Analysis of "Zoomies Part II"
Then the characters continue making statements much in the same vein as they did in "Zoomies Part I," saying "I remembered to eat breakfast today…I put on pants today…I took a shower…I got dressed and I put on shoes." However, what started in "Zoomies Part I" as a celebration of small accomplishments in the face of the pandemic, has turned into a monotonous and endless cycle of existential fatigue in "Zoomies Part II." The characters' lack of energy reveal how tired they each are. "Zoomies Part II" reveals part of the mental toll of the pandemic. In a Time Magazine article, Markham Heid discusses the impacts the pandemic had on the mental health of Americans. Heid references a study by Jean Twenge, who found that "in April, more than 1 in 4 U.S. adults met the criteria that psychologists use to diagnose serious mental distress and illness." Twenge also found that approximately 70% of adults in the U.S. "experienced moderate to severe mental distress—triple the rate seen in 2018." The pandemic had severe and lasting impacts on the mental health of Americans. In "Zoomies Part II" the apathy and lethargy caused by the pandemic is clear in the behavior of every character, demonstrating the impacts of the pandemic on mental wellness.
The scene also demonstrates the "blurring" of time that many experienced during the pandemic. When everyone's lives were reduced to the bare essential actions, there's not very much left to differentiate one day from the other. Thus, time began to blur together, creating the odd sensation that the pandemic had been taking place for both a short time and an incredibly long time. An article in GQ India by Namrata Kedar presents the defintion of the word "blursday," a word that became popular during the pandemic to describe how many lost track of the passage of time. In "Zoomies Part II," time seems to have taken on this blurred quality for the scene's characters. This is demonstrated by their repetition of the same phrases over and over again, as if they don't even remember that they're repeating themselves.