The victim is Scott E, the guy who told Major he’d seen zombies after their group session together. At first it looks like Scott’s death is suicide. Ravi points out the obvious—there isn’t enough blood in the bathtub where Major found the corpse. The suicide is staged. At the lab, they discover that Scott overdosed before his wrists were cut by a crude shiv. Unfortunately, the medication in his system is one anyone on staff at the hospital can get their hands on, along with any patients not too keen on taking their pills as prescribed.
Their suspect list is, as always, too long to manage. For a heartbeat, Major is on that list. He tells Liv about Scott’s obsession with zombies and the video his deceased chess partner shot at Lake Washington the night Liv was turned—which he apparently sent to someone at a TV station. The only obvious option: Liv eats crazy brain and waits for a vision. Actual police work is so last year.
While Liv suffers the effects of Scott’s brain pretty quickly, the visions take a while to filter through. Through the first, they learn he’s been sleeping with a woman who wants a baby, despite his disapproval. It’s not the woman he was sleeping with at the hospital—Brie—and they’re back to no solid leads. That is until Johnny Frost, local weatherman and oddball supreme, comes in to identify Scott’s body. Hey, look, someone who may have the zombie video. Except, he doesn’t. Johnny does know where Scott hides important things. Off they go to commit crime, breaking into Scott’s apartment to find his laptop. They use the laptop to track Scott’s missing cell phone after failing to find the video. The search sends them to an orderly’s apartment, where they find not only the missing phone, but a bunch of pills and personal items stolen from hospital patients. Faced with serious time for drug possession with intent to sell, the orderly turns on Dr. Maddy Larson—Scott’s doctor and sometimes bed-buddy. Guess what? She’s pregnant. Dr. Larson admits to killing Scott, claiming she was afraid he’d tell her husband.
Throughout the case, Major dogs Liv’s steps. Checks himself out of the hospital. He talks to Clive more than her, digging deep to track down information on the zombies his deceased friend claimed to see. Eventually, Major ends up minutes behind Liv after she breaks into Scott’s house and leaves. He finds nothing, she took everything of note, but he does make an impressive climb from a window to avoid running into Blaine—who is likewise tracking the mythical zombie video to destroy it after paying a surprise visit to the morgue and chatting with Liv. After escaping Scott’s apartment, Major hides in Blaine’s trunk. Blaine unwittingly takes him right to the base of his operation. The following day, Major steals several coolers containing bits from an astronaut’s brain.
Or does he? See, the predominant side-effect from eating Scott’s brain came in the form of vivid hallucinations. Most in the form of a cartoon devil endlessly harassing Liv about case details he “knew” but she couldn’t figure out. At the end of the episode, we learn that Johnny Frost is likewise a hallucination. As well as Major. Well, in part at least. There’s the moment in this episode. The moment when Liv finally comes clean about Lake Washington and zombies. She and Major are finally on the same page. But the Major she confesses to and kisses isn’t real. The real Major is more focused on finding the truth himself. He barges into Liv’s apartment armed with Blaine’s coolers of astronaut brain, ruining the illusion from the night before, and declaring war on every zombie in existence.
The reveal is well done. At no point did anything not line up, giving up the truth through poor timeline handling or shoddy dialog. Where was this level of writing back in the baby-crazy episodes? At least this show is ramped to end the season on a higher note than it began.
Liv, obviously, isn’t handling Lowell’s murder well while operating on PTSD brain. The police drag her into interrogation after neighbors report gunfire at his apartment and they discover the body. She’s lying badly, about to be arrested for the murder, when Lt. Suzuki—Blaine’s pet zombie-cop—walks in and says Lowell shot himself, case closed. Is this to save Liv, Blaine, or keep the undead truth under lock and key? All of the above, I’d say. Suzuki knows what happened. He has to. Blaine dragged him too deep into the muck around his brain delivery scheme for him to deny anything z-related coming through his office—including Liv herself.
