Liv's actually using her abandoned apartment. Due to her always being with Major, and Rita having her own life and one of a dozen flats, I assume a friendly family of raccoons have moved into the abandoned one. Since it's Seattle, they already have an Etsy store where they sell bits of string hand washed in an all natural river. This scene is just to establish that Rita super knows Liv's still sleeping with Major. Sadly, we don't get to see the raccoons jarring their own hand curated garbage collection and instagramming it.
Our brain of the week is the mystery woman from the end of last last weeks episode who slipped a white envelope somewhere. Turns out she's Regina Sumner, bad ass wedding planner who will fuck you up with a cake server. I'd have been checking her for super powers, because cave servers are dull as butter, but she went and got shot, so never mind. So long potential werewolf and/or Matrimonial Hulk. Turns out that she used to date/sleep with/stalk Clive. And the gun that shot her was Clive's. He seemed pretty chill about the whole thing, including her stealing his gun. Just how many do you have in the house that one goes missing and you shrug it off?
There's a quick scene of Von but, god, is anyone else really hoping that guy gets pushed off a building fast? I never want to lose Blaine, he's like watching an eccentric maestro compose a symphony backwards. But Von's been pushed so far to the "I'm awesome but can't accomplish shit" backburner to make room for Rita he just makes my hair hurt. I don't know why Rita tells her dad about her booty call woes, but Von doesn't give a shit because it's Von. This was mostly to establish there are eight dead zombies, and three innocent ones. AKA, Major shot up the ones in Meat Cute when he went all Rambo and stuffed the other three in his mannequin freezer.
They swing by the lab and the creepy Dr. Irving is gone (which I'm sad about, lady was ghoulishly awesome), but it does get a good line from Rita commenting on the eternal changing cast of Max Rager's R&D. "They're like drummers for Spinal Tap." If Super Max gets dumped into the full zombie's blood stream they go from original Dawn of the Dead shamblers to remake zombies with rockets up their asses.
Because Clive can't be investigating his own potential murder case, they bring in Detective Cavanaugh who is no longer a seemingly affable, candle loving guy. Nope, now he's just dick all the way down. I'm not really sure why. I preferred when he was this weird mix of goofy detective and scentsy mark. Going full asshole as a foil isn't breaking any new ground here. Oh well.
This whole episode was to give us a little bit into Clive's backstory, but once again the only way to crack under his skin is with a dead body. Dick Cavanaugh drops off a phone of Clive threatening Regina to leave him alone. After Liv noshes on some brains, Ravi has the thought we all did. "What if you have a vision of having sex with Clive? What if you see his O face? I bet it's super angry." Ravi's on point this episode. I think I blew a blood vessel laughing so damn hard.
We do finally learn the first name of BlondieFBI and it's Dale. I'm guessing her parents really wanted a boy. She explains what the weird ass package was, turns out Regina was a super stalker as well and would make scrapbooks pretending she was married to cops. But it was really just an excuse to give sudden hobby backstory to Clive: he plays piano, he cooks cajun, and - to Ravi's delight - he's a huge Game of Thrones fan. That's about it.
I'd say we learn more about dead Wedding Planner who wields the cake slicer like it's Excalibur. On top of having so-so photoshop skills, and actually printing out photos, she's a badge bunny and only went after cops before deciding they should be married forever. I'm more surprised at the idea of Clive meeting her at a wedding. Clive at a wedding seems a real stretch. Oh god, the idea of Clive having to be a pointless usher asking people if they're with the bride or groom and not giving a shit where he seats people.
Liv's going all super stalker to try and explain away why Regina stole Clive's gun, but seriously, dude. You dropped the ball on that one. They don't really explain when she stole it, but shouldn't that kind of thing be reported and on file? Or does he have so many he didn't notice? Never mind, the need to own and use a gun safe. We have to go track down whoever Regina was suing right now, but we're going to talk about this Clive. I mean it!
Our little zombie investigating duo is told they have to play it by the book and not get involved because that always works. Liv's teamed up with Ravi, which was freaking adorable, to try and question the couple Regina was suing. Liv tried to pretend they're fiances asking about using Regina as a wedding planner for their own fake nuptials. Clammy hands clinging tight to Liv, Ravi massively flops face forward into his improv session.
But Uma Voss doesn't see through it, as she talks about how Regina messed up their wedding, got fired, showed up drunk, then sued them. On the way out we learn that Uma's husband is a cop and Liv has her only zombie vision of Matthew throwing the same scrapbook off a bridge. Apparently Seattle co-opted that bridge hazard in Paris where uncreative people like to cause structural damage by covering it in padlocks and chucking keys at innocent fish. I mean, isn't love grand?
Ravi finds the tossed scrapbook and they notice that there's some white guy in a picture that Regina kept using. I can tell it's shopped by the pixels! It can't have been Matthew Voss that killed her because he was on call at the time, so we're back hunting.
The stalker brains have kicked in, and Liv throws a fit about Ravi's shampoo in the shower. Man takes good care of his hair. Major at first takes it in stride, but after Liv reads through his phone and finds the texts from Rita, he gets rightly angry. For some reason, now's when Liv admits about the stalker brains instead of before, but beleaguered Major isn't having it. He hides his zombie sleep drugs in his safe, but Liv's super suspicious that he even has that.
