iZombie Review: "Eternal Sunshine of the Caffeinated Mind"

This week's episode of iZombie was one of my favorite in a while. I've commented on this the last couple of weeks, but the pacing of the show is perfect, with each episode revealing just enough information to keep the story moving. One of the highlights of the episode was seeing Liv finally confront Rita (I figure i can drop the fake name Gilda, now that Liv knows that's not her name), which was easily one of the most satisfying moments of the seasons so far. Liv is often a passive hero on the show. She knows more about the various moving parts of the show than just about anyone, but she's rarely the kind of character that acts irrationally on her knowledge, like Major or Blaine. Seeing Liv be so angry at Rita that she punched her and threatened to burn her possessions, proved that Liv is no less formidable than any other character on the show. It was all the more impressive that Liv exhibited all of this anger while under the influence of a brain that made her perpetually perky.

Liv's "glass half full" attitude was courtesy of this week's murder victim: a positive vibes loving coffee shop owner with a greedy daughter. Unlike last week, this week's case actually had a decent mystery element to it, and it was fun to see Liv, Clive, and even Ravi solving an interesting case again. Sure, the scene showing the murder made it pretty obvious that the daughter committed the crime, but the case did give us a fake Frenchman, a barista who thinks the Millennium Falcon is a new model of Ford vehicle, and Liv encountering her old bunkmate from prison, so it was an overall win. It was also interesting that the show portrayed a crime in which the killer got away. Realistically, it was bound to happen at some point, and I think it's great when shows throw in elements that make them more grounded.

After Boss figured out he is the rival drug dealer, Blaine found himself doing the iconic "zombie rise from the grave," this week. What makes the power struggle between Blaine and Boss compelling is how much they can each surprise the the other one. In this episode, Boss made a move against Blaine, that should have taken him out for good, but instead literally woke a sleeping zombie. There was clear foreshadowing earlier in the episode that Blaine was starting to turn back (the scene where he though all of the wine had gone bad), so it was no surprise to see him escape the fate Boss had in store for him. Boss inadvertently exposed his hand to Seattle's most dangerous zombie.

The episode also revealed that Blaine and Boss aren't the only players in the game. For the last three episodes, the show has indicated that Liv doesn't know the real Drake, and as it turns out, neither did the audience. The revelation that Drake is an undercover cop, not only gave the show a perfect excuse to hire Enrico Colantoni (Keith Mars from Veronica Mars) as Drake's boss, but added another layer to the already complicated drug war being waged in Seattle. Not only is Drake lying to Boss and Blaine, but he is lying to the police about his condition as a zombie and his employment with Blaine. What this all means for Liv's relationship with Drake remains to be seen, but it has been pretty apparent from the start that their relationship will end at some point.

On the cure front, Ravi was able to use some of the tainted Utopium that the trio found at the end of last week's episode, to recreate the original zombie cure. Wisely he tested the "cure" on a zombie rat instead of Major, which turned the rat into some sort off hyper zombie, similar to the results Max Rager had testing their formula on zombies. Knowing that he came very close to the same fate, Major was inspired to tell Liv all of his secrets, which of course was interrupted by Rita's arrival. It's unclear whether Major called her by her true name in front of Liv on purpose, but either way now that he knows Rita is the one watching Liv he's unlikely to confide in Liv about being the Chaos Killer. While it was a cruel joke for the writers to have Major come so close to telling Liv, at least he has realized that it doesn't make sense not to trust Liv. 

iZombie Review: The Whopper

iZombie is well into the second half of its season and what is most impressive is how well the show is managing its multiple storylines. The last few episodes have managed to reveal major information that brings each character closer to the truth, without making all of the big reveals feel rushed. At first when Blaine's goons revealed they had captured Major, it seemed like the show was skipping a lot of plot development. By the end of the episode however, it made sense. The working relationship between Major and Blaine just became yet another in a long list of weird symbioses that have formed between the characters on the show. Yes, it's annoying that Major has revealed his secret to Blaine and not any of his close friends who could help watch his back, but the writers are determined to keep that secret, so I just have to hope that the payoff is worth the frustration.

Blaine had a bit of a showcase in this week's episode. As despicable as Blaine is (and I'm glad the writers don't shy away from highlighting this quality), the writers have still managed to make him sympathetic enough that seeing his story continue on is intriguing. As a viewer, I don't like Blaine, but I still want the writers to keep finding ways to bring him into Liv's life. He's such a great foil for Liv and her friends. Here, his daddy issues were on full display, and the writers managed to show Blaine in both his most sympathetic and his most savage states.

On the Meat Cute side of things Dale and Clive keep getting closer and closer to the truth. I see no way that Clive can avoid stumbling onto the "zombie" of it all, especially given just how much the show keeps proving that he is more than just a bumbling cop. His instincts made him keep investigating the Meat Cute massacre, his work with Dale has led him to find out that both Blaine and Major are somehow involved in everything, and he even pointed out in this episode that he has caught on to the fact that Liv takes on the personalities of the victims in each case they investigate. That last detail was a nice one for the writers to throw in, cause if Clive truly is a good detective, then there's no way he wouldn't notice Liv's personality changes. They're just too obvious to miss.

