YMMV / Zoey 101

• Awesome Music:
  • The theme song. Even today, it's regarded as one of the best themes in the Nick Verse.
  • Strange from "Goodbye Zoey". It's a heartbreaking ballad about being jaded by life that's surprising high quality for a Kid Com.
• Base-Breaking Character: The titular Zoey herself. Some fans like her for being a kind person who, despite having a few selfish traits here and there, still cares about others. Others hate her and consider her an annoyingly "perfect" girl who is undeservedly put on a pedestal in the series, and a Vanilla Protagonist compared to her more interesting friends. She's even more divisive in recent years due to the revelations about her actress.
• Common Knowledge: Many fans, even on this Wiki, will talk about the time Quinn completely changed her look in order to win back her boyfriend Mark, dressing sexy when she usually dressed more conservatively, if oddly. This is not entirely true. Quinn was already well past transitioning from "the weird girl" to "hot nerd" well before this episode, and about the only difference between her usual look at this point vs. her "change" for Mark was removing her glasses and adding a choker. Google "Quinn Pensky" and check out the images; you'd be hard pressed, if you didn't know, to pinpoint which images are her "changed" appearance vs. her usual look. Even her character image on the show's Fandom page has her in a low-cut tank top.
• Designated Villain: Logan, depending on the episode. All the crap he gets is often him being a Karmic Butt-Monkey, but sometimes he seems just victim of Disproportionate Retribution.
• Die for Our Ship: Both Romantic False Leads James and Rebecca are hated by Zoey/Chase fans, even if the former is a nice person (while Rebecca is a Hate Sink).
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Initially a minor character, Quinn became a mainstay due to her Adorkable personality and Mad Scientist tendencies. She remained the most popular character in the series until the very end.
• Fanon Discontinuity: Many fans hate "Wrestling" with a passion. Reasons given are that the plot flat-out shouldn't happen, considering how Coach Keller should've been kicked off the campus immediately in real life. Add that the episode ends with a Downer Ending and you have an episode that appeals to no one.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Zoey and Nicole fake-fighting in "Back to PCA" becomes this when you realize that Alexa Nikolas quit the show because of real conflicts between her and Jamie Lynn.
  • Any episode dealing with the girls having an argument but making up at the end becomes this given Jamie Lynn Spears and Alexa Nikolas's dispute behind the scenes. Ditto for every friendship scene involving Zoey and Nicole, who were actually the closest of the girls in early seasons, they are harder to watch due to the Hostility on the Set between the actresses.
  • The moral of "Defending Dustin" is that kids don't always want or need their older siblings to stand up to bullies for them; in fact, it can even make the situation worse. Apparently, Jamie Lynn Spears did not believe in this advice in real life, as she made Britney Spears confront Alexa Nikolas, blaming her for spreading mean rumors around the set. The emotional trauma from the confrontation (for which Britney later apologized) caused Nikolas to quit the show.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: Nicole's overly affectionate behavior towards Drake Bell is this as Alexa Nicolas became one of his most vocal supporters to him coming forward about his experience with Brian Peck.
• Hilarious in Hindsight :
  • Every time they show boys and girls hanging out in each others' dorm areas... what could possibly happen?
  • In the season 1 finale, Zoey is helping Chase study for his biology exam by discussing dominant and recessive genes and the conversation briefly switches to what a theoretical child of Zoey and Chase would look like. The same episode also has Dustin asking Zoey where babies come from.
  • In the episode "Time Capsule," the teacher says that in 20 years people will be laughing at their clothes. Lola says that their clothes will always be cute - and although their clothes were in style back then, now they are completely out of style.
  • Lola's debut episode had her pretending to be a creepy Goth to show off her acting skills. Victoria Justice's other well known Nickelodeon role was in Victorious were she played a character that went to a performing arts school and was friends/rivals with a goth.
  • A season 2 episode had Chase and Michael hosting a web show.
  • Michael spent an entire episode trying to turn "Drippin" into a new slang word for cool. It catches eventually on but Michael is denied credit for creating it. Years later, Drip would become a legitimate slang word for meaning excellent and fashionable.
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships: All of the characters in the series (with the exception of Dustin) fall into this. Among the women, Lola seems to fall into this and among the men, Chase and Logan share this trait.
• Moe:
  • Dustin, for being a shy and nice kid, since he's younger and more innocent than the other characters.
  • Nicole, as a cheerful and lovable Genki Girl, can be a predecessor of Cat Valentine. She's also more sensitive and naïve than her friends.
• Moral Event Horizon: Coach Peters crosses this in "Wrestling" when he not only forces Zoey to join the wrestling team, but then admits that he was using her and that the whole reason he put her on the team was to get her in the tournament, make boys forfeit against her, and then lie to the ref saying she was "injured" so he could have another one of the wrestlers sub for her and get into the finals without being tired out.
• More Popular Replacement: Lola replaces Dana as Zoey's roommate after the first season. While Dana has her fans, she's a bit of a Base-Breaking Character for being a female version of Logan and most people agree that the show works better with Lola.
• Nightmare Fuel: "The Curse Of PCA" is genuinely frightening, as the characters are stalked by Charles L. Galloway, the ghost of a former student who committed suicide (which is obviously never mentioned, but heavily implied) after being relentlessly tortured by a Sadist Teacher. And while Charles mostly appears as a cloud of green smoke, he does psychologically torture Zoey and physically attack various characters, eventually taking form, with his face looming over the building, laughing evilly.
• Realism-Induced Horror: In Zoey's Balloon, Zoey is being blackmailed and forced to do humiliating things by Rebecca when she finds out an embarrassing secret about Zoey. Being blackmailed and cyberbullied is a very serious problem, just imagine how you would feel if it happened to you.
