Thursday, June 4, 2015

iZombie, Season 1, Episode 12: Live Rat, Dead Rat, Brown Rat, White Rat



Assassin and new zombie Sebastien makes his way to the road – where he is run over by a group of stoned kids who have stolen a car. They freak out at the corpse they now have on their hands and worry about what to do – they decide to bury him. And then swear not to tell anyone about it – ever again. I’m sure this is a Horror movie plot.

Sebastian, of course, isn’t dead (or not entirely) and he rises up and eats one of them – the blonde girl. Yup, definitely a horror movie trope. Actually I take back the sarcasm, this was a pure homage.

Two weeks later her body is found by a man walking a dog (honestly between crime drama and true crime shows I am convinced never ever to own a dog. You take it out walking and you find bodies. EVERYWHERE. It’s almost as bad as being an early morning jogger! Can you even complete a lap without finding bodies everywhere?)

The dead girl was called Kimber and has been scattered about in little pieces when the crime solving gang arrive. Ravi quickly derails Liv’s examination and explanation to Clive when he realises a cracked skull points to a zombie murder. This is when Liv decides to tell Ravi about Major stealing brains and swearing death on all zombies. In addition to not volunteering to be number one on the killing spree – it gives Liv a new motive to kill Blaine before Major gets himself killed hunting him

To the morgue with Ravi having some creepy high school reminiscences and Liv giving him the due suspicious gaze in between contemplating her next brainy meal. Liv I also pretty dubious about how drinking “cheerleader brains” will help her tackle Blaine – which Ravi rightly calls her on, just because Kimber was a cheerleader doesn’t mean she wasn’t serious or intelligent.

Also cured zombie rat is now called Hope and Ravi bought her a toy (aww). And she’s dead (aww poor Ravi’s sad face). And, of course, bitter disappointment over the cure. Still Liv doesn’t let it get her down because she is riding on perky cheerbrains – and Ravi is enjoying this far too much

And on those brains she joins Clive in interviewing Kimber’s friend and Clive has to endure perky Liv. But it does work very well on Kimber’s friend Tate. Clive finds it all quite bemusing and Liv desperately reaches for an excuse for why she’s acting so odd. Still they follow a lead to a highschool band that was playing in a message Kimber left

The band are the three other teenagers in the car that day. Through the sarcasm and excuses they manage to be super suspicious with their rehearsed alibis – and Liv has a vision of Kimber in the car with them and Kimber and Nate (one of the band) were “fooling around”.


Liv goes home and Peyton is there! She hasn’t been banished to the plot box! And they talk and are all friendly (albeit with a heavy amount of cheerleader brain ruling).

Back at work Clive has put some clues together and guessed the teenagers stole a car – so they go back to the band only to find the place wrecked and one of the members, Nate, dead inside. Though when they get him to the slab none of his brains have been removed. Liv finds it doubtful that a zombie, especially in full-on zombie mode, would pass up perfectly good brains.

Clearly more brain eating is involved – on a pizza she shares with Ravi (not the brains. And yes he can eat pizza around brainy bits, he’s a pathologist). Ravi has also created another zombie rate to experiment on. Clive arrives and is upset they’re having a pizza party without him – and eats a slice of pizza with brains. Uckies uckies. He puts the odd texture down to mushrooms. Anyway Clive has new clues including Nate being lured to his death and Cameron, another band member, becoming the next suspect.

Nate is a stoner which carries over to Liv along with her having a vision of Cameron and Nate arguing over going to the cops. Now Clive has to deal with a whole new personality Liv. Stoner Liv does amuse me when the band’s drummer, Teresa comes to the police station. She’s worried she’s going to be targeted next and tells them all about running over Sebastian. She’s also watched I know What you did Last Summer.

The sketch artist also has a beef with Liv which is hilarious because stoner Liv makes just about everything hilarious. But Ravi brings the bad news that another body sans brain has been found and the police are calling it a serial killer. Liv has to eat more cheerleader so she can actually think past the stoner brain. After chugging (well, so Ravi encouraged) cheerleader brain she also gets the sketch – and recognises Sebastian. Liv realises she made a zombie and that zombie is killing people

Sebastian has snuck into Liv’s flat – and knocked Peyton unconscious! Liv is not even slightly happy but he’s even more furious – because Liv turning him into a zombie led to him eating his beloved Aunt Edna. For a guy we’re supposed to hate his emotion is really powerful. Liv isn’t impressed “I haven’t eaten anyone I didn’t want to eat” (not entirely true but still).

They fight and Liv gets several horrible looking knife wounds and she seems to be losing before she pulls out Full On Zombie Mode as well, beats him repeatedly – and stabs him in the head. I think that’s a zombie killer.

And Peyton saw it all. Including Liv removing a knife blade from her hand. Peyton is truly horrified and Liv has to try and gently explain zombiehood to her. She tells her the massive news then gives her space to get her peroxide for her cut head. When she comes back, Peyton is gone.

When Clive and Ravi arrive, Clive identifies Sebastian as the man Teresa sketched and decides he’s the killer and that’s why he attacked Liv and trying to reassure her for killing him which is lovely – him and Ravi both. She also tells Ravi about Peyton

Back to Teresa gets a text from Cameron asking her to sneak out – and she does (also ominously mentioning how he scared her). She goes to the motel – and the door closes behind her (did I see blood spatter?). We later see her, blood stained and injured, desperately call for help

To Blaine and he’s giving his now vocal-chord-damaged minion grief over not finding the missing brains – afterall he didn’t kill a national hero without some expectation of pay off.

Major goes zombie hunting – first by making a terrible vlog then by posing as a health inspector (because it’s not like Julian would recognise you, right, Major? Aaaie every choice this man makes! EVERY CHOICE!). When Julian hears about it later he’s very suspicious and suspects that impossibly good looking health inspector may be impossibly good looking Major – but Blaine is too focused on his missing astronaut brains to care.

Ravi and Major actually have a fun moment reminding us they are friends as Ravi asks advice about a date with Peyton. And Major is watching zombie killing videos. Oh Major. He also buys some more illegal weapons. Maybe even a grenade… oh Major

Julian kidnaps Major and gives him to Blaine. And he guesses Major has the astronaut brains. To top up the number of endangered characters, Peyton’s brother leaves a job application with Blaine – and he notices his emergency contact and employs him straight away



Well we ended in a whole lot of peril there

The main one I care about is Peyton – this show has desperately needed another female character to be in Liv’s life and with Peyton finally learning the truth she stands to see her character grow a lot. However, a background (and marginalised) character getting a sudden in to the main plot line, having more lines and generally being more involved is generally TV speak for “this person is going to die now.”

As to Major – he frustrates me but at the same time I have a sneaking suspicion he’s not unrealistic – how many average people ARE actually that good at investigating or under these circumstances? Still, his endless poor decision making makes me kind of hope someone eats him

I’m also impressed iZombie made a point of making Sebastian care – of not just making a cookie-cutter villain but having him genuinely tormented by what becoming a zombie did to him.


I’m really impressed with how the actress really works those brain personalities – yet at the same time don’t want to give the show points for Ravi and Liv both poking at judgemental stereotyping when the brains nearly always produce blatant stereotypes.