User blog:Tomas T/Zoey - When good idea and bad writing are meeting

Hi everyone. Welcom to my new blog. After Sugar and Courtney it's the time for focusing on the controversial girl of the second generation: Zoey. Same for Courtney and Sugar, zoey is very controversial. Some people really love her while some truely hates her. My opinion is kinda complex. I wanted to love her but the writing prevented me. In this blog I will explain what was good about the idea behind her character, why and how it failed, how it could be fixed and good thing that the writers did with her character.

Zoey as the idea
Zoey was meant to be well liked by the fans. She seems to be reletable person. Zoey seems to be the "Bridgette" or "Sky" of the second generation: the sanest and nicest girl. However unlike Bridgette and Sky (or Emma) Zoey touched subject that rarley was touched in the show: loneliness.

Only four characters have loneliness as main subject or as the concept of the character: Gwen, Zoey, Sammy and Jasmine (I wish at least one male had some story of loneliness). Each of them had diffrente type of loneliness.

Gwen: It was her choice to be a loner. She had three friends back home but in the show it took some time from her to open up to other people. She don't know why she is a loner but most likley it has something to do with her father beind absent from her life.

Zoey: Like Gwen, Zoey is a loner too. Unlike Gwen Zoey want to be involved in the social life. But she lives in a reality that keeping her loneliness relevant: She is only child, lives in small town and most of the teenagers in her age are not type of people who can understand her. Her options are really limitated.

Sammy: Sammy is a loner because of other person: Amy, her twin sister. Amy keep on ruin Sammy's life and prevent her be happy. Her loneliness still active because of Amy.

Jasmine: Jasmine's loneliness caused by people misjudged her and not knowing her.

Having character like Zoey is a good idea, showing us a loner, who doesnt want to be a loner, but she is a loner and don't know how to stop. For some people, stop being loner its an easy thing to do. But for some other people, like people with social anxity or AVPD (like I have) its really hard and without the proper treatment, its almost impossible.

My first impression
Having good impression is the most important thing you need to do to be liked by other. The first time I saw Zoey was in her audition tape. She seems really nice to me and I was so sure im going to love her very much. Same goes with the first episode. Zoey is a character I could relate a lot, even more than Noah, Harold and Courtney (the three character who I can relate the most). Same for Zoey I was only child for most of my life. My siblings were born when I was 15, and they are from my father's second marrige (and since I live with mother, I still was her only child in my own home). And I never met people at my age who I can be friend with them. I never found any person with same interests as I have. All my classmates loved to drink, go to clubs, upload photos to facebook/instegram/twitter and stuff like this. Nobody love to reading books, watching horror films, playing video games, helping animals. I have nobody to talk to and I felt like people just saw me as the preppy goth or something like this. I was friendly to others but there was no chemistry. And having AVPD made it even harder. So when zoey introduce to us, I was happy to see the writers finally having a character of a loner who want to stop her loneliness but she doest not know how to do it. But my hopes were for nothing because the great idea behind her character was infulenced by bad writing in both her seasons.

So what went wrong with her?

Her design
What? Zoey is the most beautiful girl on the show (sorry Lindsay) so what the problem with her design? Well just think about how the show would look like if Alejandro has Noah's design. ridiculous right? now switch between Dawn and Taylor. Its ridiculous to see Dawn behive in her carless attitude while Taylor being so spritital who cared about the animals and the mother nature. Same goes with Zoey. I think the way the creators designed her not fit at all to her character or the messege they want to give. This design is too hot for the character Zoey intents to be. Zoey has rounded buttock, large breast, wearing strapless shirt with cleavage, her belly button visibale, hills sandals, perfect make up, pretty face. Zoey look like a model, she can be put in the same line with the other hot total drama girls like Lindsay, Dakota, Anne Maria, Amy and Sammy or Taylor.

But her personality or backstory does not fit that much with the design we got. Zoey is shy girl next door, social awkward, has low self esteem and low self confidence and she apologizing a lots. I dont know, but this personality doest not fit to the design we got. We got a design of a model with self confindence. Not shy girl next door.

Im not saying that Zoey should be ugly or she should be covered like a nun or orthodox woman. But her look does not supposed to be that sexy. An average look, at least with clothing, is better choice. Zoey's personaity fits way better with a look that simillar to Bridgette, Courtney, Sky, Emma or Carrie.

In TD the characters look like and wearing like they type of personality they are representing. Jo is a jockette so she is wearing sweatpants, Gwen is a goth of of course she will wear dark clothing and dyin her hair. Alejandro is a spanish lover so he need tan skin, long dark hair and hot body. Heather is a femme fatale so it make sense to wearing an outfit that reavel her skin and hot body. But Zoey is not sopposed to be hot. She supposed to be avrege girl, like most of the girls.

