iZombie - Brother, Can You Spare a Brain?
There were parts of me dead even before I became a zombie.
Olivia eats the brains of a womanizing artist named Javier
and sees (and, more importantly, feels) a model he was pleasuring, not to mention
the boyfriend of another model he was fucking. Meanwhile the sensations of
being Javier (like his sexual interest in the ladies!) present themselves to
Olivia as does his talents as a painter! I absolutely love that addition to the
ongoing story of Olivia and its use of brains as food providing her with a
sense of purpose while also introducing her to brief glimpses through the
memories of victims that come and go through Ravi’s morgue.
Olivia responding to the personalities and talents of the
brains she eats (in the pilot she could speak Bulgarian) is just so ingenious
to me. And how they emerge, detail by detail until the “a-ha!” The kleptomania
and knowing Bulgarian in the pilot, and the artistry, sudden interest in jazz,
and awakening of attraction to Javier’s girls in the second episode; iZombie
keeps the fun surprises coming.
“What’s more meta than a zombie having a bad zombie dream?”
“Javier was having an affair.” Brief gasp. “It was pretty
hot.”
“It was like watching a flower bloom.”
“No, you gave me Fifty
Shades of Psychic and no vital details.”
Besides the investigation into Javier’s death, the episode
has Blaine DeBeers (David Anders of The Vampire Diaries), the drug-dealing
sleaze who scratched Olivia on the boat, turning her into a zombie (after
hitting on her, which included slapping her on the ass), on a slab, sitting up
like the pro wrestler, The Undertaker. It certainly takes Olivia by surprise.
He lays on some charm, taking a bit of the edge off as Olivia remembered seeing
him murder someone. Blaine explains that the guy tried to mug him. When he
later turns an older (but quite attractive) woman he seduced at a bar, and
mentions to a drug kingpin’s two goons, who had come to fetch him for their
boss, that he plans to run the city, Blaine assures the viewer that he hasn’t
seen the error of his ways. One of his ideas is to sell brains to the rich lady
he turned. Perhaps that will be his new drug of choice…brains. When examined by
Ravi, Blaine appears ready and willing to be a guinea pig. He talks a good game
with Olivia, acting as if he’s not the scumbag she saw on the boat and has been
afraid of. Olivia soon learns different, seeing him getting in the car with
drug associates he kills. Javier’s investigation, although it does get
attention, serves Olivia’s journey through her zombie conflict. The show’s
formula appears to function as exactly that. Olivia wants to keep a safe
distance, but life won’t allow her to do that. Blaine, her opposite, appears on
the verge of using his own zombie “disease” as a means to benefit him, not as
Olivia does (helping others) but to accommodate his own avarice and fulfill his
own desires. This dynamic I’m most certain will clash during the show’s run.
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