The fun and screams continue as Team Badass ventures to finally translate the Necronomicon—no, Pablo, I won’t call you guys The Ghost Beaters even if you paid me in fresh human flesh. Ash drags his unlikely partners along to Books from Beyond, owned by Lionel Hawkins, a self-made Necronomicon expert. He’s probably the only guy alive today who can read the book. Good thing nothing happens to him, right?
I’m getting ahead of myself.
The mysterious Ruby Knowby is on the team’s trail. She arrives at Kelly’s parent’s house not long after they drove off. Her taste in cars in commendable, by the way, but that’s not why we’re here. Ruby wants Ash and the Necronomicon. To find them, she needs information. That’s where dear old dad comes into play. Kelly’s father wasn’t properly buried for someone attacked by a deadite. They idiots left his head attached. When Ruby shows up looking for Ash’s trail, she’s attacked by DeadDad. The fight lasts a laughable half a second before Ruby impales DeadDad on his wife’s grave marker and begins her interrogation.
DeadDad isn’t a stool pigeon. He’s of no help to Ruby, refusing to cooperate. That is until she pulls out a wicked knife which just so happens to scorch deadite flesh on contact. Groovy. Where can I get one? We have to assume DeadDad talks. I hope he did. It’s about time Lucy Lawless and Bruce Campbell were on screen together. My patience wears thin waiting for this momentous occasion.
Over at the creepy as hell book store, Lionel is one happy puppy when Ash gives him permission to touch and read the Necronomicon. His joy is cut short when Amanda Fisher, still not back on duty but a pain in Ash’s backside nonetheless, bursts in thinking she’ll just snag Ash and end the newfound problems in her life. Think again. Pablo, fresh from his rejection after Kelly calls him “the little brother I never had,” rushes to Ash’s defense, clocking Amanda on the head with a femur. They cuff her to a ladder, leaving Kelly to watch over the officer while the guys go into the back to learn a little Necronomicon history and royally screw everything up some more.
Translating the book is about 25% skill and 75% talking out one’s backside, or so it seems when Lionel cannot find a clear answer to the Big Problem: How do they close the portal Ash opened in order to get laid? There’s some vague thing about the key being in The Man, which Ash assumes is him. Then the braintrust does exactly what they shouldn’t, plan to summon a lesser demon and ask it how to fix Ash’s boneheaded mistake. It’s Pablo’s idea, which he wants nothing to do with once things are in motion. Lionel is beside himself with joy at the prospect. Ash is still stuck figuring out why him. Don’t hurt yourself thinking, dude.
The women aren’t exactly making intelligent decisions, either. Amanda wakes and is understandably livid about being cuffed to the ladder. Kelly’s sympathy button broke when she watched Ash hack her mother’s head off. She’ll watch Amanda and let the guys do their thing. That is until whatever they’re doing in the back room makes weird things happen out front. Suddenly having another ally seems like a good idea. Amanda even agrees with her; if Ash and the others are trying to stop the deadites, then they should all team together.
They’re not cooking with the same kind of logic in Books from Beyond’s back room. Lionel is eagerly setting up the ritual space, creating an altar and a protective circle to trap the demon—safety first, kids. So long as no one breaks the salt circle, they’re good. I mean, it’s only a lesser demon. How bad can it be?
Bad. It’s bad.
Eligos isn’t some infant-sized demon, as they assumed from the picture in the book. It is downright terrifying, actually. The design for the demon is astounding. Better yet, it’s practical. As in, there was a guy in a rather hideous costume on set for the actors to work with and not a tennis ball on a pole to get the sight lines correct. The only computer effects came in when Eligos had to move and fight. Oh and they blurred his junk for the actor’s modesty. How kind.
Okay, back to what a poorly thought out plan this is.
The demon isn’t particularly helpful. Ash asks how they undo what he’s done. Eligos wants to barter—his freedom for the answer. Yeah, not happening. He asks again, what can they do? “Die quickly; that is my only advice,” Eligos tells the men. He’s so helpful, that Eligos.
Before Ash can make yet another vain attempt to get a straight answer, Amanda bursts into the room. She lied to Kelly. She’s still going to apprehend Ash. When Ash doesn’t comply to Amanda’s order to disarm, she shoots a warning shot beside his chin—it is the biggest target, after all. The show startles Ash. He breaks the protective circle. Eligos got his wish, he’s a free elf . . . I mean, demon.
Eligos attacks. Amanda is knocked out. He digs his powers into Ash’s mind, destroying it from the inside out. The demon is wicked fast, moving in quick jumps around the room, making it impossible to shoot him. Ash shatters a window. It gives Eligos the weapon he needs to prevent Lionel from reading the spell to return him to the other side of the portal. Lionel takes several huge glass shards to the face and dies. Poor Lionel.
Pablo, who spends a good chunk of the fight hunched behind a table with Kelly, grabs a gun and tries to shoot the demon. It does no good, but breaks it’s hold on Ash . . . just long enough for it to circle around and snag them both. As they only one left to save the day, Kelly grabs the Necronomicon—it started the mess, it should end it, too—and whacks Eligos with the book. The demon vanishes in a puff of black smoke. Nifty thing to remember next time they summon pure evil. That was sarcasm.
Amanda can’t catch a break. After Pablo and Kelly head to Ash’s can, Amanda wakes and still tries to apprehend Ash, cuffing him. He slips his wooden hand off and cuffs her instead. She’s left in the book store alone. Or not. Lionel returns as DeadLionel and he’s got his eyes set on Amanda. She better figure out how to escape.
Left at yet another dead end, the team’s spirits are low. What can they do? The most helpful thing Pablo can suggest is visiting his estranged uncle, the family brujo. Given the lack of anything better, off they go to talk to the uncle Pablo hasn’t seen in quite some time.