How does Liv celebrate escaping jail and a murder charge? Dives face-first into an alcoholic’s brain. This particular alcoholic happens to be Rebecca Hinton, the reporter who broke the story about the police department’s failure to allocate resources to find the missing skate park kids. Her death has nothing to do with Blaine and company, though. Over the last few months, she chased a story about seemingly random, violent outbursts—including a young man, Jason, who snapped and assaulted people in a library. Long story short, Max Rager is at the center of attacks in at least three cities.
Day-drunk and brimming with journalistic bravado, Liv marches into the Max Rager offices. Bypassing the high-strung office assistant, Adele, she comes face-to-face with Vaughn Du Clark. He attempts to charm away the accusations. Their conversation is cut short by Adele and two security officers. Apparently they were smart enough to call in to check Liv’s credentials. Oops, not actually a cop. Time to go. Go get drunker, of course.
At the bar, one of Rebecca’s sources for her story comes forward. Sebastian tells Liv about a second informant, someone on the inside still. It sets a fire under Liv to find answers. Alcohol and fire, a great combination.
She finds Rebecca’s inside source at a morning Pilates class. Adele hesitates before agreeing to make a deal—and runs the second Liv leaves her alone. Neither make it far. Sebastian waits in the parking garage, easily taking the women. Liv wakes on a boat with Sebastian and a corpse. Into the drink goes Adele. Sebastian takes time to taunt Liv. Bad move. She’s sobering up and it doesn’t take much to go full-on-zombie. Liv saves herself, running the Max Rager hitman over with his boat.
Except he tasted her blood first. Dun, dun, duuun . . . .
A far more pressing problem—which Liv ignores—is Major’s descent into madness. Clive can’t find anything to substantiate Major’s story. Dupont is at the gym, bench-pressing a small car. Obviously he doesn’t have three bullets in his chest. Worried, Clive advises Major find psychological help. Ravi unfortunately has to parrot the idea. When he asks Liv to tell Major, she shoots it down.
“He’s lost his job. He’s breaking into cars. He’s shooting people. He’s doing all of this when he thinks the Candy Man is killing kids. What’s his move when he finds out he’s eating them?”
She has a point. Some people aren’t built to handle the truth. Isn’t she selling Major short, though? He’s proven there’s not much which will dissuade him from finding the truth, no matter how odd. So zombies are real and have a taste for young brains, it’s not too far of a stretch from thinking that body builders munched ’em to build muscle. Cannibalism is cannibalism. No one says anything to Major. He leaves for Blooming Grove mental hospital after taking care of Liv after yet another binge-drinking night. At the hospital, he meets a man who likewise faced a zombie and walked away to tell the tale. Sad when a complete stranger is more helpful than the woman he was supposed to marry.
Liv does come to terms with Lowell’s passing and her part in it. Ravi signs a falsified coroner’s report stating Lowell killed himself. Now more than ever, Liv is determined to kill Blaine. I think this time she won’t hesitate with her finger on the trigger.
An ex-sniper, Everett Adams, is found with a gunshot wound on a paintball course during a Big Brothers Big Sisters event. There’s no witnesses. No real evidence. Seems like this is winding up to be another “accidental clue” case. Adams’ “little brother”, Harris Jenkins, is on the scene. Harris tells Clive and Liv all about the sordid details of Adams’ nasty divorce with his wife, Penny, and subsequent custody battle for Anna, their daughter, after she remarried. Open and closed case. Except, there’s still no evidence. Liv chows down on Adams’ brain and becomes Super Soldier Zombie—complete with PTSD. Trying to control the effects of the PTSD, she gives into Adams’ athletic/competitive side and heads to the paintball field. Where she accidentally finds a bullet casing the entire police and forensic teams managed to miss. Sure, I’ll buy it. Do the writers also have magic beans for sale? The casing wasn’t where forensics said the shooter’s perch was located. Cue loads of head-scratching . . . until Clive digs deeper into the ex-wife’s new husband, Sean Taylor. Who just happens to work with new drone technology. Case solved by actual police work. Wow.
