In the sixteenth episode of the second season of iZombie, I CONTINUE TO BE UNABLE TO DEAL WITH THIS SHOW. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch iZombie.Â
Trigger Warning: For talk of sex work and bias against sex work/strippers.
This show is full of secrets, and now that they’re finally coming to light, everything is a horrible, horrible mess. Maybe the ultimate theme of iZombie is that we should always tell the truth? MAYBE.
Blaine
I’ll start with the least shocking element to this episode, which is a huge thing to say because this episode just escalated the plot INTO ANOTHER UNIVERSE. Plus, it’s not like I could have ever anticipated or guessed what Ravi’s second cure would do to Blaine. HIS MEMORY IS GONE. COMPLETELY. And it started slow, then declined to the point where all his memory was gone. How? How does that even happen? Can you fix it? Because Ravi is gonna have to come up with a fix soon or Don E. and Chief will ruin Blaine’s plan to lay low. My god, THERE IS TOTALLY GOING TO BE ANOTHER SHOWDOWN BETWEEN MR. BOSS AND BLAINE AND IT’LL BE THEIR FAULT.
This is bad. SO SO SO BAD. Bad for Peyton, too, since her case relies on Blaine, who can’t remember anything at all! Granted, she got a huge victory thanks to Liv, but oh my god, this show just pulled the rug out from everything again.
It’s so fun, I swear.
Pour Some Sugar, Zombie
I think the writers wanted to poke fun at stripper culture, and in the early scenes, it felt clear that the show was criticizing men and how gross they can be. But in the latter half of the episode, I saw the focus as shifting to strippers themselves, and the narrative came across as a little too cruel for my tastes. Plus, this is another instance of the show giving a black woman a negative characterization, so it’s getting kind of grating to see this pop up again and again. As for the story itself, there’s some humor derived from the setting, such as Liv giving Peyton a lap dance and being… well, not that great at it. But as for all the side characters, they exist here for comedic effect for the most part. We’re supposed to laugh at how catty and shallow they are. (Though I did like that nod to the fact that a lot of women choose to pay off college debt. THANKS, AMERICAN COLLEGE SYSTEM.)
It’s not my favorite zombie brain gimmick of the show, but I might also be harsher on it because everything else is just so much better in comparison.
Love and Truth
Actually, maybe this show really is about honesty. So much of what drives the drama and suspense in “Pour Some Sugar, Zombie†comes from the fact that Drake and Major are hiding huge secrets from other people, though in a neat twist, one is terrible while the other is ironically positive.
I’ll start with Liv, who spends most of the episode wondering why she ever trusted Drake. From her perspective, it’s obvious that Drake was a criminal and actively lying to her about who he was. (I mean, technically, he was, but OH GOD.) So, as she navigates the messy world that comes with the case she’s on, all she sees is how love and disloyalty go hand in hand. Love makes you do naïve things. It makes you betray your friends. It gives you poor judgment. It’s confirmation bias: everything she sees supports her idea that Drake was not worth the time she gave him.
EXCEPT SURPRISE, HE WAS AN UNDERCOVER COP AND YOU WERE WRONG LIV AND EVERYTHING IS HEARTBREAK AND SADNESS AND THIS SHOW REPEATEDLY LOVES TO RUIN ME.
But come on, there’s nothing more earth-shattering than Ravi’s plot line in “Pour Some Sugar, Zombie.†I’ll argue that he’s also the most loyal character in all of iZombie, and the man has defended Major at his lowest points. As he slowly discovers Major’s secret, you can see the (justified) resentment seep out of him, resulting in the teary-eyed anger we see at the end of the episode. Ravi’s a natural investigator, too; he constantly takes in information, processes it, and spits out a conclusion. Therefore, all the little bits of hints towards Major’s secret were always going to collate into the truth. I knew it was over as soon as Ravi spotted Minor in the paper and the dates Minor was found and gave away too coincidental.
And perhaps Major will be relieved that someone knows the truth, that he can finally tell someone how Max Rager’s been blackmailing him. I could actually see that as a positive thing! But what of Dale Bozzio? She’s close to pinning everything on Major, too, and even if Ravi knows… god, this is a mess. OH, AND LET’S ADD TO THAT THE FACT THAT MAJOR JUST TURNED BACK INTO A ZOMBIE.
What an entertaining mess.
The video for “Pour Some Sugar, Zombie†can be downloaded here for $0.99.
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