• Replacement Scrappy: James for Chase in season 4. While Chase was a more flawed and Adorkable character who had an interesting Will They or Won't They? dynamic with Zoey, James was just a generic pretty boy and a Satellite Love Interest.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Erin Sanders (Quinn) would later play Camille in Big Time Rush.
  • Brian Tee (Kazu) would later play Takashi in The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, Nobuo Mori in The Wolverine along with notable guest appearances in Bones and Hawaii Five-0 before appearing in Chicago Med as Ethan Choi.
  • Daniela Monet (Rebecca) would later play Tori's older sister Trina in Victorious.
  • Jennette McCurdy, well known for playing Sam in iCarly, had a role in an episode as a delinquent student who had an interest in Dustin and later Chase.
  • While Miranda Cosgrove was already made aware with her role as Megan in Drake & Josh, before she had her true Star-Making Role as Carly in iCarly, she played Paige, an ace and a rival for Quinn.
  • Jillian Rose Reed, one of the girls who gossiped about Zoey and James in the fourth season episode "Rumour of Love", is Tamara Kaplan from Awkward..
  • Ashley Rickards would later play Jenna Hamilton in Awkward..
  • A 10th grader (Shane Harper) delivering a message to Zoey is Spencer from Good Luck Charlie.
  • Ashley Benson has a small role in "Quinn's Date" as Candice, Quinn's social experiment, when she walks in on her and her boyfriend making out. Later on, she portrayed Hanna Marin Pretty Little Liars.
• Salvaged Story: "Election" addresses Zoey's "too perfect" complaints. Chase and Zoey nominate each other for class president and despite promising to not let it interfere with their friendship, Zoey gets mad at Chase because Logan was resorting to dirty tactics without his knowledge or consent even despite Chase's numerous protests. Chase is portrayed as 100% in the right and Zoey is the one who apologizes at the end admitting she was angry at the wrong person.
• The Scrappy:
  • James, the Replacement Scrappy for Chase. In the first episode he gets introduced he becomes part of the group, Zoey's love interest and every girl instantly falls in love with him.
  • Mark for being a bland love interest of Quinn who has zero chemistry with her and ends up ditching her for shallow reasons.
• Strangled by the Red String:
  • Logan and Quinn, an example that proves this trope does not make a couple bad. The two have little interaction for the first 3 and a half seasons, and the interaction they do have isn't friendly, and not in the Belligerent Sexual Tension way. But despite the relative lack of buildup and no real reason for them to get together outside of the writers' whims, the Opposites Attract chemistry worked and the pairing became one of the most popular on the show.
  • Zoey and James. In the very episode he's introduced in, everyone except Michael and Logan instantly loves him, and in their case it's because they still miss Chase. In the end, after everyone thought they were dating because they merely interacted, they end the episode by getting together despite having no chemistry. Despite being Deconstructed later on, when she realizes she doesn't actually love him, it was still terribly executed and is considered a factor in the series' Seasonal Rot.
  • Quinn and Mark. The only reason they became a couple is because Quinn had a crush on him, but it became clear in Mark's debut episode that they have zero chemistry.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: For the cast reunion in the revival of All That and the Zoey 102 Sequel in Another Medium, many fans were understandably disappointed that both Victoria Justice and Alexa Nikolas, who played Lola and Nicole respectively, were absent. Justified for the latter, who revealed that she fell out with Jamie Lynn Spears during production of the show, accusing the actress of being hostile towards her enough for her to suffer emotionally, thus prompting her to leave and revealed that she wasn't invited for it along with that she has been unsuccessful in making amends with any of her former castmates.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Zoey in "Dinner for Two Many". She wants a date with James without their friends, so they go to a fancy restaurant. Logan, Quinn, and Coco are already there, minding their business, yet Zoey is upset about them being there the whole time, even swiping expensive lobster, and getting mad at James for Michael and Lola barging in. The end shows them representing a private dinner and apologizing for "ruining their date", despite three of them (Logan, Quinn, Coco) having no reason to feel bad.
• Unpopular Popular Character:
  • Quinn is The Friend Nobody Likes in the first two seasons because of her nerdiness and weirdness (until she becomes more normal and approachable), but she's one of the most popular characters. Fans have always loved her for being smart, interested in science, and not afraid of showing her quirks.
  • In season 3 and 4, Stacey is the Meg Griffin of the show, replacing Quinn as the resident loser. Except that she's only a side character who only appears for random Butt-Monkey gags, none of the other characters care for her, and never gets a Throw the Dog a Bone moment until the finale. Many fans, however, sympathize with Stacey and feel sorry for her.
• Vanilla Protagonist: A common criticism of Zoey is that despite being the protagonist, she doesn't really have much character other than a Standardized Leader who doesn't struggle at the things she does.
• The Woobie:
  • Stacey, without the slightest bit of doubt. In one episode she tried to audition for a play and got rejected before she could do anything. And in many others she and her cotton swabs are neglected, even by her own parents who never picked her up for a ski trip and even changed their number so she couldn't contact them. It should be noted in the show's final episode, Stacey does get a happy ending. Granted she gets hit by a car, but the accident makes it possible for her to finally speak properly. Promos for Zoey 102 imply that she and Mark, who seem to get together in the series finale, are still together.
  • Chase Matthews, from the Season 2 episode, "Spring Break-Up" until the series finale can be considered this, for everything he went through during that time, including his absence in Season 4, as he went to England to be with Zoey, only for Zoey to return to PCA.

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