You guys remember Evil Dead, Evil Dead II, and Army of Darkness, right? If not, please educate yourself on some of the most hilarious cinema featuring murderous corpses. Well, some of them were corpses. Others were possessed. Either way, the Deadites are a force to be reckoned with.
Ash, our debonair hero, thought he’d put those suckers to bed thirty years ago. Flash-forward to present-day. He’s fat, hiding it with the most ridiculous girdle worn by man, and hornier than a chihuahua on Viagra. The opening sequence for the series is literally everything diehard Evil Dead fans want to reintroduce Ash. At the drop of a woman’s undergarments, he’s able to get laid—his sole goal in life, it seems. The mood is soured when his for-now lover’s face morphs into a Deadite. Hard to keep going after that, huh?
But why is Ash seeing Deadites at every turn? Well, see, he wanted to get laid by the blonde artsy woman with words tattooed around her wrists not long before the show’s timeline starts. StonedAsh managed to focus through the haze long enough to grab the nearest book—the Necronomicon. Whoops. So they read from the friggen book, of course, and here we are, smack in the middle of Deadite Country.
Elsewhere, two State Police officers are dragged into Ash’s mess when they’re called to a domestic dispute. Only, the house is abandoned. People had been there, judging from the table-load of drugs and booze left behind. Oh and the corpse crouched in a corner, hands still raised to fend off whatever scared her to death, could be a clue. I don’t know. I wasn’t a cop before turning undead.
Amanda Fisher and her partner, Carson, find one other person in the house—Ash’s blonde date who read from the book. You know where this is going, right? Fight time. Blondie cranks her head around 180* and dislocates her shoulders before launching at Carson. Amanda takes some wicked-huge scissors to the hand. Then things get really out of hand, ending with Carson and the blonde woman without heads. That escalated quickly. Later in the episode, we learn that Amanda is out on leave pending an investigation into the shooting and a psyche evaluation, because how many people say their partner went crawling on the ceiling before attacking them? A kind, and kinda hot, stranger—played by Lucy Lawless—more or less tells Amanda she’s not nuts. A fact Amanda confirms by going back to the crime scene, where she finds Carson’s shirt fibers on the chandelier.
Over at ValueStop, Ash attempts to swindle Mr. Roper out of his paycheck and possibly, maybe, forgetting Ash is supposed to work that day so Ash can run like a scared rabbit into the sunset before the Deadites find him. But first, he has to make a fool of himself in front of the new woman Pablo brought in to work with them. Hello, Kelly. I like your lack of accepting misogynistic nonsense and skill with a wrist lock. That’s how you introduce a female character, ladies and gentlemen. Take note.
Ash’s plans to bolt come too late. The Deadites are on his trail. In a scene calling back to Army of Darkness with the army of MiniAshs, he fights a possessed doll, only to be saved by clueless Pablo. Well, not totally clueless. Pablo’s brujo uncle warned about a man who would be the only one capable of defeating the evil dead, El Jefe. Putting two-and-two together, Pablo figures out Ash is that guy. Cool. They’re saved. Except Ash still wants nothing to do with the hero biz. He’s out of that game. Paid the ultimate price.
They’re only hope gone, Kelly and Pablo don’t know what to do next as things get weirder around the store. Kelly receives a video call from her father, with guest star—her undead mother! Off to save Mr. Maxwell. But first, a pit stop.
For a man living in a trailer, it sure is taking Ash a long time to skedaddle. He’s gotta think about Eli, man. Poor bearded dragon didn’t ask for any of this. He just wants to chill and eat. But it’s a good thing Ash is so ill-prepared to leave. Pablo’s pit stop requires the man himself to fight Kelly’s Deadite mother. Yeah, Ash isn’t on board with that plan, either. He doesn’t get much of a choice. The Deadites are in the trailer park, changing his weird, yet kind neighbors into joke-cracking killers. One grabs Kelly, strangling her through the trailer’s window.
He’s always been a sucker for a woman in need. Ash flings an ax at the Deadite, severing its arm. The trailer starts rocking—and not for any goodtime reasons. Cue the quick change into GoodAsh. Admit it, you all swooned when you saw the blue shirt. Bonus badassery, a foot-trigger, spring-loaded shotgun storage compartment in the trailer’s floor. I want one of those. But Ash loses a point for admitting he needs to do cardio.
There’s one more Deadite fight, this time with sweet as cream Vivian. She’s silly enough to stand between Ash and . . . wait for it . . . are you sure you’re ready? The chainsaw. They knock each other all over the trailer. Ash ends up, yup, on the ground. Pablo is pinned to the wall with a knife in his right shoulder, leaving Kelly to fend for herself against something she’s never seen before. Her bravery flees, though she manages to hold DeadViv at bay just long enough. For what? For the most awesome moment in the show. Pablo flings the chainsaw to Ash using his foot. Angels sing. The engine revvs. DeadViv is so excited her head just flies off.
Roberta saves Vasquez’s bacon big time. She stops Kurian from injecting the Zmurph serum into her newest crewmember and suggests Kurian take the inaugural dose. Trapped with no way to avoid outing the scheme, Kurian doses himself. He’s not quite dead yet. Matter of fact he’s feeling good enough to go for a walk. A short walk. To a box containing a severed zombie head, which La Reina orders him to stick his hand into as a test for the cure. Amazingly, Kurian doesn’t turn. It’s enough to convince La Reina to dose her entire crew—except Escorpion, a.k.a. Hector, who takes Vasquez off for another round of torture. He’s the lucky one. The serum works as intended, with a slight delay before Murphy is able to make them do a soft shoe to Brittney Spears songs—which he doesn’t do in this episode, but should. Taking control of Kurian, Murphy sets him to work making more serum.
