iZombie: All's Well That Ends Well

"This is why the time of patty cake is over..."

Last night Mrs Llamastrangler and I bit the bullet. We’d been delaying seeing the last ever iZombie, because then it would be over. And we weren’t disappointed, although there was a lot to cram in. It’s not the creators’ fault, but would it really be too much to extend the running time beyond a paltry forty-two minutes...?

Anyway, we begin with half an hour of narrative in which all the plot threads are concluded and, although there’s a lot of dramatic tension (I love the moment where Liv, Clive and Ravi are caught on the plane- only to find the police officer to be on their side) and drama but things end as happily as the title implies. I love the way both Blaine and Don E end up down the well with Blaine’s sad for all eternity, rushed though the sequence inevitably is, and how we think for w while that Peyton may be dead after her fatal shooting although, of course, that pervert Blaine scratches her. We also have time to see Clive become a dad (aaah!) and Major’s heroic sacrifice to prove in live telly that the cure works; it’s not his fault that Ravi made damn sure he survived. And as for Enzo, his fate is poetic; the ultimate zombie racist dies human. It’s a pity that Durkins seems to survive.

But we then end with the coda, ten years later- a brave choice but one that pretty much works and gives happy endings for our heroes, perhaps a little trite but not unearned. Zombieism can be cured now so zombies are not a threat- is it that simple? At least Liv and Major are together. That kiss...!

Yes, it’s rushed. But within its forty-two minute constraints the episode works well. And I salute the firm decision, heralded by the title, not to go grimdark and have a defiantly happy ending. Wonderful,  and a fitting end to a series I will very much miss.

iZombie: Bye, Zombies

"We are in the South now. You don't put stolen jewellery in a black man's pocket."

The penultimate episode. Nearly there.

Confession time; this is a heist episode (it's too close to the end for murders of the week), and the pop culture references centre around Mission Impossible and Ocean's 11, neither of which I happen to have seen. Still, I'll do my best.

So Ravi sent the tainted Utopium to a scientist at the CDC in the hop of a zombie cure... and the money-grabbing bastard has realised there's more money in palliatives rather than cures. This is why state health services should always be allowed to veto this kind of evil. Anyway, the point is we have a pretext for Liv, Ravi and- after some persuading- a Clive who is touchingly emotional, to carry out said heist in a clever, entertaining and ultimately successful fashion with the help of some appropriate brains from the restaurant of a grieving Don E. It's splendid stuff.

It's the penultimate episode, though, so other arc threads are gently nudged towards their respective conclusions. After all, we have racist extremists for both humankind and zombiekind respectively trying to start a war. The nuclear bomb of Damocles still metaphorically hangs over the city. But not all is bad; Ravi gets to rub in Blaine's face that Peyton is his girl ("That was genuine cockiness!") which is cool and, I think, just on the right side of not being misogynistic.

Blaine reminds us, however, that, despite being the witty villain we love to hate, he is in fact an absolute ***, making Peyton genuinely afraid as he kills one of the Freylich kids and threatens the rest. I predict he's going to die. We also get the most touching grave robbing scene ever as Liv and Major remind each other that they like each other and kiss. Awww. Except... this is near the end and anyone could die. Could they...? Would they...?

While the heist is successful the episode ends on a grim note; Major is alone, a fugitive, in a New Seattle where he's been usurped by Enzo and the extremists are merrily warmongering. And he has to get some Max Rager from Fillmore Graves...

What an episode. What a season. What a series. One more to go...

iZombie: Killer Queen

”Jenkins, find me all the Chers."

It's the pen-penultimate episode of iZombie, ever, and by Jove this is bloody good. So much happens, it all drives along the arc splendidly, the characters are a joy- yet this week's murder mystery, this time centring around drag queens, is as splendid as ever, and drag queen brain Liv is naturally enormous fun; the episode finds time for this even though it has so much to do. I'll miss this programme.

But we begin with Liv and Ravi finding out what Martin is up to, a massive blow for her; at this point, it seems as though Liv's dad is going to be the Big Bad. But Ravi now has some original boat party Utopium, a possible source for a cure- and news of the recent murder of a cured zombie proves a cure is out there. We get a splendid little comic sub-plot, too, as Ravi and Major, that great double act, get to be heroes and rescue all Blaine’s Freylich kids. I suspect this will be the last fun sub-plot before the finale so possibly, gulp, ever.

But things soon get intense as Martin’s conspiracy leads to four “sisters” Liv helps out of Seattle turn out to be sleeper agents setting up shop in a Nevada brothel to infect people- and Enzo shows more hardline tendencies. So much so, in fact, that he exposes the operation by killing a hostage and allows Liv to learn the truth. This all feels real and character-led, complex though the plot is, a sign of good writing. The same can be said for the desperate Skype call between Liv and her dad- ultimately leading leading to Enzo shooting him dead. Yes; he’s the Big Bad. And he has the most outrageous French accent since Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

And that’s not all- Blaine finds out Don E is still running brains for Major and, even worse for him, Darcy suddenly dies in her wedding dress shortly before the wedding. Ouch. That was a superb bit of telly.

iZombie: Filleted to Rest

"She fired people for existing wrong."

Another superb episode that, as this season is continuously doing with admirable skill, manages to pull off a genuinely impressive whodunit while still having lots of jaw-dropping arc stuff happen against a steadily deteriorating background of human vs zombie tension. And we end with quite the cliffhanger. Halfway through this final season...

The murder/brain of the week, a delightfully rude chef, is a particularly good one, and Liv on chef brain is a real treat. The murder of the week, to be fair, takes up a lot of screen time, and deserves to. It's too easy to forget that iZombie's basic format, still fundamentally there in spite of everything, is a bloody good one. Burgling as a murder alibi is a bloody good one.

And yet...a load of Fillmore Graves troops are killed in a terrorist attack, and after a far bit of intrigue Major gains proof that Justin- who is, let us not forget, a former boyfriend of Liv- is a traitor, shooting his recently former close friend while trying to escape. Ouch. Liv has a massive row with her mum, who we haven't seen for, well, seasons, but it's finally time to start tying up the loose ends.

There's a heartwarming scene where Michelle tells Clive that, no, he probably isn't the father... but she thinks he's a decent man and kind of wishes he was. Aw. Ravi's relationship with Dr Charlie Collier (and her twin sister!) develops a little, which makes me think they are going to share a more blatant sub-plot about a zombie cure.

But that cliffhanger, that this new player who is de-thawing zombies and appears to be Durkins' zombie mirror image is probably Liv's dad... wow.

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.

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.