Honestly, it was probably the most unnecessary sequel of all time. None of the characters in the movie was like themselves at all. I think the only part I liked was when Zoey was looking back at old pictures of them all together on her phone from the old Zoey 101 days. That's it.
I know it gets a lot of hate, and I can see why people don’t think it lives up to Zoey 101. It’s definitely not perfect, and there are some cheesy moments ofc but I genuinely enjoy it and always watch it after I finish watching Zoey 101 in its entirety.
One of the things I actually really liked was seeing Zoey more humanized. In Zoey 101, she’s kind of presented as this girl who is pretty, popular, smart, confident, and somehow everything always works out for her. I liked her character then but I thought it was fun seeing her get humbled a little in Zoey 102.
Like Archer telling her, “It’s really gross how much you talk about high school,” or her boss (Thomas Lennon?! Hello!) literally yelling at her from about one inch away from her face. It was fun seeing adult Zoey realize that the world doesn’t necessarily revolve around her anymore and high school popularity doesn’t automatically carry you through adulthood.
I also loved all the little details they gave the other characters.
Mark and Stacey still being together and having a murder podcast was fun to me because there are so many people who do that now. And I loved that they didn’t completely forget Stacey’s speech impediment from the original. They established that she’s still gotten rid of it, but then had her using a ridiculous amount of S-words while recording the podcast.
Quinn being a successful inventor made perfect sense to me, and I loved seeing how much Logan had mellowed out. He’s basically just completely obsessed with his woman now, which I thought was adorable considering how Logan used to be.
I also liked Chase being a school teacher. He does seem like the kind of person who would have a different handshake for every student.
And I liked getting to hear about Michael’s success as a music producer too. It felt nice seeing that these characters actually went on to have lives and careers instead of everything revolving around PCA like it did on the show.
The Dean Rivers reference also caught me completely off guard. The fact that they casually brought up him embezzling everyone’s tuition made me laugh, esp when Mark follows it up with “But those student loans are real 🤪”.
Logan randomly having a sister was probably one of the more questionable additions, although considering Mr. Reese has apparently been married a million times, it makes sense he’d wind up with a step sibling at some point.
Also Lola being MIA was disappointing! I would’ve liked seeing what she’s up to or at least referencing that she couldn’t come bc she was filming a movie etc etc.
But I think people sometimes expect sequels like this to recreate the exact feeling of the original, and I don’t think that’s really possible. Zoey 101 was a product of the 2000s, and we were also watching it as kids. We’re older, the actors are older, and the world is different. Of course Zoey 102 isn’t going to feel 100% the same.
Personally I didn’t need it to be exactly the same. I enjoyed getting to see the characters again, seeing where their lives ended up, and catching all the little references to the original show.
I genuinely had fun watching it.
Why Blix was such a big deal at PCA? This isn’t anything to overthink about, just asking out of pure curiosity since the group was almost always drinking one! 😆 They looked so refreshing, especially the blue and orange flavors, but I couldn’t help but think about how much they resembled kids mouth wash lol. Anyway, I used to think they were fruit flavored drinks but I’m learning that they were apparently a parody of Gatorade? They even had a soda machine for Blix, and then ofc there’s that one episode where there was a Blix contest.
Thoughts?
Honestly, I loved that picture of Zoey with Chase's guitar.... I screenshotted this from the Zoey 102 movie, although the movie was literal trash, I really do like these pictures. I've actually never seen these pictures before until now. I tried reverse Googling them, but my computer froze.
Mods, can you change the title to, "The Nostalgia of Zoey 101?" These pictures are so nostalgic.
the whole zoey and chase dynamic honestly pisses me off. i hate when shows want us to root for the guy to get the girl when the guy himself never takes any initiation to do so. zoey’s feelings for chase weren’t expressed on her end because she didn’t want to ruin the friendship, but she wasn’t moping around and complaining to her friends about it like chase was. it reminds me a lot of how they wanted us to feel bad for ross on friends when he was hardcore crushing on rachel. i know it’s just a show, but it honestly just makes me cringe so hard when rewatching and i had to let it out😭
Honestly, my favourite couple was Vince Blake and Lola Martinez. Honestly, Vince being introduced in season 3, episode 5, gave him an advantage over James Garrett, because the audience was already familiar with his character and he had a whole storyline centred around him in season 3 and 4, with him being introduced as a bully and him coming back as "a new man, who has changed."
James and Zoey had the worst chemistry and although he was introduced a lot more later than Vince. Vince and Lola's chemistry was undeniable, I always found Vince to be good looking when I was younger too.