in a way that you don’t see everyday, along with bringing that beautiful voice with him.
These are all things that should’ve had me counting down to the premiere of this show, even if its first few episodes aired on Hulu (worst of the streaming platforms other than the obvious garbage that is Amazon Prime, the service which gets a pass for hosting Fleabag and for genuinely nothing else.) Something kept me away.
I hate to say it, and I know how crazy it sounds, but leavening the weight of the world with humor and song right now has felt like kind of a terrible thing to do. The world seems to be on fire, whether politically or with a crisis of public health or even on the smaller scale of my own personal life with an impending graduation, a thesis due, the need to decide in the next few months the course of my next few years. The dreams I’ve had for years and the realities of my present have sort of crashed together in the wake of the million things going on in the world, and sometimes the burden feels unimaginable. I feel like I don’t have the time to enjoy things in the same way that I once did, and discovering new and enjoyable things brings a sort of guilt into my stomach. I wish that wasn’t true.
That brings me to sitting down to finally watch Zoey’s, thinking that, since I had a few hours to kill before bed and did not have classes in the morning, I should allow myself to goof off for a few hours and actually enjoy something. I thought it would just be silly. Maybe Zoey would learn that her coworkers were jealous of her, or that her barista wished to be a ballerina, something like that. Instead, Zoey hears “Mad World” lingering in a coworker’s office late one night. The singer in question, the guy Zoey’s been crushing on for quite some time, as if she is not a woman in her late 20s using the word “crush,” sits in his dark office, distraught as Zoey hears him sing the song in his head. He’s clearly deeply troubled, though he has never once taken the time to let that be known by anyone.
For me, and maybe for many other viewers, it feels like a turning point. The songs aren’t just silly moments carrying a bit of a societal pressure (cue “All I Do Is Win” from Zoey’s coworker Leif, with whom she’s competing for her promotion at work. His name is… Leif, which is a whole other thing for me.) They’re meant to clue Zoey in on the things really troubling the people around her, to let her know that she needs to swoop in. Simon, the crush in question, is struggling with the heavy weight of his father’s recent suicide, and Zoey shares in his grief, knowing her father may not be with her much longer.
There are a number of other things playing a part in Zoey’s life, the kinds of things which make me feel less guilty for taking an hour of my week and spending it in this silly little musical world.
She’s navigating a promotion at work in an office where she and her seemingly-scary boss are the only women. Her family seems to be falling apart at the seams as her father, the glue who held them all together, deteriorates by the day. Her best friend at work has apparently been in love with her for years, and her new friend is dealing with an issue of gender identity and performativity that she doesn’t quite know how to handle. It’s all of the things that make her feel like me. I sort of love her.
A serious undertone lies within Zoey’s, and Jane Levy plays it well. That song that she’s hearing, the one that her loved one or her coworker or a friend might sing to her, is the song inside their head. It’s not the one that gets stuck like that Empire flooring commercial jingle or whatever local furniture store advertises on your local radio station. It’s the song that encapsulates their feelings, even the ones they aren’t ready to, or have become unable to, express. It’s easy to think that most of us just click on the radios in our cars, listening to whatever top 40 hit plays once every hour, switching to another station only to find that same Post Malone song again.
Truth is I tend to be clicking through my Spotify, and some of my friends laugh at how long it takes me to choose a song before driving, but I just want it to feel right. It has to match my mood, whether that means I’ll choose a song to personify my feelings or to try to change my mood or to meet it where it is. There are some songs that just sound like certain feelings. The inside of my head sounds like Radiohead’s “No Surprises” when I’m sad, Mitski’s “Texas Reznikoff” when I feel like I’m about to explode, “Tommie Sunshine’s Megasix Smash-Up” aka a mashup of Katy Perry’s number one singles from Teenage Dream when I’m particularly happy.
I should have known the show would be, to use one of my own favorite words, iconic the moment I saw Lauren Graham’s Joan bust through a bathroom door in song during an early advertisement (and finding out that she’s singing “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” in said scene has only made me love her more.) I did not know that the guilt I often feel when I take a few moments to myself, even if I sometimes can’t help but procrastinate which only makes me feel guiltier, would subside for a little while.
Maybe I have managed to erase my guilt (or at least have tried my best to repress it) I see so much of myself in this story, knowing that it doesn’t ignore the fact that sometimes it seems like the world is on fire. There are still dreams. There are still songs in our heads. I wonder what song Zoey would hear in mine.