Off in Hector’s torture chamber, Vasquez finally confesses to the attempted murder. As reward for his honesty, Hector has Vasquez strapped into what’s essentially an iron maiden, only with a zombie instead of sharpened spikes on the door, so a zombie maiden. There Vasquez is forced to listen to Hector’s woefully typical, “This bad stuff happened to me as a kid and that’s why I’m a murderer,” speech. I would have preferred to hear just about anything else from the character. He’s called away to a meeting. Thank goodness.
To say Roberta isn’t onboard with the Zmurph plan is a vast understatement. She washes her hands of Murphy’s plan for Kurian and the Zeroes the second she realizes it’s a thing which is really happening as they stand there trapped in what will probably become a nest of ravenous Zmurphs. Leaving Murphy to deal with Kurian, Roberta heads to warn the others that they need to get out ASAP. Before they fully formulate a plan, she’s called to the meeting with Hector and La Reina. Before she goes, the others are tasked with finding Vasquez.
At the meeting, Hector lies so much his pants spontaneously combust. Roberta calls him on the bull, admitting that Vasquez has no interest in killing La Reina, just the man who murdered the former DEA agent’s family. Murphy strolls into the meeting just in time to control La Reina, making the meeting go favorably for their group. Not so much for Hector. Murphy gets a little too eager to flex his power, ordering Roberta to kill Hector. They’re only saving grace is the meeting is amongst other Zmurphs.
Zmurphs Murphy loses control over moments after Roberta leaves with Hector leading the way to the torture room. The time to leave is, like, fifteen minutes ago. Kurian in hand—because he wants more serum even if the doctor is lusting for Murphy blood—Murphy runs to the lab. One can only assume he means to grab whatever supplies they’ll need to make a cure on the road. Roberta ends that plan by decapitating ravenous Kurian.
With Vasquez free and Hector locked in the zombie maiden, there’s nothing stopping them from walking out the same door they came in through. Right? Ha. Ha ha ha. La Reina and the other Zmurphs are on the hunt for their master. She recovers Kurian’s head before leading the Zmurphs through the power plant tunnels. Doc gets an idea to use the zombies trapped in the power plant to fight the Zmurphs, except the doors won’t open. That’s okay, Murphy here to save the day. He uses his powers to agitate the zombies, their weight breaking the doors.
Did anyone else kinda want this fight to suddenly stop and turn into a dance routine from Westside Story? Just me? Okay . . . .
The crew runs for it. Murphy lags behind. Guilt weighs heavy on the poor guy. He’s not okay with zombie on Zmurph violence, but what can they do? The mission is more important. Something he nearly forgot in the rush of having his own people to control. Despite misgivings, he leaves the underground power plant, joining the others on the now-deserted street.
Deserted except for Hector. It looks like the nutjob chewed his way through the zombie maiden. Hector and Vasquez have an honor fight. Roberta makes everyone stand down so the two can pummel each other. The fight ends with Vasquez tossing Hector to the zombies clambering to climb the ladder. That’s it for the Zeroes. Right? Maybe. We know Kurian’s head lives to see another day, but who is the one saving him at the episode’s end?
The gang borrows the Zeroes’ fleet of El Caminos and hits the road in style. They’re not far from the border. If they don’t muck things up, they could reach the lab in a day.
The fans don’t want braindead Liv, jonesing for relationship bliss more than stability in her life. They want intelligent Liv who makes great strides to accept herself while remaining a vital part of the crime-solving team. While they did try to make that happen in this episode, eventually the effort becomes too much and we lose Liv to the brain’s influence. It’s annoying. I shouldn’t have to tune out the lead character to enjoy a show. Why would the writers think we want to see one of few female-lead shows on TV centered around yet another weakly-written woman obsessed with who she’s going to marry? I honestly expected more from them.
Liv isn’t the only character suffering from poor planning by the writers. Clive has been a great big void for personal information since the get-go. In this episode, they’re forced to disclose his entire personality, family history, and past relationships. But because there’s so much to cover, this venture into last-minute character development happens in a two-minute conversation with Agent Bozzio where she info-dumps everything vital to the case, with just enough fun tidbits thrown in to distract fans from realizing these are things we really should already know. It sours the interesting parts of Clive’s personality, making later jokes at his expense fall flatter than Rita’s sense of humor.
The woman we saw ditching a package on Bozzio’s welcome mat is Regina Sumner, Clive’s ex-girlfriend. What? Clive has a social life? Don’t die of shock. Regina finds herself dead after a man attacks her and she’s shot in the back by an unseen killer.
Clive IDs the body on the scene. He also IDs the murder weapon—his 9mm handgun, which Regina stole the night before her death. Seeing as he’s now suspect number one, Detective Cavanaugh is brought in to handle the case. Or in this show’s way of thinking, Cavanaugh is an insulting nitwit while Liv and Ravi attempt to solve the case without Clive. Because Clive is the only competent detective on the force, despite having some of the worse closing numbers because he’s caught up in the zombie weirdness. Sure. Makes sense to disregard the intelligence of an entire department just to make a character with no development until eleven minutes into episode 208 look better.
Turns out, Regina was, like every other woman on this show, completely unhinged when it came to men. She chased police officers, dated them, then obsessed over them to the point where she created Photoshopped wedding and engagement pictures, announcements, etc. She’d know how to make them look real enough, Regina boasted the title of worst wedding planner in the city. A former client, Uma Voss—who Regina sued for non-payment—was blessed to have the psycho show up to her wedding drunk. This was after Regina slept with Uma’s fiancé, Matthew. Yup, you guessed right. Matthew is a police officer. That trail runs cold. Liv chases down an SUV pictured not only in the photo album Regina made for Clive, but also Matthew Voss. The SUV tracks back to Chief Walt Price. Liv, the genius, is caught after breaking into the SUV.
