Season 1 ended horrifically with Liv’s brother badly
injured and needing a blood transfusion. Which poor Liv can’t give because of
the whole zombie thing.
iZombie you
already ripped out our hearts and ate them with the death of Lowell (NOT OVER
IT!) tread carefully!
We do open 3 months after the surgery and little brother
Evan isn’t dead no thanks to Liv – and both he and mother Eva are pretty pissed
about that. Especially since Liv can’t tell them why she said no.
Poor Liv, she advises herself to ”harden herself” and act
like a monster. As she tells Ravi, Major and Peyton are also avoiding Liv as
well now they know about her zombieness (Major is also struggling to get a job.
Ravi also almost uses the terrible and misogynist “bros before hos” line but
walks it back after a look from Liv).
Crime scene time – and at least Clive’s ignorance means
he doesn’t hate Liv. An old man, Wendell was killed with a car being dropped on
him deliberately. His sister-in-law fills in his history – Wendell was diagnosed
with fibromyalgia 30 years ago and has been bitter and unpleasant ever since.
Brain snack. (Ravi also has a new Rat he deems “New Hope”
she deems “Final Hope” and there’s a nice Star Wars quip there too). Liv swears
off all relationships until she is human again (she has a new room mate… which
is… fine.) and Ravi sums up why they’re having trouble developing a new cure in
glorious passive aggressive terms. I do like them together especially since
snark makes exposition fun. Anyway to find that lost cure ingredient, they need
to find Blaine
Who is now a funeral director.
Lt Suzuki also died last season (though the reason was
somewhat covered up) and his widow is being honoured in his stead. That cover
up has Clive all kind of suspicious – and about Liv and Major for that matter
(since they made up a false alibi). Clive is not buying their reasoning. Liv’s
snacking on brains has also left her very very grumpy which makes her less than
sympathetic interviewer as they chase leads (but she does do grumpy well).
That grumpiness also comes with a side order of racism
which Ravi could have slapped down a little harder (Asian drivers? Really? It’s
also really clumsy since it’s applying an east-Asian insulting stereotype and
lumping in Ravi) – and Liv realises what Blaine’s new business is and goes to
visit.
Blaine mocks her with chocolate which is just cruel – further
taunting her for not having any more cure. Liv, eat his brains already. She’s
coming looking for the secret zombie cure ingredient and uses the threat that
no-one knows if the cure is permanent or not (Blaine seems to like being human
with all those feelings and senses again) and may do terrible terrible things
told him.
Of course Blaine isn’t going honest – he’s smuggling
drugs. Utopium zombie drugs to be exact. And now he’s tracking down the guy he
had cut the drug with zombieness
Over to Major who is now a personal trainer and finally
answers Liv calls warning him that Clive is super suspicious about their cover
up. That suspicion is also driving Clive to interview Evan and have witnesses
sketches made – which looks like Blaine
Another cranky interview (and now Liv takes issue with
men in make up) followed by more leads and her terrible grumpiness causes her
to make a terrible racist remark to Clive (“you’re one of the good ones” which
he treats with contempt.) We then get a PMS joke going back the other way and
REALLY iZombie can we get through one
episode with me just loving it? Please? For Lowell’s sake (not over it). Liv and
Clive keep following leads and Clive doing some nifty police work and
eventually find the tearful killer and it all feels more tragic than
satisfactory
In the morgue they prepare to cremate Wendal’s body
because none of his next of kin want to claim him. Liv takes a life lesson –
she’s not going to let misfortune bring her down and turn her into a terrible
person
Poor Major may also have a zombie personal trainer client
(he knows because ex-zombies have zombie sensing skills). Which he tells Ravi
about who just wants to talk about the terrible kitchen. Though Liv doesn’t set
off his zombie fear senses. Ravi reports this to Liv as a new zombie cure
thing.
Back to the evil people – Vaughn the head of Max Rager is
having to convince his board to stick with him despite the whole
soft-drink-turns-people-into-spree-killers-thing. His PA looks much more
sinister and awesome – she tells him she’s found a way to stop zombies.
Vaughn goes on to meet with… Major and makes a big speech
about why it’s necessary to kill zombies. Vaughan has intercepted Ravi’s call
to Liv and he knows about his zombie sensing. They’ve drawn up a list of
potential zombies and want Major to hunt them down
And to make him do it Vaughn has intercepted Liv’s
warning about the cover up. He also throws in the fact they know about Liv.
Major hunts down and kills the man he was training.
And Liv tries to make nice with her new room mate. It’s
Vaughn’s colleague, Gilda.
Damn it iZombie
you always do this! I should be able to watch this show while yelling how
awesome this show is! I want to just hiss “preciousss” while loving the banter,
Ravi, the snark, Ravi, the whole fun concept and Ravi. But you keep having to
be seriously
problematic with the brain eating, which we’ve talked about
You want Liv to eat the brains of the crotchety? Fine –
do that. It would actually have worked better that way and people certainly
need no reason to be bitter racists. But no, we went with the Fibromyalgia
reasoning. Now we could have done this respectfully and had Liv be grumpy
because she’s in constant pain or can’t move or can’t get around and how the isolation
of it and frustration of it are limiting and annoying especially with people
around her not understanding an invisible condition.
Instead there was no analsysis of her disability at all –
she was just crotchety and racist (her comment on Asian drivers to Ravi was not
well challenged and even Ravi seemed to treat it as humorous. I was A little
happier on the comment to Clive because Clive actually seemed offended and it
is a line that too many White people use and not realise is offensive – “singling
out “the good ones”.) And in the end we have the whole condition being an
inspirational life lesson for someone else – the disabled as inspiration porn
is far too common a trope. And that's aside from the idea that someone with fibromyalgia who becomes angry and short tempered is letting it win and giving up
iZombie needs
to be more careful when playing with other identities and it’s the massive
glaring flaw in a show that I otherwise adore.
