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.
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?
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.
The show is a crime drama/comedy. The main character provides no useful information for the case in this episode which wouldn’t have been found by a human crime scene tech. Meanwhile, Peyton is back in town for two days and manages to exhaust her list of people willing to testify against the city’s top Utopium dealer, Mr. Boss, while in the process scoring her most valuable asset in the case—Blaine DeBeers. In the time it takes Liv to write a song, Peyton has enough information to first hurt Boss’ business, then bring his empire down like a house of cards. Not only that, she centers Liv, encourages Ravi to continue dating Stephanie without an ounce of jealousy, and is the only one to realize whatever is wrong with Major is serious. Oh and she’s on the nose when it comes to her gut feelings about Gilda/Rita, the Max Rager spy. Now if only Peyton could fix Liv’s lack of . . . everything. The writers still handle her as an android; they pop in a brain (program) and off she goes. It doesn’t make for a compelling leading lady. While Liv does retain more of herself in this episode, it’s only to progress the story line with Major. The message is clear, Liv is only vital when it comes to her relationship with a man.
Onto the case. Liv and Ravi are called to pick up Lacy Cantrell, a thirty-two year old waitress and singer/songwriter strangled to death in her bedroom. Following police logic, they track down the woman’s ex-boyfriend, Matt—a.k.a. Sue—who was released from prison a month prior to the murder. With his violent past, it’s clearly the boyfriend. Case closed. Everyone go home. Wrong. Again. Can we get a case on this show which doesn’t waste twenty minutes looking at the significant other or recent ex as the sole suspect, please? It’s so predictable, I figured out the plot twist not long after they took the body to the morgue. Matt didn’t kill Lacy. Matter of fact, once he’s done being angry about the police coming after him as a suspect, the guy has nothing but love for the deceased.
He follows Liv after she uses Lacy’s brain to perform a song based on the case and lets fly about how much he cared for Lacy. It triggers something in Liv, which we’ll discuss later. But if Matt’s not to blame, who murdered Lacy? A complete stranger. There’s another murder case taking top priority because it’s located in the richer area in the city. The show opens with three kids finding the gun from that murder. Why would writers do that if they didn’t intend to tie to two seemingly separate cases together? They showed their hand early in the game. There’s no fun on a crime show if the case is laid out and solved by viewers two minutes into the episode. So the convenience store murderer is Lacy’s killer, as well. And at no point did Liv offer up a helpful vision or clue. Clive handled this one by himself. Astounding since he’s a little distracted by FBI agent Dale Bozzio. She is in town to investigate several high-profile disappearances. Namely, the people Blaine killed to sell super fancy brains to his clients. But some of his clients are missing, as well. If Bozzio falls down the zombie rabbit hole, will Clive finally learn Liv’s brain-munching little secret?
Majorly disappointed with one character in particular. See what I did there? Major’s Utopium habit is getting worse. He’s completely disconnected from the world. He can’t even keep track of the dog he stole from the zombie he killed in the previous episode. Miner, as Ravi calls him, runs away one afternoon and finds the park where Major kidnapped his owner. Cue weeping. For the dog, not Major. All sympathies for the man flew out the window when he completely disregards Liv feelings. She opens up, telling him how hard it was last year hiding the truth from him, watching him go insane. His response is a verbal shrug and a door in her face. Nothing sinks into his drug-addled brain until he wanders off to score more U. The kid he finds to buy from lived in the shelter Major worked for last year. When the dealer points out how Major once pushed the shelter kids to get clean, and now he’s a junkie, it breaks the glass shell he’s existed in since Liv gave him the cure. The episode ends with Major on Liv’s doorstep, asking for help. Oh and kissing.
