iZombie - Some Like It Hot Mess

My last season being the third, all out of sorts, it is amusing to see how the story arc involving zombie cures and Liv getting one (Blaine and Major going through their own ups and downs involving memory loss and recovery) played with emotions. Liv was always so close to the cure and like her, we as the audience, went on that roller coaster. But it wasn't meant to be: Liv was a zombie who often accompanied Clive on cases and helped him solve them by recovering memories from those whose brains she cooked in gourmet (and not so gourmet) meals. In the episode, "Some Like It Hot Mess", Liv could very well be close to the cure. Don E gets an offer for a cool million from a trust fund zombie and requests Ravi give up some of the doses. Eventually Ravi arrives at his lab and those very doses were stolen from a locked cabinet. And that one dose that Major had was given by him to a young woman he felt needed it. So poor Liv once again is so close to being human again and is left devastated. Meanwhile, Blaine's memory loss is verified as fake. Don E tells Ravi that Blaine's faking because of a phone conversation--and why not continue the ruse if it allows him to remain unaligned with Mr. Boss, separated from his past, and allowed to conduct his brain distribution to zombies without as much issue? With the love triangle of Blaine, Peyton, and Ravi very important to the series at this point in the third season, that revelation once again deprives Blaine of any future with Peyton and gives us the possibility of a Peyton and Ravi romance reunite. The personality Liv has in this episode is a scatter-brained, self-absorbed drama queen seemingly incapable of responsibility or trust...expecting the victim (dead by a hair dryer dumped in her bath) to be on time, pay her rent, behave herself professionally at all was to not know her at all. Liv being entrusted to conduct herself in the lab, even acquire ingredients for that blue substance Ravi needed to soak brains in (to help the memories that emerge to last longer than seconds), or assist Clive on cases without following her impulses to get liquored up at a club she badly wanted to "investigate" and engage in DJing proves to be a problem...Liv even loses her phone in a corpse her and Ravi were autopsying!

The episode also focuses on Major's cure, losing his memory, leaving behind letters to those he cares about because of the memory loss, and heading home. Liv on that scatter-brain has her barely able to retain attention on anything for very long, much less losing Major, and her desire to talk about how men are pigs and get all "gossipy" certainly didn't help matters. The show with all these varied personalities often valued itself on reactions to McIver and how she could just get lost in them. This episode is no different in that her irresponsible nature and prone-to-act-out behavior could be more than a bit obnoxious. The victim was helped by her attractiveness and ability to negotiate herself out of difficulty. But the use of an expensive autographed baseball got the victim killed. A lender of the victim's apartment, whose unflattering comments when questioned clearly showed a negative view of her, brought back into limelight at the end of the episode is no surprise if you watch this series with any regularity. 

Blaine, after admitting to Peyton his recovered memory and ruse, makes some of the blue brain juice at the end in some makeshift lab. Liv learns from Major that the last dose is gone, with Peyton and Ravi having to look on...the series brings you right up to the possibility of Liv finally getting that cure, only for it to be snatched away. 4/5