Thursday, March 22, 2018

iZombie, Season 4, Episode 2: Blue Bloody






This episode’s murder is a rich lady who is the worst ever, killed by a golf ball launched from a golf ball gun. Honestly absolutely no-one mourns this worst woman ever

Of course Liv eats her brains and becomes equally terrible, constantly insulting people and treating everyone like servants, especially Clive. The good side is Clive resolutely refuses to be treated that way - and underscores the racial implications of her behaviour. He also snarks her excellently.

The investigation has several servants all declare the dead woman to be a truly nice lady with no enemies. Clive has been with Liv on this woman’s brain for a hot minute and knows this is a terrible, awful lie and anyone who met her would clearly want her dead. Especially when they discard her gems as a motive.

A surprise comes when they find this very very terrible woman actually left $1,000,000 each to her servants and many of them have major motives to want that money. One of which is her chef - whose son is dying from a heart disease. He needs an operation, one he can’t get in the zombie city of New Seattle. She needs the money to bribe a coyote to smuggle him out of the city - and agrees to confess to the murder if they’ll get her son out

But that means going to a part of the city on lockdown (due to anti-zombie terrorists) and smuggling someone out of the city. Something Clive, a cop, can’t agree to - and Liv on terrible brains has zero inclination to do.

It wasn’t the most insightful brain to eat but it was definitely amusing.

Major is having his own dilemma struggles - he’s taking Captain Seattle (who needs an actual name) out on the street with guns and no training because Chase Graves, despite being a soldier, thinks this is a good idea. Showing either a) he is a fool or b) he is absolutely desperate. Major reminds them just how important it is to keep their helmet on since, beyond brain damage, zombies are pretty much immortal

Their first encounter is a group of people harassing a zombie business: Major tries to calm everything down and does a very good job (though I don’t see how it will stick after Major leaves) but Jordan is provoked by the humans and one of them grabs her helmet. After underscoring how important that is so we know why she freaks out she chases him down and attacks him - and goes full on Zombie

Major stops her, and they manage to stop one of his friends killing him as he begs them to when he screams that he’s been scratched. But all of this is recorded on a phone and is going to be really really really bad PR. This is going to be a trainwreck.


For more trainwreck - the “Prophet” Angus and his hammer is gathering his worshipful congregation and using them to attack the illicit brain dealers (and the soldiers who supply them) and is now handing them out for free to all zombies - all with the address of his congregation in the wrappers. And some of those dealers got smashed with the hammer as well… another powder keg

And there’s a personal one for Liv. when she comes down off evil brains she feels for the ill child and is horrified. She convinces Ravi to help smuggle him to the forbidden zone and runs into Major, guarding it. He doesn’t like it but grudgingly covers for them and she takes him to Mama Leone, the Revolutionary - and clear resistance leader of some kind.

But when she gets home she and Major have a huge fight, him furious that she put them at risk while he is very much unpleased by her clear disapproval of his work and “life choices” (Liv blames Fillmoregraves for the zombie outbreak and the walled city in the first place).  He also accuses her of basically thinking of herself as the only good zombie

Both are now on the outs with each other. Both are trying to do the best they can but with very different methods: with Major very much invested in a system Liv clearly is not a big fan of

We also see Dale and Clive have… issues. Her being a zombie and him not means they can’t have sex and this is causing a lot of sexual tension. So much so that Clive asks Ravi to write him a prescription for SRI’s (which have a side effect of killing libido). Dale finds out before he takes them but clearly they have issues to work through



My strongest impression of iZombie shown by this episode is that New Seattle is falling apart. It is walled and lacking in expertise and resources that the city may need leading

It’s a violent, fragmented city with parts of it officially off limits because Fillmoregraves has basically given up on the city. Armed zombie soldiers walk the street (and not enough of them), zombie businesses are harassed and into all that we have the Prophet Angus walking around with his hammer, clearly building a cult army, shortages of brains, corruption of the supply and generally everything not going well. Even though it wasn’t the focus of the episode, I think it did a good job of laying out the conditions of New Seattle, the powder keg they represent and even Liv and Major’s fractured relationship nicely underscores this