iZombie: Astroburger
May 26, 2015 11:06 PM - Season 1, Episode 11 - Subscribe
When someone close to Major dies of an apparent suicide, Liv consumes the brains resulting in a mix of reality and paranoia. Clive questions Major and learns of a secret computer file that may contain important details in the investigation – and finding the killer.
It's hard to imagine what a worse mistake they could possibly make than killing Ravi. His and Liv's friendship is the heart of the show.
Stupidly, I didn't figure out the weatherman was a hallucination until nearly the reveal, but when Liv began her reveal to Major I immediately knew. And it annoyed me. Then the weatherman annoyed me more. I hate that stuff, it's hackneyed.
But the weatherman himself isn't hackneyed. I think I was also pissed that he was a hallucination because I loved every second with that character and badly wanted him to be an addition. That's maybe why I didn't recognize that he was a hallucination, despite all the clues. I liked him too much.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 1:41 AM on May 27, 2015 [1 favorite]
Stupidly, I didn't figure out the weatherman was a hallucination until nearly the reveal, but when Liv began her reveal to Major I immediately knew. And it annoyed me. Then the weatherman annoyed me more. I hate that stuff, it's hackneyed.
But the weatherman himself isn't hackneyed. I think I was also pissed that he was a hallucination because I loved every second with that character and badly wanted him to be an addition. That's maybe why I didn't recognize that he was a hallucination, despite all the clues. I liked him too much.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 1:41 AM on May 27, 2015 [1 favorite]
The weatherman was pretty suspicious because it made no sense for him to hang around all the time and Major was too nice and laid back. But, it was still a pretty good fake-out, certainly better than a done-to-death dream sequence.
posted by Ik ben afgesneden at 5:10 AM on May 27, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by Ik ben afgesneden at 5:10 AM on May 27, 2015 [1 favorite]
Yeah, count me as one who was fooled by the hallucination, though I did think that the Major stuff went a little too smoothly as it went down. * And I felt immediately stupid for it but didn't feel like it was cheat. Good play show.
* The reason it worked at all is because I wanted the Major stuff to be true SO badly. I hate that his real reaction is his reaction, but it justifies not telling him and it has the potential to be the more interesting story.
I refuse to believe Rob Thomas or anyone else involved at iZombie would be stupid enough to kill Ravi. I won't even entertain that possibility. But if I was entertaining the possibility, honestly, if that were to happen, it wouldn't even make me as angry as a fan of the character and his relationship with Liv as much as it would make me angry as a person who respects good television-making.
The "dead astronaut as high-end brains" plot is a thing of beauty and I want to use it to get people to start watching the show because it's the kind of detail that makes the show special to me, but I'd rather people discover it naturally.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 5:54 AM on May 27, 2015 [1 favorite]
* The reason it worked at all is because I wanted the Major stuff to be true SO badly. I hate that his real reaction is his reaction, but it justifies not telling him and it has the potential to be the more interesting story.
I refuse to believe Rob Thomas or anyone else involved at iZombie would be stupid enough to kill Ravi. I won't even entertain that possibility. But if I was entertaining the possibility, honestly, if that were to happen, it wouldn't even make me as angry as a fan of the character and his relationship with Liv as much as it would make me angry as a person who respects good television-making.
The "dead astronaut as high-end brains" plot is a thing of beauty and I want to use it to get people to start watching the show because it's the kind of detail that makes the show special to me, but I'd rather people discover it naturally.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 5:54 AM on May 27, 2015 [1 favorite]
Ok...So, I missed the first few episodes of the show, so maybe everyone already knew this, but...Is Clive a zombie, too? Or did I mis-watch a scene where I thought Blaine gave Clive some brains? I was kind of doing other stuff at the time.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:59 AM on May 27, 2015
posted by Thorzdad at 6:59 AM on May 27, 2015
I hate that stuff, it's hackneyed.
I actually thought it was pretty well-done. The head-fake with the little devils made it seem like it was a sitcom-level storyline about mental illness, but the reveal shows us a much more insidious kind of problem. It's still an exaggeration, but they played it well enough. Plus, I never tire of seeing Daran Norris on my screen. To me, the "imma kill all zombies" shtick that Major spouts at the end was more annoying.
Ok...So, I missed the first few episodes of the show, so maybe everyone already knew this, but...Is Clive a zombie, too? Or did I mis-watch a scene where I thought Blaine gave Clive some brains?
Clive isn't a zombie, but his boss (Lt Suzuki) is.
posted by zombieflanders at 7:16 AM on May 27, 2015
I actually thought it was pretty well-done. The head-fake with the little devils made it seem like it was a sitcom-level storyline about mental illness, but the reveal shows us a much more insidious kind of problem. It's still an exaggeration, but they played it well enough. Plus, I never tire of seeing Daran Norris on my screen. To me, the "imma kill all zombies" shtick that Major spouts at the end was more annoying.
