Review: iZombie ‘Grumpy Old Liv’ – Business as Usual

After three months of waiting, iZombie has returned to us, it promises more witty dialogue, character drama, and brains. But does the first episode bring promise? The short answer yes, yes it does. The long answer? Well…

Spoilers

The episode starts pretty much right where it left off, sure three months have passed, but everybody still hates Liv (Rose McIver). We have Evan (Nick Purcha), who doesn’t even want to see her, Eva (Molly Hagan) who also doesn’t even want to see her, Major (Robert Buckley) is having a hard time talking to Liv, and Peyton (Aly Michalka) is nowhere to be seen.

The opening minutes set out to prove a couple of things, that it will pick up and continue the overarching story, but that it’s still a police procedural. The quality of both just as high as before. Particularly the dialogue is still witty as ever, especially with Old Man Liv around.

Speaking of which, the temporary personality gimmick in iZombie has always been pretty great, but in particular this episode was very strong in this aspect. With Liv yelling at teenagers, making witty insults, and making racist comments left and right. Liv was a nasty, mean, crude old man, and it was fantastic to watch.

Later in the episode we get to see what Blaine’s (David Anders) up to nowadays. This time working in a funeral home, and working to become the local drug lord. However, a couple of questions have been raised, why even bother working in a funeral home? Blaine made a comment about ‘the brains coming to you,’ but he’s a human, is he still supplying his old clients?

Of course Blaine also has another thing to worry about, finding some Boat Utopium in order to make some more cure. Which leads us to Don E. once more. You remember Don E. right? Major’s friend from the mental institute? Apparently he was involved with the Boat Utopium, yay for recurring minor characters!

Major also gets a fair share of screen time, we see his reluctance to talk to Liv, bored demeanor during his job, and tension with Ravi (Rahul Kohli). Major’s also just met another character, but we’ll get to that in a bit.

Clive (Malcolm Goodwin) is still hung-up on the whole Meat Cute incident. Questioning Liv again and again about Major’s alibi, and beginning to hunt for Blaine. Clive also seemed a little more sensitive to how different Liv was, but that is probably due to just how insensitive Liv’s persona was this week.

We learned some interesting things this episode, the first being the fact that cured zombies can detect other zombies. We see this through New Hope’s reactions, and the two hair-raising zoom up scenes for both Major and Blaine. And of course it wouldn’t be important unless it was used for bad.

The bad this time being Max Rager hiring Major to hunt zombies for them. Max Rager is indeed still a threat, in fact they are set out to be the biggest threat this season. Major ended up accepting, thanks to a couple of audio clips. Which reminds me, how did they get those calls? Are they tapping Liv’s phone? The first phone call was from Liv to Major, while the second was from Ravi to Liv. This seemed like an oversight by the writers, but after seeing the final scene we might have found our explanation.

Speaking of the last scene, it turns out the Max Rager secretary is rooming with Liv. That’s… great, just fantastic.

iZombie season two has begun and it is ready to jump in, no breaks for us, thank goodness.