Since Major's shut down, Liv's now taken to stalking facebook, freaking out over every post on Major's wall. This doesn't seem so much like stalker brains as just jealousy cranked to eleven (I can make the Spinal Tap reference too!). Stalker would be more her reading a small moment of kindness as a sign someone is meant to be with her forever and ever. And then she photoshops her head onto a bride's and creates fake wedding invitations. It felt like it was played more as "ladies be jealous and crazy" instead of "stalkers have delusions based upon nothing you can control and can take it to dangerous and scary lengths." But this was mostly just to turn Rita's devious brain against Liv anyway. After Liv says Major called Rita desperate, you can see the gears churning in her brain.
Back to our Brain of the Week, Clive swings by the morgue with food (guys, we need to talk about you eating in the lab...beside dead people! That's an OSHA no-no, big time). Ravi's a true brit as a little spice on his po'boy knocks him down flat, and they both try to razz Clive by talking shit about the sandwiches. He sort of admits that he doesn't get them from a take out place called "Grandmas" but makes them himself.
Of course they want to know why he wouldn't admit it. Then Liv calls his cooking "adorable." "And that's why." Poor Clive can't just enjoy his eccentric hobbies in peace. Ravi does get one good one in by leaning close to him and asking "Clive, what's GRR Martin up to?" Through his knit jaw, Clive sneers, "Not writing!"
Anyway, dead lady. Right, should focus on that even if Clive seems pretty chill about his career ending and him winding up in prison and all. Seems some evidence has gone missing, one of the other scrapbooks that I don't remember anyone mentioning, but eh who cares. Liv, through the use of the cyclist community, has managed to trace an SUV that she promptly breaks into because she's bang up at laying low. While digging through the cleanest cop car in the world, the owner arrives. Rather than leave, Liv climbs into the bloody backseat. And then we see the new Chief Wallprice that appeared out of thin air for this episode (didn't it used to a black lady? I swear there was a black lady. The turnover in Seattle is getting impressive). Seems Regina was boning him and sent him a scrapbook as well.
Someone calls Chief Wallwiggum about the missing evidence and he pretty much paints himself by saying "If the scrapbook gets out, it'll end my marriage." Liv manages to steal one page out of the scrapbook and then promptly gets found out. Proving that no one has to follow the law in Seattle, she's thrown right into jail jail instead of county, no bail, no nothing. I'd say that violates the constitution but that seems to be the norm anymore.
She's not getting out until Monday morning, which means she's going to get real hungry. They finally figured out that Regina stabbed the shit out of someone with her cake server because there are two different blood types at the crime scene. But that may not exonerate Clive because they don't have any thermocyclers on premise and can't do a DNA comparison I guess. I don't know, I guess the Seattle CSI is a goat tied up with an extension cord. Someone buy these guys some taq polymerase because being unable to do a simple DNA extraction & amplification despite having your magic microscope that can see viruses is rather pathetic.
Despite being in jail on flimsy pretenses and having a police chief hate her, Liv can have visitors. After Ravi stops by, Major does as well. Seems he's still working with that kid's basketball team, which is nice. Anyone want to take up a fund to pay for Major's huge therapy bills when all this is done? Liv confesses the stalker brains are out of her system, which means she goes full zombie and wants to eat her roommate just as she gets released. This gives Liv another dose of stalker brains, but it's okay because, despite going to jail jail, Liv's still got the picture she stole. Do I want to know how she held on to that? Probably not.
They find it's the original picture of some white guy with Regina and can see that nice stalker lady stole Uma Voss' one of a kind grandmother's engagement ring. Liv and Ravi return to the dry cleaners where we see neck stabbed Karl is running the register. Ravi asks for a blood sample and Karl bolts while Liv and Uma just watch him. As Karl tries to start up his van for a get away in a vehicle marked with his damn business, Cavanagh pops up and plays some Karma Chameleon to our delight.
It's the same old story. Regina slept with Uma's not-quite husband which meant it was okay because there wasn't a ring on it. Uh, okay? And then she sent Uma a scrapbook and stole her grandmother's ring. Uma said the plan was to scare Regina to give up the lawsuit, but they didn't count on her having a vorpal cake cutter in her purse. So, before Regina could kill her brother, Uma shot her. (Anyone wonder why they didn't think to check for fingerprints on the gun? Just me?)
Still on the "stalker" brains, Liv tries to break into Major's safe. He opens it to show that all that's in there is her engagement ring (because Major's not stupid enough to leave all his shit out like that). He says the heart breaking line: "I couldn't stand the idea of anyone else ever wearing it." This man is like a crying clown picture crossed with a sad beagle. So many therapy bills in his future.
But Liv still hasn't learned her lesson and breaks into his phone again (dude, change your password to something other than your damn thumb!) and Rita's screwing with her. There's no way Rita doesn't know what she's doing, so expect more melodrama on the horizon.
A fun little episode that maybe moved Super Max a needle tick and gave us a few things about Clive. But, it looks like next week Liv eats a vigilante's brains and becomes the Zombie-Bat running around Seattle to beat up criminals with her undead hands. *rubs hands in anticipation*
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