iZombie: Grumpy Old Liv Recap

Synopsis:  Liv’s ostracized from her family after refusing to donate blood to her brother, but she distracts herself by taking the case of a grumpy old man who was crushed to death underneath his car. In the meantime, Blaine starts dealing utopium again while Max Rager hires Major to clean up their zom-problem (zomblem.)

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Last time we saw our favorite pale zombie and suspended our disbelief that she’d ever be able to pass for someone who hasn’t been locked in a basement with Nosferatu for the past 200 years, she refused to donate blood to save her brother during his lifethreatening surgery.

Because apparently death > zombieism.

Anyway, because Rob Thomas is a merciful demi-god, Liv’s brother was miraculously saved by the on-call doctor who happened to be O-negative and who generously decided to lend a vein before his shift.

So Liv’s brother is recovering nicely – but he won’t take any of her phone calls and he refuses to see her. Liv’s mom is pissed, too – she asks Liv if she’s been doing drugs, and honestly that would be a better out than Liv’s plaintive, “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” Yeah, it’d make it a helluva lot easier to resolve this unnecessary conflict though.

Liv has to deal, so cue murder-of-the-week: an old grumpy dude got crushed to death by his car. Liv dines on brains and discovers that the old man had plenty of enemies. From the teens who egged his house and threw bags of seeds in his yard to attract squirrels to his bitter sister-in-law, there was no shortage of potential suspects.

Near the end of the episode, Liv gets a flashback that old-man Wendell attempted to poison his neighbor’s dog. That neighbor confronted Wendell and kicked his car while Wendell was underneath – the car fell and crushed him to death.

Eh. It was an unsatisfying end, but it was also an unsatisfying episode.

In larger plot development news, it turns out that the cured zombies (Major and Blaine) can sense when other zombies are around (as demonstrated by repeated creepy, zoom-in shots of hairs raising on their arms #nothanks). Max Rager exploits this trait by hiring Major to assassinate all the zombies he can find. The company blackmails him by threatening to expose his part in the murder of the Meat Cute zombies and by threatening Liv’s life.

The only other developments this episode were that Blaine is now running a funeral home (presumably still to supply his brain business) and is dealing utopium on the side, Ravi needs more tainted utopium to make another cure, and Max Rager planted a mole to pose as Liv’s new roommate while they investigate how deep the zombie problem (zomblem) runs.