Thursday, April 16, 2015

iZombie, Season 1, Episode 5: Flight From the Living Dead



Some people are sky diving and one of them ends up impaled on a tree

See this is why I decide against throwing myself out of a plane with a sheet strapped to my back.

Ravi and Liv are just awesome together, between whining and snarking they’re just perfect. The humour is interrupted by Peyton calling Liv, all tearful, because her friend Holly died in a skydiving accident. Yes the corpse they’re making really tasteless jokes about is Peyton’s friend. She’s also an old college acquaintance of Liv’s.

The investigator puts it up to human error – and them being damn fool enough for jumping with the equipment they have in the location they were. Instead one of Holly’s friends decides to randomly accuse another guy from the jump.

While reflecting on the differences between herself and Holly, Liv still insists on eating her brains even while Ravi tries to give her an out. Liv won’t opt out of trying to help her friend even if it will be weird.

At home Peyton is torn – she cared a lot for Holly and thinks she was an amazing friend, but is also angry that Holly had so many dangerous hobbies that she was, in Peyton’s eyes, “throwing it all away.” While Liv can look back and see the joy Holly managed to pull out of life and that maybe she had it more figured out than they did with their safe sensible lives (and regret that she and Peyton voted to kick Holly out of the sorority for her rule breaking ways). During the facebook reminiscences, Liv gets a flashback of the accused sky diver, Lowell Tracy, yelling at Holly and trying to fend her off.

Meanwhile Major goes to see Clive because he’s worried about both Eddie and Jerome, the missing guys from previous episodes who Blaine is eating. He’s frustrated because Missing Persons doesn’t care about kids from a homeless shelter – hence why he’s going to Clive at homicide. Major rather obnoxiously tapes a picture of Jerome on Clive’s computer.

Liv also goes to Clive with Holly’s case and Clive points to all the actual cases he has without Liv inventing one for an accident. Still he caves and pulls in Lowell for an interview which liv gets to sit in because this is TV land and absolutely every random person in the world can sit in on police interviews. They need to install stadium seating.

In between seeming to recognise Liv, Lowell talks about not really wanting to skydive but since the company who put out his last album he was kind of pushed into it. Lowell has plausible explanations for jumping last and landing away from the group while snarkily telling them to watch the helmet cam footage since it shows it all. Except that the company, Max Rager, decided all the footage needed to be destroyed. Which is just a little suspicious


So they interview all the other people in the jump who are all different shades of annoying with a consensus being that Lowell was withdrawn for some time – and he was not romantically involved with Holly. Unlike Carson who was cheating on Eliza with her according to Ren – and Liv has a vision that makes her think Ren and Carson were also lovers – and Holly may have found out.

Of course, Clive’s boss (who I am growing to like – and his love of food porn) isn’t pleased about Clive interrogating a company with expensive lawyers over a non-existent case. E’s to focus on the cases that are on the board in red – no others. Which is probably not the best time for Liv to arrive to reveal Holly had GHB in her system – enough to impair her. It gets the case on the board

First step – Liv, Peyton and Major go to Holly’s memorial (Peyton’s “vodka, where?” may be one of the best lines of the night). Holly’s co-workers try to get Liv to leave to which she responds with awesome snarling. Though revealing Holly was drugged is probably not very wise

Liv does some snooping and finds Carson’s stash of blank prescriptions. Which also means it would have been easy for any of them to find GHB. Lowell finds her stooping but just invites her for a drink and explain the whole kicking Holly out of the sorority thing (which Liv regrets). He flirts with Liv, confirms Ren and Carson’s sex life (and that it’s a big secret) and serves her a drink full of spicy chillies. Just what a zombie wants – zombies just like them.

Revelation!

Lowell explains that he started to go into full-on zombie mode on the plane which is why he scared Holly and tried to get her to stay away from him. He went super zombie on the way down which is why he avoided them and didn’t join them until later.

Major leaving interrupts the zombie bonding – he is very distracted by Jerome and Eddie disappearing. He and Liv also have an awkward moment over Liv being somewhat flirty and moving-ony.

As is Clive, he goes to investigate at the skate park… there he learns a huge number of people have recently gone missing.

Ravi is, of course, quite happy about a new zombie to experiment on and goes all scientist mode until it’s clear that Liv isn’t thinking about Lowell in a scientific manner. They also get a name on the prescriptions that have been handed out – Carson.

They bring him in and accuse him of killing Holly because she risked exposing him having sex with Ren – he denies everything. Instead he points to Eliza who was trying to cover up that Max Rager’s product (whatever it is – drink?) made some people “psychotic” and Holly objected to this. Eliza objected to Holly objecting and Carson, selfish, narcissistic, cowardly and shallow, didn’t object to anything and kept his head in the sand.

To Eliza’s house – which is empty, but shows she probably didn’t intend to leave (she has food cooking in the oven) and shows a recent departure with an ominously missing body-wrapper (shower curtains always end up wrapping bodies).

Clive reports this to his boss who concludes Eliza is on the run but it’s generally a win for Clive – who takes the opportunity of his bosses’ good mood to bring up the over 60 missing kids. His boss, again, demands he stay out of it – it’s not a murder case there’s no body

Meanwhile Major keeps hanging around at the skate park and sees one of Blaine’s flunkies wearing Jerome’s shoes. They fight – and Major can definitely handle himself – until he goes full on zombie anyway and throws Major through the air – leaving him blood stained and unmoving.

Lowell goes to Liv’s workplace to flirt with Lowell and it’s all very sweet.

And I so expected that body bag to open on Major’s body.





So that was Izombie’s first attempt at LGBT inclusion – and I say “attempt” because Carson never once actually confirmed his bisexuality (and Ren was nothing more than a name), it was just something everyone else said about him which is pretty damn shoddy inclusion anyway (on top of the “inclusion” being a one-off character). Top that off with him being a cheat, having his sex life snarked over – and a cowardly whiney pathetic drug dealer and I don’t know whether I want Izombie to do better with LGBT inclusion or call it done and not try (well, for a given level of “trying”) again.

I love every main character interaction. Ravi, Liv, Clive – even Peyton and Major get some excellent addition. Most of it is hilarious but there’s a lot tghat’s deeper too; Liv’s reactions over Holly’s corpse were perfect. Liv and Peyton considering how Holly lived, what made a life well lived or wasted,

And, of course, Lowell which looks to be interesting, definite chemistry there.

I find Clive’s boss to be interesting. He amuses me and, I guess, we’re supposed to be annoyed by the limits he puts on Clive – but he’s also right. They have full range of cases, they don’t need more to be added especially when there’s no evidence of crime. Nor can homicide take on cases that should be assigned to other departments – departments with more appropriate resources, expertise and experience. Resources his department cannot spare themselves but trying to do everyone’s job.

Of course the bitter pill is the prejudices, classism, racism and “disposable person” elements that fall on Blaine’s victims – that make Major and Clive the only ones who will seriously pursue these missing people. It’s all well and good to let other departments get on with the job, but bitter when they don’t do it.