Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist Review: Zoey’s Extraordinary Confession (Season 1 Episode 7)

Max put a real heart-song out there for Zoey.

Yes, that’s right, on Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist  Season 1 Episode 7, “Zoey’s Extraordinary Confession,” the underdog shared his feelings for Zoey with an entire food court. Max doesn’t sing a deeply personal song that Zoey can hear using her “powers,” but instead hires a whole flash mob to declare his love.

Oh, Max. Max, Max, Max, Max…Max. Just when I was starting to come around to your particular brand of blandness.

To be clear on this, it’s not the insane flash mob of it all that bothers me. I was quite moved by Max’s sweet and stripped-down  “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)” during Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist Season 1 Episode 6, “Zoey’s Extraordinary Night Out.”

It’s probably the most I’ve ever rooted for him.

What bothers me about Max making this very public declaration to Zoey is that Max has now fallen into a television trope that I wish would go away, and that’s the “entitled nice guy,” AKA the most dangerous trope to portray in a positive light.

Throughout Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist (all SEVEN episodes, mind you,) we’ve seen Max manically in love with Zoey. In just SEVEN episodes, he’s gone from longingly crushing on his best friend, to having sex with a barista, to dumping said barista in a bad way, to trying to be a knight-in-shining-armor for said best friend again, to…declaring his love to her in a flash mob?

Max has played his love for Zoey in such an upside-down-loop-de-loop way that I have whiplash even trying to remember the events he’s already had since we met him.

After Max broke things off with Autumn, I definitely expected his pining for Zoey to return. That’s pretty textbook for a show like this.

What I did not expect was that Max would lay claim to Zoey’s heart because they’re best friends.

Or that he’d assume that because she’s seen him be helpful to her family that she MUST return his feelings. Or that as her best friend he’d think a FLASH MOB was the right move? Or that publicly forcing feelings upon a person, without being positive that the response will be favorable, is a good idea?

All of these don’t make me see Max and a sympathetic underdog. 

Now I just kind of hate Max. 

It’s as if being there for Zoey as her friend isn’t enough for him, that understanding that she’s going through family stuff, and in a new position at work, that their friendship has been a little estranged, that maybe she just isn’t that into him…none of that seems to matter to Max.

He’s a bit of jerk in the way he treats her after his flash mob goes wrong. He gives her crap after she shares her “superpower” with him. He’s even a bit argumentative with Zoey after she carefully explains why now isn’t the right time, and why it’s a complicated situation for her to navigate. 

Max isn’t entitled to have Zoey reciprocate his feelings just because he’s a nice guy. 

Max didn’t do a great job taking stock of what his relationship with Zoey has been these past SEVEN episodes. (I know I keep harping on that number, it’s just how has so much [and simultaneously so little] happened in SEVEN episodes?) 

Seriously, did he forget how cocky he was handing out coffees after he got laid on Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist Season 1 Episode 4? That was also a major jerk move, and a deliberate “in your face” to his bestie.

If Max had stepped back to seriously consider Zoey for a second after he sweetly walked away from that streetlamp and really reviewed his recent relationship with her, he’d see that their relationship has not been favorable; it’s been distant and awkward.

In fact, he KNOWS it’s been distant and awkward. He brings it up, specifically.

Does Max truly believe that because he helped Zoey during a crisis with her ill father that it’s going to be the thing that turns things in his favor? Because that just feels like a gross, taking-advantage situation.

Why does he assume that a movie night between friends is anything more? Zoey has given Max NO indication that she feels anything for him beyond friendship. 

Now, sure; one could argue that Zoey is leading Max on because she is aware of his feelings through his heart songs.

One could argue that and then be shut down by me because Max doesn’t know that information, which leaves Max to be accountable for his own actions. His behavior isn’t cool.

And I don’t love how it’s resolved.

Yes, his friendship with Zoey is complicated. She’s not in a place where she can look at Max as anything but a friend. But the problem is now that, because of his reaction to rejection, I don’t want Zoey to see him in any other light, and frankly, I don’t know that I want Zoey to see him in a friendly light either. 

There is some other plot movement in this episode, but honestly, it’s all overshadowed by this Max and Zoey story that’s made me so angry that I can’t write a review about anything else, other than this great Max misstep. 

If the writers don’t course-correct Max quickly, then I don’t know that I can support any love story for Zoey, because both of the options that have been presented for her are each problematic in their own way, and I’d rather just lose the love angle altogether in favor of Zoey figuring out herself. 

What did you think of this episode of Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist? Am I being too hard on Max? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist airs Sundays at 9/8c on NBC.

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