Recap: SON OF ZORN Watches Dad Wage The War of the Workplace
Season 1, episode 3: “The War of the Workplace”
Written by Monica Padrick
Directed by Eric Appel
[All photos courtesy Fox Broadcasting Co.]
We open with Craig (Tim Medows), Zorn (voiced by Jason Sudeikis), and the family at the beach making sand castles. Zorn’s castle is life-sized with working weapons. He destroys other castles.
At school, Alan (Johnny Pemberton) is being picked on because he’s wearing sweatpants (to hide his cartoon legs) in gym class instead of shorts.
Craig and Edie (Cheryl Hines) learn from Alan that he’s being bullied at school.
Back at work, Zorn discovers an interloper from the office across the hall, Vita Shock. He’s taking hot sauce from the break room. Zorn wants to destroy him, but Linda tells him to let it go. Zorn can’t and tries to rally the rest of the workers to stage an attack on Vita Shock, but he only succeeds in knocking out the power to his own office. He does, however, win over Jackton (Bobby Lee) to help him.
Back at school, Alan tries to talk to his bullies only to get punched in the face by one of them.
Zorn and Jackton stage a raid on Vita Shock to get the hot sauce back and are successful as Zorn runs out of the office…naked.
Zorn, Edie, and Craig try to advise Alan on what he should do about his bully problem. Zorn tells him to get back at his bullies with weapons, Craig’s advice is to just ball up on the floor and Edie tries to teach him some self-defense moves. Alan wants to do none of it.
Back in the office, Zorn has booby-trapped the hot sauce, getting him in trouble with Linda (Artemis Pebdani).
Zorn is banished to work in the hallway, Jackton tells him that the Vita Shock guy is still raiding the break room.
Edie gives Alan an excuse note to get him out of swimming in gym class.
Zorn and the Vita Shock get prepare to throw down….except that they’re respective bosses stop them from doing battle.
Alan is excused from gym, but in the locker room a bully sees his cartoon legs, he accidentally gives the bully a powerful leg kick.
Zorn asks Linda to decapitate him, Linda declines and tells him to apply his need for battle to his job.
A dinner, Zorn is proud of Alan and starts to sing a ballad about his feat…or he would if he didn’t just turn it into a ballad about himself. Craig decides to sing along with him causing Zorn to stop.
Analysis:
Thanks to the writers, I don’t ever have to worry about finding morals for any episode:
Spoiler: The moral of every Son of Zorn episode is that violence isn’t THE answer, but it’s definitely AN answer.
— Son of Zorn Writers (@SOZWriters) October 3, 2016
So, I’m a bit confused; who knows about Alan’s legs? In the pilot episode, it seemed like Alan was keeping his legs a secret from everyone but himself. In this episode, his parents and Craig know about them. True, we’re only a few episodes into the series so perhaps it’s just an altered premise or a misunderstanding of what the final shot of the pilot episode was about.
We also get a guest star appearance by Bobby Lee, best known as a former cast member of Mad TV. In this episode, he is Zorn’s fellow co-worker who helps him out in his war with the guy from across the hall that raids the breakroom. But he doesn’t really add much to the show. They could have saved money and hired an extra out of central casting to fill this role. It was more of a “Hey! Remember that guy from that one thing? Here he is!” kind of appearance.
The best moment of the episode would have to be the sand castle bit at the beginning of the show. I think everyone would want to build sand castles that big.
The other storyline is this episode was about Alan not wanting to expose his toony Zephyrian heritage to his classmates. So he tries to not change out of his clothes in front of them or wearing trunks in gym class. He eventually gets found out but finds that his legs are more than just cartoony, they’re super strong. How has he never tested them out before? With legs like that, he’d probably be great at running.
He also has to deal with bullies. We learn that Edie used to be a bully in school, perhaps that was why she was into Zorn back then. I can’t wait to see an episode that explains how Zorn and Edie met. That’ll be interesting.
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.