Orange is not Liv’s color. Nor does jail time sit well with her dietary needs. She nearly eats possibly the most obnoxious character introduced on the show—a fellow inmate who literally doesn’t shut up for the entirety of Liv’s jail time. Luckily she’s released in the nick of time. Ravi greets her with a Regina milkshake. Yeah, because more obsessive brain is just what the fans want to see. Liv’s already put Major on high alert with her batty behavior—breaking into his phone to read texts, weeping because he won’t unlock the safe he keeps his zombie-killing supplies in, scanning his Facebook page for anyone and everyone who may be flirting with him, and the icing on the cake comes when she does half of this in front of Gilda/Rita.
The case itself runs in circles until they look at the scrapbook again. What’s this? Uma’s ring on Regina’s finger in a photo? The linchpin for the entire case was under their noses the entire time? How convenient. Uma and her brother Karl confronted Regina the night she died, intending to scare her into leaving Matthew alone and retrieving the ring. They didn’t expect her to fight back. Uma shot Regina to save her brother. Case closed.
What’s not so simple to wrap up is the production time on Super Max. Thanks to Liv’s blood sample, a new Max Rager scientist has reformulated Super Max, giving it more of a punch without the psychotic side-effects. It’s not one-hundred percent safe. Du Clark swears by the new formula, putting it to test during his workout with Major. He’s stronger, faster, and holding onto an anger issue the size of Manhattan. But it’s still a step forward. If Major doesn’t do something to derail Du Clark and Gilda/Rita, there’s going to be many, many more Super Angry people in the world.
The gang somehow finds themselves carless and hopelessly surrounded by zombies at the United States/Mexico border. Murphy’s near-death experience means he’s more a sack for them to heft around than useful for keeping his kind at bay. They’re cornered. No chance to fight their way out with maybe four bullets amongst them. All hope is lost. The mission is over!
Wait, is that Escorpion peeking from a basement door? Follow him, guys.
Down they go into what I can only assume is a power plant of some sort. The Zeroes found a way to make the zombies work for them—without chaining them to a giant wheel like the ill-fated survivors in Burrtown—by cramming them in a tank and letting them decompose. The compost’s heat runs the turbines for the Zeroes’ power plant. It’s ingenious, really. We may have found the one group with high enough IQs to recreate society if the zombie outbreak is ever controlled.
That’s exactly what their leader, La Reina, plans to do. She needs a little help, first. Which is why Escoprion keeps popping up in the crew’s way. The only surefire way to end the outbreak is to make a cure. For that, they need Mr. Murphy. La Reina is freakishly possessive of Murphy. He and Roberta are treated like heroes. But not even heroes get to keep their weapons in the queen’s presence. The gang is disarmed before they’re allowed to venture beyond the lush gardens within the Zeroes secure compound.
Inside, they’re taken to the lab where La Reina has recruited a scientist capable of taking Murphy’s blood and delivering the cure her entire plan for the future hinges upon. One guess who lurks in the tiny, bloody lab . . . . Yup, Dr. Kurian. Roberta nearly kills the guy then and there. She hesitates, a weakness La Reina catches immediately. Why won’t Roberta kill Kurian? He may be the only PHD left on the planet capable of synthesizing a cure. Which he can’t. But she doesn’t know the truth.
Only Murphy understands why they’re all about to be up Feces Creek. Kurian has a plan, though. One which will put Murphy firmly atop the food chain from here on out. While the others are off receiving their reward from La Reina, Murphy hangs back in the lab to snarl at the man who ditched him back with the phytozombies. Kurian talks Murphy down, then wins him over when he produces batch one of the Murphy-zombie serum. It’s not perfect, but effective. Murphy has full control of the unfortunate Zero goon Kurian turns. The scene is thrilling. *wink wink*
What about this reward La Reina promises the crew? Well, they can either take a lifetime supply of whatever they wish, or become cartel members. Vasquez spots the trap. The Zeroes never give options. Either they join the cartel or die. But there’s a catch—they have to pass the examination. Ambushed, the crew is dropped into an improvised gladiator arena. The examination is simple, whoever survives both rounds in the arena becomes cartel members. Round one is a cakewalk. Addy puts the lone zombie down without blinking. Round two is trickier. In the dark, the gang must dispatch about a dozen zombies. For our crew, it’s no problem. They’ve faced worse since leaving New York.
Now everyone is Team Zeroes. They just need to look the part. Before the gang parties, they take a trip through the Zeroes’ Day Spa for makeovers. 10k doesn’t know how to react to his pedicure and Doc’s beard will never be the same after. Even their weapons get a makeover—cleaned, sharpened, and loaded before Escorpion returns them to the crew as part of their cartel induction.
Vasquez is going to blow it for everyone. He realizes Escoprion was the masked man who killed his wife and child. Despite Roberta imploring him to be patient, wait until they create a plan to escape Mexico, Vasquez still attempts to shoot Escorpion in the middle of the shindig. Desperate to avoid being killed, Roberta thwarts the attempt. Vasquez is taken into custody for questioning because everyone thinks a Reina is his target. But if she’s the target, surely he’s working for someone. Yet again, Zona is brought up, with the addition that it’s populated by “rich bastards.” A trussed-up Vasquez bobs and weaves around Escorpion’s questions like Julio César Chávez in the ring. The interrogation ends when Kurian requests a meeting with La Reina.
The cure is finished! Not really, but the Zeroes don’t know there is no chance of making a cure from Murphy’s blood. Kurian’s verbose bragging does nothing to convince La Reina the cure works. She wants proof. Vasquez becomes the volunteer for the inaugural dosage.