It’s probably a good time to get clean, anyway. Blaine is one step closer to recreating the tainted Utopium. Scott E tracks down Gabriel, the guy who cut the original U batch. Slight problem with this grand plan, though; Gabriel has turned a new leaf and jumped on the Jesus Train. Since he won’t cooperate, Blaine kidnaps the guys, has a minion turn him into a zombie, and turns the starving baby brain muncher out on the streets. How long will Gabriel’s morals keep him from bashing in a skull for the prize inside? Probably not very long. Either he kills or slinks back to Blaine for morally ambiguous brains to eat. Soon Blaine will have the means to mass produce zombies. That’ll be fun.
This episode is all about beauty over brains. No, beauty isn’t a new hot sauce brand. Liv sinks her teeth into a socialite who is thrown over her balcony by a man posing as a realtor, real name Joe Fricano. As a result, 90% of her dialog is about clothes. I’m trying really hard to keep an open mind about this show—it helps that there’s a bit of rot on my left temple letting in a nice breeze—but every time they dig into this stereotypical female personalities, I want to put my hand through the screen. We get it, it’s fun to make bright, motivated Liv into a mindless clotheshound.
Wait. That’s not fun. I’d much rather watch Liv use her intelligence and not her powers to solve a case. Two seasons of accidental visions is enough. This problem wasn’t as prevalent in season one, but now it’s pretty much all we’re seeing—Liv being weird, not helpful, and they manage to close cases by pure chance. At least she looks nice while doing it?
Let’s dig into the case. Taylor Fowler, our brain donor for the episode, is married to businessman Terrance Fowler. Clive is convinced the husband is involved. Dead end there when the guy hems and haws about a time to sit down for an interview. Instead, they visit with the actual relator whose identity the killer used to gain access to the house. She tells them Vaughn Du Clarke is selling his house and she’d kicked the killer out of Du Clarke’s place during an open house after she caught him snooping. Off to Max Rager they go. Liv has a rather unpleasant vision during the meeting—Du Clarke and Taylor in bed together. Full. Body. Shudder. But there’s still no motive for anyone to off Taylor. Finally Terrance is ready to talk to them. The meeting goes smoothly, until they drop the bomb about the affair. Terrance puts his hand through a glass coffee table. I think he’s a little angry. Eventually they track down two of Taylor’s so-called friends. If friends are the people with a knife to your back at any given moment. The demons in Prada did provide a couple helpful tidbits: Terrance knew about Taylor’s affair with Du Clarke and he isn’t Mr. Perfect himself, using a social media site to hook up with younger women. Now we’re back to Terrance Did It. Yawn. Naptime.
Oh, that was only half of the episode?
To establish Fowler’s alibi, they stop to visit his personal stylist, Bethany. Newly fashion-savvy Liv falls in lust with the woman’s style. They quickly become best friends, bonding over shoes. It turns into a shopping date the following day. Liv ditches Clive, who wants to do actual police work to interview Fricano’s manager at the auto shop. They’d assumed Fricano worked for Terrance at his home, giving him access to Taylor in order to figure out her schedule and kill her. Nope. Manager says Fowler isn’t the guy who hired him. However, Joe had been seen with a hot, yet slutty woman who he was obsessing over for a while. Just so happens, Clive has the book of skanks from the website where Terrance picks his mistresses.
One guess who the manager points out? Yup, Liv’s new BFF, Bethany. When Clive calls to tell Liv while she’s out shopping, Bethany overhears. There’s a rumble amongst the couture dresses. Bethany maces Liv, which does nothing except make her go Full-Blown Zombie. Case solved.
But what about the case of Liv’s weird desire to have the guys go to dinner with her? Turns out, it’s her birthday. She doesn’t want to make a big thing, have a bash, just a quiet dinner with the handful of friends she has left. Ravi ditches her to go visit a girl he met during his Utopium high—they’re actually hitting it off. Clive just says no. Major? Well, seeing as Liv finds out he’s working for Max Rager in this episode, he’s not high on her e-vite list. Oh and he’s shagging her roommate/Max Rager spy, Gilda. The only person who does anything for Liv which isn’t purely selfish is Peyton. You know, the ex-roommate who watched Liv murder a zombie in their kitchen? She’s back in town, working on a taskforce to hunt down Utopium dealers and manufacturers. Even with her plate full, Peyton still managed to bring Liv a personalized cake.