On to more important things. Is Ravi turning into a brain-munching fiend after stupidly handling Zombie Rat? He’s as nervous as a sexually active teen girl with a late period. Constantly checking and rechecking his vitals. Asking Liv roundabout questions about how she knew she was a zombie after waking on the beach in a body bag. In the end, it’s a false alarm. Whatever strain of zombie virus infects the rat didn’t pass on. Liv, of course, is pretty miffed when Ravi tells her the truth. If he’d stop hiding things from her all the time, he wouldn’t get in half the trouble.
Major could use a dose of truth, as well. His quest to figure out why Dupont had a brain in his car leads to a weird land of Youtube gun training sessions, odd Google searches, and the wacky idea that Dupont eats brains to build muscle mass. Chasing the latter idea, he ends up in a gym, where in the course of five minutes, he manages to make his new trainer think he’s flipped his lid. Which he has. Because no one will pull him aside and say, “By the way, that guy you’re chasing is a zombie. Yes they exist. Stop chasing zombies. It’s bad for your longevity.” The trainer gossips about the whackjob who wants to eat brains to build muscle. Dupont overhears and tracks Major down on Blaine’s orders. There’s a fight. Major’s Youtube training lessons come in handy and he shots Dupont three times.
One phone call to his detective buddy and Clive comes in to find . . . no corpse. No blood on the floor. Just a bullet, a broken mirror, and a dent in the wall. Even he thinks Major needs a long vacation and many talks with a psychologist.
At last Liv is on the same page as the rest of us. She knows Lowell lied about his brain source and that Blaine is actually providing her honey with meals. Unfortunately, instead of approaching the revelation with a calm, cool head, she attacks Lowell. He gets defensive. Liv is still no closer to contacting Blaine to do something about his murderous rampage. It isn’t until Ravi makes Liv stop and put herself in Lowell’s shoes that she sees reason. How would she eat if she didn’t work in the morgue? She came into the undead world prepared to survive. Others like Lowell aren’t as lucky. Blaine turns them and part of the deal is Brains on Wheels. They know no better alternative. With empathy gnawing on her soldier-altered mind, Liv heads home. Lowell shows up unannounced, covered in dirt, with a brown paper bag. He sat in a graveyard all afternoon watching a man’s funeral. The same man whose grave he dug up. Whose head he tore apart to remove the brain—for Liv, as a peace-offering.
“We eat people,” Lowell tells Liv. As though he hadn’t put the pieces together before then. They kiss and make up. After, they hatch a plan to kill Blaine. Lowell lures their creator to his place. Liv will use her newfound sniper skills to take Blaine out. Sounds pretty easy. Until Liv’s conscience kicks in. If she kills Blaine, she’ll become someone like him—completely opposite from the Liv she was before the zombie-making accident. She calls it off. Then Lowell does the worst thing possible, he tries to protect her from this awful act by doing it himself. Blaine blocks the murder attempt and shoots Lowell.
Where can they go from here? If Liv isn’t willing to kill Blaine when she had the chance, she’ll have to go the legal route. How much can she dance around the Z-word while pointing Clive and the police in the right direction? The truth will come out eventually. It always does.
Last episode, Lowell was a minor distraction compared to the rampant Baby Fever cooking Liv’s brain. This time around, she’s so caught up in her new lover and how he makes her feel, she ignores the people who’ve been by her side pre-and-post zombie infection. When Major calls from jail, she ignores it in favor of a rather intense foot massage. Later in the episode, she agonizes over whether or not she actually has a relationship with Lowell or uses him for bedroom antics—despite the fact that in the previous episode, they spent an entire night hanging out as friends because Lowell ate a gay brain. The agonizing doesn’t amount to any growth on her part, his part, or for their relationship. They talk for a couple minutes, it magically fixes everything she sees is wrong, and they end up in bed together again. Liv can’t handle her own relationship, but analyzes everyone’s personal lives in the episode with help from the most recent case on the morgue’s table. The hypocrisy is strong with this one.
