iZombie season 2 discussion thread

[kitik]

Season 2 has already started! Quick turnaround from season 1, but CW is obviously happy with the show's performance.

I can't believe it took me a few days to watch the season premiere. Suffice it to say, SPOILERS for the season premiere lie ahead, so stop now if you've been slacking like me.



Oh man, grumpy old man Liv was great. They broke out a fantastic personality for the premiere. She had me laughing a bunch of times throughout the episode. Grumpy old man is surely going to be one of the best Liv's of the whole season.

They started off with a bang too, as this was a fine episode. It was nice to see the followup with Liv's family, though she really should have flat out said something like "my blood was already rejected for transfusion, I cannot reveal why". Or something like that. It could have gone better. But one of the better parts of the series last season (actually just a few months ago) was Clive actually figuring a lot of crimes out without overly relying on Liv's visions. And both Clive and Liv figured some things out tonight about the guy with the dog, so we're off to a good start.

The scenes at the end with the two reveals weren't terribly surprising though. The odds were pretty good Major was the one being sold on a new "job" by that energy drink guy. And by the simple fact that they didn't show a clear camera view of the roommate right away, you had to think it was the other new character we saw this episode. So it looks like Peyton won't be appearing too much this season, if at all. Sad to see her go, but my initial impression is that Liv may have actually found a new roommate that was just as hot if not even hotter than the old one.

As for Major, it really shouldn't take more than an episode or three for him to pop in to Liv's and meet her new roommate. One would hope that he'd immediately warn Liv, but we'll see what thw writers have planned for that angle. He also needs to tell Liv to never say anything remotely suspicious on the phone ever again. Damn energy drink NSA.

 

[Sto-Vo-Kory]

Cool idea that the cure imbues the recipient with a "Zombie-sense" detection ability.

Seems like they reduced Liv's paleness this season. She looked more human-colored in the premiere, though maybe I'm misremembering her appearance from last year.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I was entertained. Liv is great fun, and all the developments are interesting. iZombie remains in my DVR list for another season!

 

[Christopher]

Oh man, grumpy old man Liv was great. They broke out a fantastic personality for the premiere. She had me laughing a bunch of times throughout the episode. Grumpy old man is surely going to be one of the best Liv's of the whole season.

I'm afraid I can't agree. Playing the old man's casual racism as a joke was a serious misfire. It was in poor taste and not at all funny. Clive shouldn’t have been so forgiving of it, and it shouldn't have been treated as some kind of harmless comic embarrassment. It was pointless to put that in there if it wasn’t going to have some impact.

But I do agree it's implausible that Liv couldn’t come up with an excuse for not giving blood to her brother. There are legitimate health reasons for not being able to give blood. Surely Ravi could’ve forged some kind of medical documents saying she had hepatitis at the time or something. They’ve had the whole between-seasons break to concoct a cover story that wouldn’t destroy her relationship with her family.

 

[dansigal]

So I like this show, but I can't fully get behind it, mainly because of the whole "Liv takes on a different personality each episode" thing. I feel like if the main character is a slightly different person each episode, then I'm never really able to get to know the main character. And if I can't get to know the main character, I can't really care about them that much, and if I can't care about the main character, it's hard to care about the show.

 

[kitik]

I'm afraid I can't agree. Playing the old man's casual racism as a joke was a serious misfire.

The second Clive responded to that by saying "I'm going to do my best to forget you ever said that", I immediately substituted Clive for the viewers.

I almost wonder if they initially had something even worse there (because they made the point a few times throughout the episode that the guy was racist, so there may have been more), and what we actually saw was the "toned down" version. Because by the sounds of it, that guy was probably even more of a racist than what we heard throughout that episode.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

God forbid a show try to be edgy these days.

 

[kitik]

Hilarious episode, bro.

But wow, downer of an ending, bro.

 

[Greg Cox]

Fun episode.

"He's a Seattle institution--like the Monorail or salmon tossing."

I laughed out loud at that one.

 

[shapeshifter]

TOGA! TOGA! TOGA!

 

[Christopher]

So is this whole season going to be about Liv embodying obnoxious, one-dimensional caricatures? Stereotyped hateful old guy, stereotyped dumb frat boy? I'm not comfortable with that. I'd prefer there to be some more depth and nuance to the personalities she absorbs. And maybe for them to have a less drastic transformative effect on Liv herself. It's hard for her to have a developing character arc of her own when she keeps getting turned into these broad, exaggerated personality types.

