Strappy shoe salvation
Note: Full spoilers for the episode follow.
It’s all connected is the tagline used to describe Agents of SHIELD, but it might apply more to iZombie. The world isn’t connected to a bigger landscape like the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but it establishes all sorts of threads within the series. For example, Peyton didn’t just randomly come back into the picture. She came back to lead a task force against Utopium — a drug tied to Major, Liv, Ravi, Blaine, Max Rager, and Seattle’s zombie problem at large. The case of the week was tied into Max Rager and led to the reveal of a bigger issue. The lines drawn between the subplots are well placed and believable.
The murder of the week was a 180 from the frat bro of the last episode. Rose McIver’s talent at bringing in elements of other personalities can’t be denied. She doesn’t just walk the walk if that makes sense; she brings in little affectations to sell the concept. Like I mentioned last week, some degree of stereotyping is necessary. Liv has to show and sell the broad strokes of a personality type since we don’t know the murder victims intimately — they’re reduced to a few traits in some ways. The danger is leaning too far into those stereotypes, but with Taylor, they struck a balance. The rich housewife turn was pretty hilarious.
iZombie: “Real Dead Housewife of Seattle” Photo Gallery:
iZombie: “Real Dead Housewife of Seattle” Photos
iZombie: “Real Dead Housewife of Seattle” Photos
iZombie: “Real Dead Housewife of Seattle” Photos
iZombie: “Real Dead Housewife of Seattle” Photos
iZombie: “Real Dead Housewife of Seattle” Photos
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iZombie: “Real Dead Housewife of Seattle” Photos
iZombie: “Real Dead Housewife of Seattle” Photos
iZombie: “Real Dead Housewife of Seattle” Photos
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Though Liv wasn’t able to control all her Taylor-influenced behavior, we saw her personality shine through the brain-haze. It seems like her strongest feelings are what make it through. We saw her reaction to Major and to Vaughn Du Clark, and it’s a little thing, but I like seeing some of the actual Liv in there.
And another small touch: the brain meal prep shots are more glamorous than they were in Season 2. They’re continuing to come up with different recipes for Liv’s meals, and they’re being shot as if they’re on the Food Network. It’s fabulous and makes me hungry every week which should not be the case because, well, it’s brains.
We want to hear it.
“Real Dead Housewife of Seattle” reminded us Blaine isn’t the only evil force in town. Max Rager’s CEO is actually worse. Steven Weber is utterly charming as Clark and embraces every over the top touch. It should make Clark super obnoxious — and it does, but it works for the character. Clark’s awesomely terrible if that makes sense, and I hope we see he and Blaine go head to head. But I want to know more about Clark’s goals. Is it just about money and power, or is there more? He doesn’t need any redeemable qualities, but it would be good to differentiate him from Blaine.
Clark is possibly worse than we thought. A comment from Clark’s assistant/daughter revealed he was willing to down an entire boat full of zombies and humans if necessary, and he killed Fowler and let his doctor go super zombie. The question is whether the doctor’s state was because of Super Max or because Clark denied access to brains. It expands the zombie mythology either way, as does Major’s long hit list. The zombie population of Seattle is lurking in the background.
I can’t wrap up without giving bonus points for the use of “a long time ago we used to be friends” in dialogue.
One of iZombie’s strengths in Season 1 was bringing the characters together and connecting the dots, and that’s continuing in Season 2. Peyton’s being brought into the picture, Liv knows Major is working with Max Rager — it’s coming together more and more and going in a fascinating direction with Utopium as the center piece of the puzzle. And with a look at the development of Super Max Rager, the stakes have been raised yet again.