The episode ends with a needle at Vasquez’s throat. Yes, I yelled at the television. No, I have no patience to wait for a week. The show’s producers are evil for okaying the To Be Continued ending.
Addy finally manages to build a functional radio and makes contact with Citizen Z. CZ has been trapped in the base with zombies this entire time, yet didn’t manage to kill them all. Someone is slacking. He warns the group about the mega-zunami heading their way and advises they divert south through Mexico to avoid it. Roberta isn’t onboard with that plan. Not when they’re so close to finally hitting the California border. That’s okay. The RV they’re in makes the decision for everyone, breaking down near the Grand Canyon. Roberta, Addy, Vasquez, and Murphy hop on the ATVs hauled behind the RV to find another vehicle or a place to hole up for the zombie storm. 10k and Doc head toward the cliffs, hoping higher ground will keep the worst of the attack at bay.
Up the road, Roberta’s group finds a casino, complete with distrusting occupants who tell them to get off tribal land. That is until she shows them the zunami heading their way. The gang is taken inside and introduced to Chief, Danny. Danny is convinced his casino defenses will hold. Nothing they say can change his mind.
Up on the cliffs, 10k and Doc run into Danny’s son, Red Hawk. If you thought Danny and his crew at the casino had trust issues, Red Hawk makes them look like Boy Scouts. He’s violently opposed to white men being on the tribe’s sacred cliffs, blaming their poisonous souls for the apocalypse. Red Hawk’s sister, Ayalla, and another woman, Kuruk, roll their eyes at the he-man chest banging, grab 10k and Doc, and treat their wounds. As a bonus prize, Doc gets to go on a nice peyote trip. For the pain, of course.
Not long after Doc’s brain is well and truly cooked, Red Hawk traps the guys in snares, calling them the early zombie warning system. Sure enough, a zombie shuffles by not long after. Doc spirit walks, killing the first walker. Ayalla rides in to save the day when a second approaches and Doc’s spirit gets camera shy. She takes them to the casino so they can warn her father.
While Doc and 10k play cowboy, Roberta uses the makeshift radio Addy builds with Jerry to talk CZ though using a rocket launcher. See, he’s got this one zombie he just can’t put down. Obviously the reason is his bullets are too small. Time to upgrade. Except, rocket launchers don’t really like the cold. The device’s battery is too cold to function properly. CZ ends up running from the zombie while warming the battery . . . in his underwear. Roberta did tell him to put it the warmest place possible. Once the battery is ready—and after CZ nearly loses the rocket launcher three times—he shoots the Z. It’s a great visual effect moment as the zombie melts in the blast.
Danny finally understands why Roberta’s group is so concerned about the zunami. He orders his people to follow Ayalla to the sacred cliffs. He stays behind, though, unable to leave the land where his wife’s spirit resides. Shortly after everyone drives away, the first zombies hit the casino. It takes about a minute for them to demolish the building.
Back at the cliffs, there’s a huge problem—the zombies are dive-bombing from above. They need to find a way to drive them from the cliff. Doc, having a deep connection with the spirits in the wall paintings, ponders if zombies are as dumb as buffalo. Only one way to find out. They set the grass on the plateau above the cliffs ablaze, hoping the fire will turn the zombies toward the Grand Canyon. Murphy freaks when he realizes the zombies will die. He wants to save them. He feels their pain. The crew hold him back. They watch, breathless, as the first zombies redirect at the fire. The plan works like a charm. Zombies tumble down into the Grand Canyon by the truckload.
The tribe says goodbye to their friends from the Z Nation (ha ha). Each is given a token to remember the adventure. Except Murphy and Vasquez. They’re waiting at the bus the tribe gave the gang. Murphy is still distraught about the zombie deaths. Nearly inconsolable. Roberta pulls no punches.
“The day is coming when you’re gonna have to decide what you are, human or zombie. And when that day comes, I want you to remember which of the two is trying to keep you alive and which one wants to eat your brains.”
How much of the zunami did they successfully divert? Hopefully all of it. They’re so close to California. So close to finally being done with broken cars, no food, sleeping with one eye open, and Murphy’s sourpuss expression. The real question is, what will go wrong next?
Meet our newest corpse, Syd Wicked. It’s a stage name, of course. Syd is a magician, in town for an industry convention. His body is found in his hotel room, a metal-edged playing card embedded in his jugular. The only person seen entering the room on security camera footage is the maid who found the body and the three security guards who answered her distress call. After Liv takes her lunch break, she decides to hold a not-really-real séance in the morgue where she communes with Syd’s body and is generally, stupidly goth-weird. It’s so stereotypical, my eyes rolled across my cell on their own.
Blaine interrupts the tête-à-tête. Thank goodness. Maybe. Seeing as Blaine doesn’t shamble amongst the half-dead anymore, he comes to Liv for a little zombie mojo to help figure out who’s kidnapping the rich zombies in town before Agent Bozzio puts the insane puzzle pieces together herself and exposes not only Liv, but Blaine and his business. That’s if she has everything she needs to track them down. Only one way to find out. That evening, Liv and Blaine stake out Bozzio’s house. They wait for Clive to take Bozzio to the movies. The couple have other plans for a randy night in. Drat. Gotta come back the next day. This time they successfully make it inside Bozzio’s house. Wouldn’t you know it; the files are all organized on the dining room table. Convenient. Liv suggests they divide and conquer the files. Mistake. Blaine flips past a picture of Miner, the one clue which would have solved the case. It’s a cheap misdirection; kinda like the worm in Labryinth leading Sara away from the path directly to the castle beyond the Goblin City. The only productive part of the break-in is when they intercept the report on the mystery brain from Suzuki’s fridge. Liv takes the report, doctors it to say the brain is bovine, and returns it to Bozzio’s house.