Since Liv is missing in action, Major relies on his roommate and friend, Ravi, to bail him out. Ravi is beat to the punch by Peyton, Liv’s roommate, who finds just the right loophole to get Major out of jail without bail.
Everyone Liv is close to comes to her ex’s aid. Ravi even carefully breaks the news that the police found the bodies of the missing boys. However, he can’t bring himself to tell Liv what’s happened to Major—aside from informing her about Major’s recent break-up. What is Ravi protecting her from? She’s pretty much gone through the worst thing possible in her life; finding out her ex played Batman, was caught, and beaten for his part in antagonizing an already tense police department isn’t going to ruin however long she’ll stuck in zombie limbo. It’s an absurd character decision. The show is full of them. Like Ravi’s failure to properly handle his undead rat friend at the end of the episode. Maybe a human shouldn’t handle the infected rodent, like, at all. Even with chainmail gloves. Spoilers: It proves to be an incredibly stupid idea.
The case is a nightmare—overly complicated like so many others this season just to drum up false tension. A radio relationship gossip queen, Sasha Arconi, is murdered on-air, electrocuted by her microphone. There’s no security in the building, anyone could’ve walked in to rewire the murder weapon. One caller is suspected after calling out the plate number for the car belonging to her husband’s mistress. Just so happens, the car belongs to Sasha. Problem is, Sasha believed in free love. There’s no telling how many lovers she has floating around in the world.
One lover in particular hosts a rival sports talk show, Morning Hurl. Their on-air hatred is the stuff of legends. It’s also disgusting. Morning Hurl’s host, Chuck Burd, is King Pig in the land of Misogyny. A shame since they brought in Battlestar Galactica star Aaron Douglas to play Burd. Everything from the character’s mouth degrades Liv or the deceased in sexual ways.
Is this necessary? Is this entertaining? Is this appropriate for a show touting a supposedly strong female lead? Bringing in Burd one episode after they forced Liv to become baby crazy isn’t wise. It perpetuates her role as victim. Sure, she talks a big game when Burd confronts her, but that’s thanks to Sasha’s brain. Liv is a passive vehicle for her meals and their personalities. They didn’t even need Burd for the plot to work. He is a red herring. The real killer is, of course, a woman jealous over professional success. Because women are incapable of coexisting in a competitive work environment. Sure.
To make everything more convoluted, at the end of the episode, Liv sees Blaine walking into Lowell’s apartment building. She should’ve thought about how her new lover sated his brain habit long before now. Oh, and the brain they ate for breakfast after a night in the sack? Just so happens to be Jerome’s. Major buys a gun after delving deeper into why Dupont had a brain in his car. Because guns solve everything. How these characters haven’t killed each other by accident yet boggles the mind.
This week’s case is pretty straight-forward. An underage girl, pregnant with her skeevy boyfriend’s baby, missing for eight months, and found near-dead in the woods by a bunch of teens her age. Obviously the boyfriend did it, angry with the girl for getting pregnant. Or was it her parents, enraged by her poor decisions and choice in boyfriend? A pack of wild dogs? Bigfoot? Even with Liv chowing down on Emily Sparrow’s brain for brunch, this case goes nowhere fast.
It’s a wonder any case is solved in that city. These fearless crime-fighters have terminal cases of “Ooo, shiny.” In the end, none of the suspects kidnapped the girl, which lead to her escape and death from the effort. Important clues happen by accident, save one moment of actual police work—charting Emily’s escape path via river instead of the assumed walking path the task force originally mapped out. At one point, they had one of the kidnappers in the station and were none the wiser. The police work is akin to how children play when their parents force them out into the sun—half-hearted, rules made up as they go, yet somehow they’re always the winner by the time play hour is up.
What happened to Liv? Normally her “Ooo, shiny” isn’t this bad. She’s pretty dog-and-bone when it comes to a new case, simply for the fact that she’s, essentially, the victim every week. Yes, it’s a show with a female lead which forces her into the victim role every week. Sounds a little fishy. This time around, it is worse. She’s distracted by Lowell’s sudden distance. Then Liv gets Baby Fever.
