iZombie: Recap of Episode 1.05 – Flight of the Living Dead; First Look at Episode 1.06 – Virtual Reality Bites
Matt Molgaard
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The murder case in this week’s “iZombie” Episode 1.05, “Flight of the Living Dead,” is introduced in the opening frames, wherein we see a group of skydivers consuming shots of alcohol seconds before leaping from a plane. It looks like a blast until we see that one of the skydivers didn’t make it; she was impaled by a large tree branch on the way down.
Liv and Ravi are on the scene before we know it, Liv reminiscing about her days as a normal human being and Ravi humoring her unorthodox thoughts. Despite the gruesome scene, the two are lighthearted, exchanging goofy banter in which we hear some lingo that will have pop culture fanatics chuckling. A phone call from Liv’s roommate, Peyton, comes in, and the undead crime fighter learns that the woman in the tree is a young lady named Holly, who was a college buddy of the two young women.
Major makes an early appearance at the police station, where he approaches Clive about his missing friend Eddie and his other buddy who’s now gone missing as well, Jerome. Clive is limited in what he can do due to the fact that he works Homicide, not Missing Persons. Major isn’t too comforted by Clive’s reluctance to look into it, but he seems to understand the man’s position. And the fact that Clive lets Major know he will do what he can instills a hint of hope in the man.
It’s a trip to the morgue for Liv and Ravi, who are now conducting an autopsy on Holly. Liv has to know what went wrong during that jump, and Ravi isn’t about to stand in the way of the woman and her brain-eating habits. This guy is damn supportive, and he’s by Liv’s side all the way. While he may not be the heroic stud of the show, he’s a shining light amongst an ensemble of memorable characters. The guy is a show-stealer, plain and simple.
After work in Liv’s apartment she and her roommate talk old times with their former – and now deceased – sorority sister. The moment helps to paint this week’s victim as truly human, which we didn’t get to see much initially as she only had about 15 seconds of screen time. While talking, Liv watches a video of her old friend and sees someone familiar, Lowell Casey, who was present at the crime scene, who’d been in the plane jumping with Holly. A vision strikes her and she sees him on said plane, losing his cool, screaming at Holly. And just like that we’ve got our first major clue. As we’ve already come to expect, Liv heads directly to Clive’s office, where she insists he look into the case, which still appears to be a horrible accident and little more. Clive, who’s come to trust in Liv’s strange ability and reliable third eye, agrees to bring Lowell in for questioning.
Lowell shows up at the police station, and Clive and Liv question the man. He wasn’t near the drop zone immediately after the jump, and he was seemingly absent from the scene for a full 30 minutes. He’s looking a little suspicious, especially after Clive discovers that all the footage from the helmet cams worn during the jump has mysteriously been destroyed. The question is quite obvious: Is someone covering for Lowell? Clive sets out to find the truth by bringing in some of Lowell’s friends and co-jumpers, although he doesn’t learn all too much about the man, save for the fact that his recent behavior has been a little out of the ordinary. He does, however, learn that Carson, one of Lowell’s friends, is a little suspicious; a vision from Liv casts new suspicion on this new suspect.
We soon learn that Holly had GHB, the date rape drug, in her system at the time of death. By the time she collided with that tree branch, she was completely out of her head. We know that only minutes had passed before she consumed the drug, which we can presume was in the shot she took before leaping. Just like that the case is greenlit as a homicide, and Clive and Liv are now officially on it.
Liv heads to Carson’s place for Holly’s memorial. Major is there, as he too went to college with the woman. Everyone is a bit down for obvious reasons, and one of those damn slide shows triggers more emotion. Liv isn’t exactly welcomed by Holly’s friends, but she puts them in their place quickly, informing them that she was once Holly’s friend, too, and she may be the best she had considering one of them drugged the woman moments before she jumped from a plane. Liv snoops around a bit and finds some prescription pads pre-signed tucked away in one of Carson’s bedroom drawers. He’s looking more suspicious by the moment, but we know that means little with “iZombie.”
Liv runs into Lowell, and we get an interesting revelation: He knows that Liv is a zombie, and he knows that because he is a zombie himself! It’s a shock to Liv, but she’s exceptionally attracted to the man, who pours the flirtation on real thick. Lowell briefly details his life as a zombie, and he fills her in on some of the happenings of the plane the day Holly died. Lowell began to turn into the rage-beast while on the plane, which explains Liv’s vision of the man getting angry before the jump. Lowell tells her that it was anxiety from the jump and also lets her know that’s why he was AWOL for half an hour after the jump. He was stuck in a murderous outburst and had to keep himself away from those with flesh to munch on.
Clive makes a trip to the skate park where Jerome and Eddie were last seen. He pokes around a little bit and discovers that a whole hell of a lot of people have gone missing around those parts as of late. Far more than he’d realized. His eyes are now open to the potential reality he faces here, which is a slew of new potential murder cases waiting to be delved into.
Carson finds himself once more in the interrogation room, where he’s confronted by the bogus prescriptions. Clive and Liv push the man into a corner, but just as he seems to be all but busted, we learn that Eliza, one of the jumpers who has also been romantically involved with Carson, is the likely culprit behind the delivery of the date rape drug. She has personal and professional motivations for eliminating Holly. But when Clive heads out to pick Eliza up, she’s nowhere to be found, and from the look of the house she made an extremely quick exit. In fact, it looks as though there could have potentially been foul play involved in her recent and sudden departure.
Fast forward and we learn that Clive has unearthed the physical evidence to tie Eliza to the murder. With the case wrapped, Clive wants to probe a little bit on the Missing Persons cases, but when he confronts his chief about the problem, he’s again berated and shut down by the man, who we see pouring hot sauce into his beverage, a tell-tale sign exhibited by the undead. There may be a good reason the head honcho is such a douche bag: He’s likely been getting his brain supply from Blaine and the fruits of his side gig. He obviously wouldn’t want to disrupt that.
As the episode reaches its conclusion, we return to the morgue, where Lowell pops up to pursue Liv. Again he applies some stellar romantic chatter. He’s chasing her at this point, but she’s very, very receptive, and for the first time since Episode 1.01 she looks to be feeling alive. There’s a future brewing between these two, and it will no doubt be explored in future episodes.
The multi-layering displayed in the first four episodes of The CW’s latest genre foray isn’t quite as pronounced in “Flight of the Living Dead”; however , there’s a valid reason for that: The episode was clearly designed to introduce Liv’s new love interest. That was the focus of the episode right from the jump, and it works to create some curiosity. Can Liv rediscover some serious passion? Is Lowell a decent zombie, or is he as shady as Blaine? How significant of a role will this new character play in the story, and where the hell has he been getting his brains from? We’ll know soon enough.
Ready for next week? Here’s a preview of Episode 1.06, “Virtual Reality Bites.”
“iZombie” Episode 1.06 – “Virtual Reality Bites” (airs 4/21/15)
SHALL WE PLAY A GAME? — Liv (Rose McIver), Clive (Malcolm Goodwin), and Ravi (Rahul Kohli) work together to investigate the murder of a computer-hacker. Liv inherits intense agoraphobia after consuming his brains along with mad skills at computer gaming. This delights Ravi, who urges her to play and offers to help her from inside the game as they continue to search for the killer.
Meanwhile, Blaine (David Anders) becomes acquainted with someone close to Liv. Robert Buckley also stars. Dermott Downs directed the episode written by Gloria Calderon Kellett.
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