Recap: SON OF ZORN Puts Up With A Tale of Two Zorns

Season 1, episode 6: “A Tale of Two Zorns”
Written by Greg Gallant
Directed by Eric Appel

[All photos courtesy Fox Broadcasting Co.]

We start with Alan (Johnny Pemberton), Son of Zorn, getting tricked by Zorn (voiced by Jason Sudeikis) using his robot clone, Meka Zorn. He just got him back from prison.

Later, Linda (Artemis Pebdani) gets mad at Zorn after Zorn wants to leave work early because he’s bored. She tells him that he’s going to do a project with Todd (Mark Proksch). Zorn doesn’t want to because…he’s Todd.

Meanwhile, Alan and Craig (Tim Meadows) are planning to wait in line for a new video game, Blood Soldiers: Subterranean Ops. This ticks off Zorn because he thinks Alan likes Craig more than him.

Edie (Cheryl Hines) goes to lunch with her friends. She gets mad because her friends hate that all she does is complain about Zorn. Edie decides she won’t complain about Zorn anymore.

Alan gets bad news: he won’t be allowed to skip school to wait for the game, so Zorn decides that he’ll skip work to help his son out. He’ll send Meka Zorn to work in his place.

Meka Zorn is not very helpful at work, but he is a good listener.

Linda walks in the break room to find Meka Zorn, whom she thinks IS Zorn, seemingly in a trance. She thinks he’s having a stroke so she calls Edie, his emergency contact. She identifies Meka Zorn to Linda and reboots him. Linda is mad, Edie is mad, so they decide to go and get some coffee. They chat about how annoying Zorn is.

Back in the line, Craig shows up to also wait for the game; Zorn gets mad at him for butting in and acting like his video game kills were real and sics his hawk on him. He leaves to get Meka Zorn from the office, but finds it missing.

Zorn gets mad at Todd for trying to be friendly to him and ends up confiding in Todd about Alan and Craig’s relationship.

Edie and Linda are having a good time back at Edie’s place, beating the crap out of Meka Zorn and getting drunk. Linda gets too drunk and tries to make out with Meka Zorn.

Alan and Craig come home from the video game store and discover Edie and Linda. After they get an explanation of what is happening, they decide to join in. Craig hits Meka Zorn a little too hard and Meka Zorn goes into bomb mode.

Zorn comes to the rescue just in time to turn off Meka Zorn’s bomb mode…unfortunately, he gets it set in Kill mode. Meka Zorn gets the upper hand and ties Zorn up, but Craig and Alan come to the rescue by diverting Meka Zorn’s attention and then pouring a bottle of wine on it, shorting the robot out.

Edie and Linda yell at the boys….and then ask for a pizza.

Analysis:

This episode mainly centers around Zorn’s want for a more fatherly relationship with his son, Alan. He is still trying to win him by the friend road then being a father to his son.

Alan, on the other hand,  is a terrible son. He uses Zorn to get out of going to school to wait in line for the video game. A game that’s a little insulting to his father since you don’t ACTUALLY kill something.

We also get to see a new pairing of characters as Linda and Edie meet for the first time. They bond over their mutual frustration of Zorn and his antics. I liked the pairing of these two characters and I think it was the best part of the episode.

Of course, you also had Meka Zorn, Zorn’s robotic duplicate. Apparently, it was serving a prison term in Zorn’s stead. It was pretty handy for Zorn to use, but not too well put together as it malfunctioned a few times during the episode. Perhaps he should have gotten one made from magic instead of technology? Of course, he might have bought it from Japan. The origins aren’t really divulged. It would have been better with a remote.

Ratings wise, I’m not seeing good news there. Viewership has slipped from week to week. This episode had just 2.08 million viewers down from 2.27 million the week before. It’s lead-in show, The Simpsons had 3.17 million. The next show, Family Guy went up to 3.58 million viewers. This looks like a million viewers went somewhere else for 30 minutes and then came back for Family Guy. If it slips more, will they pull it from the schedule?

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.