iZombie: Even Cowgirls Get The Black and Blues Review

This iZombie review contains spoilers.

iZombie: Season 2, Episode 4

I wasn’t expecting he Major/Liv stuff to consistently be the best part of an all-around great season 2 of iZombie, but this show continues to deliver some near-unbearable angst when it comes to this star-crossed couple.

Major needs help.

In tonight’s episode, Major finally admits to Liv that he needs (so much) help — but only after a horrible scene in which Liv puts her heart on the line and tells Major that she needs to let him go and Major more or less slams the door in her face. Good move for her. Bad moment for an increasingly spiraling Major.

It is so fitting that Major’s breaking point later comes when a former youth he helped recognizes him while he is trying to buy drugs. Major’s breaking point isn’t zombie murder. It isn’t his drug problem. It isn’t even Liv letting him go. (Those these all no doubt play a part.) It is the confrontation with the person he used to be, the person who tried to help others, that really does him in.

It’s hard to say how much Major will confess to Liv about the extent of his problems, but at least he is letting her in. Given that we still have a handful of episodes until the midseason finale, I wonder if iZombie won’t slow burn Major’s reveal even further, letting Major divulge a half-truth (i.e. his drug problem) and not the source of the problem (his current zombie-murdering gig for Max Rager). The drug problem is just a symptom; Max Rager is much more potentially devastating.

Blaine and Peyton cross paths.

And the result is surprisingly pleasant. When Peyton brings Blaine in to help break open her larger case of bringing down the Utopium business in town, Blaine trades information for immunity. And they flirt? It weirdly works. Blaine is a terrible person and obviously has ulterior motives, but these are two characters I never expected to see together in this context and the result is a lot of fun. 

Elsewhere in the episode, we get an amazing reunion scene between Peyton and Liv. iZombie doesn’t draw out the drama. Peyton has forgiven Liv. She misses her, and she understands why she lied to her about everything. It is the kind of break that Liv deserves a little more often and, especially with all of the Liv/Major drama going down in tonight’s ep, was smart storytelling. One can only handle so much angst, you know?

Liv and Clive solve a country murder.

In this week’s Murder I Don’t Really Care About, But That Entertains Me Because Brains, Liv eats the brain of an aspiring country singer. Clive and she eventually crack the case, discovering that the murderer didn’t even know Lacey, but was trying to escape after having committed a different murder. As per usual, the best part of this murder-of-the-week element came in Liv’s assumption of the deceased’s personality traits. This time, she takes on Lacey’s love of music, and we get a lovely scene of Liv singing her feelings about Major to a crowd of strangers (and Ravi) at an open mic night. It reminded me so much of the Veronica Mars moment that had Veronica serenading a group of entitled rich boys from her high school with “One Way or Another.” Sure, the tone was so different, but the result is the same: this protagonist (and this show) rocks.