iZombie Review: "Reflections of the Way Liv Used to Be"

With a show like iZombie, which balances procedural murder-of-the-week stories with a multitude of season (or even series) long serialized stories, there's always the risk of relying too much on the serialized part of the show. This week's episode, "Reflections of the Way Liv Used to Be," fell into that trap more than any other episode has this season. That's not to say that it was a bad episode, just not one that did a particularly good job of standing on its own.

The episode starts with Major finally letting someone, in this case Ravi, in on his secret identity as the Chaos Killer. On the one hand, this story arc has resulted in some great character development on Major's part, and given the show a sense of danger. Voughn and his Max Eager cohorts have always been a more menacing threat than Boss or Blaine, and the show deserves credit for exploring that. On the other hand, the comic book trope of keeping secrets to "protect" people has been done to death (especially on The CW's DC Comics shows), and in most cases hurts shows more than it helps them. I'd say the show has done a fair job of rewarding the audience for this frustrating plot, and that's due to the show's very strong writing. Even the most annoying plot devices can be overlooked when the character development and writing are as strong as they are on a show like this.

All of this of course resulted in that final scene where it appears Major is about to go into full on zombie mode on Dale and the FBI team she brought with her. The show has done a great job of ending these last few episodes with explosive moments, but the events leading up to this week's cliffhanger seemed like a bit of a stretch. Dale didn't have the authority to override a local DA when she was trying to put Blaine away for outstanding crimes, but she has no problem getting a team of FBI agents to hunt down Major based on a woman saying she recognized his dog? That one's a bit of a stretch. That being said, having Dale figure out that Major is a zombie was a necessary plot move heading into next week's finale.

The rest of the episode focused mostly on the case and the drug war, both of which tied together, but neither of which proved to be particularly entertaining. I'm glad that the show found room to fit Enrico Colantoni in, but I wish his part weren't so directly tied to the least interesting part of the show. It's pretty clear this isn't the last we'll be seeing of his character, so hopefully the writers will have better luck with future endeavors.

Next week is an extended finale, and it will be interesting to see how all of the show's many plot lines play out.

Other thoughts:

• Two murders in one school year? Someone needs to shut that school down. 
• It will be interesting to see what the show plans to do with Gilda, now that we know she's alive.
• Dale encouraging Clive to apply for the FBI job is a waste of time, cause obviously Clive is an essential part of the show. 
• While the drug war is the least interesting part of the show, the writers deserve a lot of credit for making it relevant to real issues.