The Parent Track is the third episode in Season 1 of Sydney to the Max. It first aired on February 8, 2019 to 0.59 million viewers.[1]
Plot
Summary
Max tracks Sydney’s phone after he suspects she snuck out to a concert with Olive against his wishes. His parenting dilemma reminds him of his childhood when his mom paged him on his beeper incessantly to track his whereabouts.
Full Plot
Sydney and Olive want to attend a rock concert on their own. They had just gotten front row tickets on a tablet, but the tickets will only hold in their cart for a couple of minutes. Sydney tries to convince Max into letting them go by themselves, but Max believes Sydney is too young to go without an adult.
The next morning, Sydney goes to the table for breakfast and tries to guilt Max into letting her go to the concert. However, this doesn’t work. Max also makes Sydney a special breakfast to make her forgive him. This doesn’t work either. After Sydney finally realizes that her dad won’t let her attend the concert no matter what she says or does, she asks her dad if she can hang out at Olive’s house on the same night. He allows her to and claims that going to Olive’s house is more fun than going to the concert.
Judy enters the household and kicks Max off the couch in order to meditate. Judy then asks where Sydney is, as she wants to give Sydney things that she had recently bought at the New Age store. Max reveals that she and Olive are hanging out and that Sydney took not going to the concert pretty well. Judy points out that Max as a child would’ve snuck off by now. Max then claims to have been more trustworthy than Judy gave him credit for but eventually admits that he did try to get away with a lot. Judy leaves the house when she realizes one of the items that she needed in order to meditate was not in her bag. This brief conversation and Max’s childhood behavior prompts him to reluctantly track Sydney through her phone.
Sydney and Olive are dancing to a video of an old concert of the band they wanted to see. Sydney goes to check her phone after she receives a notification, which showed that her dad was tracking her. Upon realizing this, Sydney decides she and Olive will attend the concert while leaving her phone at Olive’s house, to trick Max into thinking she never left. After deciding this, Olive buys concert tickets for them. The doorbell rings and Iggy, the pizza deliveryman who seems to be friends with Olive, arrives with the pizza they had ordered earlier. Olive decides that she’s going to put the pizza in the fridge. As Iggy is about to leave, he accidentally takes Sydney’s phone with him, since both of them have the same phone case.
Max is still tracking Sydney. He starts to regret tracking her before his phone says that Sydney is on the move. Sometime later, Judy is trying to meditate when Max calls her. He reveals that his phone had said that Sydney was at a kid’s birthday party. Judy doesn’t want Max to be tracking her, knowing that Sydney can take care of herself.
At the concert, Sydney feels guilty and wants to go home. As they’re planning to leave, she learns from Iggy that he had accidentally taken her phone. The girls retreat, and Max catches up to Iggy and realizes Syd apparently never left the house.
At home, Max and Sydney admit what they did and forgive each other. However, as part of her punishment, Sydney must attend the concert the following night with Max, who embarrasses her during the show.
In 1992, young Max is waiting for Judy to come home. Before she enters his room to give him the beeper she bought for him, he and Leo are discussing how excited he is to receive his own beeper. Leo also has a fake beeper that stores gum in it.
While working at the arcade, he is dismayed when he realizes that Judy only got the beeper for him to excessively track his whereabouts. Eventually, Max puts a lot of coins in his pockets that he got from the arcade. They’re for the payphones, as he knows that Judy won’t stop beeping him. When Leo points out there is a new PG-13 movie that opens the same night, and that Judy would never allow Max to see it, Max defies Judy by deciding to go see it.
At the stand in the movie theater, they try to buy tickets, but Gerald says that they need an adult in order to buy them. Leo and Max try to convince him to give them the tickets, even giving him $3, which works and Gerald allows them to see the movie.
While watching the movie, Judy beeps Max. They go to a pay phone and try to trick her into thinking that Max and Leo are working at the arcade. They almost successfully trick her, but Max’s quote, “You know how important my job is to me,” gave it away. When Judy beeps Max again presumably many minutes later, Max and Leo, as usual, walk to a payphone. They also talk about Judy behind her back when they’re unknowingly right in front of her. They get in trouble.
Cast
Main Cast
- Ruth Righi as Sydney Reynolds
- Ava Kolker as Olive Rozalski
- Jackson Dollinger as Young Max Reynolds
- Christian J. Simon as Leo Webb
- Ian Reed Kesler as Adult Max Reynolds
- Caroline Rhea as Judy Reynolds
Recurring Cast
- Reid Shapiro as Iggy
Special Guest Cast
- Buddy Handleson as Young Gerald
Guest Cast
- Gabriel Tigerman as Elder Gerald
Continuity
- This is the second episode where Max and Leo share a specific reference to a popular movie.
- In "Caved and Confused", Max and Iggy talk about meeting at the concert in this episode.
Trivia
- The title is a play on the popular 1998 movie, The Parent Trap.
- Casper the Friendly Ghost is shared as a reference by Max and Leo.
- Max's phone seems to have a parody of Siri on it.
- When Max, Leo, and Gerald are at the theater, they show an example of how small prices were.
- Buddy Handleson who played Gerald played Newt Van Der Rohe on Bella and the Bulldogs and Henry Dillon on "Shake It Up".
- Sydney makes a reference to the Disney princess Rapunzel.
- The Sixteen Oranges concert and the movie Max and Leo watch were never actually seen, only heard.
- This is the first appearance of the recurring character known as Iggy.
- The venue used for the concert is the same exact room used for the movie theater in the 1992 sequence.