This week all the storylines of iZombie pretty much collide together – and it’s surprisingly well
done and probably pretty needed
The crime this week is an awkward one for Liv – because it
involves 3 decapitated bodies; which means no brain eating or convenient
visions. Oops. Awkward to explain this to Liv why her visions have dried up.
The innocuous but creepy Stacey Boss has finally decided
to act on Peyton’s (and her boss, Barracus) attempts to bring down his criminal
enterprise – so he sent 3 of his men to go kill Barracus. A plan that would
have worked if it weren’t for Barracus being a zombie – and zombies being damn
hard to kill. Stacey is genuinely upset by the loss of his men – one of them
his relative. Liv quickly figures out what happened – partly because Barracus’s
kitchen contains an awful lot of hot sauce. And his friend contains severed
heads. I mean, if you’re attacked by three guys, it’s a shame to waste those
brains, right?
There’s a lot of fallout from this little war between
Stacey Boss and a zombie attorney general.
Firstly, Peyton was all set to resign her job. She was,
after all, sleeping with her confidential informant who then turned out to be a
multiple murdering zombie (Blaine). She is in a deep depression and expresses
this by drinking Ravi under the table every night (despite Liv repeatedly
telling him that drinking with Peyton is a bad bad bad bad idea). It’s really
cute, I’ve always liked them together. Peyton’s boss going missing, though,
means the Mayor isn’t willing to accept the resignation – after all, Stacey
Boss sends goons after one man who disappears and then the other person
prosecuting him decides to quit? It looks like cowardice, it looks like the
city has caved – it would be an open admission of defeat. Peyton has to keep
going… and she declines to move in with Ravi (even with the promise of Major as
a doorman. Did I mention they’re sweet together?)
This also comes with an awesome moment of Liv and Peyton
confronting Blaine and giving him his marching orders
That’s not even the worst thing that happened to Blaine
this episode – since Stacey Boss notices him. Blaine used to work for Boss
before becoming a zombie and starting to sell drugs himself. Except some of
those drugs were Stacey Boss’s stash – and he would quite like that money paid
back. With interest. Blaine is not a happy ex-zombie.
And there are problems for Major as well – because he’d
told Vaughn that Barracus isn’t a zombie and therefore didn’t need to be killed
by him (by the Chaos Killer). But to anyone in the know it’s obvious that Barracus
was a zombie and Major has been a naughty naughty naughty liar. And since
Vaughn is willing the mangle critics on twitter (with Gilda’s awesome
commentary, as always), Major really does have to obey. So he makes nice, spins
a decent lie about why he spared Barracus…. And agrees to kill him
While Liv has found the zombie in hiding and pretty much
realises there’s absolutely no way he can come back from decapitating three men
and keeping their heads in the freezer – even if Stacey Boss doesn’t finish
what he started. Major adds Barracus to his freezer of preserved zombies after
staging his suicide – giving him a way out and buying Major some more time
Over to Liv – after lots of cute scenes with Drake, she
finally realises that Blaine is muscling in on Stacey Boss’s turf selling drugs
– not just testifying against him. Even as Boss is killing some of Blaine’s
customers and errand boys
This episode was interesting in that I think it was
necessary and useful. But at the same time not quite as zany and fun or
focused. Liv’s brain issues were very sidelined as not really being the point
this episode and we didn’t focus on any one plot line in particular detail so
much as touch on all of them as they gathered together – it worked. It was
necessary to move the meta forward and I think it was a good idea to weave the
murder of the week into that without it taking over or distracting things.