The rest of her friends are jerks. Or is Liv the jerk? She lied to all of them about her condition. Each brain she eats makes her an entirely different person. It’s difficult to hang onto friends when your diet essentially turns you into the worst flavor of bipolar person alive—or undead. Yet she chooses to continue putting strain on her relationships to supposedly help with police work. When in reality she takes a fun ride on the brain acid-like trip, dropping one, maybe two useful visions, and acting like she’s Batman saving the city. Liv isn’t perfect, the show would be boring if she were. However, the way she’s written gets progressively less appealing with each episode. Somewhere along the way, the writers lost track of who, exactly, they’re creating. Liv isn’t a blank canvas. She was an entire person, which they established in episode 101, before Blaine turned her. Let’s get back to that Liv.
The dead guy this time around is frat bro numero uno, Chad Wolcoff. He was the guy everyone relies on when they just can’t make it through their fourth beer bong. He was also a prick notorious for getting his bros in trouble with his pranks—one guy landed on the sex offender’s list after Chad told him to streak and set his path to take him past an elementary school. Chad’s offed by someone in a giant furry blue bear suit. How hard can it be to track down a suit so distinctive? Impossible, judging from Clive’s numerous failed calls to local costume shops.
Liv on bro brain is a peach. She cakes gaudy, glittery makeup on Ravi’s face, topped off with “FART” written on his forehead. She also drinks like a fish, belches, and talks like a brain-dead idiot. She’s dead, but her brain is fully functional. Thankfully. Or not. Her visions aren’t much help. Except one. Her second vision introduces them to the other Chad Wolcoff. This Chad spends him time talking to teens about the dangers of drunk driving. Chad and Chad faced off a while back when BroChad got drunk and posed as SoberChad at a school, where he proceeded to tell teens it’s cool to drive drunk. After Clive finally finds the bear suit, he thinks they’ve hit a dead end. Sonny and his girlfriend were at home having Furry Relations (much to Liv’s amusement) the night of the murder.
Or was he?
Turns out, Sonny killed the wrong Chad. SoberChad wasn’t always straight-laced. Back when he was fifteen, he hit and killed Sonny’s father. Because he was a minor, the punishment wasn’t as severe as Sonny would’ve liked. Over the years Sonny looked for Chad. When he found BroChad online, he wanted to face him again. BroChad didn’t make a good first impression, obviously.
This episode was Blaine-heavy. He’s concocting a drug war between himself and Mr. Boss, the local Big Boss when it comes to the drug trade. A position Blaine wants desperately. He sets up several rich kids amongst high-end clubs to sell his Utopium. In return, Boss orders hits on every last one, including Speedy, Blaine’s face-man for his business. Undaunted, or already prepared for this rebuttal from his nemesis, Blaine pays a visit to the District Attorney, who just happens to be one of his best brain-buying customers. They reach an agreement to start a case on Boss, but it’s going to take some hefty bribes to undercut the firm footing Boss has in the city. That’s okay, Blaine just needs to pay a visit to his dear daddy, played by Robert Knepper. As expected, Angus DeBeers just like his son. Blaine uses every manipulative trick in his book to work his father, finally demanding half a million dollars or he’ll overthrow his father, take over the family business, and lock Angus in the looney bin . . . just like Angus did to his father. Now Blaine has the means to take over the Utopium drug trade in the city.
