iZombie - Zombie Bro

**/****

Season 2: Episode 2

If it couldn’t get any worse for Major he, in a moment of weakness, decides to try Utopium in a club with Ravi (experimenting with the drug purely out of testing its effects), becoming an addict. Liv still doesn’t realize her roommate is a spy for Vaughn Du Clark. Blaine initiates the potential downfall of his main drug lord competitor, Mr. Boss. Blaine also goes to his father, for whom he loathes for committing his grandfather to an institution to take his position, for “financial aid”.

The case concerns a murdered frat boy, stabbed multiple times during a frat party with an ice pick, which might just relate to a drunk driving accident.

•                 The suspects could be a college girl invited by the frat brotherhood due to her “ugliness” as a joke to earn a trophy, a college student named Chad Wolcoff (the murder victim has the same name!), and a college student who rented a specific furry costume that is quite one-of-a-kind.

I must admit that this episode just annoyed me. I could never hear the word, “Bro”, again and all would be right in my world. Ugh. While Rose McIver goes above and beyond to sell the obnoxious moron personality of the dead frat brother, Chad, after a while I was ready for her to return to normal. I was certainly happy when the murderer was finally caught because it meant that Liv would be able to get back to herself and out of that raucous caricature who appears to speak in some inebriated doofus voice and personality. Chad seems to have been nurtured by the irritating jocks of Alpha Beta, totally devoted to beer pong and securing strippers “for charity”. Liv’s face is often exhilarated when in the company of her victim’s fellow frat goofs, particularly when they are partying or gathered together to do anything else but study for classes. Reliving a distasteful mockery of stepping into the place of the other Chad during a drunk-driving seminar while inebriated or many of his immature adventures as a barely functioning dummy; Liv has that goofy smile that is all teeth with eyes quite full of elation.

Blaine has his ultimate plan in play, using a speed-freak druggie for killing clients of a major drug dealer, affluent young men, while antagonizing his zombie father (turned by Blaine!), played by Robert Knepper (Twin Peaks The Return). Blaine just up and tells him that he plans to destroy him as he did his father! Blaine’s dream is to see his father walking out of his own building with box of valuables and desk items in hand. Blaine is certainly always cooking up something to bring himself great power. All Blaine’s father can do is write him a check with plenty of zeroes. Blaine even goes to a DA he turned zombie (Blaine gets his corpse make up girl, quite the ditz, to paint him up in white to favor his old zombie self!) in order to orchestrate a coup against Mr. Boss. Blaine is a very fluidly important character always a vital factor in the show.

The love between Liv and Major is a soap opera angle consistently reinforced. Their agony is a dramatic staple, always denied despite how both feel for each other. Deprived by forces that weren’t of their choosing but nevertheless oppose them; both McIver and Buckley never fail to accentuate their desires and ache.

*I have to admit McIver looks quite fetching in body-hugging police tape.
*Glenda does get some screen time as she tries to hang around Liv as much as possible.
*Even poor Ravi can't escape the pranks of Chad's brains' influence.