Back on the magical murder, Clive has an army of potential suspects to weed through. Turns out, Syd was kind of an a-hole. Anytime a fellow magician snubbed him, Syd took to Youtube and exposed their signature tricks. Two notable names are Houdina and The Magnificent Magnus. Houdina was on stage during the murder. Magnus, well, the old guy still has gas in his tank and had a lovely red-headed companion occupying his time—though he cannot remember her name. Houdina raises their interest later in the episode when Liv has a vision starring Houdina, wearing a wedding dress and throwing a diamond ring at Syd. Then they learn she may not have been on stage when they thought, according to Mr. Smoak of magic duo Smoak and Meers. Houdina exposes the secret ending to her show—she uses a disguise to vanish in plain sight, posing as a clueless waitress after pulling a vanishing act.
Lightbulb.
Liv’s observational skills do not fail her, for once, and she spots eerily familiar handwriting on a message board in the maid’s break area at the hotel. Meers, a mute performer, uses a specific ampersand when he writes. The now-missing maid who found Syd’s body used the same ampersand to note missing items on the message board.
With lackluster flair, Liv exposes Meers’ real identity and her partner’s involvement in ensuring the other suspects in the case didn’t have an alibi. Ta-da! Yawn. The only intriguing part of the episode is a mysterious woman at Bozzio’s door. She hesitates for a while before dropping a package on the welcome mat and leaving, obviously torn over whatever is in the envelope.
This is a poor mid-season episode. There’s not even humor to keep it going. Liv isn’t just annoying with her death-obsessed brain, she’s stuck on the notion that she and Major cannot have sex. Like it’s the end of the world if they can’t do it all day, every day. She harps on the idea so much, if I hear the word sex from her or Major one more time this season, I’ll swallow razors. Can we request her next working lunch be from an a-sexual person?
Here’s your spoiler warning. Proceed at your own risk.
…They make a run on the food pantry, ignoring Olivia when she reminds them they have to ration until the walkers clear and they can make a supply run. Spencer, Deanna’s son, steps in to lend a voice of reason. Then he turns around after everyone is gone to pillage what he wants. My opinion of the guy was already pretty low, but after he left the gate open for the Wolves and stole much needed food? I hope his drunk self falls off the wall while he’s on guard duty. Spencer isn’t the worst off emotionally, either. Betsy, wife to David who died in the last episode, and a few others paint the names of the dead lost in the attack and partially failed mission on the wall—including Nicholas and Glenn.
After creating the tribute, Betsy returns home and slashes her wrists. Jessie finds her after, zombified and banging on her front door. This leads to Jessie making one of several drawn out speeches during this episode. Not every speech comes from her, though she has to say something after Betsy dies in order to keep the others from seeing suicide as a viable option. It just feels like anytime there’s a sliver of tension, Rick or someone yanks out the soapbox and lets it rip. For heaven’s sake, Rick makes a loud speech about being quiet to avoid riling the walkers while standing next to the compromised wall section with about a thousand zombies leaning against it trying to get to the booming voice on the other side. There’s a point where the writers need to give up this trope and move on to other ways to motivate a crowd. Start a conga line or something. I don’t care so long as I don’t have to listen to another sermon from the Ricktatorship pulpit.
Healthy ways to cope with the stress do not involve attacking each other about a girl. A lesson Carl and Ron desperately need to learn. Enid is still presumably on the outside. Carl asks Ron to help and is rejected, with a threat to tattle to Rick if Carl hops the fence. He ends up going to Rick anyway in order to cash in the rain check on those shooting lessons Rick promised back at the quarry. Another unhealthy coping mechanism is attempting to tenderize a walker with a broken bottle. Deanna, I’m looking at you. Your cool flew out the window the minute the Wolves attacked. Get your act together. Tara seems to be the best adjusted to the stress. She manages successfully to talk Denise off the metaphorical ledge when the new doctor cannot find a way to clear the infection in Scott’s bullet wound. And, hey, she gets kissed for her efforts. It’s a win-win.
Desperate for answers, Maggie prepares to drop over the wall and search for Glenn. Aaron, heavy with guilt because the backpack he lost when the Wolves tricked him and Daryl with the tucks led the attackers to their door, insists she let him help. He even knows a way out which won’t break her leg if she falls wrong. They take to the tunnels running under Alexandria. Down there, they face walkers so soggy and muddy, Maggie’s hand goes right through one’s chest. She’s nearly bitten, yet still tells Aaron to go back and tend to his wounds. Yeah, not happening. Then again, neither is the mission. The tunnel exit is too close to the herd.
Despite everything in her demanding she find Glenn, Maggie won’t risk losing the baby. It’s the last piece of her husband left; she doesn’t even have a picture. That night when Maggie and Aaron search the area for a signal from Glenn, they take a moment to erase his and Nicholas’ names from the memorial wall.
There’s a change in the guard coming to Alexandria. After Deanna snaps and attacks a stray walker—Carol lost track of only one Wolf she killed and he turned in the walls—Rick swoops in and makes the actual kill. Crouched on the pavement, covered in walker blood, Deanna tells Rick, “I wanna live. I want this place to stay standing.” She realizes her mental capacity cannot handle the stress from all the losses, but Rick seems to be doing just fine. Obviously he’s the better choice for leader, right? NO. WRONG. But the decision is made. Rick celebrates his new position by kissing Jessie. Okay, that wasn’t the real purpose to their conversation, but it might as well have been for all the sense it made. Somewhere along the line, the writers forgot how to have Rick talk in coherent thoughts.
The future is not so bright for Alexandria. The fence, though reinforced, is failing where the truck hit. Four of their best fighters are still in the field. Morale is in the tank. There’s a crazier leader taking the throne. Oh and let’s not forget the crazy guy waiting in a jail cell. Yes, they survived to see another day, but how long will their luck hold out?