That’s good news for one character in particular. No, not Ravi; he’s still drawing blanks when it comes to finding the tainted Utopium. However, he thinks if he can understand the drug, he’ll have a better chance of figuring out a zombie cure without the specific strain from the boat party. This leads to Ravi begging Major to join him on a drug-seeking mission at a high-end club. Ravi floats on an euphoric cloud, attempting to monitor his reaction to the drug with the voice recorder app on his phone. Spoiler: the audio provides little to no help the next day. Bored watching his friend have all the fun, Major takes Ravi’s second vial of Utopium. Then he wants more. When we find Major again, he’s passed out in the bathroom. A stranger finds his phone and calls Liv. She dutifully drags the kite-high men home. But before the cab drives a foot, Major grabs her phone and throws it out the window, telling her, “They can hear you and they’re always listening.” Or something to that effect given all the slurring. Liv and Major have a bonding moment on his bathroom floor. He asks her to stay and take care of him. She’s elated, thinking they’re finally on speaking terms. The bubble bursts the next day. Major replaces her phone, but won’t see her. Guess who’s falling down the Utopium hole? Yup. Major’s an addict. It’s either that or stew in guilt over the man he killed and the many more he’ll murder to keep Max Rager’s goons from going after Liv.
How much longer can Major keep the wolves at bay, though? He almost spills the beans to Liv twice in this episode while under the influence. What’s stopping him from blabbing to Ravi? Even if he does, there’s not much they can do to take down Max Rager short of killing Vaughn Du Clark.
Three months after Meat Cute blew up, Liv is still persona non grata when it comes to visiting her family. She gives it another try, anyway, hoping time healed her brother’s mental anguish over her refusal to donate blood. Yeah, no. He’s still holding tight to that grudge, telling Liv, “Go away. Don’t come back.” Which is pretty much the same thing their mother says before Liv walks into Evan’s hospital room. They aren’t the only ones with a bone to pick when it comes to Liv’s recent behavior, Major has her in the doghouse since the moment she turned him without permission. Hey, she gave you the last dose of the cure, dude. Show a little respect.
Speaking of the cure, it may not be one-hundred percent effective. At least, that’s what Ravi alludes to as he laments the lack of tainted Utopium necessary to replicate the cure so he can actually test it. Final Hope, a.k.a. New Hope, is the only rat left from the experiments. It’s doing well considering at one point it craved burrowing into other tiny furry heads to munch brains. However, the rat is terrified of Liv. Turns out, it’s not just the rat with zombie-senses similar to Spider-Man’s spidey-sense. Major shows a similar side-effect. Anytime he’s near a zombie, as is the case when he meets a new personal training client, the hair on the back of his neck stands on end. The cure turns former zombies into zombie-detectors. Handy skill to stay alive. It could also be put to use for other nefarious purposes. More on that later.
Ready to meet our first corpse for the season? Wendell Gale is a peach of a man. A rotten peach. He’s old, grumpy, and quite the racist bastard. Which essentially makes everyone living in a mile radius from his house a suspect. It also means Liv is unbearable in this episode. At one point Clive is so fed up with the rubbish she spews, he looks ready to punch her. The personality is wishy-washy. It’s like the writers realized they went too far and held back during certain scenes. But then they went Full Bigot at times, too. Personally, I would’ve nixed the racist personality. Yes, we get it, old folks love to hate what they don’t understand. Did they necessarily need to manifest this in the form of intense racism? No. They didn’t. It was a lazy way to write a grumpy old man and give them a wider suspect pool to play with. Half-baked detective work and a couple insignificant visions narrow the suspects down to three people—Wendell’s sister-in-law Clara, the neighborhood bad-boy Rodney, and neighbor Byron Thistlewaite. The case itself is pretty straightforward once Liv finally has a clear vision starring Byron’s darling dog. Wendell, notorious for yelling at Byron about where his dog dropped its dung, locked the mutt in his shed to teach his neighbor a lesson—leash laws aren’t a joke and curb your dog. Instead of having a civil conversation, Byron jumped to conclusions after a little ribbing from Wendell and kicked the carjack out from under the car Wendell had crawled under to work on. The car killed the old man. A distraught Byron heard his dog in the shed and rescued it. Now he has a safe dog in need of a new home since he’s going to jail for murder. Congratulations, idiot.