In season 1, the new viewpoints she absorbed generally helped her gain a new perspective on her own life. I'm not sure that's really happening here. In the premiere, she sort of learned from everyone hating her as the old guy that it was a mistake to isolate herself from the people around her. But what did she learn from being the callous, stupid frat boy?

And why would Ravi think it was good science to buy some drugs in a club and just use them there? He should've analyzed them first, to make sure they weren't tainted, and only used them in controlled conditions. He should've known he couldn't trust himself to record his notes into his voicemail, so he should've done it at home where he could video-record it (what's the verb for that now that film and tape are both obsolete?). That was a pretty stupid plan he had.

Then again, I wasn't too bright myself this week. How did I not piece it together the moment it was revealed that the victim and his namesake often got mistaken for each other?

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I liked the frat bro episode. Pretty funny, and some cute lines and pranks. Liv's crime scene tape costume was great. Also, nice parallel between the frat partying and Ravi and Major tripping on Utopium, and neat to see Blaine's dad.

 

[kitik]

Oh, I didn't know you joined the Solved Crimes Squad.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Those 3 thousand dollar dresses Liv was wearing this week, didn't look half as good as that police tape.

 

[kitik]

Actually I thought those dresses looked pretty damn good too. (Though crime scene tape also worked well.)

Steven Weber's daughter also looked mighty good. No way could Major resist that. Interesting that she is not 100% on board with her father's plans. Or at least she didn't know about all his dalliances. As for Major, holy smokes, he's doing some bad bad things. I know some people were assuming that it's a fakeout, and he's not killing them, but if he's stashing them somewhere, then why would he have the dog?

I know some people may complain about another simple exaggerated cliche character, but hey, they work. The first three have been great this season.

 

[Greg Cox]

So, how long before Liv eats a dead sci-fi fans brain and turns into one of us? Lord knows there are enough fans in Seattle . . ...

"Is that . . .Klingon?"

 

[Christopher]

I know some people may complain about another simple exaggerated cliche character, but hey, they work. The first three have been great this season.

They don't work for me. It's all just one-dimensional caricatures. Were they all this superficial and cartoony last year? Her every persona so far this season been totally obnoxious, shallow, and unlikeable, and I'm getting sick of her going around being annoying all the time. Not only that, but it's boring to watch Liv continue to embody characters with no depth or substance or real humanity. If you're going to do a show in which the protagonist takes on a different persona every week, then those personas should at least be people who are worth getting to know, people whose lives are interesting and complex and whose stories are worth telling. But all we're getting so far this season are one-note, one-joke stereotypes.

 

[Saga]

if Liv ate the brains of nice, normal, everyday people then it would be uninteresting to watch.

 

[Christopher]

if Liv ate the brains of nice, normal, everyday people then it would be uninteresting to watch.

Oh, come on, that's a straw man. Obviously it is possible to make fictional characters interesting without making them broad, cartoony stereotypes. Indeed, one-dimensional stereotypes are uninteresting to watch. That's my problem. I have no reason to care about Cartoonishly Racist Old Creep or Cartoonishly Stupid and Sexist Frat Boy or Cartoonishly Shallow and Bitchy Housewife. There is nothing remotely interesting about characters who have no personality or substance beyond a single exaggerated trait. Why couldn't we have had, say, an elderly man whose surface bitterness masked a deep-rooted loneliness and grief at the death of all his loved ones, or a frat boy who acted obnoxious and sexist because he was afraid to come out of the closet, or a rich housewife who obsessed over her clothes and makeup because she deeply loved her husband and was afraid he was losing interest as she aged? It's not that hard to add complexity and depth and sympathetic qualities to characters. Just write them like individual human beings rather than generic "types."

This is supposed to be a show about getting into other people's heads. And that's how good writing works. You don't just treat characters as stereotypes defined by how they act on the outside. You get into their heads, see things through their eyes, feel what they feel, understand the hidden motivations beneath the surface behavior. You identify with them so you can portray their emotions and reactions authentically. It's about empathy. By the very nature of this show, its writing should be defined by empathy for the murder victims, by viewing the world through their eyes. But that's not what we're getting, except on the most superficial level.

 

[kitik]

This is supposed to be a show about getting into other people's heads. And that's how good writing works.

I'll point out that there was a very short break between Seasons 1 and 2. They probably used most of their writing and creative brain power on figuring out the overall story arc for this season, and let the individual episode characters be somewhat simple and quick/easy to write.

If you didn't catch the preview for next week's episode

Spoiler: what brains will Liv be eating next week

looks like Liv will be dining on a country singer. Not sure that lends itself to quite as much comedy as the first 3 episodes, but maybe Liv will be moping around about pickup trucks and tractors or something like that.