Showing posts with label Gage Golightly. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gage Golightly. Show all posts

Friday, 14 June 2019

iZombie: The Scratchmaker

”Let’s face it- we’ve all got a little monster in us.”

It finally happened; a Blaine episode, after his near-absence from the opening episodes. Following his downfall last week we now follow Blaine as he adjusts to his new reality- and survives, as he always does. Oh, there’s a perfunctory murder of the week with a matchmaker being murdered and Liv on match maker brain. But all this happens in the background. Other characters get their moments- now that Dale is off on maternity leave (I know they have shit working conditions in America- do they have that?) it’s fun to see Clive getting to sit in the big chair.

But this is about Blaine, stuck in a cell, forced to answer questions and, worse, his entertainment options limited to the TV edit of Snakes on a Plane in endless loop. He’s an evil, amoral, annoyingly witty man who we all live to hate, and this is probably the right moment to praise David Anderson to the skies for inhabiting this gloriously witty sociopath. iZombie without Blaine is a terrifying thought.

There’s a rather big change to the status quo here as it turns out Al is the niece of none other than Stacey Boss, who is behind all of this and planning to takeover Blaine’s brain business wholesale- successfully, although not without some cleverness from Major forcing him and his new sidekick Don E to lower the price. Interestingly,Blaine is left to think that the brain business has gone elsewhere, effectively coupled by Don E and his shadowy benefactor. I’m sure he’ll take it very well when he finds out.

All this and Major, who is on fire somewhat, has a bit of a mini-showdown with Durkins. Another splendid episode, then, and a final season which is coming along very nicely.

Saturday, 1 June 2019

iZombie: Death Moves Pretty Fast

"Can a thing that's known for doing a thing do that very thing?"

As if it were possible for this season of iZombie to ramp things up, well, that's exactly what seems to have happened. There's also a pretty good murder of the week too, although it's a shame the use of Blaine as a suspect doesn't last, and (SPOILERS!) only at the end do we realise that we're getting a prankster killed by his resentful sidekick... again. But there's a lot more going on than that, although I'm a little confused at Clive's injury? He seemed fine last week.

Anyway, the Dead Enders continue to be a menace, this time sneaking Alzheimer's brains into the tubes- and this leads to the culmination of the conflict between Major and Enzo, the hardliner with the outrageous French accent. The zombie cure leaks out, and Ravi is devastated because it's his fault that sufferers of the disease in question now all have targets on their backs. But the main focus of the episode, cleverly done, is how Al slowly uncovers the full truth about Blaine's murderous past, and we see him exposed, turned from hero to public enemy number one... and the supply of brains stops. Worse, Peyon is shown to be either stupid or complicit, her earlier relationship with Blaine revealed. Peyton's position is now imperilled, just when New Seattle needs her to persuade DC not to nuke the place... again. And where are the brains going to come from?

Suddenly things look very worrying indeed for our fragile civilisation in the city, and that's before Major learns, once Enzo is on ice, that a full seventeen people have been thawed out... cut to a cage full of Romeros and suddenly we're reminded this is the final season. Could everything end with an actual zombie apocalypse? Another superb bit of telly, although I do worry about this over-the-top comedy treatment of Vampire Steve.

Monday, 27 May 2019

iZombie: Dot Zom

“The future will be obnoxious..."

Another clever episode, at its heart another whodunit of the week, but one through which the arc and its themes are rather interestingly explored- and where a new player unexpectedly emerges. This season so far is going splendidly.

The brain of the week is that of a Steve Jobs/ Mark Zuckerberg/ Elon Musk type dot com "genius", at once deeply fashionable and, while professing noble aims and sinking loads of money into a "bunker" to save a selected few from a vaguely upcoming armageddon, morally blink and unwittingly fomenting genocide. Rose McIver is, of course, superb as ever, but the moral is very much that such people are pretentious wankers.

There's a nice switch at the end; the zombie-hating racist is not, in fact the killer, but the spurned zombie ex-lover. Yet it is the red herring who is unmistakably the most evil, wishing to exterminate all zombies. And Liv's wider aims are thus not in sync with her sleuthing, a nicely made point.

Meanwhile, after a few hiccups, Peyton's and Ravi's sitcom is making progress, and Blaine (where has he been?) seems to have success in pulling a journalist, Al, who is interviewing him in a subplot which serves to illustrate the ongoing danger of the Dead Enders, who are gradually doxxing zombies to a world which hats and fears them. And there's an odd new baddie, in league with French Bloke, who has nebulous aims- and a mole in the camp of "Renegade". A surprising amount of arc stuff is being set up here. And, while yet again we have a top notch episode, it's all very ominous.