iZombie: Dead Lift

”You ever feel like you’re an unwitting tool of the prison industrial complex?”

It’s still all about the arc as we start the episode with last week’s supposed murder victim instead having a druggy affair with “Glenn from accounting”, the three kids being smuggled dodge arrest, and Major continues to receive flak for his hearts and minds approach from hardliners at Chase Graves. But he has a point- they NEED humans to be on side or New Seattle will collapse into anarchy. And, this being the final season, that happening is a very real possibility.

Of course, there’s a lighter sign. Liv on fitness guru brain gives us a splendid example of the usual humour, and if anything the script is even wittier than usual. But there’s a very real sense of doom as Dolly Durkins’ Dead Enders foment outrage for immigrants... er, zombies among the human majority. It turns out that her lot have fakes the viral video of the woman being murdered by zombies but, after a drive-by shooting in a Dead Ender hangout by zombies affiliated by Chase Graves, Major allows fake footage of their “execution” to go viral. Both sides are using fake news already. This feels very much like Trump’s America, complete with the moral dilemmas on how hard to punch a fascist, whether one should act with integrity when the enemy has none.

Peyton is trying to run Seattle in spite of bureaucratic inertia but Ravi provides not only great sex but also a great idea: an online comedy called “Hi, Zombie” to try and improve relations. It’s such a good idea that Peyton commits fraud in order to fund it, something which again muddies the waters and will in no way come back to haunt her. You can see not only the threads but the themes developing.

Of course, all this pales in awesomeness next to the sublime D&D scene. But this season has got off to a very strong start.

Airplane! (1980)

"I haven't felt this awful since we saw that Ronald Reagan film."

Obviously this is a true cinematic comedy classic from what would become the Naked Gun team, a harbinger of a style of humour that will prove successful and funny, time and time again. Equally obviously, it's a spoof of the many high profile disaster movies of the '70s. And, for my hat trick of pointing out the bleeding obvious, it marks Leslie Neilsen's great career shift from square jawed straight actor to the master of deadpan absurdist comedy.

Watching it today it's very funny, of course, but also very much of its time- a world where everyone smokes, Afros abound and there are copious references to disco and a recent war which is carefully not stated to be Vietnam. The cast are universally brilliant, but the standout turns are from Lloyd Bridges and the extraordinary Nielsen. The jokes about the captain being a pederast are a little disturbing, mind.

Often, as here, there's only so much that can be said about a brilliantly successful comedy, and I admit I'm probably not getting all of the pop culture references, but this is possibly my favourite comedy film not made by the Monty Python troupe. And that's high praise indeed.