Wednesday, April 22, 2015

iZombie 1.06: "Virtual Reality Bites"

“What was it Mom said right before ‘sit up straight’? Something about not letting life pass me by.”
- Liv

It is hard to believe but we are about halfway through the first season of “iZombie”. Can I just say it’s been a fun ride with Liv and Ravi and Clive? Things kick off to a really awkward start this week when we see Major lying motionless and bruised on an autopsy table. It’s quickly established that he’s alive and Ravi is trying to stitch him up when Liv shows up. Lucky for Major since Ravi is no surgeon. Liv admonishes her ex for taking on the guy he thinks is The Candy Man and then gets evasive when Major brings up Lowell. It also turns out that the case of the week is rather gross as well. A very overweight man who is starting to putrefy is found dead in his apartment. He’s a shut-in and no one has seen him in years. While Liv and Ravi try to determine cause of death (and Liv is mentally gagging at the thought of drinking diseased brains), Clive does a little digging and finds out their victim, Simon Cutler, is an online hacker who goes by the handle Sim Reaper. He sounds like a total jerk.

Elsewhere around Seattle, Jackie is having brain withdrawal symptoms and her delivery boy shows up without her brain. She ends up impaling him and decides to just eat his brains instead but for some reason she calls Blaine to tell him her order never showed up and then she mutters something about a meeting and hangs up. Very odd. And it seems she may have decapitated the poor delivery boy and dumped in the woods because Ravi is working on him later when Clive shows up asking about the Cutler case. Clive heads to Blaine’s butcher shop due to the combo of food in the delivery boy’s stomach and questions Blaine about knowing the kid. Before things can get too unfortunate for our homicide detective, Liv calls with information about the Cutler case. Oh and then Blaine goes and drills a hole in Jackie’s head because he’s just a prick like that.

It seems that one of the personality traits Liv inherited from Cutler is his massive agoraphobia. This kicks in when she goes to tell Clive that she saw Cutler have an allergic reaction to a donut. While she’s at the station she and Clive figure out that the random birthday card found at the scene was the murder weapon (it launched confetti that was laced with peanut dust). Well that’s convenient for the case for sure. Too bad the agoraphobia gets the way of Liv’s first date with Lowell. Very disappointed about that. But hey, she does get to examine Cutler’s laptop and ends up really getting into this online roleplaying game that he was into. OF course Ravi is also into the game so he’s helping Liv out, especially since it seems one of the enemies in the game claims to have killed Cutler. It turns out the player is a young kid and is kind of freaked out when Liv confronts him. Oh and Liv’s mom stops by with soup and Liv is very distracted and uninterested in her mom being there.

Because the episode doesn’t have enough odd little side plots, we see that Major is still looking for the missing kids and one of the kids in his group session points out that they are likely dead. But he does have a thought when he sees this same kid watching some old skate park videos. There are a lot of them and so he starts to scan the crowd to see if he can find anything that would help lead him in the right direction. He even ropes Ravi into it after watching lots of videos.

Liv is in the middle of doing some more digging after talking to the kid (who couldn’t have been the killer because he lives in New York City) when Lowell shows up at her place with some anti-anxiety meds. Apparently he ate a brain with PSTD and the drugs helped him get through it. He is really kind of sweet and my previous concerns about being linked to Blaine pretty much evaporated when he explained he got scratched during a bachelor party in London. And he no longer plays live gigs because the adrenaline rush just sends him into full-on zombie mode. Liv also admits that she is in no way over Major and their evening ends with an almost kiss before Liv realizes she’s found a break in the case. I really hope Lowell sticks around. He’s far more interesting than Major. And what can I say, I like bad boys?

The latest lead turns up not quite like Liv had hoped. Owners of a donut shop are happy that Sim Reaper is dead because he posted a scathing review on Yelp but Liv thinks based on her gut that they are innocent. It was kind of funny to watch her rambling on Skype while Clive is walking around out of his office and not really listening to her. But they both realize that the review mentioned that Sim Reaper would get his donuts elsewhere so now they need to figure out who else delivered in the area. Liv does a little hacking (thanks to Cutler’s) skills and she finds the delivery driver who is their culprit. It’s rather sad what led him to kill Cutler. Cutler went on a rude tirade during a customer service call and then ended up hacking into the rep’s life and absolutely ruining it, driving her to suicide. The rep was this guy’s sister.

As Liv ruminates on the tragedy of it all, she decides to not let life pass her by and swings by Lowell’s recording studio, intent on picking up where they left off which includes making out in the middle of the sidewalk. So for the moment, I’m a happy little zombie shipper! And things are getting dangerous when Major finally gets a clear shot of the Candy Man. Of course it’s Blaine and Liv is a little bit shocked, but mostly annoyed, when Ravi shows her the photo. Next we see of our nefarious nemesis, he may be recruiting his next young delivery boy.

No comments:

Post a Comment