iZombie: Method Head Review

This iZombie review contains spoilers.

iZombie Season 2, Episode 10

iZombie was back tonight with its midseason premiere, and boy did it get meta. Much of the action revolved around a murder on the set of “Zombie High,” an in-universe TV series with a plot you can probably guess. The resulting jokes and references resulted in an enjoyable hour of television.

A televison episode about a television episode murder.

TV shows tend to do a good job when writing about TV shows. After all, its a subject close to home, one writers know well enough to both poke fun at and recreate with enough realistic elements to ground any fantastical or farcical elements. This was the case with “Method Head,” which took place largely on the set of “Zombie High.” 

Though the murder wasn’t particularly compelling, the investigation was the perfect excuse to make meta jokes. My favorite? Clive’s honest: “Zombies kind of freak me out.? Poor guy. Will he ever learn the truth?

More proof that Ravi and Liv have the best dynamic on this show.

The Ravi/Liv friendship continues to be a consistently delightful element of this show, and the scene that saw them improving with fake food whilst in the morgue was one of the funniest of the episode. It was also emblematic of their relationship. Liv may have eaten brains that imbued her with some of the personality traits of a narcissistic actor, but Ravi had no such excuse. But he is there for his best friend, no matter which brain she has eaten. When she eats the brain of an actor, by god he will do improv with her. 

Ravi may be the most important person in this zombie chaos.

Ravi’s commitment to Liv doesn’t end with improv, of course. Though he isn’t a zombie, he is in many ways the key player in this zombie madness — or arguably the most important one. He has the potential to affect great change. Or, if he is ever taken out — I would never forgive you, iZombie — Team Liv would be largely powerless to fulfill their main goal, i.e. curing zombie-ism.

This episode started out with a bit of a weird, unnecessary catch-up through the holiday season that allowed us to see Ravi breaking the news to Liv and Major that the current zombie cure is temporary, and gave us multiple scenes of Ravi, Major, and/or Liv hunting for the utopium-filled corpse buried somewhere in a non-descript field. 

This beginning proved that iZombie continues to have some problems with organically integrating its more serialized plots with its murder-of-the-week mystery. As great as it was to see our friends celebrating the holidays, it felt like it was part of an entirely different episode. One that ended when the “Zombie High” murder came into Team Liv’s lives.

The FBI is onto Blaine.

Blaine spent much of the episode having a jolly old time, which should have been a clue that he was about to face a major setback. Though he managed to remove The Yellow Lunchbox from Agent Bozzio’s site, she later identified Blaine from the Clive’s Meet Cute murder suspect sketch. The clock is seemingly ticking on Blaine’s shenanigans, though I wouldn’t count him out yet. Will he use his connection with Liv to somehow weasel his way out of this one? Or will his important to the Boss case grant him immunity?

I’d like to think that iZombieis about to ratchet up the suspense with some real consequences (a la Lowell’s death in season 1), but we’ve seen this show eschew structure-changing twists before, and we are too far from the season finale, in my opinon, for anything big like Blaine’s takedown to happen in the next few episodes.

Major is getting really good at leading a double life.

If you asked me when this show started who the most competent, devious character would be, Major would have been at the bottom of the list. Frankly, I pegged him as a total Duncan. Slowly, steadily, he has become the best character on this show. After being lied to about zombies for the entirety of last season, even when he was actively on the zombie trail, Major is now the one with all of the secrets.

More than that, he is somehow holding his own (for now) against the corporate villainy that is Max Rager, Vaughn Du Clark, and Gilda. This week, Major convinced Clark (though not Gilda, perhaps) that he was completely on Max Rager’s side, and managed to plant a recording device on Clark’s person. I’m not sure what Major’s plan is here (perhaps to go to the FBI?), but, like Ravi, Major has immense potential to affect change in the course of this zombie conspiracy/proto-apocalypse.

The FBI may be onto Major.

Of course, the FBI might come to him first. In a throwaway line at the end of the episode, Bozzio mentioned that the dog of one of the victims, aka the pooch we have come to know as Minor, has some kind of tracking device, which will presumably lead Bozzio straight to Major. Will Blaine take Bozzio out before this happens? If not, will Major be able to convince the FBI that he hasn’t been offing people? To do so, he would have to explain zombie-ism to both Clive and Bozzio — which, again, doesn’t seem like something iZombie is going to do at this point in the season.

All I know is that, for an episode that spent a lot of time making in-jokes about zombie television shows, iZombie laid the foundation for a few game-changing developments in tonight’s episode. If they choose to pull the trigger on those game-changing developments is another question altogether.