Blaine has Major locked in the freezer because he really
wants to know where his prime astronaut brains are. Of course Major is defiant.
And cold. I have to admit Blaine is a kind of awesome villain. He also feeds
Major brains.
In the morgue, the gang looks at Teresa’s body. She
called 911 but they didn’t get there in time – she was bludgeoned to death.
They also found Cameron’s blood in the motel room (after Clive does a quick
recap of the last episode and it’s many murders)
Time for Liv to chow down on Teresa brains before she and
Ravi talk about the cured rat. Liv wants to take the cure now, Ravi wants to be
sure it’s not lethal first being sensible while Liv is dealing with her best
friend thinking she’s a monster and Major wanting to kill everyone like her.
She’s not sensible but she’s understandable. But Ravi points out they only have
one cure – and if this cure works then the next step has to be replicate it. He
wants to turn Liv human but they also have to be able to cure the other zombies
as well. She has to concede this –and also has a vision
The vision, as she tells Clive, incriminates Max Rager
since Teresa got her hands on the memo accusing their energy drink of causing
mass murders.
Over to Max Rager where evil boss guy Vaughn is showing
his new head of research a video of the old head of research interviewing
zombie Sebastian – which is fascinating and gruesome since Sebastian kills the
old scientist. They also know that Liv is a zombie which I why they’re eager to
have her there to interview them.
Vaughn ducks and weaves and reveals he knows quite a lot
about what has been going on though he seems quite unfazed by Liv’s blasé admission
of stabbing Sebastian to death. But the case takes them away which leaves
Vaughn to be rather excessive in his praise for what his new head of science
will do for his product – which seems to involve turning it into every drug
under the sun. Oh and remove the little zombie-causing issue. Of course for
those zombies that actually exist, Vaughn intends to deal with them
Back to the case, between a hit on Cameron’s credit card
and some CCTV, Clive and Liv conclude that Cameron has been kidnapped but not
where he is. Ravi has some evidence though (and he and Liv have some quality
snark – of course Ravi is right about English games). They’re interrupted by a
911 call from Cameron which abruptly cuts off
Tracking down the phone they find it in a junkyard where
cars are crushed. Which also what happened to Cameron’s phone. But Clive is a
clever cookie and figures out Cameron is scamming things and pulls up traffic
cams to show Cameron himself drive his car to the junkyard.
Cameron is busy selling the thumb drive to as Max Rager
operative – but his ineptitude only fails to kill him because the police scare
him away from his car before it blows up.
While the police arrive to check out his bombed car,
Cameron is on a bus to Canada. Trying to cross a border when there’s an APB out
for you doesn’t always go well. Cameron ends up in the police station being
interviewed by Liv and Clive
Cameron tries to be clever. He fails. Clive points out
that they could just let him go – and let Max Rager handle things. Cameron
finally does something smart and tells all. He also has a copy of everything on
the thumb drive which includes Rebecca’s (remember her?) article which is a
massive expose of all that is wrong with Max Rager and their product. And they’re
bringing out a new product “super max.” Liv wonders what this will do if normal
Max Rager causes zombies and the rage of full on zombie mode
Liv also has an angst moment spurred by both Peyton and
Major’s continued disappearance. Cracking she decides to take half the cure –
except her text to Major is answered by Blaine looking for his brains. He
threatens Liv with eating Major’s brains if she doesn’t give him the brains he
has. Unfortunately her brain exchange goes terribly wrong
But Major actually has a good idea. No, really, and
manages to escape. And grab his guns and bombs… I think he’s reached his good
idea quota for the day. He goes on the rampage, shooting Blaine’s zombie
minions. He does almost spare his butcher when she begs – then she attacks so
gets up close and personal with a bacon slicer. And he blows up Julian with a
grenade. But he’s gloating too much and Blaine stabs him… Blaine is an awesome
villain and ultra smug. Until Liv shoots him.
Blaine quickly points out why she can’t kill him – if he
stops providing brains to Seattle zombies, the zombie apocalypse begins. She
listens – or she hears Major call for help and goes to check on him only to
have Blaine ruin the touching moment by mocking how he doesn’t know Liv is a
zombie and spilling the big secret (the hair, the eyes, the complexion, you
thought these were just questionable style choices?). Blaine then pulls on
massive amounts of villain ominousness about how Liv can’t stop him and he’ll
just make more minions – and she stabs him with the cure.
“Let me know if you survive. You’re our guinea pig now.”
Oh Liv I’m impressed. Blaine’s come back is almost as good “if there’s a zombie
apocalypse, assume I didn’t.”)
Of course, Liv now has a dying major in front of her… and
she scratches him.