I have a bigger problem with the way the creators classified the females in this season. But this is for another blog.

I saw once this fanart and I think this is great design for Zoey

Dumping her friends storyline after one episode
So after seein her audition and watching her first episode, it seems she will be involved with two storylines: getting friends and be with Mike. However after one episode all the friends and loneliness things was dumped for good. Zoey's homelife and her loneliness never brought back in any point. Zoey joined to TD to find new friends after she failed to do it in her hometown. And worst: she even rejected two potential friends: Dawn and Dakota. Dawn was the nicest person to her before her elimination. She was the only one who felt any empathy for her in the first episode and she comforted her after Mike tunred into Vito (well... with Mike laying to Zoey, it leaves Dawn the nicest person to Zoey at that moment). But Zoey just went to the conffesions booth and gossiped about how Dawn is creepy (Beth in "Get A Clue"). Later on the season, after Dakota turned into Dakotazoid in the worst epiosde of the season and the series (yes even worst that "Sundea Muddy Sundea") she proteced her from the munats all the episode. But later Zoey voted for her (and its kinda dumb plot because Scott doesnt need Zoey to vote with him. he had Chris head statue). Zoey does not even trying to befriend with the other. The only time there is some attempt is comfiting Brick in the second episode. Well later she and Cameron become friends but this is mainly because of Mike's absence.

So basicly Zoey's (seems to be) main plot was dumped after one episode and she left with not so good plot. And her plot was...

Dependent on Mike!
So all of Zoey's character was spend to be Mike's girlfriend. Sometimes things like this happened, when a character served only as a love interest. But the problem here is that Zoey has bigger role in the season and bigger screentime. And of course: she is a main character. But everything she has to say or think, its connected somehow to Mike. Cameron is Mike's bestie? So he is also Zoey's bestie! Mike hate Scott? so Zoey hates him too because he eliminated Mike (and not because Scott was huge jerk to almost everyone). Anne Maria has crush on mike? lets slap her!. at some point it start to be annoying that the sole thing that keep Zoey is her love for Mike, a guy who lay to her.

And things like this happned a lot. A great concept of a character that just wasted on the love storyline. Another example for this is Aria Mongromery from "Pretty Little Liars". If you never watched the show here some TL;DR: Aria is an interesting concept. She is some kind of artist indie girl. She loves literature (her favorite genere are crime novels), love old B&W films, she write songs and stories, play violin and she design her own clothes. She had interesting POV of life and her backstory is interesting. However all of her character just spend on be with her boyfriend Ezra. for seven seasons she has this boring storyline with "on off" relationship with Ezra. It was so worst that even the actress, Lucy Hale, beg from the showrunner to creat an interesting plot for Aria. for the first four season out of all the four main characters Aria was involved the least with the main storyline. Same goes with Zoey. The idea behind her character is great, but the writing spend only on Mike. And even Mike is not that good character. In fact I think he is worst than Zoey.

Zoey was so depend on his character in ROTI so we barley felt Zoey. We felt a girl who want Mike and her name is Zoey.

But ever worst: more than Zoey was depended on Mike, Mike was depended on Zoey even more than her (and it became worst in TDAS)

Damsle in disstress
For the first three season we met a lot of strong girls. In fact, all the girls were strong in some way. Sometimes they were in disstress but most of the times they were heroes. However after three seasons of strong women, ROTI do the total opposite and did worst writing with the female characters. But I will leave it to another blog. However Zoey, our new main female (who is not the main protagonist) is not strong like gen 1 girls. This time Zoey is a pure damsle in distress. almost every episode she found herself in a new danger and who will rescue her?

A) will Zoey rescue herself?

B) or will one of her female teammate save her?

C) or a dude, her love intrest will save her?

the answer is C. With the expetion of episodes 7+8 (where Brick and Dakota saved her) she was saved by mike every time. Seeing a damsle in disstress as the main female after three seasons of strong female is not that nice thing to see.

I do not say that it should be illigal to see female in disstress in TV or movies. But this time when it happened everytime to Zoey, after three seasons of girl power, automaticly Zoey will be seen as inferior compers to Heather, Leshawna or Sierra.

These are all of her problems in ROTI. TDAS changed Zoey alot. It solved some problems but created others. Some will say that TDAS problems are worst.

