iZombie: Grumpy Old Liv

How was your summer? Good good. Only a few alien invasions and one attack by catapult werewolves with mange? None of that matters because iZombie is back!

If you missed the amazingballs of last years season finale you can read the long recap here. Or here's the short short short version.

Major breaks out of his ice prison, goes full on Rambo but without the mullet, blows the shit out of Meat Cute then gets stabbed by Blaine. While he's dying, Liv jabs Blaine with her zombie cure then later cures Major too because she's great at thinking ahead. It ends with her brother getting blown to smithereens because the police Lieutenant had the same "explosions are awesome" bug as Major.

Without wasting any time, we're back in the hospital. Despite refusing to give her brother her blood for zombie related reasons (and Medicaid won't cover undead transfers), he still made it through the first surgery and is on the docket for more. It turns out Liv had been trying to visit him for the four months the show's been off the air (and he's been in the hospital the whole time? I would not want to see that bill), but he's refused her. Both her brother and mother blame Liv for not giving up her blood and sharing in the awesome zombie virus.

Of course this leads to the "I must hardened my heart and walk alone" trope which I just got an hour of from the Flash. Sigh. I squirmed at this point because seriously, enough with the damn lone wolf who's dangerous and can't let people near them plotline? Barry's moping seemed even more outlandish compared to the two women on the show who lost a fiance and husband respectively but seemed to have moved on! He's too busy being the Batman, I mean lone Flash crime fighter who something something, I don't know. I expected him to smear on eyeliner and wear all black.

I'm mostly bringing up the Flash for compare and contrast purposes, so bear with me. Seriously though, enough with the Man Pain!

Having established that Liv and her brother yet live, it's time for the brain of the week. Sorry guys, it's pretty pointless but barely mentioned so...

We get the weirdest brain of the week beginning as a woman decides running in a suburban area at 2 in the morning is a great idea. She spots an old lecherous guy working on his car and then a pair of kids playing hockey. At night. At 2 in the morning. If this isn't a remake/update of children of the corn I'll eat my straw hat.

Anyway, turns out the dead person isn't the runner from a hockey stick stabbed into her brain, but the old guy who got smashed below his car. Our first red herring rolls up in her scooter, and she talks about how the dead guy, Wendell, was her brother in law and a cantankerous old bastard. They try to give some reasoning because of illness and his wife leaving, but after a few decades do those excuses count anymore?

MAN PAIN! LONE WOLF!

After Liv noshes on some spaghetti and brainballs we do a little catching up with our ex-zombie rat. Liv calls her Final Hope, but Ravi insists it's New Hope, not Final Hope because that name's too dark.

"If I wanted to give her a depressing name I'd have called her Phantom Menace."

I've missed you so much Ravi. How is there not already a section of Tumblr the size of Alaska dedicated to that man? Quippy, hot, and kinda nerdy? Come on ladies of tumblr, I'm counting on you.

The other reason I love Ravi is because he often says what we've all been screaming at Liv as he tears into her for wasting the cure. It's an excuse to explain to the audience that yes there were only two samples, and yes she wasted them on her mortal enemy and ex-fiance but it needed to happen. No letting our hero off the hook for being sorry because she may have doomed them all to a zombie apocalypse.

It's also establishing one of the main concerns of this season. In order to make more cure they need the same samples of the tainted drug Utopium from the boat party. And the only person likely to have it is our favorite zombie godfather, Blaine!

Don't go thinking our don-undead's vanished into the night and is reduced to eating rats in the alley. Nope, he's gotten himself a new job at a mortuary where he's just as delightfully creepy as always. Though, I have to question his choice of nom-de-plumes. John Deaux? Really. I expected better from you, Blaine.

Liv goes to confront him at his new house of the dead where some great banter happens. He tortures Liv by eating a piece of chocolate and extolling the virtues of having living tastebuds. She spits back:
"Are you eating that or impregnating it?"

Because Blaine is the Lex Luthor of zombies, he's used his thinking bones to figure out that since Major wasn't mentioned on the list of dead from Meat Cute going to Pun Heaven then either the Ken Doll's running around as a zombie, or most likely she wasted the cure on him. Liv demures the fact, then turns back around on Blaine admitting that they just injected a couple rats, one of which died after a few days. Who knows how long or if the cure will last. So it'd be really useful if he got her some of that same tainted Unobtanium.


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