iZombie - Thug Death

I have to say I did surprisingly like the opening episode of the fifth season of iZombie (I am a little behind due to other shows and such grabbing my attention), “Thug Death” mainly because there are clear signs that forces are at work to deteriorate relations between humans and zombies. Blaine, as expected, will always return to his psychopathic ways (one of five border agents refuses to “do business” with him due to a zombie attack on a human woman and doesn’t return home, outside Seattle, sending him brains to service the zombies of the city), so when he threatens to hunt humans in the city again (not outright, but he gets his point across to Liv and Clive when he visits them at the police station, a wad of cash (ten grand he says) in tow. A major adversary, Dolly Durkins (Jennifer Irwin), who fully and vocally opposes zombies and promotes that any of them that commits crime deserves the guillotine although Commander Lillywhite has outlawed such executions. Dolly is on Johnny Frost’s interview show (he gets a bit too touchy-feely with Peyton) directly initiating discourse with Peyton (mayor is thrown around as her potential next position in the city) over human and zombie relations. The murder of the woman by zombies who tear her apart at a gas station is the catalyst in the city undergoing tensions between humans and zombies. Dolly is overt in her negative feelings for zombies, and later in the episode she commissions a suicide mission, using a grieving father still in mourning over the loss of his children to zombies, orchestrating a van drive (the vehicle loaded with explosive) pointed towards a major checkpoint, protected by Fillmore-Graves officers. Commander Lillywhite is there with a few officers when the van motors ahead at full speed.

Continuing in this season is the cutoff of Seattle from the rest of the country, and how citizens from the other states seek to gain illegal access into the walled-off city. Sexually-abused orphans from Sacramento hope to use Liv’s underground to get into the city. Border patrol agents willing to look the other way for a price to get brains into the city for Blaine is also part of the episode as he warns five of them through threats against them and their family. Brain shipments are something Lillywhite insists Blaine makes sure to maintain…when his fortune and luxury are threatened, Blaine is not one to allow agents to undermine him and rebel. While Liv sends one of her underground “transits” to find the young man she considers the right candidate to gain access to Seattle, two other kids hoping to join them throws a monkey wrench into those plans. Baron (Francis Capra) is to bring Oliver (Matthew Nelson-Mahood), with only one fake ID available, not anticipating two teenage girls to expect to come along. On a bus, a passenger tips off the driver that they are hiding in the baggage compartment.

Instead of Liv getting to mimick some stereotype in this episode, Ravi eats the brains of a thug (hence, the title) and takes on his personality. He’s the in-your-face, crude, abrasive street tough, wearing leather gloves, the ole leather driver cap, leather jacket, just looking for a fight if someone crosses his ire. Peyton, particularly, doesn’t like Ravi in this persona, as he balks at her for cutting her hair without his permission, also driving up to the station to confront Johnny Frost over his handsy treatment of Peyton on his show. When a new doctor, Dr. Collier (Quinta Brunson), speaks to Ravi, she speaks about the cure for zombies through the use of brains that are rare to sick teenagers with a particular disease. Ravi is mortified at the thought of kids being murdered for having that disease for their brains, pleading with Collier not to tell the CDC board of medical scientists. She had mentioned the potential of a cure but relents at Ravi’s urging. Is this a close call or merely delaying the inevitable?

With Clive looking for Bozzio some brand of chocolate and Liv more or less at his desk or investigating the case about the missing woman who was killed by the two zombies, these two are actually not as featured in the first episode of this fifth season as I was expecting. Ravi, instead, really got a lot of screen time, more or less lost in his temporary persona of street tough...his seesawing back and forth between his sweet coroner trying to convince Collier not to tell her peers about the cure and the nasty thug speaking obtusely, this episode does allow him to take center stage instead of Liv. 

This is considered part one of two, with the To Be Continued at the end when the husband of the zombie victim finds her things in the last area her cellphone pinged. 

[2.5/5]