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iZombie Recap: Weird Science

iZombie

He Blinded Me … With Science
Season 2 Episode 15
Editor’s Rating 3 stars
He Blinded Me...With Science

iZombie

He Blinded Me … With Science
Season 2 Episode 15
Editor’s Rating 3 stars
Rose McIver as Liv. Photo: Diyah Pera/CW

After being off the air for four weeks, iZombie eases itself back into the season with an episode that features either its laziest case or its ballsiest one. I’m on the fence. That being said, the show makes some Major (sorry!) plot developments as it continues to turn the screws on its characters.

After rising from the dead, Blaine makes his way back to civilization clad only in a picnic blanket. After eating some brains on a bus to satiate his hunger, he heads to the morgue for more brains — and just barely misses being seen by Liv and Clive, who left to work on the case of the week. Naturally, Ravi isn’t too happy to find out that Blaine has reverted back into a zombie because it means he’ll soon die. That won’t happen, but it does raise the question: Without Blaine around, who would feed the zombies of Seattle?

While Ravi gets to work on a new version of the cure, Liv and Clive head out to investigate the murder of Dr. Eleanor Cash, a scientist whose face was doused with an accelerant and lit on fire. Whoa, that’s messed up. Anyway, let’s cut right to the chase: It was twins. See, Dr. Cash lost her job after her acne medicine severely disfigured a trial patient’s face. However, this patient had a twin sister who decided to exact revenge on Dr. Cash. Honestly, I can’t decide if I’m impressed or insulted by the writers’ willingness to have a case actually come down to twins. Either way, it turns out Sherlock Holmes was wrong: Sometimes it is twins.

However, the case’s lackluster denouement reveals just how unimportant the details really are. It basically serves to give Liv and Clive a reason to pay Vaughn Du Clark a visit while he’s hopped up on Super Max. How’d that happen? Well, Dr. Cash had used a fake name and got a job at Max Rager after she was fired from her previous job. Unfortunately, Vaughn doesn’t tell Liv and Clive anything else, so Liv, who has a science brain coursing through her, decides to go undercover at Max Rager to find out more — even though that’s exactly the sort of thing she promised Clive she wouldn’t do anymore.

So Liv dresses up as a regular living person (i.e. Rose McIver didn’t have to wear the zombie makeup she normally wears) and goes in for a job interview at Max Rager. She finds out that Dr. Cash was working in Max Rager’s not-secret basement, which requires special access. For some inexplicable reason, Liv thinks she can bypass the fingerprint scanner in the elevator and go down there. She can’t, of course, then Vaughn catches her and throws her out.

That’s not the only extreme Liv takes this week. Dr. Cash’s brain influences her to tackle her suspicions about Drake’s behavior. Time for the scientific method! She starts out by collecting data, which means buying a burner phone and placing it Drake’s car so she can track him. Eventually, her tracker leads her to Mr. Boss’s office, where she sees Drake with the drug kingpin. Her worst fears have been realized.

Ravi, who has been hard at work on a new cure with some help from Liv’s science brain, advises Liv to confront Drake in a public place. And so, they make plans to meet up at a restaurant. Little does she know, however, that Major has set his sights on Drake after Vaughn requested he take out another vampire. (Blaine gave him Drake’s name because Drake failed to warn that Mr. Boss was going to murder him.) Major abducts Drake right as he gets out of his car in the restaurant’s parking lot, leading Liv to believes she’s been stood up. This can’t be good for Major.

Meanwhile, Ravi finishes a new version of the cure — it works on one of the zombie rats. He gives Blaine a dose to be used in case of emergency, but warns him that they have no idea what the long-term effects will be. With his death slowly approaching, Blaine has become a tad bit sentimental: He warns his crew not to sell Utopium again if he dies because they wouldn’t stand a chance against Mr. Boss. And although Blaine tells his boys that there’s no point in being good, he contradicts himself and donates money to a charity. I love what they’re doing with Blaine this season. In this episode and many others, David Anders delivers one of the show’s consistently best performances.

Last but not least: There’s trouble at Max Rager. The Super Max powered zombie in the basement breaks lose and kills the one remaining scientist. As Vaughn’s daughter Rita tries to fight the zombie off with a cattle prod, he flees to the elevator, leaving her to die. Stone cold. So yeah, Vaughn is the Worst CW Father of the Year, snatching the award from Arrow’s Malcolm Merlyn. He returns to his office, locks the doors, and pours himself a drink to calm his nerves. Good luck with that — instead of dying, Rita has turned into a zombie. She begs a horrified Vaughn to let her in his office, but he refuses. She just shuffles away.

Postmortem:

  • Liv’s Meal of the Week: Brain Soup.
  • Oh, I almost forgot to mention that Clive and Dale find more brains in a freezer in Blaine’s father’s cabin. They call Dale’s friend in the FBI lab and he tells them that the first brain they sent over was human, which makes them realize someone tampered with the lab report they received.
  • “Gaylord says what?” says Vaughn, as he finds out that Major was doing the “featherbed jig” with his daughter.
  • At one point Clive comes down to the morgue and sees Clive and Liv standing around a dead rat on the table. The awkward silence is hilarious — it’s the best moment of the episode.
  • Ravi’s reaction to Liv’s disguise: “Literally, the stuff of nightmares.”

iZombie Recap: Weird Science