Recap: SON OF ZORN Wants To Be The Weekend Warrior
Season 1, episode 4: “The Weekend Warrior”
Written by Elijah Aron & Jordan Young
Directed by Payman Benz
[All photos courtesy Fox Broadcasting Co.]
We open with Zorn (voiced by Jason Sudeikis) shopping with Craig (Tim Medows) and Edie (Cheryl Hines) because Alan (Johnny Pemberton) will be staying with Zorn for the weekend. Zorn wants to be more of a pal with his son, but Edie reminds him that he needs to be his father, not his friend.
Meanwhile, Alan is trying to impress Jeff (Cameron Monaghan) and his friends to become his friends. He invites them over to Zorn’s place to have a party.
Before he leaves for Zorn’s, Edie reminds Alan to do his homework; this causes Alan to snap at his mother. She finds that this is all due to his exposure to Jeff.
Alan and Zorn hang out…and it’s kinda lame. Zorn shows Alan his lava launcher, a gun that creates an instant pool of lava when fired. Of course, Zorn leaves this unattended in the apartment.
Things at Zorn’s just get lamer and lamer, so Zorn decides to relax the dad rules and becomes more of a pal to Alan.
Later, Edie and Craig are having some friends over, but they decide to play a prank on them.
Alan invites Jeff and his friends over, but Zorn ends up humiliating him, so he “borrows” the lava launcher to get back in Jeff’s good graces.
Edie is worried about Alan, so Craig and Edie go to check up on him. They don’t find him at Zorn’s, but Zorn does notice that the lava launcher is missing.
Alan and his new friends mess around with the launcher, melting some cars. After Alan struggles to get the launcher away from Jeff, it goes off and forms a large pool of lava in the parking lot.
A security guard almost calls the cops on them, but Zorn gives the guard the launcher in exchange for his silence.
Alan and Zorn have a heart to heart talk. Zorn will punish Alan. They are both caught by Edie and Craig and Edie starts reading them the riot act, when Alan comes up with a convincing lie and Edie apologizes to Zorn.
Analysis:
So as we said last week, there is no moral to any story according to the writers…okay, that’s not true. There is a moral to the story: Don’t give into peer pressure. Don’t be a pal to your child, be a parent. Don’t leave lava launchers unattended. Good advice, I will look up my lava launcher from now on.
This episode was sort of a formulaic straight plot, nothing special. It’s the little bits that make the episode. The hints at Edie and Zorn’s past. Zorn’s inability to be a real parent to Alan. Zorn getting advice from a person who’s number he finds on the restroom stall wall.
I kind of hope they expand that out. It would be funny to have him build a relationship based on a random number.
So, not much continuity to this episode. Last week’s episode has no effect on this week’s episode. A shame, I would like to see how the revelation that Alan got the power of his legs carry over to this week’s episode. Maybe he could have had to jump over the lava to save someone or take up track or something. Nope, you could transpose the order of the last two episodes and not now they were out of order.
We get more of Edie’s mean streak in this episode when she plays a prank on her dinner guests. She stops her heart. At some point, I would like to see Edie just go full out Xena: Princess Warrior and kick some ass.
Son of Zorn airs Sunday at 8:30/7:30 Central on Fox. It can also be found on Amazon Prime Instant Video, Hulu and Fox.com. For more information, visit the official website.