Now that the writers of the show have spent some time developing Clive as a character, I think it's about time that they writer an episode where Liv is out of the picture and Ravi has to help Clive instead. Ravi is the perfect comedic counterpart to Clive and every scene they share together inevitably becomes the funniest scene of the episode. Ravi mocking Clive about never using Dale's first name around them was proof of that. Ravi might be too busy trying to find a Utopium cure, though. After discovering the bodies of the men who swallowed the tainted Utopium, and learning that the effects of the zombie cure not only wore off of "New Hope," but eventually led to her death, the zombie cure has become more pivotal than ever.

With everything that is going on on the show, the zombie cure often gets pushed to the side. From a writing standpoint, that's probably on purpose. The zombie cure makes the show deal with some big issues. Without the cure, Major and Blaine will die, and Seattle will forever be plagued with a growing zombie problem. If a genuine cure is discovered, Liv no longer has to be a zombie, and there's no reason for the show to carry on. As interesting as everything else on the show is, I can't wait to see how the writers resolve the issue of the zombie cure.

The case this week, like last week, was used more to develop the Boss/Blaine plot than anything else. It gave Liv major insights into what the town's Utopium dealers have been up to, including where to find the tainted Utopium, and it gave Liv another personality to play with for the week. It was more fun seeing Liv come up with outrageous stories on the "pathological liar" brain this week, than it was seeing her take a selfie with everything on last week's "social media addict" brain. The changing personalities give each episode a fresh feel, even as the cases the come from become less and less important.

iZombie Review: "Physician, Heal Thy Selfie"

This week's review will be a shorter one, cause I was late getting to watch the episode. Most episodes of iZombie have a predictable (but still entertaining) format: half of the episode is about Liv's visions and solving the case of the week, and then the other half either focuses on zombie mythology (usually involving Blaine), Major's dealings with Max Rager, or some sort of relationship building issue between two or more of the main characters. "Physician, Heal Thy Selfie," almost completely ditched the crime solving aspect of the show, and instead focused on all three of the other aspects of the show. The episode even went as far as having Liv's brain of the week come from a social media obsessed woman who was not murdered. Watching Liv and Clive solve crimes is always fun, but it was nice to see the show's writers prove that they can do away with that plot structure when they need to. The result was an episode that still had all the fun of Liv dealing with a new personality, but also did some much needed development on all of the many side stories the show has going on right now (seriously, this show is juggling a lot of plot lines).

For the rest of the review I'm just going to do some bullet point thought about the episode:

• This episode's big reveal was Liv having a vision and figuring out Blaine is the new drug dealer in town. I like the pace that the show uses to unfold each of these stories. It's easy to forget sometimes just how much we know that Liv doesn't, but if Liv knew everything we know, she'd probably be overwhelmed by all of the threats lurking around Seattle. 
• Speaking of threats, I'm counting three major villains so far this season: Max Rager, Blaine and his new Utopium ring, and the well establish enterprise of Boss. Last season Liv only had one homicidal maniac to deal with, so the show has really upped the ante this season.
•  It was nice to see Peyton and Ravi sharing scenes again. Even if they don't get back together, scenes like these give both characters a much needed personal life. 
• Liv's relationship with Drake doesn't add anything to the show, but now that she knows he is a part of Blaine's operation, I'm guessing that it won't last much longer anyway. 

Links To Past Reviews:

Grumpy Old Liv

Zombie Bro

Real Dead Housewife of Seattle

Even Cowgirls Get the Black and Blues

Love and Basketball

Max Wager

Abra Cadaver

Cape Town

Method Head

Fifty Shades of Gray Matter

iZombie Review: Fifty Shades of Gray Matter

After a couple of weeks off the air, iZombie returned with an episode that was all about peeling back the layers on the secrets and lies everyone has been telling. Let's start with with this week's case. The case itself was a big dud, but at this point the show an get away with that as long as it results in Liv getting an entertaining personality for the week. When the episode introduced the victim's husband, I instinctively knew he was the murderer, and unlike Clive, I'm not that big on the "the spouse always did it" mindset. This week's personality was a very amorous librarian with an active imagination, or as the episode kept bluntly putting it, "horny librarian." It was one of the more over the top personalities that Liv has taken on, but it gave the writers a chance to get in some really good jokes, and for Live to make some really bad life decisions (such as sleeping with a stranger, who unbeknownst to her is simultaneously working for the city's two most prominent Utopium dealers).

Liv wasn't the only one making bad life choices. Peyton finally returned to the show, but ended up sleeping with Blaine. I'm glad that rather than drag that storyline out, the writers let Peyton in on the secret of Blain's past misdeeds before the episode was over. Of course, this all took place after Peyton went and stopped Dale and Clive from arresting Blaine, as both had figured out that Blaine is definitely connected to the Meat Cute massacre and all of the missing zombies around town. Clive keeps getting closer and closer to the truth about Liv, so it will be interesting to see if the show actually ever lets him in on the secret. There's a risk to letting secrets run too long on shows like this. Usually, protecting the main character's secret becomes a stale plot device and an irresponsible danger to the other characters. So far the show has only benefited from letting characters in on Liv's secret, so I'm definitely in favor of Clive (and Liv's family for that matter) finding out sooner than later.

