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Major is not dead! And Ravi is helping patching him. It
does seem odd that he would go to the morgue and not the hospital but he
explains that as a social worker he has terrible medical insurance so it’s far
better to get patched up by your pathologist house-mate.
Liv arrives to critique and take over (with snark of
course). Liv lectures Major on the many dangers of being a vigilante. More snark
as well because they’re all such fun together.
To the crime scene this week! Simon Cutler died on some
stairs and it took a while to find him – and he is now very very very smelly.
In between trying not to vomit, Clive explains that Simon was a shut in who
never left his home or met people. He also assumes because Clive was fat, led a
sedentary lifestyle and ate unhealthily that it’s probably a heart attack. Oddly
for as friendless shut in, they also find a birthday card. And confetti.
The neighbours are ghastly, including taking selfies with
a body bag. Classy.
And at the morgue, Ravi reveals that the guy didn’t die
of a heart attack – which means it’s rotten brains on the menu for Liv. Ravi
suggests deep frying. She is even more put out when Clive reveals Simon is a
troll and hacker and hated on the net and received many death threats so it’s
almost certainly murder – brain goo is definitely on the menu.
Looking at a website dedicated to his death they learn he’s
generally a terrible person. And has a severe megalomania issue.
So Liv sucks down the guy’s brain and ends up craving doughnuts which leads to a vision of Simon taking epinephrine for a food allergy. Possible cause of death is presented. Except for the lack of food in Simon’s system. But between them Clive and Liv realise that the card – sent waaay before Simon’s birthday – was used to fling peanut powder into Simon’s face.
Liv has another side effect from eating Simon’s brains –
agoraphobia. Which also ruins her chance for a date with Lowell. At least
Lowell being a zombie means she can be honest about her reason.
Major returns to his work as a social worker for kids and
is duly mocked for his saviour complex which is not entirely inaccurate, if not
entirely fair, criticism. Still the kid does have lots of videos of the skate
park for Major to analyse.
Meanwhile, Blaine’s customer Jackie loses control and murders
a delivery driver for the sweet sweet brains. Unwisely she calls Blaine and
complains about her brain delivery not arriving then rethinks and backtracks
when she remembers she killed and ate the delivery boy. This seems… cross
purpose.
In a nice bringing things together, the kid’s disposed
body ends up on Ravi’s slab – and he’s suspicious that an 18 year old street
kid would have a stomach full of really expensive food.
Because Liv can’t leave her flat, Ravi takes Simon’s
computer to her where her brain-acquired muscle memory easily gets the password
and launches an MMO which is super popular (and well known to Ravi). Ravi
nicely fends off her contemptuous snark. Naturally she logs on and Ravi
presents a somewhat dubious motive that someone may have murdered Simon because
of losses he inflicted in an MMO. So he encourages Liv to play using her
brain-acquired knowledge and skill.
And Ravi plays too. Of course he does. And yes he loves it
Mid game Liv’s mother comes round to take care of her
sick daughter (her excuse for not going to work) and while Liv’s passion and
scathing contempt during the game isn’t exactly shiny, her mother’s kind of
happy just to see Liv passionate about something.
When she finally reaches her enemy she decides to question him without the game – and finds she’s questioning a 14 year old kid who didn’t even know where Simon lived. Ravi is deeply depressed by this dead lead –or that the 14 year old kid is better at the game than he is anyway.
Lowell drops in with handy pills – having eaten a brain
with PTSD he has an idea what Liv is going through. Which is all sweet and
stuff though Liv quickly makes it clear to Lowell that she did have a fiancé not
too long ago and she’s not over it – points for honesty.
While at Major and Ravi’s, Ravi desperately flounders to
stop Major going over to Liv’s in between watching all the youtube vids looking
for his attacker – he tells Major Liv isn’t alone. Major is niceluy mature
about it.
Lowell and Liv share zombie origin stories, how Lowell
eats (a funeral home) and how he doesn’t play in public any more because the
adrenaline rush sends him to full-on zombie mode. It’s very emotional and kind
of beautiful. Even the awkward miss read signals and him backing away from
almost kissing her. Alas the police case ends the evening early and awkwardly.
Clive, meanwhile ends up in Blaine’s high class charcuterie
investigating the death of the delivery boy. He questions Blaine who denies
everything and has his minion the excellent chef prepare to kill Clive – but Clive
is saved by his squeamishness that puts him off going into the back (and seeing
hacked up human corpses and becoming one of them). That and Liv calling him
with a lead.
Liv’s lead is a doughnut shop Simon put out of business
with a scathing review (because their non-nut doughnuts contained nuts which,
frankly, I think is deserving of a whole lot of scathing reviews and being shut
down. Carelessness with allergens isn’t a minor thing). Still they seem to be
innocent.
But Clive has an idea and it leads them to another
doughnut shop whose employee records the brain-enhanced Liv hacks into. She
also has another vision – and struggles into the police station under the
influence of many many pills and reveals her suspect connecting a few of the
clues they’ve found so far.
Simon viciously attacked and destroyed his sister’s life
and drove her to suicide. Sean then did his best to hunt down Simon
This does inspire Liv, in a round about way, to go find
Lowell and kiss him.
Blaine goes to see Jackie – with a drill. Bye Jackie.
And Major finds a picture of his attacker – standing in
front of Blaine. He shares the picture with Ravi who shares it with Liv.
For extra drama – Liv’s mother patronising Blaine’s shop
and takes an application for the newly vacant delivery boy job for Liv’s
brother.
While Simon is pretty stereotypical when it comes to geek
or gamer – it’s also established that Ravi and Major are equally geeky gamers
so I’m unbothered by that. Yes, the depiction of an MMO as a motive for revenge
(simply because I can’t imagine an MMO which has such devastating or enraging
PVP penalties) is highly dubious, but then I’ve seen some Raid Leaders when a
rival raid gets a boss down before them so I’ll go with it.
I think more could have been explored with the
agoraphobia rather than making it a quirky little gimmick that could be
overcome with a quirky handful of pills. It was pretty dismissive
Similarly, I’m not fond of them making a point about
Simon’s weight then making Liv crave doughnuts and do nothing but eat unhealthy
snack food
Especially since putting the two together could have been an interesting element – stress or emotional eating, the difficulty of having an active lifestyle when you can’t leave the house and have to have all food delivered – these could have been very pertinent points. Or they could have just depicted a fat person without then spending an episode pushing the junk food meme.
I don’t say this about many, but Liv and Lowell have
amazing chemistry. They work.
I was glad to see Clive a little more involved in the
actual investigating