This case ties directly into last week’s basketball-loving fest. Harry Cole, the man who murdered a scary debt collector and witnessed Mike Hayden’s murder, is gunned down on the courthouse steps yards from Clive. The killers get away on a motorcycle. Clive tracks their progress toward the water. Assuming they dumped the bike, he orders a dive team to search for it. While awaiting word from the dive team, Clive and Liv interview Roger Thrunk. He’s the “fixer” for Harry’s law firm and the man accused of killing Mike Hayden. Despite appearances, Thrunk isn’t a practicing lawyer. He hasn’t been in the courtroom in nine years, yet has a rather nice office at the firm. They have no solid evidence on the guy with Harry lounging on Ravi’s examination table and Thrunk knows it. He enjoys taunting them about the vague meaning behind his one phone call since arriving at the police station. Who did he ask his associate to take care of?
It doesn’t take long for Harry’s compulsive gambling to take over Liv’s life. All her small wagers lead to a vision which isn’t completely redundant. Enter The Barber, Harry’s bookie.
It’s not just a moniker, the guy actually runs a barbershop. He’s also incredibly quick-witted and intelligent, keeping his lawyer perched on the sidelines in the shop more or less constantly. The lawyer is kind of a nitwit, though. They get nothing of note from The Barber. Liv takes advantage of the proximity to Harry’s obsession and places a bet—the first of many in the episode.
Hitting a dead end, Clive makes the unpopular decision to crash Harry’s funeral to talk to his widow. In attendance is Calvin Owens, a big time basketball star who happened to go to college with Harry. Clive’s fanboy shows big time. Good thing, too. All his gushing prompts another vision: Calvin turning his back on Harry and refusing to pay off any more of his debts.
Thanks to a crime scene tech who plays by the rules, Clive and Liv figure out who Thrunk wanted taken care of—his pet turtle. Only, when Thrunk’s associate realizes the tech is calling a detective, he bolts. The turtle is brought into the station. That’s one happy turtle, man. He has enough cocaine stashed in his ceramic house to—well, I’m not sure what a turtle would do with cocaine, but there was a lot of it. They have enough evidence on Thrunk to put him away. Mike Hayden’s case is finally wrapped up.
But who killed Harry? The final puzzle piece clicks in place when Liv heads back to The Barber to place a bet on a basketball game based on Calvin’s recommendation. Every man in the shop pauses for a moment when she says his name. The Barber alludes to Calvin’s involvement in gambling before. But he’s either really good at it, seeing as he’s living in a mansion still, or he was on the other end of the gambling game. After some digging, Liv realized Calvin shaved points off during the final quarter in most of his college games in order to help Harry. About the same time the dive team coughs up information about the motorcycle. Hey, it just so happens to belong to the sons of Calvin’s former teammate. Turns out, Harry threatened to blackmail Calvin if he didn’t pay his current debt. Tired of hemorrhaging money, Calvin hired hitmen. Case closed.
But there’s so, so much more in this episode.
Liv and Major are sickening sweet together. There’s still that one little catch; they don’t know if they can safely consummate the relationship, even with protection. Ravi tests every condom brand known to man—and makes a condom balloon animal, too. Turns out the zombie virus is so small, condoms are completely ineffective in preventing infection. Damn. They can get creative, right? They may not have long to get creative. Clive and Bozzio are inching closer to officially reopening the Meat Cute case. Not only that, Bozzio is now one-hundred percent totally chasing Major as the person abducting these wealthy businessmen. He adds a notable name to his list at the end of the episode.
Which is where Blaine comes in. Or rather, his father. Papa DeBeers doesn’t take threats lightly. He’s been digging into Blaine’s life, trying to find a way to destroy his son’s little fiefdom. Luck comes when he discovers Blaine’s makeup artist and tortures her for information, including Blaine’s client list. Little DeBeers is now demoted to a gopher, sent to fetch the brain from one of his father’s rivals. Joke’s on Pops. Blaine doesn’t retrieve the brain he asks for. Instead, he pays a visit to Grandpa DeBeers and takes his. There’s a whole mountain of remorse before, during, and after the act. Which is for naught. Angus DeBeers joins the growing list of missing businessmen. Well, he’s not completely missing. Major knows exactly where he put the guy on ice. Literally. Angus is in a freezer with two other men.
There’s trouble in Peyton’s plan to finally bring Mr. Boss to justice. Boss knows. He’s creepy as hell, to boot. Late one night, Boss pays a visit to Peyton’s office. He’s not very subtle; Peyton has two choices, accept a bribe like three district attorneys before her, or vanish like the one who didn’t. It doesn’t take Boss long to figure out who fed Peyton her information, either. There’s a new list growing, a list of people Boss will take care of in order to keep his place in the drug world’s hierarchy.
I’ve got a feeling someone will not make it through this season alive.
Hey, not a half bad brain this time around. I wasn’t completely annoyed with Liv and her basketball-centric brain, only mildly annoyed when large chunks of dialog were buried under random player and game stats. We get it. We do. It’s not necessary to cram each brain’s personality into micro bursts of What The Hell Is She Talking About?
Our basketball lover is Mike Hayden, security guard and coach for a youth basketball team. He is shot twice in the chest at work. Weird thing is, Mike turned off the security cameras shortly before his death. With next to nothing to go on, Clive pulls images from the cameras before they were disabled and gives them to Liv hoping to shake something loose with her psychic mojo. Problem is, he’s a little too eager to wrap up the case. Liv hasn’t eaten Mike’s brain—as an omelet—yet. She fakes it. Horribly. After eating, Liv heads to the police station for an actual attempt to determine if any of the three photos rings a bell. Nada. However, Mike’s basketball team walks into the station claiming they know who killed their coach. Wouldn’t it be nice if it were that simple?
