iZombie Season 3 Episode 4 Review: Wag the Tongue Slowly

This iZombie review contains spoilers.

iZombie Season 3, Episode 4

iZombie is really getting its Murder of the Week/Ongoing Plots ratio right this season. While some of “Wag the Tongue Slowly” was structured around the unintentional murder of an office gossip, the episode did a lot of work moving forward the larger plots that we really care about. Let’s talk iZombie Season 3…

Major’s undead health gets worse.

Major truly is the Little Character That Could. What could have been a role defined by its love interest-ness, Major has long been one of the most interesting parts of this show. While Liv’s character suffers from the inconsistencies that come with her brain-personalities, Major is a constant. Constantly running into danger to help others. Sure, going off on a mercenary mission without a dose of the zombie cure is just plain stupid, but giving his first zombie cure to Natalie is exactly the kind of selflessness we have come to expect from this character.

I would have liked to see a little bit more reaction from both Ravi and Liv when it came to Major’s potential death and/or memory loss. What is a very frightening moment for this character and this show was treated as an inconvenience by a self-pitying Ravi and as a moment of hilarity for Gossip Brain Liv. I assume iZombie is waiting to milk the angst of Major’s potential death/personality loss until later in the season, but it felt a little weird that the person who seemed the most worried about Major in this entire episode was Natalie — someone he barely knows.

For now, Major will live to see another undead day. But, with that cough getting worse and his near-suicidal levels of selflessness on the rise, who knows what’s next for this character. What I do know? He continues to be the best part of this all-around delightful show.

Peyton & Blaine get closer.

In the wake of Ravi’s poor choices, Peyton has gone running back into the arms of Sensitive!Blaine, and can you really blame her? Not only do the two have major chemistry, but Blaine is a hell of a nice guy recently — and a lounge singer to boot! When Peyton is worried that Blaine’s mean memories will be restored, she literally throws herself at him. She cares enough about this new Blaine that she doesn’t want to lose him without one last night. It’s actually pretty romantic (even though I am still not convince Blaine has really lost his memories).

It’s actually Blaine who decides they should wait. Sure, maybe this is proof that he truly is a nice guy or maybe this is proof that he never really lost his memories. If he says they should wait to knock boots until the next morning to see if his memory has been restored, he is risking nothing if his memory was never gone in the first place. Instead, he manages to make Peyton fall even harder for him. That is exactly the kind of thing Blaine would pull.

We’ll likely not know until Major has to take the cure himself. Which will not doubt come once Peyton has full-on fallen for Blaine. iZombie knows how to weave some seriously intricate long-form storytelling — and how to make each narrative step along the way delightful. This show doesn’t get enough credit for its narrative deftness.

Clive & Liv get a lead on Wally’s murder.

Meanwhile, in the hunt for the killer of Wally and his family, Liv and Clive find a clue on one of the alt-right zombie message boards that leads them to a zombie-hating gun range. While it’s unclear if the man they find there actually killed Wally and his family, it’s clear that he feels nothing for the loss of any zombie life. It’s only a matter of time before he does kill a zombie, if he hasn’t already. In fact, he tells Liv and Clive that truth to their faces, calling into question any value zombie life may have.

It’s this kind of blind, all-consuming hate that will no doubt lead Fillmore Graves to make some rash, all-consuming decisions of their own. For now, it feels like the calm before the zombie/human war. And, in its commitment to showing what the alt-right community looks like, iZombie somehow feels like one of the more relevant shows on television. You know, minus the brains.