Ok...So, I missed the first few episodes of the show, so maybe everyone already knew this, but...Is Clive a zombie, too? Or did I mis-watch a scene where I thought Blaine gave Clive some brains?
Clive isn't a zombie, but his boss (Lt Suzuki) is.
posted by zombieflanders at 7:16 AM on May 27, 2015
I kind of hope that they can find a way for Daran Norris to come back as the character "for real" so it can be like when Geordi falls in love with the fake Leah Brahms in the holodeck but then has to work with the real woman.
Speaking of, I also love how part of the reason I fell for the hallucination was because it just felt like they wanted to give a bigger part to another Veronica Mars alum.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 7:48 AM on May 27, 2015 [4 favorites]
Speaking of, I also love how part of the reason I fell for the hallucination was because it just felt like they wanted to give a bigger part to another Veronica Mars alum.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 7:48 AM on May 27, 2015 [4 favorites]
Considering that what Major knows of zombies is that they are murdering people including nice kids, you can't blame him for his reaction. Hell Liv's reaction when she realized what Blaine was doing was that she had to kill him. It's the exact same response except generalized to the whole...species because Major doesn't know there are zombies like Liv.
I really enjoyed this episode. They finally integrated the murder of the week into the larger plot line so it wasn't a distraction, but the whole episode fit together. I like the attention to detail like the butcher shop is named the "Meat Cute."
posted by miss-lapin at 4:17 PM on May 27, 2015 [1 favorite]
I really enjoyed this episode. They finally integrated the murder of the week into the larger plot line so it wasn't a distraction, but the whole episode fit together. I like the attention to detail like the butcher shop is named the "Meat Cute."
posted by miss-lapin at 4:17 PM on May 27, 2015 [1 favorite]
I have never been so annoyed at this show as when Frost was revealed as a hallucination because I wanted him to take over Clive's role in the plot so badly. Saw Major coming as soon as he came back to the apartment, though. Which means it was a good head-fake!
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 6:25 PM on May 27, 2015
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 6:25 PM on May 27, 2015
"Saw Major coming as soon as he came back to the apartment, though. Which means it was a good head-fake!"
Yeah, the movie-watching (or whatever they ended up doing) was real, but him coming back to stay and everything after that was a hallucination. Which I totally fell for. But my ears perked up at the kiss and then the fast reveal and acceptance was very obvious. The reason that made me mad while the weatherman didn't, is because of the fake-out of Liv finally clueing Major in (as well as them getting back together). That's the kind of thing I think is hackneyed -- it's one of the things that these genre shows do to artificially and and in a very contrived way keep the tension going.
"It was all a hallucination" can still work for me when it's interesting in its own sake and not merely as a device for misdirection. With regard to putting up this huge barrier for Liv to reveal the truth to Major, that didn't require the head-fake to make it the more affecting (though that was the intent and I recognize that it worked for some people), it could have been made more affecting in a more organic and character-deepening way, where we see Liv and Ravi actually grapple with teling Major and then deciding to and then finding out that they can't risk it, given his feelings about zombies.
Except, really, I'm having a lot of trouble buying that, too. Does anyone here really believe that the character we've been shown as "Major" would do anything other than to see Liv as a "good" zombie? They haven't actually set his character up to be the narrow-minded, judgmental type who will react rather than think and then dig himself into that position. There are lots of people like that, but Major isn't one of them. So I'm not actually buying that it would be bad for Liv to reveal herself to him. I'm okay with this making Liv more fearful of it, to some degree. But the intent of the hallucination and then Major's statement was to boomerang the audience where we had relief and then we end up with even more tension. And that just didn't happen for me. If they felt this was what they needed to do, my sense is that they'd have been more effective at it had they worked through it more organically, rather than using the hallucination trope.
But, yeah, otherwise, the show does seem to be coming together. There's not many episodes left in the season, though.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 6:51 PM on May 27, 2015
Yeah, the movie-watching (or whatever they ended up doing) was real, but him coming back to stay and everything after that was a hallucination. Which I totally fell for. But my ears perked up at the kiss and then the fast reveal and acceptance was very obvious. The reason that made me mad while the weatherman didn't, is because of the fake-out of Liv finally clueing Major in (as well as them getting back together). That's the kind of thing I think is hackneyed -- it's one of the things that these genre shows do to artificially and and in a very contrived way keep the tension going.
"It was all a hallucination" can still work for me when it's interesting in its own sake and not merely as a device for misdirection. With regard to putting up this huge barrier for Liv to reveal the truth to Major, that didn't require the head-fake to make it the more affecting (though that was the intent and I recognize that it worked for some people), it could have been made more affecting in a more organic and character-deepening way, where we see Liv and Ravi actually grapple with teling Major and then deciding to and then finding out that they can't risk it, given his feelings about zombies.
