Twenty-Sided, Die: Review for iZombie 309


Summary

They’re not even trying to write interesting cases for Clive and Liv to solve anymore. Season three is a laundry list of brain gimmicks they’ve sat on for the last couple years, slapped together in a way which makes Liv look like the most unstable city employee in American history.


Twenty-Sided, Die:
Review for iZombie 309
by A. Zombie

This week, Liv turns into a Dungeons and Dragons dungeon master. Only, she’s a cartoon of a human interested in table top gaming and ends up dramatically narrating everything. The second the brain is inconvenient, Liv magically remembers she can pilfer leftover Fillmore-Graves brain goop from Major. So the writers dragged yet another subculture through the mud, got a lot wrong according to my expert, and dropped the gag because it was too annoying to bring into Liv’s new relationship? Okay, sure.

There’s no resolution to this case, either. After the DM is poisoned during a gaming session, the red herring winds up being Dan the DM’s secret hobbit-fetish driven relationship with fellow player Zoe, and how the three other men in their gaming group likewise wanted to date her. I’ll admit, I almost turned off the TV and walked away from the episode. First, Ravi calls the gaming group nerds several times in a five minute span, then they bring on yet another case of Jealous Man Syndrome, in theory placing the blame for the murder on a completely innocent woman through her romantic choice. But she had nothing to do with what happened to Dan, because Dan was a secret international hacker. The FBI takes the case from Clive and Liv, leaving it all up in the air, along with the stench from all those decomposing, ancient DnD jokes they resurrected like it hasn’t been Hollywood’s favorite pastime to demoralize “geeks” since the Eighties.

Bringing the FBI into the case does allow the writers to kick Clive one more time via a face-to-face with Bozzio. She’s taking Dan the Dungeon Hacker’s case, yet absolutely refuses to take any BS from Clive when he runs outside to catch her before she’s gone for good again. We seriously need more scenes like this for Clive. He’s been the robot detective for three seasons, with half-second glances at something more under the scowl. I’d gladly follow the show for more from emotionally-expressive Clive, even if Liv were to bite the dust in the zombie/human war.

Major needs no help getting all up in his feels. With yet another new lease on life, Major stews in his recent past, cataloging what few good things remain after becoming the Chaos Killer . . . or Chaos Kidnapper, rather. There’s no shortage of motivation, Ravi has a trunk-load of hidden hate-mail from the CK era. Within the mountain of anger is one letter showing compassion. Shawna writes that she’s also found herself in a situation where she’s blamed for something she didn’t do and invites Major to reach out to talk anytime. He takes her up on the offer after watching Justin and Liv leave for Baracus’ fundraiser. Shawna doesn’t seem completely crazy, so there’s a chance Major gets to do something other than mope soon.

The Travelers may not be the bumbling fools we hope they’ll turn out to be. During the benefit, someone shoots Baracus. Things with these guys needs to wrap up quickly before the body count grows.

Ravi almost manages to be the savior he’s convinced he needs to be in order to woo a woman. While in the Travelers meeting, he steps in to put a kibosh on Harley Johns’ idea to kidnap a zombie, starve it, and live broadcast the outcome via internet to expose zombie-kind. The problem? These yokels have no clue how dangerous a cornered zombie can be. Outing himself as a morgue worker, and former CDC employee, Ravi warns them about a zombie’s ability to infect with a scratch. The mob calms down and agrees to the rational plan—wait for Ravi’s cure so if anyone is injured, he can cure them. Hint, there’s no way Ravi’s following through with that idea. He only needed to buy time.

Not nearly enough time, it seems. Thanks to Blaine’s little blue brain experiment, the Travelers have their hands on a genuine zombie . . . Don E. The dude stumbled into the street, tripping hard on doctored war veteran brain. The visions from Blain’s double-strength memory-enhanced brain are all consuming, pulling Don E. from the real world so much, he’s only aware of danger after Johns locks him in the back of his van and delivers him to Ravi. I mean, at least the dude isn’t at a secret government lab, but this means Ravi has to not only extract himself from the hate group, but also rescue an addle-brained zombie.

At peace again, Peyton actually has energy to focus on work. First priority? Figuring out what happened with Weckler. The best way to learn about a person after their death is to talk to someone they trusted with their deepest secrets. This expert laughed at the notion that Weckler, distraught after losing his wife, would spend his meager income on a dominatrix. Which is pretty much what I’d already figured out. So who’s the puppeteer behind the mentally unstable man? It’d be easier to list the powerful men in town who hadn’t paid tribute to the deceased dominatrix; finding one man amongst her client list with that kind of sway over legal matters isn’t going to be easy.

Perhaps the answer just slithered back into town. We wrap this week by saying hello to Boss as he’s smuggled into Seattle. This can’t be good. His Unfinished Business list is longer than my arm. Drat. Peyton just got her life somewhat together, too.

Next week, make sure the Ghostbusters are on your speed dial. Hopefully the episode will be a nice pallet cleanser going into the final episodes. I’d certainly like to laugh instead of groan during the show.