We left it on a massive cliffhanger last week with Ravi
standing between Donny and Harley and the zombie hunters – Harley can’t bring
himself to kill Ravi – but he can knock Ravi aside – so they can begin
torturing Donny to make him zombie out for their followers on youtube
Which is when Liv and Blaine arrive, journalist Rachel
runs for the kills, there’s a smoke bomb that hides most of the action and a
few people get eaten. Harley manages to escape but everyone else gets gunned
down by the belatedly arriving Fillmore-Graves zombie soldiers. There’s a brief
attempt from Jace Graves the new head of the zombie army to criticise Liv for letting
Harley escape – but Liv’s not having that, pointing out that the zombie
soldiers are so very very late. I do love that Liv is just not impressed by
Jace at all –especially as Jace is becoming more and more paranoid about the
zombies being revealed to the world.
That leaves Liv, Blaine and Donny to help themselves to
fresh brains from Harley’s brother’s head (and share some with a zombie
soldier). Ravi’s expression is priceless and wonderful. Just how casually they’re
all reaching into this guy’s head
Poor Ravi then gets to go home and see Major and Shawna’s
sex fort is still in place. Which is when Rachel tracks him down all tearful
and traumatised and Ravi reassures her… and nearly kisses her. Ye gods Ravi,
BOUNDARIES man. And informed fecking consent! When women are distraught and emotional
and traumatised is NOT the time to make your move. Ravi’s brain turning to
relationships whenever he sees a woman who is vulnerable is creepy and needs to
end.
Then Rachel see his housemate is Major the Chaos Killer and
runs screaming into the night. This affects poor Major’s self-esteem a little
more which is why he’s very reluctant to go out dancing with the selfie-loving
Shawna since people will see him.
Back to Liv and Clive is treated to Liv, Donnie and
Blaine all having simultaneous visions – and all obsessing over conspiracy
brains. Remember the man they ate is the one who rambled to Ravi about zombies
being created by the Shah of Iran.
Is this the first time we’ve had zombies on the same
brain? Because they work really well together, bounding off each other, having
simultaneous visions etc. From Harley’s abandoned car they also find several
guns – which, using an off-the-books ballistics expert (since this is not Clive’s
case) confirms these guns were used in the attempted murder of Mayor Baracas
and the death of the zombie family Clive knew.
Zombie soldier also has a vision from the brain he ate –
revealing the location of Harley’s secret cabin which he tells to Jace while he’s
getting his body spray (iZombie thank
you for the visual) – Jace naturally plans a raid because he’s not a subtle
man.
Thankfully for them, Liv gets a vision telling her that Harley
knew about the bug on his car, knew he was being followed and knew the zombies
knew about the cabin – and that it’s booby trapped. She sends a warning through
Major saving most of Jace’s soldiers – but two are still caught in the land
mines.
Time for Liv to take her conspiracy brain to everyone
else – and we have Liv both fighting against the brain and Ravi, Peyton and
Clive all trying to get her to think through it. I missed this- for most of
this season Liv has kind of just run with whatever brain she ate – no matter
how ridiculous. Part of the main point of season 1 was Liv having to navigate
the brains, use them or work round them when possible – not become a slavish
avatar of whatever she has eaten.
I especially love how she rambles away to Peyton who just
asks “Liv, whose brain have you eaten?” It makes me wish for non-meta episodes
of just Peyton, Liv and Ravi living with zombieness, the normality of it
Peyton is still checking in on the Weckler case, after
Liv confirmed that he both did kill Roxanne, the dominatrix and he was killed
by someone else. Going through his personal effects she finds a key to a
security deposit box and tries to get Tatum, his zombie daughter, to let her
see the contents. She’s initially reluctant and Peyton has to convince her to
finally let her be there and take the much sought after memory card.
While doing so Tatum has a vision – and Peyton notices. (Which
is a little odd because we saw Tatum and her friend eating Fillmore-Graves
style brain paste which is supposed to be vision-less).
The memory card reveals that while Weckler did kill
Roxeanne – he also did it because someone was forcing him to. Who? Liv has a
whole elaborate conspiracy theory about mayoral candidate Baracus
But it’s not entirely implausible – Tatum the zombie
daughter suggests maybe she was turned to give Baracus leverage over Weckler.
Baracus visited Roxeanne and proof of that would sink his political career.
Of course, part of this elaborate scheme is Liv’s conspiracy
brain – but Peyton can see some possibility in it. Which is troublesome because
she, Liv and every zombie just voted for him- and made him the new mayor
Another secret Liv’s conspiracy brain has managed to
unearth is Shawna’s tumblr page – all about her relationship with Major the
Chaos Killer, pictures of him half naked in bed with her, their texts,
including highly sexual ones and it’s generally awful. Major is appalled by
what he sees as an attempt to cash in on his notoriety and dumps her – even as
she tries to sell the page as a way of “rebranding” him – which he rejects as
he wants to sink into life as it was before – obscure and unknown
I think that it’s excellent Major stuck to his guns and
insisted on dumping her – but more was made of the fact Major wanted to sink
into obscurity than of the fact his sexual messages and pics of his half naked
body were shared without his consent. The anger felt both not nearly as much as
it should be but also aimed more at “hey I didn’t want to draw attention” than “you
violated my privacy”.
I almost wrote that you can’t redeem a serial killer in
the public eye just because he looks hot. Then I asked myself where this weird
and completely ridiculous faith in humanity came from. Of course you can.
I also feel that, even with the local radio and newspaper
stations stirring up controversy about him “marketing” his crimes, we do live
in the era of the 24 hour news cycle. “ZOMG THE CHAOS KILLER HOW DARE HE SHOW
HIS FACE” is likely to quickly sink out of popular knowledge after the next
major crisis, disaster etc or the next Trump tweet.
He fact his fellow soldiers see it as a joke seems
awkward to begin with – but then he turns to partying with them. Everyone else
sees this and condemns him as the chaos killer trying to cash in on his crimes –
his fellow soldiers see it as a joke for ribbing and teasing: but no malice.
Another media issue is Rachel the journalist who comes
back to Ravi, asking to understand and Ravi returns to his previous terrible
judgement: and tells him everything
Which she then prints.
Back to Liv and Clive and Clive throws in some detective
work – Harley has a noise complaint about construction at his run down cabin.
But a brief look at the place confirms that cabin has gone a loooong time
before any work was done on it.
They find an outhouse – in a building that has indoor
plumbing already. Sure enough they find a bunker underground where they find
Harley, hiding in bed with a gun – he tries to shoot Clive and Clive shoots
him.
Only then Liv has a vision, seeing Harley outside the
house when the zombie family were killed and heard the shots – he wasn’t
involved. Clive is worried about killing an innocent man – when Harley wakes up
– because he’s a zombie.
Well that's like twist on twist on twist on twist - that's a whole lot to unpack next season.