The kid’s suspect their former teammate’s father, TJ Ryan. TJ boasts a nasty temper and about two functional brain cells. He’s also physically abusing his son, RJ. Mike had an altercation with TJ after reporting him for abuse, but it’s not enough to motivate the guy to kill. Even though TJ’s alibi checks out, Clive pays a late night visit, warning him to leave his son alone. He punctuates the warning by beating the snot out of the guy. Go, Clive, go!
One suspect down, none to go. Clive digs through Mike’s personal information and finds emails from a crowd funding site. An anonymous donor paid off the remaining four-thousand dollars Mike needed in order to send his team to basketball camp. There’s no trail to follow. Another dead end. And another corpse. Telly Levins is one of the three men seen entering the building the night Mike died. Now he’s got his own drawer at the Tacoma morgue. Ravi, Liv, and Clive make a field trip to check out the body. Tacoma’s ME, Dr. Metzger, isn’t fond of Ravi. He’s also not very good at his job. Telly was beaten before being dumped in wet cement, something Metzger missed in his initial examination of the body.
Everything leads back to the building Mike worked at and the 14th floor, where Telly was seen the night of the murder. Clive and Liv interview a couple lawyers in the law firm housed on that floor. Turns out, one of them is a pretty big sports fan. He’s also really bad at picking teams. Harry Cole lost a nice chunk of change on a college game. When he doesn’t pay, Telly—a known debt collector for unsavory types—stops by to give Harry a stern warning. Harry freaks and beats Telly to death. But when Clive tries to pin Mike’s murder on him, he denies pulling the trigger. Turns out, the law firm has a guy who cleans up situations like a random bloody corpse in the office. It was Roger Thrunk’s idea to kill the security cameras, kill Mike, and dump Telly in Tacoma. Case solved.
It’s astounding how focused Liv is with Mike’s brain in her system. She functions as an actual part of the crime-solving team. During her off time, she’s helping Major deal with his drug problem. Part of her plan involves stern halftime pep talks. The other part? Well, Major hopes she’s getting over her hangups about accidentally infecting him while they make love, but not so much. Liv conscripts Major into coaching the youth basketball team. They work well together. Major even throws out the Utopium hidden in his bedroom. With Liv at his side, he’s a better man. He’s not going to let her shy away because of some maybes.
His job may get in the way, though. Gilda/Rita finds out about Liv and Major. It gives her all the motivation she needs to collect a blood sample from Liv for Dr. Erving, Max Rager’s newest pet scientist working on Super Max. Erving thinks Liv is the only intelligent zombie in town and needs her blood in order to figure out why the Super Max zombies are so dumb. One drop of Liv’s blood—obtained when Gilda/Rita “accidentally” stabs her with a kebab skewer—could hold the key to their final formula.
More trouble brews on the horizon. Clive is still digging into the Meat Cute incident. He contacts Suzuki’s widow, asking if the man could have been suicidal. It’s a bad move, but he can’t let it go. Evidence keeps popping up, making it impossible to ignore. Agent Bozzio has a huge break in the case; one of her missing persons was traced to Meat Cute. Then at the end of the episode, Suzuki’s widow brings in a container she found in her late husband’s beer fridge with what’s left of his last brain order.
Blaine is itching for the zombie cure. Gabriel comes through and cuts a batch of Utopium. Don E delivers the vial to Ravi, who immediately plans exhaustive testing. First, he has to make more zombie rats. Just as he’s mixed the zombie-making serum, Blaine pays a visit, expecting the cure. Needless to say, he’s disappointed. But not as disappointed as Gabriel when he grabs the syringe of serum, thinking it’s the cure, and doses himself. Instant rotting death. Cool. Wait, that’s a rather effective weapon. Blaine and Ravi struggle for the vial of remaining serum. Eventually, to keep Blaine from weaponizing it, Ravi smashes the vial with a jar of some blue liquid.
We’re so close to the entire team finally being on the same page with the zombie thing. How will Clive react? It’s hard to say. He’s proving to be pretty unpredictable lately.
DeadDad isn’t a stool pigeon. He’s of no help to Ruby, refusing to cooperate. That is until she pulls out a wicked knife which just so happens to scorch deadite flesh on contact. Groovy. Where can I get one? We have to assume DeadDad talks. I hope he did. It’s about time Lucy Lawless and Bruce Campbell were on screen together. My patience wears thin waiting for this momentous occasion.
Translating the book is about 25% skill and 75% talking out one’s backside, or so it seems when Lionel cannot find a clear answer to the Big Problem: How do they close the portal Ash opened in order to get laid? There’s some vague thing about the key being in The Man, which Ash assumes is him. Then the braintrust does exactly what they shouldn’t, plan to summon a lesser demon and ask it how to fix Ash’s boneheaded mistake. It’s Pablo’s idea, which he wants nothing to do with once things are in motion. Lionel is beside himself with joy at the prospect. Ash is still stuck figuring out why him. Don’t hurt yourself thinking, dude.
Amanda Fisher and her partner, Carson, find one other person in the house—Ash’s blonde date who read from the book. You know where this is going, right? Fight time. Blondie cranks her head around 180* and dislocates her shoulders before launching at Carson. Amanda takes some wicked-huge scissors to the hand. Then things get really out of hand, ending with Carson and the blonde woman without heads. That escalated quickly. Later in the episode, we learn that Amanda is out on leave pending an investigation into the shooting and a psyche evaluation, because how many people say their partner went crawling on the ceiling before attacking them? A kind, and kinda hot, stranger—played by Lucy Lawless—more or less tells Amanda she’s not nuts. A fact Amanda confirms by going back to the crime scene, where she finds Carson’s shirt fibers on the chandelier.
