After establishing the brand new world that is New Seattle in last week’s Season 4 premiere, iZombie settles back into a more familiar routine with “Blue Bloody,” as Liv and Clive investigate the death of a rude, cruel dowager. However, in between this case of the week, the series also provides some much-needed character insight, which was missing from last Monday’s opener, and also gives us a peek into the the more political issues that New Seattle has created with its walled-off borders.
Those larger problems become more personal when they directly impact Liv and Major’s relationship during the final minutes of the episode, after he risks not only his job but his life to protect her and Ravi when they smuggle a sick human boy through a Fillmore Graves’ security checkpoint outside a restricted area. They are helping take the boy to his father in Los Angeles so he can receive treatment for his medical condition and have the opportunity to live a healthy and, hopefully, happy life. The confrontation between the two exes doesn’t entirely work; the scene would have benefited from Liv and Major sharing more screen time together over these past two episodes, and it also would have hit harder if the introduction of their revitalized sexual relationship hadn’t been so rushed. But even with those small quibbles that I have, I can’t deny the power of their exchange, particular when Major tells Liv that she’s not the “only good zombie” in New Seattle and when she counters by telling him that the old version of himself would have been helping her and Ravi save a sick kid, not trying to stop them. The argument crackles with intensity, thanks in large part to Rose McIver and Robert Buckley’s performances, but it’s also due to the rich, complicated history these two characters have together.
While Liv and Major’s hearts are usually always in the right place, they tend to approach difficult situations, such as the one presented in “Blue Bloody,” very differently, and those differences continue to grow greater the longer Major aligns himself with Fillmore Graves. As we began to see at the end of Season 3, Major is becoming a more strict and hardened individual, and I’m curious if his work with the young recruits will bring him back to his life as a counselor and change his mentality, or if this type of no-nonsense attitude will extend to how he instructs them. Meanwhile, Liv continues to live her zombie life the same way she did before the citizens of Seattle became infected four months ago. She refuses to answer to anyone, especially someone like Chase Graves, and will continue to do what’s best for all people, human or zombie, no matter the risk. Unlike Major, she has no allegiance to anyone right now, but that could change if she keeps working with Mama Leone, aka Renegade, in the future, putting her on a collision course with Major that might do more than just further complicate their friendship or sex life: it could lead to him locking her up in a Fillmore Graves jail. And if something like that does transpire, would Liv ever be able to forgive Major, or would he have become such a completely different person from the man that she loved that forgiveness wouldn’t even be an option? We’ll have to wait and see.
It looks like we’ll also have to wait and see how Clive and Bozzio will manage their relationship moving forward, as their intimacy issue are put on full-display in this week’s iZombie when Clive seeks help from Ravi, looking for some type of medication that will tame his libido. While every other aspect of Clive and Bozzio’s relationship is going great, sex, or rather a lack of sex, has become a major problem for the two of them, just like it was for Liv and Major when they tried to make their zombie-human romance work in Season 2. Clive believes that dampening his sexual impulses with anti-anxiety medication might provide a solution, but when Bozzio finds the pills in their bathroom, she confronts him, insisting that she will not have him deny his own urges in an attempt to make things better; they’ll find another way.
Like Clive, though, I’m doubtful of what this “other way” could be. As I mentioned above, we saw this lack of physical intimacy cause Liv and Major to slowly drift a part, and while Clive and Bozzio appear to be in a much better place than Liv and Major ever were, I still don’t see how they’ll be able to figure out a magical solution to this problem. Unless Dale can take Ravi’s cure and then only be a zombie for three days a month? Would Clive still contract the zombie virus if she took the serum? I’m curious if iZombie will explore that as a potential option for the couple, because that’s about the only real answer I can think of right now. Anything less than that, such as them exploring other human and zombie partners to meet their sexual needs, is guaranteed to lead to major conflict down the road, and if Clive and Bozzio do end up breaking up at some point this season, I don’t want it to be a toxic or upsetting end to their relationship. I want the two of them to split up on good terms as friends; even though that will still hurt, it will hurt less than them hating each other.
Overall, it’s the more personal storylines involving Liv and Clive that make “Blue Bloody” a more successful and satisfying episode than last week’s premiere. Does the church storyline revolving around Angus still feel like it belongs on another show? It sure does. Is dowager brain as entertaining as Seahawks fanatic brain? No, it’s not, but it does lead to a couple of laugh-out-loud funny moments, such as when Liv refers to Clive as “Jesse Owens” and when Clive tells Liv when she initially sits in the back seat of his car that “We’re not going anywhere like this, Miss Daisy.” Even if tonight’s episode isn’t a home run, it’s definitely a triple, which is an improvement over the double that was “Are You Ready For Some Zombies?” I’ll take that as a promising sign for what Season 4 has in store.
Other thoughts:
- As I mentioned above, I am not enjoying this religion storyline with Angus at all, and it bothers me that we’ve now ended back-to-back with Angus-centric scenes in the church. It’s taken screen time away from the likes of Blaine and Peyton. Give me stories with them, please, iZombie writers. I’d rather much see those than whatever this new version of Angus is cooking up.
- Mama Leone tells Liv and Ravi that they’ve met her before, even though they don’t remember it. I’m excited to see what the backstory of her character will be and how it ties in with our two favorite medical examiners.
- Do we think there will be any fallout from Jordan attacking and scratching one of the human troublemakers at the zombie shop? I doubt that the writers would have that guy recording the incident with his phone unless it was going to come back into play in a major way later.
- The excitement on Ravi’s face when Clive tells him that he needs to talk to him about a “personal matter of a sexual nature” might be one of Ravi’s funniest moments ever.
- I have issues with how the Liv/Major sleeping together storyline is handled (there isn’t enough build-up for the payoff at the end of the argument, when they agree to stop messing around), but it does give us the “Lonny Anderson,” which Liv apparently performs on Major while they’re together, leading him to hilariously describe it as a “next-level maneuver.”
- Favorite comic-book title card from this week: “Puttin’ on the Spritz.”
- “Wouldn’t you rather stay in there with Ravi and talk about your genitals?”
What did everyone else think about this week’s episode of iZombie? Comment below and let me know.
[Photo credit: Diyah Pera/The CW]