It’s lazy writing to take a female character who, when able to have children, was too busy building a career to commit to baking buns in her oven. Now Liv’s physically incapable of getting pregnant and can’t stop thinking about how quickly she can pop out a dozen kids. Yes, I’ll grant that being half-dead will change a person. But so much as to take a career-driven woman and land her in a rocking chair, knitting booties for the dozen kids she day-dreams about? It’s too fanciful, even for a show with coherent zombies. She’s mourning important human things, you say? She already gave up regular human life during her residency before Blaine infected her—willingly sacrificing sleep, time with family, her relationship with Major, regular friendships, and even a normal diet. Medical school was her everything, just as zombieism is now.
Major is, well, Major. He’s digging deeper into the missing kid’s case—getting his backside handed to him once wasn’t enough to slow him at all. Now Major’s dragging Clive into murky waters. After an ambush phone call between the two—witnessed by a reporter Major brought on to help him uncover the truth the cops don’t want to find—there’s trouble coming their way. Clive is demoted to paper-pushing in the Sparrow case after his bosses see the quote he accidentally gave, posted in bold writing on the next day’s paper. Major escapes unscathed until he stupidly follows the Candy Man—Julien Dupont. He’s caught by cops after breaking into Dupont’s car. Oh and he finds a brain hidden at the bottom of an ice chest. Dupont explains it away, mentioning the café Blaine uses as a front for his brain business. The cops let him go, but drag Major to the station. They lock him in with a biker gang and no supervision. There are a lot of accidental fists meeting his face. Just like Clive accidentally provided the media more fodder against the police department. Tit for tat.
“I’m missing a rat. Liv, you’re rocking a rat.” Ravi’s zombie-cure experiments move onto the next phase—rat testing to determine what mix of Utopia and Max Rager creates zombies. Great. Good. A cure is important. Except it works a little too well, leaving one rat full-on zombie.
Just what the show needs, more zombies. How about less zombies and more focus on the over-arching story line?
Corpse time. Simon Cutler was a grade-A d-bag with a God complex and far too much time to spend on a computer. When Ravi and Liv get the call—while Liv sutures the cuts on Major’s forehead from his fight in the previous episode—to pick up the deceased, they had no clue he’d marinated in his own juices for ten days in his basement.
Yes, Liv made a smoothie from brain matter so decomposed, they probably had to pour it out of the guy’s head. Even I draw the line there. Brain isn’t like steak; aging doesn’t do a thing to improve flavor or texture. Simon’s brain gives Liv a wicked case of agoraphobia, cravings for cheese curls, and mad computer skills. She puts the latter to use, breaking into the dead guy’s computer at Clive’s insistence. A possible lead through a video game falls flat, and eats up screen time which could’ve been spent actually building the plot for the murder case. Honestly, they solve this one by accident. It’s a bittersweet case once everything is on the table. Simon unleashed his anger on a customer service representative, going so far as to put her on the registered sex offender’s list and releasing false nude photos online. After a year dealing with his torture, the poor girl killed herself. Her brother tracked Simon via a Yelp review and took his revenge with no regrets. Unfortunately this story is buried under Liv’s love life and the snail-paced Blaine story arc.
Speaking of, Blaine has to clean house again. His woman-of-the-month, Jackie, loses her temper after a botched brain delivery and eats the delivery boy. It happens to the best of us, Jackie. However, Blaine isn’t as forgiving. One drill bit to the head later, Jackie has eaten her last free meal. Ever. It’s not the last heard from the dead delivery boy. His body is found, leading Clive straight to Blaine’s slaughterhouse/café. He doesn’t get any information from Blaine and nearly gets himself killed. Bravo, Detective. Meanwhile, Major stumbles on footage which places Blaine in the skate park with the guy he thinks is the Candy Man. Ravi sees and takes the problem to Liv. What the heck can she do about it? Major won’t listen if she tells him to drop it. Clive will get dead, or undead, if he comes at Blaine again. Rock, Hard Place, please meet Liv.
