iZombie: Dead Rat, Live Rat, Brown Rat, White Rat
June 2, 2015 10:08 PM - Season 1, Episode 12 - Subscribe

Liv veers between cheerleader brain and stoner brains as she tries to track down a certain other zombie. Major gets himself in more shit, Peyton finds out more than she wanted to know, and Ravi's cure hits a little snag.

Killing Hope: Ravi, having named the cured zombie rat Hope and even bought her a wheel, finds out that she's died instead. Dammit. Back to starting over again with another zombie rat.

I Know Who You Killed Two Weeks Ago: three band members and a cheerleader accidentally hit Sebastian the zombie, and then the cheerleader (Kimber) is unpleasantly surprised and loses her life and most of her brains. Upon ingesting what's left with chocolate and hot stuff, Liv becomes quite cheerful and does girl talk with Kimber's best friend and her own bestie very well, and she and Peyton do a little girl bonding. Which kind of goes to hell after the stoner band member dies (and was apparently being blackmailed) and Liv eats his brains and generally acts really doofy. Back to the cheerleader brains--she needs a little pep.

Of the remaining two band members, Cameron...is probably not still alive, and Teresa (otherwise known as "Sin" from Arrow!, and also the only one here with any sense) after going to the cops and working with the sketch artist that hates Liv, goes to meet Cameron in a motel and the last we see of her, she's bloody, crawling across a floor and dialing 911. Oh no!

Liv recognizes the sketch of Sebastian, and figures out his handiwork when his aunt Edna comes in, brainless. Next thing you know, Sebastian's knocked out (but not killed) Peyton and is cooking in Liv's kitchen. She zombies out and manages to kill him, but Peyton sees it, forcing Liv to admit the truth. Peyton runs the hell out of there after that, bailing on showing up for her Vertigo-SF tour with Ravi as well. Poor Ravi.

Oh, Major. This week Major goes to Meat Cute as a "health inspector," gets pegged by Julian, and ends the episode tied up and caught in the back of the store--just in time to hear Liv's brother applying for a job. Oh, that girl who works at the morgue is your sister? I may have a job for you after all...
posted by jenfullmoon (19 comments total)
 
Man, the Peyton reveal was, to my eyes, just about perfect. As the AV Club reviewer said, the head-fake from the Major reveal they've been building to happening first made the timing of this surprising, though given Peyton's increased presence the last few weeks, it seems more obvious in hindsight.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 6:01 AM on June 3, 2015 [2 favorites]


Best episode so far. Will Major find out next week that Liv is a zombie ?
posted by Pendragon at 12:20 PM on June 3, 2015


I predict that next week Major BECOMES a zombie, or at least I'm not sure how he's gonna get out of this week's pickle otherwise :P
posted by jenfullmoon at 4:31 PM on June 3, 2015


Not much to say except I am excited!

Glad they mentioned Peyton and Ravi dating and I'm glad the job application thing paid off.

Looking forward to next week and to see how all of this works!
posted by lucy.jakobs at 5:43 PM on June 3, 2015


I thought Blaine was going to be a season villain, but it doesn't seem like they've moved an end game in place yet. Also, is the second killer a new character or someone we've seen?
posted by humans are superior! at 9:25 PM on June 3, 2015


"Also, is the second killer a new character or someone we've seen?"

I can't figure out who that could be, unless it's the police captain.

Count me in as someone who really liked the Peyton thing. I have a limited tolerance for overly-long sustained suspense of secret keeping -- everything always returning to the status quo, despite plotting that makes you think something big is going to change, is one of the things I hate most about episodic television and genre television about secrets especially. So the Major thing bugged me, but I really like that they follow on with someone else finding out Liv's secret, and especially that it's Peyton, who I don't think we expected.

That's good writing because it accomplishes three different things at once -- it relieves some of this need for someone to find out that's been building since they started down the path with Major, it changes Liv's circumstances in an interesting and important way, and it integrates Peyton into the story and solves an ongoing problem with the character (she's there, we're told she's an important relationship for Liv, she's dating Ravi, but nothing really happens with her and her character isn't developed).