When Liv isn’t being mostly useless in the investigation, she’s tracking down her favorite person in the world, Blaine. She needs his past connections to score more tainted Utopium. But it looks like she’s hit a dead end. Blaine is a legitimate businessman, shilling funerals to his fellow humans. Okay, he’s still selling brains, as well. Can’t change a tiger’s stripes. Which is why it’s no surprise that Blaine is setting himself up to be the largest Utopium dealer in the city. He still doesn’t know who cut the batch he sold at the boat party where Liv was turned, though. Given a new mission, Blaine tracks down Don E—pothead and former stooge—to ask who cut the Utopium from the party.
If they’re going to make a cure, it needs to be soon. Vaughn Du Clark is a desperate man. The revelations about Max Rager and its weird side-effects put a dent in their sales numbers. He has a plan. A nefarious plan. First, get Super Max on the shelves. Doesn’t matter if the side-effects still happen. They have an ace-in-the-hole. Someone with the ability to find zombies. Yep, you guessed right. Du Clark calls Major into his office and lays out his plan. Major will take the list of known zombies, venture out into the world, and murder the undead. That was his original plan, after all, so why change? The problem? Du Clark lists Liv as his number-one enemy. To pacify his new boss, Major take out his newest client/zombie. Maybe that’ll keep Du Clark off his back for a while.
It won’t keep Du Clark’s assistant from playing double agent. Gilda is making herself at home in Liv’s apartment, posing as her new roommate since Peyton bolted after Liv killed a zombie in their kitchen. Gilda is the reason Major is locked in his new position as zombie slayer. She bugged Liv’s phone. How much more chaos can she cause before Liv finds out about Gilda’s connection to Max Rager? Plenty.
A slow start to season two. The twists and turns come in fits and starts. Unlike season one, they laid the groundwork for the overall season story line early—a luxury they didn’t have before when the bulk of the show’s time was spent simply explaining the universe. With that mess out of the way, I expect more from the show. Will they shake off the sophomore curse? We’ll see.
Poor Theresa didn’t survive the beating at the end of the last episode. Seeing as Sebastian had a knife in his head before the attack, there’s a new killer on the loose. Liv wastes no time digging into Theresa’s snarktastic brain—served on a BLT with not-spicy-enough mustard. The first vision connects the dots for the Scooby Gang; the kids were attacked for the Max Rager flash drive Theresa took from Sebastian’s pocket before they buried him. It explains all the texts about “The stuff” and money flying around during Kimber’s case. Someone from Max Rager wants that information and they’ve resumed killing people to get it back. The lone survivor from the band, Cameron, is missing. When the police finally locate information, it’s from a gas station surveillance camera. Cameron walks in, grabs enough food for two people, and mouths, “Help me.” It’s a good cover story. While he’s dropping breadcrumbs for the cops to follow his “kidnapper,” Cameron meets a Max Rager representative and sells the flash drive. Then they try to blow him up. Terrified, Cameron hops on a bus to Canada . . . and is caught at the border because he didn’t think they’d catch on to his scheme and put out an APB. Moron. Faced with Clive’s not-so-veiled threat to hand Cameron over to Max Rager—who has plans to get their money back if the tracking device in the bag of cash is any indication—Cameron spills everything, including a cloud-stored copy of the flash drive’s contents.
Max Rager’s part in zombie creation is bigger than anticipated. And an accident. Vaughn Du Clark tasked his scientists with creating Super Max, an energy drink which makes the consumer never need sleep again, plus a few other enhancements. The tainted energy drink which went public is likely the test batch of Super Max, sent out in the world to see what’d it do to humans. MR took advantage of the opportunity when Sebastian made his way back to them post-turning. He went to them in good faith. Then went nuts and killed the lead scientist. It’s okay, Du Clark has a spare scientist laying around. Once the guy recovers from the whole, “Zombies are real,” shock, he’s pretty onboard with the Super Max plan. Though that doesn’t stop him from being Creepy Mc Staresalot when Liv and Clive come for yet another friendly chat with Max Rager’s CEO, Du Clark. Despite all the manipulation and murders, the documents they hid came to light. It’s no rain on Du Clark’s parade. He’s got the makings of his own personal undead army. He may not be able to keep that army undead for long. Ravi’s cure is on the fast track to success. Hope 2 (as I call her) is alive and well after taking a low dose of the cure. Unfortunately, with all the zombie-related deaths, Max Rager antics, and Major’s kill-’em-all approach to the undead, Liv’s patience will not last long enough for Ravi to test the long-term effects.