Except, really, I'm having a lot of trouble buying that, too. Does anyone here really believe that the character we've been shown as "Major" would do anything other than to see Liv as a "good" zombie? They haven't actually set his character up to be the narrow-minded, judgmental type who will react rather than think and then dig himself into that position. There are lots of people like that, but Major isn't one of them. So I'm not actually buying that it would be bad for Liv to reveal herself to him. I'm okay with this making Liv more fearful of it, to some degree. But the intent of the hallucination and then Major's statement was to boomerang the audience where we had relief and then we end up with even more tension. And that just didn't happen for me. If they felt this was what they needed to do, my sense is that they'd have been more effective at it had they worked through it more organically, rather than using the hallucination trope.
But, yeah, otherwise, the show does seem to be coming together. There's not many episodes left in the season, though.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 6:51 PM on May 27, 2015
Considering that what Major knows of zombies is that they are murdering people including nice kids, you can't blame him for his reaction. Hell Liv's reaction when she realized what Blaine was doing was that she had to kill him.
I really agree, but I feel like there are some weird undercurrents here, which I kinda hope are on purpose cause ... well, Major seems like the hero (not protagonist or character(s) I want to spend the most time with) of the show, while Liv and Ravi, despite being awesome, are pretty immoral, at least compared to Major [moral in the comic/this type of show sense].
All he is trying to do is stop kids that no one else seems to care about from getting murdered. He cares so much - because very bad actions deserve equally strong responses, something I think the show has made seem admirable - that he blows up his life, ends up questioning his sanity, and almost dies several times. Once he finds the truth - that zombies are real and as far as he knows all of them are straight up murdering people or complicit in the murder of people, which besides Liv appears to be true - he decides to kill them himself. Why? Because literally no one else - from his perspective - has done anything to stop them and every attempt he has made to get help has ended in complete failure.
I think this is a completely rational response to an extraordinary situation, but is 100% a problem created by Liv and Ravi lying to him for completely absurd reasons. Liv didn't want to deal with the situation, so she kept pushing it off until it blew up in her face, and Ravi went along because it was easier to agree with her than, again, deal with the situation.
This has kind been their MO since stumbling across Blaine's setup. Cases of the week continue, 90% of their actions are like nothing is going on and when they do try to stop what is happening, it is mainly because of the solider brain Liv ate. They could have accomplished what Major did, they just didn't want to confront the situation head on, so it got to linger as things got worse and worse.
I realize this is the consequence of serialization, but unless they're going to kill or zombie him, Major can't remain so far ahead in the "lets do the right thing" game. He needs to come down a couple notches or they need to step up a couple notches.
posted by humans are superior! at 2:20 AM on May 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
I really agree, but I feel like there are some weird undercurrents here, which I kinda hope are on purpose cause ... well, Major seems like the hero (not protagonist or character(s) I want to spend the most time with) of the show, while Liv and Ravi, despite being awesome, are pretty immoral, at least compared to Major [moral in the comic/this type of show sense].
All he is trying to do is stop kids that no one else seems to care about from getting murdered. He cares so much - because very bad actions deserve equally strong responses, something I think the show has made seem admirable - that he blows up his life, ends up questioning his sanity, and almost dies several times. Once he finds the truth - that zombies are real and as far as he knows all of them are straight up murdering people or complicit in the murder of people, which besides Liv appears to be true - he decides to kill them himself. Why? Because literally no one else - from his perspective - has done anything to stop them and every attempt he has made to get help has ended in complete failure.
I think this is a completely rational response to an extraordinary situation, but is 100% a problem created by Liv and Ravi lying to him for completely absurd reasons. Liv didn't want to deal with the situation, so she kept pushing it off until it blew up in her face, and Ravi went along because it was easier to agree with her than, again, deal with the situation.
This has kind been their MO since stumbling across Blaine's setup. Cases of the week continue, 90% of their actions are like nothing is going on and when they do try to stop what is happening, it is mainly because of the solider brain Liv ate. They could have accomplished what Major did, they just didn't want to confront the situation head on, so it got to linger as things got worse and worse.
I realize this is the consequence of serialization, but unless they're going to kill or zombie him, Major can't remain so far ahead in the "lets do the right thing" game. He needs to come down a couple notches or they need to step up a couple notches.
posted by humans are superior! at 2:20 AM on May 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
Not much to add with the comments folks added above, but I must say I fell for both the Jack Frost and Major thing.. The devil cartoons totally threw me off and I seriously thought to myself when I first thought them that it was a really ridiculous and offensive portrayal of mental health issues. Not sure if what she actually was going through was any more accurate/less ridiculous, but at least it totally fooled me.