This was a solid episode -- my main objection is how broadly Liv's stoner personality was written and portrayed, in combination with the cheerleader personality being almost as over-the-top and how I'm having trouble with my suspension of disbelief with regard to Clive not really noticing (other than in the moment ... every episode). They could answer this totally within the story that Liv's given Clive -- Clive could finally mention to Liv that has she noticed that she sort of takes on some personality traits about the murder victims she's having visions about? It's a pyschic thing, Liv could say. And everyone would be happy and we'd not have this week-after-week thing where Clive notices it but doesn't notice it. He's not that dumb. That character would have noticed this long ago and connected the dots.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 5:47 AM on June 4, 2015 [3 favorites]


And everyone would be happy and we'd not have this week-after-week thing where Clive notices it but doesn't notice it. He's not that dumb. That character would have noticed this long ago and connected the dots.

The impression I took from the first episode (and please don't correct me if I'm wrong cause it is one of my favorite characters bits from the show), is that Clive didn't care how, he just wants to close cases cause he is ambitious. So everytime Clive does that skeptical look then goes along, I think he's assessing how crazy all this stuff is, but talks himself down cause his clear rate is so high.
posted by humans are superior! at 8:18 AM on June 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


No, that seems totally right to me. Clive is sort of deliberately not curious about Liv's ability and it's exactly as you say -- he's pragmatic and, remember, he was being dissed by other detectives and now he's clearing cases. He doesn't want to look that gift horse in the mouth.

So, yeah, that explains why he wouldn't query Liv too much about her personality changes. However, he is noticing that she acts oddly, but he's not (apparently) noticing that it's connected to the personalities of the victims, even though they play this joke so broadly that it's impossible to imagine that he wouldn't totally recognize this. That's the part that bugs me. What would be in character for him, given the point that you made, is that we see that he's aware that her personality is influenced by the victims, but doesn't much care about this beyond how they might (and sometimes do, we've seen) get in the way of the investigation.

Frankly, I think that the personality-from-brains thing is part of the show's mythology that I bet Thomas conceived of as a neat gimmick with a lot of possibilities that, when they actually started writing episodes, turned out to be arguably more trouble than it's worth. For one thing, we've seen it exactly once with another zombie -- Lowell -- and that was in service to a somewhat contrived single-episode plot thread (he's into her, but he's currently gay and this is a single-episode version of Liv's Gay Best Friend). They're basically ignoring the brain effects with regard to all the other zombies -- there've been a mention or two about visions, but only the Lowell example of a personality change.

And they've done this because it would just be confusing and cluttered to have Blaine and his henchmen changing personalities. But we end up with this strong asymmetry between them and Liv.

Another reason it's more trouble than it's worth is because it's just one more thing that all the people around Liv need to mysteriously not notice. Early on, they tried to integrate this with the story that Liv's friends and family are assuming -- that the party boat thing was so traumatizing to Liv that it's destabilized her personality and she's going through life changes and experimentation. That's been my fanwank for many of the Peyton/Liv interactions where Peyton's been confronted with Liv's personality of the week. But, as with Clive, and as we saw in this episode both with Clive and Peyton, the changes are pretty extreme and rapid -- cheerleader, let's go to spin class one day, stoner the next. People mostly ignoring this in Liv can't go on forever, it doesn't make sense.

And the main reason is that it ends up complicating every episode in ways that often don't really pay-off. It's kind of a one-note joke which, now that we've seen it ten times, isn't really that funny. But it's canon, it's how it works, so Liv's personality does change and she has visions and she's working as an assistant ME and we have a new murder mystery each week and she's in the field with Clive and she knows about Blaine and she's conflicted about Major and Major is investigating the zombies. That's a lot of balls in the air. If you just limit it to Liv and getting through the a-plot each week, they have to show her working with Ravi in the morgue, working with Clive interviewing witnesses, having a vision, and having her personality be affected during all of this. That's a lot.

