Recap: SON OF ZORN Pits His Parents Against Each Other
Season 1, episode 9 : “The War on Grafelnik”
Written by Kevin Etten
Directed by Eric Appel
[All photos courtesy Fox Broadcasting Co.]
It’s Christmas for the family. They’re looking at pictures of Edie (Cheryl Hines) and Alan (Johnny Pemberton) from years past when Zorn (voiced by Jason Sudeikis) barges in. Dressed in traditional Grafelnik costume, Zorn is here to celebrate Grafelnik, the Zephyrian holiday of revenge. He explains the holiday to Craig (Tim Meadows) …it sounds an awful lot like the plot of Taken.
Zorn celebrates Grafelnik at work by punching Todd (Mark Proksch) in the nose, the traditional Grafelnik greeting. He gets his first revenge on Alan by sending him to an alley in a sketchy part of town. This is what Alan gets for crying as a baby!
We switch to Craig. Edie learns that he has a fear of Santa Claus. She discovers from him that he’s had it ever since his dad came home dressed as Santa after his parents separated and beat the snot out of his mom’s new boyfriend. He can no longer look at Santa and not see that horrible sight. Edie decides to help Craig get over it by immersing him in Santa Claus until he’s no longer scared.
Zorn is helping Craig get revenge on a waiter. He then asks if he gets presents for Grafelnik; Zorn tells him, yes.
It turns out by happenstance that the two holidays both fall on December 25th this year. Zorn only wants to celebrate Grafelnik with Alan. Edie is not pleased about this because she wants Alan home to celebrate Christmas with her. So they negotiate, but ultimately it’s Alan’s decision.
Edie and Zorn both try to sway Alan to their holidays. Craig tells Alan to take advantage of this to get better presents from his two parents.
It works. Zorn and Edie keep upping the offering. She even ditches Craig while they’re waiting in line to see Santa so she can get more presents. In the end, Alan picks Zorn after he gives Alan a hover sidecar to go on his friends new Vespa.
Craig consoles Edie. So she goes to apologize to Alan for getting so wrapped up in the present tug-of-war. She overhears Alan on the phone with his friend talking about how he pitted his parents against each other.
She goes to Zorn to tell him that they’ve been had. The two of them vow some Graflenik revenge on Alan.
Alan comes over to his dad’s apartment to find the place destroyed. Zorn tells him that Edie came over and wrecked the place after Alan decided to spend Grafelnik with his dad instead of Christmas with her. This means that Zorn must get some Graflenik revenge on Edie…by destroying Christmas village at the mall.
Edie and Alan get to the mall as Zorn starts his attack on the village. But wait, Edie’s got this. She goes to battle with Zorn using a giant candy cane. Alan gets them to stop by apologizing.
They go home and watch Taken…no harm, no foul. The mall was completely fine with the attack, as they celebrate Graflenik there, too.
Zorn has one more Graflenik tradition to bestow on the family… an attack by Zephyrianized killer bees! The family screams as we close out the episode.
Analysis:
So…it’s come to this: the prerequisite Christmas episode.
Christmas episodes are pretty much as old as television itself…The flavor of this one, pitting two divorced parents against each other for the affection of the kid, is no different.
The entertaining part of this episode is the Zypherian holiday of Graflenik. A holiday built on taking revenge. I think we could all use a holiday built on revenge that’s not Election Day.
Alan wants what all teenagers want. Cool stuff. In this case, it starts with him wanting a new phone and ramps up to him wanting a sidecar to go along with his friends Vespa. We could all use a hover side car. We could all use a hover car, period. Thinking of which, if Zypheria has hover technology, why don’t hover cars already exist in their universe? I know I shouldn’t stare at a made up universe too long, but it does make you wonder.
The other bright spot in this episode is Craig’s fear of Santa Claus. Tim Meadows did a good job, you actually feel pity for Craig. Too bad Edie was too busy trying to buy Alan’s time with all the shopping she was doing to really help Craig get over his fear. Maybe that fear will be gone now, replaced by the memory of being stung by Zypherianized killer bees.
There are just four episodes left in this season, which is set to finish on February 19th. Does this mean we have 6 weeks till the next new episode? That’s gonna be a long wait. Or are they going to dole out the last four over the next ten weeks slowly and painfully? I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
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.