I also agree that it was a little weird that Major said that he wants to kill them. And seriously, at this point Ravi and Liv need to grow up and talk to Major. Hopefully the big reveal will happen soon because it's a little ridiculous and making the pacing of the show weird, as humans are superior! discussed. Maybe that'll happen in the season finale? We will see.
Overall I throughly enjoyed the episode and at least feel like things are slowly coming together.
posted by lucy.jakobs at 7:57 AM on May 28, 2015
I also agree that it was a little weird that Major said that he wants to kill them. And seriously, at this point Ravi and Liv need to grow up and talk to Major. Hopefully the big reveal will happen soon because it's a little ridiculous and making the pacing of the show weird, as humans are superior! discussed. Maybe that'll happen in the season finale? We will see.
Overall I throughly enjoyed the episode and at least feel like things are slowly coming together.
posted by lucy.jakobs at 7:57 AM on May 28, 2015
"I seriously thought to myself when I first thought them that it was a really ridiculous and offensive portrayal of mental health issues."
That bothered me. The whole thing bothered me, as someone who spent a couple of weeks in a psych ward once when I was severely depressed. I don't really know if that could be accurate for some forms of schizophrenia. But they weren't accurate or respectful in general, given my own experience, and so that doesn't incline me to give them the benefit of the doubt.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 8:26 AM on May 28, 2015
That bothered me. The whole thing bothered me, as someone who spent a couple of weeks in a psych ward once when I was severely depressed. I don't really know if that could be accurate for some forms of schizophrenia. But they weren't accurate or respectful in general, given my own experience, and so that doesn't incline me to give them the benefit of the doubt.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 8:26 AM on May 28, 2015
I really enjoy reading everything here each week, and I don't really have anything smart to contribute.
But I will say that I enjoyed Clive in this episode more than in any other, simply for the moment where he had his legs in the air in the psychiatrist's office. I guess that shows how little character development he's had if that moment of his was his most memorable all season.
posted by joan cusack the second at 10:02 AM on May 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
But I will say that I enjoyed Clive in this episode more than in any other, simply for the moment where he had his legs in the air in the psychiatrist's office. I guess that shows how little character development he's had if that moment of his was his most memorable all season.
posted by joan cusack the second at 10:02 AM on May 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
I've always assumed Clive is just hanging around until he can sacrifice himself for Liv.
posted by Ik ben afgesneden at 10:24 AM on May 28, 2015
posted by Ik ben afgesneden at 10:24 AM on May 28, 2015
She's a zombie medical examiner. He's a spray-tanned, possibly imaginary local weatherman. They fight crime!
posted by mon-ma-tron at 6:32 PM on May 28, 2015 [12 favorites]
posted by mon-ma-tron at 6:32 PM on May 28, 2015 [12 favorites]
way to break immersion.
it's obvs kk brt not kk be rite there
god
posted by absalom at 8:05 PM on October 30, 2015
it's obvs kk brt not kk be rite there
god
posted by absalom at 8:05 PM on October 30, 2015
Liv didn't want to deal with the situation, so she kept pushing it off until it blew up in her face, and Ravi went along because it was easier to agree with her than, again, deal with the situation.
to be fair, an episode or two ago ravi is the one who told liv she couldn't tell. he predicted the way major would (and did) react.
posted by nadawi at 5:14 PM on November 3, 2015
to be fair, an episode or two ago ravi is the one who told liv she couldn't tell. he predicted the way major would (and did) react.
posted by nadawi at 5:14 PM on November 3, 2015
The Blaine stuff is starting to wear thin. He's way too small time for his clients who are increasingly rich, powerful, and pretty likely to have a grudge against him. Maybe he just offs the ones who don't fall in line (as seen before), but I'm finding it hard to believe people like that tolerate being under his thumb.
posted by ODiV at 8:09 PM on January 10, 2016
posted by ODiV at 8:09 PM on January 10, 2016
Checking in very late, enjoying the second half of this season quite a bit. Weatherman bit got me until about ten seconds before the reveal, the third time he said 63/17 did it, which is I guess when you're supposed to. Until then I just thought they were kicking around the idea of ditching babineaux for weekly guest stars until they ran out of VM alumni.
Blaine better die at the end of this season, I'm not too into him. Hopefully they don't set up the max ranger assasin as the big bad for next season, I'm sure he'll return but they need someone more substantial to carry the load for a whole season.
posted by skewed at 6:56 PM on July 26, 2017
Blaine better die at the end of this season, I'm not too into him. Hopefully they don't set up the max ranger assasin as the big bad for next season, I'm sure he'll return but they need someone more substantial to carry the load for a whole season.
posted by skewed at 6:56 PM on July 26, 2017
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Please don't let socks+shorts sweet delightful Ravi with the cure mean he gets killed. I will CUT YOU SHOW IF YOU HURT MY LAB BOSS!
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 1:31 AM on May 27, 2015 [2 favorites]