Meanwhile, the show lives and dies with its lead character and, despite how many other things I think it's improved over the course of the season, it's not really done a good job developing Liv's character. We don't know almost anything more about her than we did at the beginning of the season. That's a problem. And it's a problem partly because we've spent time seeing Liv be other people, and less herself
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 9:48 AM on June 4, 2015 [3 favorites]


Yeah, you're right. I hadn't really attributed it to the personality leaking, but she is a way passive lead character and it makes the show less fun.
posted by humans are superior! at 11:03 PM on June 4, 2015


I also hadn't really consider that very much, and I do hope that changes next season. However, I think a large part of why I hadn't noticed is because Rose McIver is a fairly compelling lead, so good on her.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 7:45 AM on June 5, 2015


Yeah, McIver is very good -- all by herself, she's compensated for some of the show's problems.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 8:33 AM on June 5, 2015


and working with the sketch artist that hates Liv

Oh, that's who that was! I was so perplexed during that scene, I thought maybe I was stoned.

There's only one more episode? And we're just gotten a second mysterious killer? I'm glad they're renewed for season two, because I'm guessing there will be some big cliffhangers.
posted by Squeak Attack at 7:10 PM on June 7, 2015


There's only one more episode? And we're just gotten a second mysterious killer?
The second killer is mysterious, but perhaps not new. Recall that at the end of Episode 5, when the police came to arrest the person suspected of the murder-of-the-week at her apartment, she was gone, and apparently quickly snatched up—computer, phone—and most forebodingly, the shower curtain—missing, but dinner still baking in the oven.
posted by obloquy at 3:38 PM on June 9, 2015


Oh yeah, I forgot about that. I think partly because catching the killer in a bunch of these episodes is a complete after-thought so I noticed that wasn't resolved but didn't think much of it.
posted by Squeak Attack at 7:14 PM on June 9, 2015


I'm having trouble with my suspension of disbelief with regard to Clive not really noticing (other than in the moment ... every episode). They could answer this totally within the story that Liv's given Clive -- Clive could finally mention to Liv that has she noticed that she sort of takes on some personality traits about the murder victims she's having visions about?

I don't understand? Honestly, from a show-don't-tell viewpoint, do they really need to have this conversation? The fact that we know Clive is a very deductive guy and not a total idiot and lets on every episode he notices these wild mood says this without wasting the time in a conversation that doesn't let the audience learn anything new.

I mean, he already thinks she's some sort of psychic. Why wouldn't he just accept this?
posted by absalom at 8:24 PM on October 30, 2015


I guess I'm just taking a different read from his side eyes than everyone else?
posted by absalom at 8:25 PM on October 30, 2015


Well, the idea that you could have psychic visions about murder victims is very common. People in real-life contact the police to make claims that they do this and, amazingly, real-life police sometimes believe them. So we don't really expect Clive to ask Liv about the details of her psychic visions because it's a well-known thing.

But taking on the personality of the victims? That's totally specific to this show and there's no reason for Clive to suspect that this would happen and he'd surely ask about it when it did. Except he hasn't. And he does reference the visions and sometimes asks about when she might get them, or if she's had one. In other words, he discusses her psychic visions. But he's never discussed her personality changes and yet he reacts to them.

To me, this just reads as TV-contrivance, where characters will act contrary to how real people will act in order to further a plot or as just one of those well-known comedic devices. In this case, the latter. It is a comedic device -- for a character to react to some continuing absurd thing and never, you know, ask about it or become accustomed to it. It's a gag. I was okay with it at first, but at some point it began to annoy me and, also, it would actually be funnier for Clive to engage with it explicitly.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 9:40 PM on October 30, 2015


So what was the, "She's totally still standing," joke when stoner Liv sees the drummer at the police station? Is a reference to something outside the show or...?

As far as the visions/personality thing, I think it probably would have been better if Liv was "special" and is the only one who this happened to for some reason that they could explore later or not. I also liked it when the personality traits were a little more subtle. At least I think they were more subtle.

So we've already seen Chekhov's gun. Is there a Chekov's grenade or was Major being offered one just a joke that won't go anywhere?

And ex-med student Liv goes to find peroxide for Peyton's wound? Come on.
posted by ODiV at 9:17 PM on January 10, 2016


"So what was the, "She's totally still standing," joke when stoner Liv sees the drummer at the police station? Is a reference to something outside the show or...?"

It's a really dumb short joke.
posted by iamkimiam at 2:07 PM on April 30, 2017


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