Godplaying
Here we come to one of Zoey's poor writing: godplaying. While she was a damsel in disstress in ROTI, AS tunred her into a godplayer for no real reason. Already in the first three episodes we can see her do things that normally she could not do before and we have zero explanations how she does that. In the first episode she maneged to hit the sharks on her first try. In the second episode she throwed the last piece to the statue exactly in the right place. Than in episode 3 she does the backflipping on the tree (this moment was so WTF at my first watch) and dogdeing the leeches that Jo throwed at her (and the outcome: Queen Jo eliminated). And as long the season progress Zoey keep on godplaying. Zoey not beeing weak and damsnle in disstress is a good thing. But she does not have to be godplayer to not be weak. There is no explantions how ROTI Zoey became TDAS Zoey. Yes I know there is "Commando Zoey" (and yes she will be in this blog too) but there is no character development or progress. We see dansmle in disstress turning intro commando emotionless girl, turning normal again and now she is godplaying her way to the finale. we never saw any progress of her becoming stronger. We cant start at point A and go straight up to point E without passing points B, C and D. But this is what the writers did with Zoey. A character development its nost just a character become another person in the end of a season/series/film/book/game. Its a progress. Let's take Heather for a moment, a character that a lot of fans claim she had great character development during the first three seasons. And it was great because each season showed us one level of Heather's evolution from antagonist to protagonist. While TDA Heather consider as the underdog of the Heathers, she is important! jumping from TDI Heather to TDWT Heather is amature writing. We have to see TDA Heather, this is important for her development as a character. Heather has to be in the spot of the underdog/outcast, be in the spot of her victim from TDI. Only than, after was the loser, Heather need to build again her spot as the queen. Unlike her Zoey was damsle in distress and in TDAS she become some wonder woman. Zoey having finally mental breakdown is a good way to start Zoey development from a victim to a hero. But instead of do it, they created Commanado Zoey, dumped it and for no clear reason Zoey retunred as a godplayer and not just on the physical aspect she is godplayer. Its goes the same with her mental state. She had so low self confidence/esteem and now she is ready to be the leader of her team? now she can see friends in (almost) anyone? now everyone want her advice? Sure getting self confincese is a character development. But again: Zoey never went out of her comfort zone (in her case: Mike and Cameron) so it does not make any sense how her character developed without seeing the developmnt. we saw the result of an unseen (and unproved) development.

Mary Sue? more like Zoey sue
Maybe the biggest thing that people say about Zoey: being Mary Sue. if Zoey had some flaws in ROTI, she lost them in TDAS. Now she is good with everything. She is idolized by a lots of characters who talk about how sweet she is (pretty much female version of TDA Owen with his characrer shilling). She never failed, she never being called out, she never was the but of a joke. never puked, fart or something. never got any serious hits from anything. She never targeded for eliminations because she was so usefull in challanges. And in the merge nobody voted for her because the first merge challange Duncan's kicked out, than Cameron quit due injuries and than the next three challanges Zoey won so she had immunity. Zoey won all these times was kinda dumb, especially there is no real justified to beat Scott in the eating sundea challange because he eats dirt!!!

I really dislike all the characters of Mary Sues (or Gary Stues if its a male). These character are just not interesting. we want to see some flaws, some characters (not antagonists) who disagree with our heroes or even dislike them.

The irony about Zoey is that her biggest flaw being flawless. Lets take Gwen for example: Gwen was the protagonist of TDI. She came from the same world of loneliness and she did good in challange. She never was target of elimination before the merge and after the merge only once (in challange she won). But unlike Zoey Gwen had many flaws. She had bad attitude, was anti social for the first half and she insult people kinda fast (the first thing she ever said to Lindsay was "idiot"). But this what made Gwen great protagonist. we get to love her desptie having flaws. And she had great development. The sarcastic anti-social girl from the start becoming more and more friendly to other, she open up for other and become better person (I miss you TDI Gwen!!!)

How she handled with Mike/Mal
The way she handled with Mike and Mal was just poor. She never figured out about it until the very last moment of last episode before the finale. She saw glims of Mal throu all the season, but he did not realize this. It make more dumb how she put her life on a risk just to see if Mike is still there. And in the semi final episode, wouldn't it be easier to bring Mike back if Zoey will take Scott to the finale so Mike's parents and doctor could do the thing they did to lock Mal's inside Mike's mind again?

Why the writing behind her was such a mess?
At first, I really don't know why the writing behind her character was a mess but I can guess. To make this much more esier I will begin with TDAS

TDAS
So why the writers turned Zoey from a damsle in disstress to a wonder woman? my guess its just redical way to undo the mistakes with her writing in ROTI. ROTI was critised by many people for having sexist writing and the poor way the females this season were represtented and the poor treatment they got (unless it's Jo...). So when Zoey return in TDAS, the writers were afraid to do the same mistake again so instead of thinking hard who to develp her character, they just did the opposite thing they did in ROTI. Did Zoey had zero self esteem? now she has too much. Was Zoey damsle in disstress all the time? now she saving herself and other with no real explantion. Do people took advantge on Zoey? now everyone is respect her. In theory, its a great thing to write massive change, but the progress of the development wasn't here at all. The writers really wanted us to love her so they thoutht that if Zoey will be good at everything and had no flaws she will liked by us.