The police are called – and Suzuki, of course, insists on taking the case and keeping other cops away. He arrives to find carnage and lies, telling the police it’s all good. He then injures himself, stages the scene and blows the place up – and possibly him with it. Worst timing ever, Liv’s brother arrives just as the shop blows. Alas, the message he wrote in his own blood is obscured in the blast. Clive is suspicious especially since he recognises Julian – and he tells an officer to check Major for gunshot residue
Back at her flat Liv has a transitioning Major and he has
a lot of accusations about her lies. She says she lied to him because he’s too
good – because if she had said what she was he would have gone ahead with the
wedding and spent a life without sex or children to be with her and Liv couldn’t
live with that. She also explains her brain visions and solving the murders –
and how that helps her conscience. Major isn’t buying this or the idea they can
be together now – Liv made this choice for him, not fate nor chance – just as
Liv let him check into a mental hospital rather than tell him the choice. He
rightly calls her out on making such major decisions for him based on what she
wanted or what she thought he wanted (wrongly).
Liv also leaked Rebecca’s story to the press, exposing
Max Rager. Vaughn’s inner peace ripples. He’s not finished yet
Liv injects Major with the only other dose of the cure
she has. Which is also when she’s called in to the hospital where her brother
is in major surgery. He needs O- blood – her blood type as her mother points
out. Her mother begs Liv to go with the
doctor… and Liv says no.
Yikes now that’s an ending! The choice! The horrendous
consequences!
And Major and Liv was… perfect. Of course a part of me
wanted to yell and beg for Major to say “no Liv it’s all good” and not throw
more tragedy and pain and I wanted this to work… but he was so utterly
completely right. I have to applaud the show for doing what so many haven’t –
for calling out Liv making choices for Major, for making him a zombie despite
his very clear aversion to it, for him pointing out her conscience salves don’t
fundamentally change what she does and very much for not forgiving or
forgetting her allowing him to check into a mental institution rather than
reveal the truth. While I understand why Liv made all those decisions and she
was, in many ways, in impossible situations, that didn’t make her choices right
At the same time I can see her point about not wanting to
ask the sacrifice of Major – and while I know a case can be made for it being
his choice, equally it has to be Liv’s choice whether she wants to live with a
man who makes what she considers an epic sacrifice for her, whether she wants
that looming over her.
Of course I still kind of want to hug Liv and be super
sad this season ended so painfully. Especially when her brother was thrown in
the mix as well.
Her use of the cures was also excellent – noble, good
and, again, the only real choice. The only real choice when confronted with her
making such an epic choice for Major was to do what she could to reverse that
choice. And Blaine? He was right – so long as there is a population of zombies out
there, each with the ability to infect with a tiny scratch and prone to
unreasoning hunger based rage they are one meal away from a zombie apocalypse.
She can contain Blaine, but stopping him at this stage would be so dangerous.
And, yes, Blaine is an excellent villain.
And this is an excellent show. I cannot say just how much
I fanpoodle this show – it is so very very very awesome. I love how it does
manage to combine some deep, emotional and devastating scenes (Lowell’s death,
this finale) with the general awesome zany fun that so characterises this show.
And the dialogue is so excellent. These characters bounce off each other
excellently. I love just about every interaction. This is probably one of my
favourite shows we’ve covered for Fangs
But,
as we’ve said before, it does have problems. There is a problem with the
way Liv wears marginalised identities. There is a problem with some episodes
resorting to some pretty gross stereotypes. Yes this show does have 2 prominent
POC on the cast and both of them have been shown to be awesome in their own
rights (though Ravi has the whiff of the sidekick about him even while he is
awesome) but that doesn’t make single-episode character stereotypes ok.
Other things it has done right – Clive and Ravi are good
characters and we have had a good treatment of sex workers, for example. There
are good moments and good insights from Liv’s brainy experiences, but it is
shaky
The show has only hints of LGBT characters who are either
dead before we see them (existing only as brainy food) or labelled as such by
other people with no actual confirmation – despite this, iZombie has been willing to play with the hint of LGBT characters
or LGBT brainy experiences 3 times – that’s not ok to mine for experience and
storyline without inclusion. The same applies in spades to the treatment of mental
illness and addiction on this show. No
actual characters, but they do exist to be brainsy experiences, usually in
highly stereotypical fashion, for amusement and zaniness. Again, this is not
ok, it is not ok to use marginalised experiences for trivial amusement
especially without actual representation behind it.
And another big issue – why is everyone around Liv male?
The only recurring female characters on this show are Peyton and Liv’s mother,
neither of whom appear for more than a few minutes. The lenses both of these
characters could have brought to Liv’s life as a zombie would have been awesome
and definitely stopped Liv being the one woman in such a male cast. The
exceptional woman or the single
female protagonist with all male peers is a problem in this genre
I do like Ravi and Clive a lot but, as I said, more on
their experiences would have helped – I also think Suzuki, his experiences, his
conflict would have been powerful to explore; something made all the more
apparent by his suicide at the end of the season. There was a compelling story
there which wasn’t told.
There, I’ve done my criticism thing – can I go back to
fanpoodling and begging for season 2 now?
