Wednesday, April 12, 2017

iZombie 3.02: “Zombie Knows Best”

“I know what’s happening with the brains right now but it still weirds me out.”
– Clive

I thought this was a pretty solid episode of “iZombie”. It had action and it moved the plot forward for the characters in a meaningful way. It felt like it was getting back to form after last week’s exposition-heavy premiere. I will admit their attempt to sort of use and intersperse in media res was a little confusing so I’m just going to address it up front. The lead detective on the case of the murdered family of zombies questions Clive about his relationship to the family. He was marked as the emergency contact for Wally on a form. So, we get to see how Clive first met Wally and Anna and how over time, after Anna’s husband got locked up for beating on his family and Clive kind of found himself in their family unit. We even learned how Clive got into Game of Thrones. Clive and Liv also chat with some of the Fillmore Graves people to see who might have wanted to hurt the family. It isn’t until Ravi is tasked with listening to one of the radio call-in shows that they realize things are moving a lot faster than anyone realized. Their neighbor called in because he saw brains in the trash and he posted about it on a message board. Someone there posted the address. Well, it seems the zombie community is about to be outed!

While all of this is going on, the gang has a new case to solve as well. At 4am, a father and daughter get massively t-boned by a big truck. As Liv and Ravi get to the scene, Clive gets to experience his first case with the full knowledge of Liv’s methods. I have to admit he’s pretty funny about the whole thing. She points out that she hadn’t eaten since the mercenary soldier guy and she’s getting a little rumbly in her tummy. Because there are two victims, they think Major can help out on the case, too. He’s a little worried about being on teenage girl brains (Liv had already dined on Dad before he arrived) because he’s starting mercenary training and he’s closer to finding Natalie (the zombie call girl). He’s got a phone number that Clive is going to chase down but he’s still fretting about it with Ravi as the brains kick in. I laughed as Liv and Major ate the brains and Clive and Ravi watched, Ravi with chip bag in hand. Gotta love it!

Thanks to teenage girl brain, Major gets to sing along (badly) to some angst-ridden female artists (it sounded like it could have been Taylor Swift but I’m unsure) when Clive and Liv come back with a dead end at the father’s work. Major then storms off to mercenary training where he’s ogling the other guys and commenting on their abs. They mention that they don’t get the personality and vision side effects of being on normal brains because Fillmore Graves gives them some mashed up brain combo thing in a tube (think Go-gurt). But as Major is showing off his selfies (which he thinks look awful), he gets a helpful vision about the teenage girl showing her dad something on her phone and her dad saying they need to go to the authorities.

Thanks to some digging by the super creepy IT guy, they learn that the girl in question used to be an ice skater and she used to be friends with our victim. The girl unfriended our victim on Facebook but she claims they had a fight about the victim being too judgmental of the other girl. Liv gets a vision at this point of the photo on the phone of the girl in bed with an older man. That man also happens to be the girl’s stepfather. Oh lord! And hey, he runs a plant nursery and has the type of truck that would be involved in the hit and run.

The next day, the girl and her mother show up, claiming that the stepfather has run off because he’s guilty of killing the father/daughter combo. The story they spin is fairly plausible at first. He broke off the relationship with his stepdaughter and she confided in her friend. Her friend told her father and he wanted to go to the police. But the girl never told her stepfather that last part so how could he have known? Cue the creepy IT guy again coming in with the texts between the girls. It seems that the girl might be our guilty party (she threatened our teenage victim and had been arrested for driving without a license a short time earlier). But then the real kicker comes. Someone put an app on the girl’s phone to track everything, texts included. And that person was the girl’s super rich mother (who left her stock broker husband for the landscaper …. yeah, they’re all real winners in this family). She was disgusted by her daughter’s actions and so she took it on herself to keep things quiet. Except, you know, now the media will find out anyway! Oh, and Clive manages to nab the stepfather for sexual assault (and statutory rape I’m assuming).

I really liked how this episode brought us back to the formula of the show and allowed Major to get into it a little, too. He was a lot of fun to watch on girl brains. Liv was more like her usual self with just a little more order (I mean she was always fixing things or sharpening tools). But hey, she did convince Ravi to talk to Peyton and see what could be salvaged there. I mean yeah she slept with Blaine but it wasn’t to hurt Ravi and it wasn’t like she intended it to happen in the first place. Although, I am a bit torn between the two pairings. If Blaine really isn’t faking the memory loss then I’d like to see him give it a real go with Peyton. But I also wouldn’t mind Ravi and Peyton being back together, too, especially now that they all know the whole truth and it would make him less sad.

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