Zoey

So I watched the most recent episode of Zoey 101 over the weekend. Despite the whole Jamie Lynn factor, this is not as painful as it sounds. Nickelodeon’s half-hour comedies for kids and “tweens” have been somewhat eclipsed by the Disney Channel’s, but Nick probably still turns out a better product; they haven’t come up with anything as good as The Adventures of Pete & Pete or Clarissa Explains it All, but they’re well-produced, decently written, and don’t have screamy overacting like the Disney Channel shows. Zoey, whose current and final season was produced before Jamie Lynn Spears’ famous, er, announcement, may remind Canadians of a watered-down version of Gordon Korman’s “Bruno and Boots,” since it’s set at a boarding school (formerly an all-boys’ boarding school that has just gone co-ed, letting in Jamie Lynn and other girls including a genius science nerd who’s a cross between Elmer Drimsdale and Steve Urkel). It’s a typical production of Amanda Bynes mastermind Dan Schneider. But that’s not what I wanted to talk about; what I wanted to talk about was the fact that the episode I watched, one of the last episodes if not the last (I’m not sure if there are any others) was… a clip show. Does anybody do those any more?