Speaking of secrets, Major still has his zombie "killing" secret that he's hiding from everyone for reasons that become less clear every week. This week Clive and Dale almost caught Major with Minor, the dog, and the entire situation could have been much more easily avoided if had Liv and Ravi known to give him a heads up that Clive was on to him. They've both already done the same to help hide his involvement at Meat Cute from Clive, so it's odd for him not to trust them with this as well. I suspect the show will handle Liv finding out about Major's activities in a way that pays off well, so I've never gotten too worried about what direction the writers are taking this story line in.

Other thoughts:

• Kristen Bell took the time to briefly lend her voice to a scene, but it hardly lived up to the hype of having Kristen Bell working with Rob Thomas again. Actually identifying her as Kristen Bell was also a weird choice. I hope it doesn't mean the show is closing the door on Bell guest starring in person in the future. 
• The ending of this week's episode felt very abrupt. It's hot a problem I've ever noticed in the past, so hopefully it was just this one time. 

iZombie Review: "Method Head"

iZombie returned in fine form from it's winter finale, with an episode that focused on a lot of what the show does best. The main focus of the episode was resolving the work relationship between Liv and Clive. My biggest problem with this entire story arc (if you can even call a two episode conflict a story arc), is that it didn't seem necessary. If the show was going to do something as big as ending the partnership between Liv and Clive, then it would have been nice for there to be more of a pay off than just having Clive realize that he values Liv as a partner. That part was annoying, but the episode wasn't an entire loss. Any chance the show gets to build the relationship between Clive and Liv is good, and the actual mending of the relationship worked well, but it all happened too abruptly for that plot device to have a meaningful impact.

This week's case wasn't much of a mystery (the killer was the most logical person possible), but it did allow the writers to have a lot of fun. Liv consuming the brain of an actor, and much of the episode taking place on the set of a television show about zombies, allowed the writers to put a "meta" spin on the episode. Clive's tongue-in-cheek dismissal of a show where the zombie is the main character was a fun poke at iZombie, and also led to the irony laden revelation that zombies creep Clive out. There was also a very well played joke that had fun with Rose McIver's past playing a power ranger. The writers found the perfect balance between poking fun at their show, it's cast, and even its perception as a show on the CW network, without taking the bit too far.

Relationships and murder aside, we learned a little bit more about everything that is going on on the zombie outbreak/zombie cure/Max Rager front. Ravi came clean to everyone about the likelihood that the zombie cure will wear off at some point. The search for a cure is an increasingly interesting part of the show because there are a lot of serious implications to either its success or failure. If Liv were ever cured, the show would end, cause no brains means no "psychic powers." On the other hand, I firmly believe that Major would not work as a full time zombie. Liv is type A enough to turn her condition into a purpose to go on. Major is emotionally distraught by pretending to kill zombies, so I can only imagine how full time brain eating would destroy him. None of this is to say that Major is a weak character. It was nice to see him play a little offense against Max Rager for once. Bugging Von is the smartest thing that Major has done since getting into this whole blackmail situation. I'm interested to see how that plot plays off in the future. In the present however, "Method Head" was a very fun entry for the show. 

iZombie Review: "Cape Town"

The fall finale of iZombie did a great job exploring Liv's condition and gave the cast a lot of great material to work with, even though the storytelling started to veer into some dangerous areas. In recent episodes the main theme of the show has been focused on how these different brains are affecting Liv and her relationships. Namely her relationship with Major. It was interesting to see Liv still under the influence of last week's brain at the beginning of this week's episode. The writers have never done that before, but it was a smart way to set the tone for the episode. All of this of course led to the eventual break-up of Major and Liv, which easily gave those actors the material for their best dramatic work on the show. After season three of Veronica Mars which became a nauseating case of its main characters repeatedly breaking up and then getting back together, seeing Thomas do something similar with Liv and Major worries me. That being said, this break-up did feel natural because Major cannot accept Liv as she is, and Liv has found a profound sense of purpose in becoming a zombie.

The show has always used Liv's ability to solve murders as a point of purpose in the chaos of her life, but this episode managed to convey just how much that sense of purpose has become a necessity for her will to live. Having Clive end his work relationship with Liv (another storytelling device that worries me) puts a major halt to that sense of purpose. Though if the last two episodes show anything, it's that Liv is so driven by this sense of purpose that she's willing to work outside the law to solve a case. All of this sets up an interesting conflict for the show. Liv has the ability to solve cases in a way that nobody else can, but the brains she is consuming are making her increasingly unstable both her personal and professional life.

As for the case of the week, it was a little disappointing. Given that the source material for the show is a comic book, the show could have had much more fun with the idea of Liv as a superhero. That being said, it was an effective delivery tool to the point where Clive cut Liv off. The case of the week has been the weakest part of the show for a while, but this was probably the least interesting case so far.