A surprisingly easy decision is the choice to give it a shot with Lowell. It’s easy to talk to him, zombie to zombie. Liv only really has Ravi to talk dead things with. Even then, there’s things he just can’t understand. Right now, that’s Lowell’s appeal. He empathizes with her problems. Brings her anxiety pills after Simon’s brain throws her for a loop. Lowell even got out of Dodge when things ramped up in the murder investigation without complaint. He’s too good to be true and that makes for boring television. But they kiss, so someone, somewhere must be pleased.
The snowball that is the CW’s newest paranormal television offering slowed down a little for iZombie‘s fifth episode. Something didn’t quite click with this episode. Not sure it it’s the almost forced maybe-lationship introduced near the end or if the overall “bad guy” arc for the season is running out of oomph as the show toddles forward and continues to grow. Is this the dreaded warning flag?
This week’s unlucky brain donor is an adventure-seeker turned skydiver kabob Liv knew back in college. Matter of fact, she helped kicked the girl out of their sorority. Guess that’s what it takes to fill Liv’s guilt tank and put her firmly on the case. It’s a little weird to hear Liv talk about owing it to Holly, like eating her brain is a great service instead of a huge invasion of privacy. At this point, it’s like she wants to find trouble. That’s when a show starts to lose interest—the second the main character keeps doing the Dumb Thing, fans walk. Why poke this emotional open wound by prying into Holly’s life and death? Oh, right. To show character growth. Start by having Liv make adult decisions about her love life, writers. It’d be swell if this weren’t another show with a female lead in her mid-twenties who acted like the nincompoops in teen dramas. It’s the CW, they like a certain formula for their female characters.
The case itself isn’t too thrilling until the big twist comes toward the end and Liv finds out she’s got a lot in common with suspect numero uno, Lowell Tracey—a moody rock star locked into a contract with the company who sent the skydivers out to jump as an advertising gimmick. There’s love triangles galore. Two misdirects on the actual bad guy. And in the end, it was a jealous lover who drugged Holly with GHB so she’d botch her landing. Yawn.
Back to the mysterious rock star. Did I mention he’s also a zombie? There’s a lot of that going around lately. Lowell flies under the radar, much like Blaine and his lover, by dying his hair and applying the best spray tan known to man. He knows right away Liv is a zombie. It intrigues him, even makes him a little hot for her. He breaks the truth via a seriously spicy bloody Mary—my kind of dead guy. There’s a date in the future for these two. Will it be as uncomfortably awkward as the rest of the relationship story lines on the show?
It’s gotta be more exciting than the continuation of the Blaine story arc, or rather lack of story. Clive does a little digging—thanks to a guilt trip from Major—at the skate park. More missing people to investigate. Okay, now he knows something is going on. What kind of resolution can this possibly have? Blaine is ruthless. Clive and Liv can’t even make it through one case without bickering over whether or not it’s actually a case. What happens when they’re on his tail? Clive’s bad cop interrogation routine won’t go far on a guy who didn’t flinch after executing his henchmen.
Is Liv going to guilt Blaine into turning over a new leaf? Maybe she can slay him with the new brain food comedy routine she and Ravi cooked up during the opening scene of the episode. Or Major can bruise his knuckles really bad with his face—much like he did with Blaine’s newly defrosted henchman at the skate park. That’ll show him.
Meat this week’s somewhat fresh corpse—a stomped on, fingerless and toothless John Doe. Ravi’s sleuthing narrow things down a little. The guy was in an Asian gang for at least five years, according to the tattoo on his arm. It’s not until Detective Babineaux walks in that the dead guy gets a name—Sammy Wong. Before Clive puts a name to the face, Ravi urges Liv to chow down so she can help with the case, calling it a “working lunch.” Only once they know who Sammy is, Clive calls off his attack psychic. He’s got this one under control. Which makes Liv twitchy as hell. Or maybe it is something she ate. How well can rice, brains, and rooster sauce sit in a zombie’s stomach? I have heartburn thinking about it.
