iZombie - Virtual Reality Bites

Olivia is not keen on eating the liquefied brains of an overweight hacking genius who nicknamed himself Sim Reaper, found dead on the stairs leading from his basement. It seems someone knew about his food allergy and capitalized on it. A birthday card shot out confetti containing peanut butter material. Olivia soon adopts the victim’s inability to leave his domicile, explaining why he never went anywhere. A phone call to a certain woman which sparked his ruining her life and career through hacking expertise could very well be the motive. The card delivered to the victim could very well have arrived into the victim’s home by way of donuts delivery. So the one responsible perhaps worked at one of three donut shops in the area.

Okay, so I got the episode’s newest case described and can move onto the story threads connected to the show. Jackie has been a lucrative client (and occasional lay) to Blaine but an order delivery gone wrong (and the inability to fight her brains-hunger) causes her to attack the kid that brought her the food. The body dump leads to the delivery kid being found and sent to the morgue where Ravi is performing his forensic analysis…obviously sans head. When Babineaux arrives at Blaine’s restaurant with a picture of the kid, he realizes that Jackie killed him. That cannot be tolerated. So Jackie will have a visitor at her condo sending Sarah-Jane Redmond off the show. Besides the occasional appearance, though Jackie was more or less just a client and victim of Blaine’s. That he’d drill her head was quite a send off. Important to that scene with Babineaux is how Blaine was trying to lure him into the cutting area as his main cook has a hatchet ready to kill him! A key phone call from Olivia to Babineaux alters that course. It is that little scene that tells you Blaine is always ready to kill anyone that might ruin his operation. But truly how long can Blaine conduct such macabre behavior???

Olivia is to date Lowell, but the introduction of the agoraphobia leaves her hardly able to walk outside the walls of her home! Lowell eventually arrives after she calls him, having to regretfully cancel. They share conversation about Major, his no longer getting to perform live (due to the zombie mode that interrupts because of an increase in adrenaline), trying to adjust to being a zombie, and relationship issues. They almost kiss. But work interferes and Lowell leaves her to it. The end does forward this along a bit as Olivia decides she must not “let time pass her by” (visit from mother bringing soup because she had heard her daughter was “sick”) and meets Lowell as he’s leaving his music studio. Sharing a kiss, this seems to progress a romance certain to come to a close at the end of the first season. At the least it allows Olivia to have a life outside of eating brains, helping Babineaux solve crimes, performing autopsies, eating Cheetos, and drinking hot sauce while watching crap on the Telly.

The main humor of the episode derives of Olivia’s videogame skills, gained from the victim’s brains, as she tries to find the killer, potentially another player portraying another character in this War of Warcraft tradition. Ravi is a gamer, passionate and ridiculously detailed in the description of characters, weapons, and levels, sharing player strategy with Olivia. Olivia rolled her eyes and dismissed all of this, but once her victim’s influence is attracted, she’s full-bore gamer! But her suspect is a 14 year old kid in New York City, so that is a dead end!

The certainty of the episode is that the victim was a troll and nuisance. He could hack into pretty much anything and use his skills to destroy anyone that pissed him off. Olivia gains those skills to log on to the game. He was hated by the online community for his abuse. There was a website celebrating Sim’s demise. That he was a puffer fish on his stairs, stinking up the basement, couldn’t have happened to a better guy.

Major gets stitched up after his encounter with Blaine’s “Candyman” bruiser by Ravi. He is determined to find out what happened to Jerome, while Olivia correctly finishes what Ravi started. Meanwhile Major’s job is that of a Social Worker. I didn’t see that coming. He helps youths, many foster kids. He learns from one of the kids that the skate park has recordings of skateboarders all the time, which motivates him to look for the Candyman. What he also finds out is that Candyman is associated with Blaine. This photo of the two is shown to Olivia by Ravi. The plot thickens…