Last night’s iZombie did a lot to define the rules of how brains affect Liv and I appreciate seeing that focus on worldbuilding. I have mixed feelings about the results. In “The Exterminator”, Liv eats the brains of a hit man and it makes her cold and indifferent like him. Meanwhile, she and Ravi find someone who’s gone full zombie, thanks to some kids who were trying to make a movie and ended up catching zombie footage that they posted to Facebook. Ravi’s google image alert for “Seattle zombie” paid off. Ravi hopes they can rehabilitate the zombie, but things don’t look good.
These two plots come to a head in the most important scene of the episode. Ravi falls into the hole where they were keeping the zombie and she starts to attack him. Liv takes a moment to make a calculated decision, then jumps in and kills the zombie. This particular sequence, as well as the rest of the episode, establish that although the brains she eats deeply affect Liv, she can let her real personality break through. This is good to know, but I’m still not sure how I feel about her being jerked around by this device.
Just like we saw her try to win her fiance back for the first time last week under the influence of brains that made her more passionate, this episode gives us the major plot point of her killing someone (even if they were a zombie) for the first time. Although we see Liv dealing with true guilt afterwards, it still feels like a convenient pass that she was feeling especially apathetic at the time. I couldn’t help wanting to know how a true, unaffected Liv would react to the difficult situation.
For the most part, this was yet another solid episode. The banter is good and they clearly know how to write strong procedural episodes. Blaine continued his storyline and he’s definitely looking like a strong season long (and possibly series long) villain.