TDROTI
Honestly, I have no idea why the writing turn out to be like this. Because the problem with Zoey is not just for her, its for all the females from this season (again with the expetion of Jo). I'm not saying the females from this seasons are bad (in fact three females from this season can be found on my top 5 characters from this generation) because they were good. Just seems the writers really dont care about them. And Zoey just make it further because the writers did not wanted the only dominant female in this season to be antagonist so they just took Zoey to be "the nicer female".

I will do in the future post about the females in this season. In fact it can be my very next post.

But Zoey is not that bad
From all this post it seems that I hate Zoey. But I really don't. She is in my neutral zone. And I think there are good things the writers did with her characters, and ironicly most of them from TDAS

Deserving winner
We can say a lot of things about TDAS and its finale and final two. But I totally think Zoey is deserving winner. with better writing she could be one of the greatest. But still, she wasn't floated by anyone. She was the leader of her team, the infrior team with the least amount of loses. She was strong player who won challanges and kept for minimal respect with others. I honestly belive that if Mike was switched by Courtney (or even Scott) we could have much better final two.

She is a good person
We can't deny it. Zoey is a good person, she has good intentions and she want to be nice with everyone. in a series like TD, with a lots of antaognists (or less nicer people) its good sometimes to have a person like Zoey, who is like the team mom, who can give other advice and help them. I admint that I really like her friendship with Gwen. It began really late, and it made Gwen the 4th memeber of the trio, but there was something really cute about their friendship. It was maybe the first time since TDWT when we actually saw a friendship between two females.

She will do evertything for the people she likes
Yes rejecting Dawn and Dakota was hypocrite thing to do in ROTI. But later in the series its really clear that if Zoey care for someone, she will do everything for this person.

Commando Zoey
I love Commando Zoey. I think she was really cool and her concept (in the bizarre world of TD) it make sense. After she spend all her life for pleasing people and let other took advantge on her, when she fall from the cliff and brok her necklace, she got to her breaking point and all the rage from all her life just broke outside. its about time for Zoey to think for herself and do for her own good. I wish Commando Zoey was here more.

How Zoey could be fixed?
First of all I really think Zoey should have got more average girl look instead of a model. This way she would be more relatable and it will fit more to her character. Second, I think chaging her reason for loneliness. Instead of "only child in small town" she could have social anxiety disorder. as a person with SAD I think it could be so great to see character with SAD in the show.

for the ROTI story. Instead of rejecting both Dawn and Dakota with the excuse of "they are weird" (and its irelevant in Dakota's case because in a proper writing Dakota never turn into mutant) she reject them because she is afraid. She does not know what to do or what to say to make other likes her. it means she will reject sometimes Mike's flirts. When Vito is arrive and flirt with Anne Maria Zoey will see this as (I lost my chance). However Zoey is not total damsle in distress. She doesnt not need to be saved every episode. She doest fine in challanges. and improving her social skills throut the season.

In the merge its all goes the same for the most part because the canon ROTI Zoey was fine when Mike wasn't here. But instead of Commando Zoey, she just become more angry. She stop to care about others opinions. She had enough and she just want to finish with this season. She hate to be cold and emotionless but she doest not want to be hurt by others anymore.

however she still maneging to save Cameron's life in the semi final

If Mal is going to be the main antagonist of TDAS, Cameron will be vs Jo in ROTI finale.

in TDAS Zoey will the simillar to canon Zoey in her personality. But she had more struggles. Not everyone worshiping her, she is tarteg for elimination. She is stronger than her ROTI self but still not the golden girl she was in the actual series. She is the first one who suspect about Mike and won't belive anything he say. however Zoey won't make it to the finale. But she leave the season as a new person.

if Jo is going to be the main antagonist of TDAS, ROTI finale will be Zoey vs Lightning. than in TDAS Zoey will be an pre-merge boot. But she still take with herself her development.

Personal opinion and closing
So Zoey, as the title of the blog says, is a good concpet and there is great idea behind. But rushed writing just ruined everything. Zoey was annoying from time to times but I maneged to see the good things about her. Zoey is a character that can be fixed so easily. However, after TDAS, it would be the best if Zoey won't compete ever again UNLESS we need a fodder. Zoey overall is a good person and we need people like her in the show, but with much better writing.

This is my blog about my full opinion about Zoey. If you want you can vote for my next blog.

What should be my next blog? Revenge of the Island and the treatment for the females Why Sky's actions through the seasons make sense