Also, coulda gave the aunt some better motivations other than being evil just to be evil.
I think she was just greedy, using her nieces talents to get ahead in life. Didn't really see Ashley as much of a person, rather a tool. Not much backstory needed as that kinda happens a lot to child stars like Miley
For one, I didn't buy the whole premise of how they went about extracting music from her dreams. Felt really contrived and convenient for the story and not convenient at all for making actual music. I did think it was cool when they adjusted things and showed how the tone of a song could completely change with the exact same lyrics.
They way they managed to get past the bodyguard felt kind of absurd, but again felt like they wanted to get the characters to a certain points without working through all the boring logic.
The concept of transferring all of a person's personality, and isolating just the prepackaged pop star portion? Felt convenient again for the sake of the story. Worked out for the story overall, but again felt like they took some logical leaps to establish some things.
But this episode felt like a real change of pace. It felt a lot less like it was supposed to spark discussion or make you deeply consider some wild concepts that are pretty close to being reality. The concepts were there, and it's an interesting concept...just didn't feel fully fleshed out and examined.
I feel like the episode is supposed to feel exactly how you described it. As many have already said here it's basically an edgy Disney movie with swear words. It gets goofy but I feel that this was absolutely intended. I mean the primary car for the family was a 'Mouse Truck' literally designed with mouse ears and nose (COUGH Disney COUGH)
It seems they chose to keep things rather simplistic, while planting seeds so you don't question things. She said that she dreamt music really early in the episode, so when they extract it not much explaining is needed. Show a program with some patterns; BOOM, music.
Same can be said of the deletion of the limiter. You'd think it would be more spread out, but I think they are focusing on a portion of the brain that stores known responses. They are aware that their audience knows that certain portions of the brain for certain tasks, which adds to plausibility. When she powers back up she states she only used 4% of her brain, so you don't really question it much. In any other case that would be much more involved to release, rather than simply deleting it.
The only other way of visualizing that IMO is to use a dull color and then increase brightness with the increase in duty/occupancy. But that also means the coding required for this teenager with no background would most likely be way more involved than what the story calls for.
Does anyone else think that Jack, the older sister, looked like a young Lindsey Lohan. Am I the only one that sees that?