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iZombie: Five, Six, Seven, Ate!

"I'd say 'small world' but it's a walled-in city."

The trouble this week doesn’t stem from the show’s issue with biting off more than it can chew, but rather from an inability to blend disparate stories that vary wildly in nature and tone. What it does do right is approach these different plots with a genuine and heartfelt attitude that helps to make this episode far more palatable than the two that came before it.

This episode sees the characters split between three different plot strands. The first follows Liv and Clive, who are caught up in the death of two competing dancers, so much so that they end up taking their audition spot in a televised dance show to solve their murder. The case work here isn’t all that interesting, nor is the mystery, but it does lead to some of the strongest comedy of the season. It also seemed like Rose McIver and Rahul Kohli had an absolute blast, most notably in those hilarious montages of dance rehearsals in the morgue, with a surprisingly nimble footed Clive assisting them.

Though he assists in a lot of the investigation this week, Clive is more caught up in this episode’s second major plot; the discovery that Michelle, the cop Clive dated before he reunited with Bozzio, is pregnant. The real problem; she doesn’t know if Clive is the father or not. This whole drama segment felt like it was lifted right out of a different series, and at this point in the show feels completely gratuitous and unnecessary. What I liked about it was that it used Bozzio rather effectively, and had both Clive and Bozzio making rational decisions, when most shows would have them do the complete opposite just to make the situation more entertaining. I honestly don’t know where this is going yet, but I’m willing to give it time to develop.

Perhaps all this talk about raising kids in a walled city may eventually lend itself to Peyton and Major’s struggles to manage the social discord that has now made its way into the schools of New Seattle. This is one element the writers approached in the right way. The plot wasn’t trying to say more than it should, and the resonance of what transpired on screen wasn’t being forced down our throats like some of the other political elements this season.

Like Clive and Bozzio, Peyton and Major dealt with their own situation smartly and efficiently, bar a small initial butting of heads. Though they initially struggle to find the right way to deal with zombie kids with nobody around to control their worst impulses, Liv offers them the perfect home with her own wayward orphans. It’s a smart conclusion, and one that makes great use of these characters’ roles in New Seattle, but it felt like it belonged in a completely different episode. Renegade Liv is a world away from the co-dependent mess she was in every other scene.

Plus

CHICS power is starting to seep into the schools, with certain teachers starting to believe their bigoted ideas. They probably were the ones who suggested that zombie kids are separated from the human kids.

Rose McIver has got some serious moves. Props to Malcolm Goodwin, too.

He Said, She Said

Ravi: "This might be weird but I think Clive just got me pregnant."
Clive: "Let's not joke about that right now."

Taken one-by-one, each of the stories here worked well. But taken as part of larger chapter, they fail to really work. At least the episode gives me comfort that iZombie can make proper use of this zombie/human situation without it seeming too try hard.

6 out of 10 brain salsa bowls.

2 comments:

  1. Rose was almost gratuitously cute in a red wig, especially since I was expecting her to put on a "wig" that was just her real hair (as she has in the past). And I'm not surprised she can dance; one of the de rigueur things to do when you have a pretty daughter is send her to dance lessons.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Liv put cilantro in her brain salsa, and now she's dead to me.

    Some things can't be forgiven.

    ReplyDelete

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