iZombie: Virtual Reality Bites

"Well, I had to escape the chilly, wet, depressing London weather. So, Seattle, naturally."

That quote only narrowly beat "Nice shag". Anyway...

This week's murderer victim is a right nasty piece of work, an online troll called the "Sim Reaper", and he so deserved his fiendishly clever nut allergy-related death at the hands of the brother of a girl he drove to suicide. It's an entertaining murder mystery, as always, and in the end a rather poignant one. It also involves an online role playing game (I prefer tabletop, preferably with dice, THAC0 and saving throws. I'm old school like that) which enables Ravi and Major to bond a bit.

Meanwhile, Liv starts to date Lowell but it's early days and rather awkward. Blaine (quelle surprise) is behind the kidnappings. And Liv's younger brother is at risk...

By this point I'm well and truly hooked.

iZombie: Liv and Let Clive

"You got your ass kicked by a girl. Get over it."

This is an episode which needed to come early in the season; any later and we'd know and trust Clive too well to believe he could have dodgy relations with criminals. Instead we get an episode which deepens his character; he spent a year undercover and was deeply affected by it.

We also have more moustache-twirling by Blaine along the usual lines. His extortion victim, Jackie, actually fancies him. Bastard. Blaine is already a superbly written and acted villain.

The plot is, as ever, a superbly crafted mystery and che character development is proving to be first class; it'll be interesting to see what happens now that Major has moved in with Ravi. 

iZombie: Brother, Can You Spare a Brain?

"What's more meta than a zombie, the  having a bad zombie dream?"

Time to return to iZombie to complete the first season; then it's True Blood again. I'll then do the second season of iZombie, the final season of True Blood, and then I'll be back to finally finish Buffy and Angel. Promise! Obviously there will also be films.

Anyway... this second episode features an excellent murder mystery which follows all the rules and features her off of Scrubs, but it also develops the characters and format in a way which is extremely promising. 

The conceit of Liv acquiring traits of those whose brains she eats is brilliant and potentially a cause for endless fun; here she becomes artistic and says things like "There was something historic about his chin". I love this series' humour, visual wit and style, characters and brain eating generally but this is a unique selling point.

Interestingly, we meet Blaine, the first other zombie and a somewhat cynical one. I love their conversation about terminology and "full-on zombie mode". Blaine became a zombie that same night and has visions too; interesting. Unfortunately he's a baddie who makes rich people zombie and sells them brains for big money. We'll be seeing more of him then.

Liv's developing relationship with her ex-fiancé, Major (odd first name!) is clearly something to watch; here, her new found artistic enthusiasm helps them to bond over jazz. Other cool things include a dog-friendly Internet cafe called "Mutt Bowl Surfers"; Gibby Haynes would approve. So far I'm really enjoying this series.