YMMV / Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist

• Adorkable: Zoey's out and out the kindest person on the show, and is also sweet, shy, and nerdy. Her adorkableness is taken up to eleven in "Zoey's Extraordinary Glitch" when singing "I'm Yours" to Max. During which Zoey spins Max in a chair, plays peek-a-boo with him with a pool table, and strums a ping-pong paddle like a guitar while giggling.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Max: Nice Guy who's justified in his frustration with Zoey, and sincerely loves her, or insensitive Dogged Nice Guy who lashes out when she tells him "no"? Or is he both? This video makes a very good case for the latter.
  • Simon: Troubled, but well-meaning guy, or emotional adulterer whom Zoey would be better off without? Again, these two aren't mutually exclusive.
  • Both Simon and Zoey could also easily be interpreted as not being bad people, but way too caught up in their own emotional turmoils to have a relationship with anyone right now. To Zoey's credit, she definitely seems to feel this way herself.
  • Since she seems to have genuine romantic feelings for both Simon and Max, even singing "heart songs" to both of them, many have interpreted Zoey as being poly.
• Arc Fatigue: Many fans have lost patience with the development of the love triangle involving Zoey, Max and Simon, which lasts two entire seasons and steals precious time that could be better used in other subplots.
• Awesome Music: Many examples!
  • Zoey’s dad singing “True Colors” is both this and a happy Tear Jerker.
  • The deaf college students' performance of “Fight Song” is stunning.
  • Leif turning “All I Do Is Win” into a borderline Villain Song.
  • Most of the cast singing “American Pie” during Zoey’s dad’s memorial service.
  • Season 2 brings us George’s performance of “Stronger”.
• Genius Bonus: Max mentions using Dijkstra's Algorithm to calculate the shortest path between locations. That's actually how that would be done.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Episode 7 has bits from Max throwing a flash mob for Zoey in a mall to Zoey's dad watching "March Madness." It aired in the middle of the 2020 Coronavirus pandemic where many public places (including San Francisco where the show is set) were closed down and the NCAA Tournament called off.
• He Really Can Act: In this case, They Really Can Sing. Many of the cast members had few or no musical roles prior to this show, and there are arguably no bad singers to be found.
• Ho Yay: For all their "loudly heterosexual bro" antics, especially Tobin's, Tobin and Leif have a lot of this... again, especially Tobin. Being sad your friend isn't spending as much time with you as he used to? Could happen to any pair of best buds. Passionately singing a breakup song about it and bemoaning your friend forgetting your "anniversary"? Uh, Tobin, honey...
  • While he had only expressed attraction to women up to that point, near the end of "Zoey's Extraordinary Christmas", Leif off-handedly mentions a male ex.
  • At the beginning of Season 2, after Zoey emerges from six weeks of near-hibernation following her dad's funeral, she finds that Simon, Max and Mo have spent the time bonding and becoming close friends, which continues throughout the season, including the three of them having an at-home spa session together. This naturally makes any or all of the trio shippable.
• Idiosyncratic Ship Naming: "Coding Bros" for Tobin/Leif. "Coder Boyfriends" also pops up.
• Informed Wrongness: Zoey fixing Max up with Autumn after finding out he's in love with her. When Max finds out Zoey has known how he felt for her and fixed him up with Autumn rather than deal with it, he gets angry and outright claims that she must be telling the truth about her heart song power, because nobody would make up doing something so cold and mean. Except, Zoey clearly didn't feel the same way about Max as he did for her and didn't want a relationship, and confronting him about his feelings just so she could reject him would have been humiliating for him (which is proven, considering how hurt he was over the flash mob incident imploding). Trying to fix him up with someone else was a considerably nicer option since, at least from her perspective, Max might have been happy with Autumn, and could spare his hurt feelings rather than forcing them to be outed just so she could turn him down.
• LGBT Fanbase: Par for the course for a musical, there's a substantial one for this show. The fact that Mo is one of the few canonically genderfluid characters on television, and he's a lead at that, has also attracted a lot of positive attention.
• No Yay: Pretty much no one is on board for Leif/Joan, for reasons varying from the fact that he's using her to enhance his career, to thinking Joan can do better than him, to thinking Joan should get with Zoey instead, to thinking Leif should get with Tobin instead. Or some combo thereof. In any case, Leif/Joan is the fandom's least popular ship. Thankfully, this is an Intended Audience Reaction of the ship anyway.
• One True Threesome: Some fans avoid Ship-to-Ship Combat and ship Simon/Zoey/Max instead. It's helped that Simon and Max actually get along and, for the most part, are both genuine Nice Guy characters.
• Portmanteau Couple Name:
  • Clarkeman or Zomax = Zoey/Max
  • Zimon = Zoey/Simon
  • Zoan = Zoey/Joan
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Although he was at first disliked for being sexist, obnoxious, and lazy, Tobin's won some viewers over, as the first season gives him more development and sympathetic qualities, and sees him vowing to work on himself and take his job more seriously.
• Seasonal Rot: So far, Season 2 is considered by much of the fandom to be inferior to Season 1. The biggest criticism so far is the excessive focus on the love triangle: Zoey and Max decide to date, but Zoey is still mourning her father and so decide to take a break. And then, Zoey reconnects with her neighbor and childhood friend. And then, Max meets a teenage friend. And then Zoey realizes that she still has romantic feelings for Simon. At this point, some fans have the impression that the writers don't seem to have a clue as to who Zoey's boyfriend might be, and that all of that screentime should be spent on other plots and characters.
• Ship-to-Ship Combat: Right out of the gate, we have Zoey/Simon vs. Zoey/Max, with some Zoey/Joan shippers as an outlier. The former case is somewhat encouraged, as even Mo in-universe can't decide which couple should be the OTP he roots for.
• Squick:
  • Zoey seeing her father sing "Moondance" by Van Morrison leads her to assume (with Mo's help) that her father wants to have sex with her mother and she has to tell her mother that. Much to her relief, the song was actually a roundabout way of saying “I love you.” However, Maggie tells Zoey that she and Mitch are already active that way.
  • Played straight when Emily, Zoey's sister-in-law sings "Buttons" to David, Zoey's brother.
  • And when David, who has joined Aiden's band, realizes they're singing a love song to his sister at her birthday. Somehow during practice he'd thought that the lyrics being about the "next-door ginger" was a metaphor.