“I don’t care. The man that I wanted to marry has vowed to kill every last zombie and last night my best friend looked at me like I was a monster. Which, incidentally, I am. I want my life back, Ravi. I eat brains. It’s disgusting. I am disgusting. I’ll sign a waiver, just let me do it.”
Ravi talks her off the ledge, begging her to give him time to test and replicate the formula. There’s only one, maybe two doses left after returning Hope 2 to the land of the living. He wants the cure for every zombie Blaine and Max Rager made over the last year. Liv almost doses herself at one point. Then she gets a phone call about Major.
What about Major? For most of the episode, he’s rooming with Blaine. By rooming, I mean Blaine keeps him locked in a freezer at Meat Cute, hoping slow torture will get Major to cough up the location of the astronaut brains he stole.
The stubborn human doesn’t budge. Eventually Dupont and Blaine put the pieces together—Liv has the brains. Blaine’s call, interrupting Liv’s impulsive decision to test the cure on herself, is pretty predictable. She gives him the brains, she gets loverboy back. Only, Blaine can’t let a mere human run around yelling, “The zombies are coming!” He dresses a random dude in Major’s clothes and trades him for the coveted astronaut brains. While he’s away, Major escapes from the freezer, using a lighter from the corpse chilling with him and urine. Hey, whatever works in a pinch. Robo-Counselor retrieves his small arsenal from his car and doubles back to kill every zombie in Meat Cute. Blaine returns, stabs Major. In return, Liv shoots Blaine. Ever the opportunist, Blaine offers to give Liv his entire client list. He justifies his actions, saying he’s the only reason the zombies aren’t attacking the city, turning and killing everyone in their path. It’s a valid point, I’ll give him that. Only, the city wouldn’t be in such dire straits if he hadn’t turned the majority of the people now threatening it if they don’t get their six o’clock dinner delivery.
Then Blaine goes for the sucker punch. All Liv’s work to keep Major from finding out she’s a zombie flies out the window. His dying moments are spent reeling from her betrayal. In return for Blaine taking away something she holds dear—Major’s trust—Liv takes away something Blaine loves more than anything, his zombiehood. He gets one dose of the cure, and it appears to work before he runs away, leaving Liv to deal with Major. Liv does the only thing she can and scratches Major without his permission. Not something he’s likely ever going to forgive, by the way.
She takes him home. Makes him soup, which he doesn’t eat. He’s livid. Unable to process how she lied to him for so long, allowed him to think he was insane. Liv justifies her brain-eating, saying it’s all in the name of helping others. Said aloud, it feels like another excuse, something Blaine might say if his inclinations weren’t so rule-the-world. Unlike Blaine. Liv has a potential fix for at least one problem she’s caused. Major gets the final dose of the cure.
Lt. Suzuki takes it upon himself to clean the mess left at Meat Cute. He stages the scene as a shoot-out, shooting himself in the leg, as well. The next step is to destroy the evidence contrary to the story he wants the other detectives to follow—that means using fire, and a lot of it. Suzuki blows up Meat Cute. Unfortunately Liv’s brother, Evan, arrives for his first shift seconds before. Their mother calls Liv. Together they watch Evan in the ICU, struggling to survive. He needs a blood transfusion desperately. The only match they have at hand is Liv. Was Liv, at least. The episode ends with Liv refusing her mother’s pleas to donate blood. Sure, it’d keep her brother alive, but without the cure, she’d condemn Evan to a half-life. She could only spare one person she loves.
