iZombie: Method Head

January 14, 2016 11:36 AM - Season 2, Episode 10

Liv gets in touch with her inner actor when she finds herself pretending to be a TV zombie investigating the murder of a genre star in a zombie TV show to track down the killer.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich (4 comments total)

They had fun with the meta in this episode. I'm also continuing to like this twisted father-daughter relationship with the Max Rager pair. They're funny and I can totally imagine this working on the page and then falling apart in the performance, resulting in something that isn't funny at all. But these two actors are pretty much at their best when playing against each other -- although he's very good with Liv, too.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 2:01 PM on January 14, 2016

Yeah fun episode, but not especially filling, I think. The murder just gets randomly wrapped up at the end like they realized they'd forgotten to solve the crime somewhere in post. And nothing else seemed to be of much consequence.

And I'm not sure I buy Major's ability to create a bugged Fitbit or to trick Max Rager guy into wearing it. And indeed Major's figuring out the doctor was a trap was much less impressive if he's been listening to everything the guy says.

Not a bad episode by any means, but not a lot there at the end of the day.

Does it qualify as a a bottle episode, I wonder? I assume that was their own studio they were shooting, and their own crew and so on.
posted by Naberius at 6:36 AM on January 15, 2016

I don't know that Major knew it was a trap?

My assumption that he has at least one or two kills under his belt, and might be so lost to self pity that he already sees himself as basically fallen. I could be wrong, and often am, but my own read was that he thought the whistleblower offer was genuine and he thought he was tossing an innocent to the wolves. Another sacrifice of his own innocence for the greater good of getting to the bottom of Max Rager. The fact that it was all a deception, I think, makes the gambit even more worthwhile and the reward of the fitbit bug actually earned. He thought he was sacrificing his soul to get an inside line on MR, but instead he might actually be redeeming it, especially after coming clean to the Zombie Hooker that was directly mentioned at the beginning of this episode. In this read, the entire Hero Major Lillywhite narrative he's written for himself to deal with his impossible situation is only further reinforced. If that realization triggers a heroic conversion or tragic fall..... equally likely, at this point.

With the dual realization that the FBI is onto Blane and the cure is running out of time, I think this episode does a great job at elevating the stakes.

Also: Yes, the procedural is totally perfunctory. I want to say that the decision to make it a metagag is an acknowledgement of this. By now the audience either accepts or does not accept that the procedural is a costume worn by the zombie plot, and coming back from a mid-season cliffhanger, some over-plot efficiency is on the menu,
posted by absalom at 9:09 PM on January 15, 2016

I took the hidden mic reveal to be an indicator that Major knew it was a setup all along. Which is fine, but made it a little less interesting to me. If he'd misjudged it as a setup and the scientists had been killed... that probably would have been a little too dark for this show, but would have been a pretty fascinating situation. Do you console yourself with the fact that this person, even if they have had a change of heart, is too tainted to really mourn? What does that mean for you, killer?

I guess there's still some room for some of that. Major has gotten ahead of this and started being the player rather than the played, but he's still got kills under his belt.

The FBI closing in is an interesting thing. Is Liv's reacceptance going to just turn into a bigger fall when her partner discovers she's been keeping secrets? Will he discover she went to far as to tamper with his test results? Is the FBI agent toast?
posted by phearlez at 10:39 AM on January 19, 2016