The weird thing about Sammy and Clive is, they were in some shady dealings together. Liv catches glimpses of the two in the midst of watching the Blue Cobra gang torturing and beating anyone they think is a rat. Since Babineaux isn’t feeling too forthcoming, Liv goes digging in his old stomping grounds—vice. His old partner tells Liv, “Let’s just say, the thin blue line can get a lot thinner when you’re working vice.” When paired with the paranoia leaking into Liv’s brain from her lunch, that little tidbit, plus finding out Clive has been suspended from vice before moving to homicide, sends her into a panic. Desperate to find out if her detective pal is a dirty cop, Liv drags Ravi to a video store she saw the name of in her vision where she plays up having a fetish for Asian men. “Her life is like a whorey version of that movie, Momento,” Ravi improvises . . . poorly. Just so happens, the video store is the Blue Cobra’s headquarters and they’re not buying what the two are selling. Luckily reason wins over Liv’s indigestion and they leave. But now she’s on their radar and on Clive’s bad side.
During a confrontation in Liv’s apartment, Clive lets the truth fly—Sammy Wong had been in witness protection. He’d agreed to testify against the former Blue Cobra leader—father to the current leader, AJ—but came back because of a family matter. The gang found him and killed him for being a rat. Which is the same thing they’ll do to Clive’s ex-partner, Ray. The two had been in deep cover together. Clive got out. Ray didn’t. Before Sammy died, he gave Ray up, told the gang he is a cop. The instant Liv sees this in her vision, she has to trust Clive and tell him. They save the day and viewers finally see some depth to Babineaux. We also got to see Liv channeling some sweet martial arts skills from dearly departed Sammy Wong.
Due to the paranoia coursing through her dome, Liv ends up meddling even more in Major’s life—dragging Ravi along for the ride yet again. In order to prevent Major from asking Corinne, the woman he’s been seeing, to rent the recently vacant room, she cons her boss into taking it instead. Or rather, she tells Major that Ravi wants the place without bothering to inform him. Honestly, there are times one wonders how Liv’s family and friends cope with the weird thrown their way. It works out for the best, though. Ravi and Major bond over video games and high-quality televisions. They’ll make great roommates—and give Liv a reason to see Major more than she does already.
Blaine’s little brain-selling company has evolved greatly since Liv shot him down on the brain-harvesting proposal. He’s acquired two not-quite dumb-as-bricks goons to make deliveries. A café owner he turned stores bodies in her freezer and turns them into gourmet meals for his clients. Hell, he’s even got Jackie, a wealthy woman with a private beauty staff who artfully apply spray tan to hide their deathly pallor. The only hitch? Blaine’s goons aren’t happy. They want to break his monopoly on the brain business. Unfortunately they go to Blaine’s number one squeeze as their first potential client. Jackie’s answer comes in the form of two bullets from Blaine’s gun into their skulls. Luckily, he keeps spare goons in the freezer next to tomorrow’s lunch.
How long will it take for Liv to find one of Blaine’s brainless victims on the morgue’s table? I’m gonna guess sooner rather than later.
Their suspect list is, as always, too long to manage. For a heartbeat, Major is on that list. He tells Liv about Scott’s obsession with zombies and the video his deceased chess partner shot at Lake Washington the night Liv was turned—which he apparently sent to someone at a TV station. The only obvious option: Liv eats crazy brain and waits for a vision. Actual police work is so last year.
Or does he? See, the predominant side-effect from eating Scott’s brain came in the form of vivid hallucinations. Most in the form of a cartoon devil endlessly harassing Liv about case details he “knew” but she couldn’t figure out. At the end of the episode, we learn that Johnny Frost is likewise a hallucination. As well as Major. Well, in part at least. There’s the moment in this episode. The moment when Liv finally comes clean about Lake Washington and zombies. She and Major are finally on the same page. But the Major she confesses to and kisses isn’t real. The real Major is more focused on finding the truth himself. He barges into Liv’s apartment armed with Blaine’s coolers of astronaut brain, ruining the illusion from the night before, and declaring war on every zombie in existence.
