My favorite part about this episode was seeing how the standalone mystery of the week married seamlessly with iZombie’s “new normal”. Liv and Clive’s investigation into the death of a rude, despicable matron was full of some great gags, but still felt very much rooted in the crazy world of zombie-Seattle. After a few hilarious, but gross quips from a pretty disgusting Liv, we discover that the guilty party was trying to use the dowager’s wealth to get her sick son across the city border. From there we see an altogether different side to this set-up than we saw in the previous episode.
Like the previous episode, There are still some great parallels to real life, here. We’re introduced to Seattle’s resident coyote, “Renegade”, aka Mama Leone, who instantly comes across as someone I’d like to get to know a little better. I get the impression she’s likely to pop up again over the course of the season as well, given that she’s the one in charge of helping desperate people get out of the quarantine. Perhaps it might come to a point where the guys will need to escape themselves.
While Liv and Ravi risk their lives to help out those at risk within the quarantine, Major continues his work in maintaining order across the city, with his new trainees in tow. There are some great ideas at work with his plot so far this season, but what transpired in his B-plot in this episode came across a little contrived.
We learn at the start of the episode that he has been sleeping with Liv, but this revelation is thrown back in the viewers face later when he’s caught in the middle of Liv and Ravi's mission to rescue the sick child. Similarly contrived was how easily the new recruits managed to cause problems on their first mission out in the field, with an anti-zombie bigot managing to get scratched in the midst of a hate-crime. It all felt like easy drama, something this show usually brings to the table with a lot more rhyme and reason.
On the other hand, Angus’s rise into the position as the city’s Zombie Prophet is growing with just the right amount of momentum, and malice. The terror of him recruiting desperate zombies to his cause is tempered by the absurdity of how easily he’s using his circumstances to his advantage; he’s is most assuredly Blaine’s father. One scene that stuck this week was him luring in the young and naive zombie children left starving by the brain shortage. He may not be as kept as he was before Blaine imprisoned him, but he’s still as manipulative and imposing as he always was.
Plus
No Blaine or Peyton this week.
I wonder how Liv’s family are getting on in the quarantine.
Clive’s suffering the same angst that Liv and Major did when they tried to make a zombie/human relationship work.
I adored Ravi dishing out sexual advice to Clive.
He Said, She Said
Clive: “This is a private conversation.”
Liv: “More like a conversation about touching privates.”
Major: “Human smuggling? If anyone found out I let you do that I could spend years in a depp-freeze or worse!“
Liv: “Yeah, well if Fillmore Graves hadn’t caused this whole zombie epidemic to begin with then we wouldn’t be living in a walled-in city that required it.”
Liv: “I remember a Major Lilywhite who would have stuck by a sick child.”
The fact that we’re seeing such a diverse exploration of this situation is wonderful to see. Naturally it will have a knock-on effect in many other Seattle residents’ lives, so it’s great to have faith that the writers will be able to give us a window into those people’s experiences in the coming episodes.
7/10
Also posted at Doux Reviews.
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