Not a bad ending for season one. Filming for season two is already underway and the premiere is on October 6th. What predictions do you guys have for the sophomore season of iZombie?
Sebastian rallies, after being buried in a shallow grave, and kills Kimber Cooper—a cheerleader too nice for her own good, killed because she wants to say a few kind words about the mystery dead guy. The others—members of a metal band, The Asshats—bolt. Kimber’s body is discovered by a hiker’s dog. Actually, Fido only brought his owner a foot. Liv panics when Ravi points out that this is likely a zombie killing. With plenty reason, too. The body count raised by her kind is reaching terrifying numbers. Eventually humans will notice.
What can humans go without? Watching Liv make a room-temperature chocolate milkshake from Kimber’s two-week old, liquefied brain. Even I got a little queasy. She should’ve warmed the brain to make hot chocolate. Gives it a buttery aftertaste.
Cheerleader brain makes Liv difficult to tolerate. She uses lazy teen-speak to coerce Kimber’s friend into giving up her location for the night of her disappearance—at rehearsal for The Asshats. Bubbly Liv is annoying. Luckily, she ditches the cheerleader brain at one point. Unfortunately, it’s so she can eat the brain belonging to Nate, one of the guys from the band who Kimber hooked up with. Liv and Clive discover Nate’s body in the band’s rehearsal space when they head over to ask about the stolen car. Before Liv gets a bite of Nate, Clive takes a taste of the pizza she put his brain on. If only Clive knew . . . .
Nate was perpetually high while alive, something Liv contracts from her lunch. She reneges on promises made to Peyton—girl chat and spin class—in favor of smoking and chasing case leads from Nate’s text history. Mostly smoking, though. During the one viable vision from her time with Nate’s brain, Liv discovers he and Cameron, another band member, argued about whether or not they should go to the cops about the hit-and-run. There’s also money involved somewhere, it pops up in this vision and in a text sent from Kimber’s phone a week after her death. Theresa, the band’s drummer, comes forward about hitting Sebastian with the stolen car. After she sits with a sketch artist to recreate Sebastian’s horrifically scarred face, Theresa is texted by Cameron to meet at a hotel and not trust anyone. She’s attacked in the hotel room. The last we see of Theresa, she’s struggling to reach the phone and call for help.
While Liv plays brain ping pong, Major prepares for war. He records a video in case he dies confronting Blain. His grand plan involves casing Meat Cute by posing as a health inspector—putting him face-to-face with Blaine. Of course Blaine smells something fishy. He hasn’t been this successful murdering people without exercising caution. There’s a few more additions to Major’s personal weapons cache, including a grenade. No amount of preparation will change the fact that Major is acting impulsively and fails to cover all his bases. Dupont gets wind of the surprise inspection and puts a name to the face which annoys Blaine. Seizing the opportunity, Dupont abducts Major and presents him to Blaine as, “The guy who knows too much.”
Peyton learns far too much, as well. Sebastian snaps, speeding up the inevitable meeting with Liv, the zombie detective after he’s driven to kill his aunt. He breaks into the apartment, knocking Peyton unconscious. Then decides to make dinner. Sure. Every bad guy stops for a meal when plotting his next murders, right? (Hannibal, you don’t get a say in this.) Liv and Sebastian fight. They both go full-on zombie. Liv is stabbed multiple times before gaining the upperhand and murdering Sebastian.
What neither notice is, Peyton regains consciousness seconds before. Liv has no option but to tell the truth—she’s not bleeding and her eyes went freaky-red because she’s a zombie. Peyton takes it about as well as expected. She runs. Doesn’t tell Liv or Ravi where she’s going. Just vanishes with the suitcases she packed for a romantic trip with Ravi. What will Peyton do with what she knows? Is she heading for the police station? How much long will the zombies fly under the radar? I’m going to say, not much longer.
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.
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.
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.
