Well, remember, Vampires can telepathically control zombies, but we'll get there when we get there.
iZombie Season 1 Discussion and Spoilers
- Thread starter Saga
- Start date
The Zombie conspiracy is more interesting than the murder-of-the-week.
If ZombieCrush isn't a bad guy, at least he may be Liv's way in to finding out what Blaine's up to. "I didn't ask where he's getting brains" was about as heavy-handed a set-up as they could have written.
If ZombieCrush isn't a bad guy, at least he may be Liv's way in to finding out what Blaine's up to. "I didn't ask where he's getting brains" was about as heavy-handed a set-up as they could have written.
If you didn't recognize Zombie Crush, that's King Arthur from 5 seasons of the BBC's Merlin.
He's usually blonde, but it's hard to forget those cheekbones.
He's usually blonde, but it's hard to forget those cheekbones.
First post on this subject, some background...
When this series first started, I mean the very first act of episode 1, it had me thinking I probably wasn't going to be in the target demographic.
I was rolling my eyes at the apparent 'Twilight' tropes being slung around like crap in the monkey house and was about to change the channel when it suddenly gelled with me. I was hooked.
I was content for this to remain a simple police procedural with the zombie twist because the writing was tight and the PV good.
But this revelation of zombies hiding in plain sight all over the place has made me... (dramatic pause) ...like the show and look forward to new episodes more than ever!
It's like the new Grimm, except with zombies crawling around right under the ignorant population noses. Cannot wait to see where this goes...
When this series first started, I mean the very first act of episode 1, it had me thinking I probably wasn't going to be in the target demographic.
I was rolling my eyes at the apparent 'Twilight' tropes being slung around like crap in the monkey house and was about to change the channel when it suddenly gelled with me. I was hooked.
I was content for this to remain a simple police procedural with the zombie twist because the writing was tight and the PV good.
But this revelation of zombies hiding in plain sight all over the place has made me... (dramatic pause) ...like the show and look forward to new episodes more than ever!
It's like the new Grimm, except with zombies crawling around right under the ignorant population noses. Cannot wait to see where this goes...
Except I hope it doesn't have the same problem as Grimm, wherein every case the cop leads investigate just happens to involve the series' central creatures, and wherein their population is shown to be so ubiquitous that they probably outnumber normal humans. The larger the zombie community is shown to be, the more implausible it becomes that they can stay secret.
Then again, I wouldn't mind if they didn't stay secret. I'm so tired of fantasy/SF shows where the world at large has no idea of the weirdness going on. It serves no real purpose beyond letting the audience pretend the story is happening in the real world, and -- duh -- we know it isn't! So why bother with the pretense? It's more interesting when the fantastic phenomenon is public knowledge and we can see the impact it has on society.
The issue I'd have with zombies in this show 'coming out' is that they can in no way be logically accepted at all in society when they must regularly break one of our biggest taboos and go dig up our dead loved ones and feast on their brains. The amount of suspension of disbelieve required to skip over that is far greater than the amount needed to hand wave the fact there are so many of them remaining hidden.
It works better with vampires as they 'only' drink the blood of the living, not even killing them. But with True Blood it was all about how they had invented a synthetic replacement for blood so they'd no-longer need to drink human blood. Something similar could work with making synthetic brains.
But then again, I don't care for that kind of story much at all. I find the mechanics of how the zombies get their brains and survive while remaining hidden far more interesting than what would essentially be a generic discrimination and acceptance story.
If I was to watch a show about a supernatural / alien race integrating with humanity, then I'd like it to be one where we just didn't have the whole "sorry we used kill you and eat you" thing at all. It just unburdens you from so much crap that would overshadow anything else.
I generally like hidden worlds. I like allowing myself to believe these things could be happening under our noses. I love the idea that one day my letter from Hogwarts might arrive. I enjoy the escapism of it, so I'm fine with it.
However, the one thing that I don't like about hidden worlds is the hiding part. I'm very much OK with the Buffy method of hiding in the open because normal humans just refuse to accept anything strange going on so they just continue as if it didn't. The Dresden Files books do it more or less the same way. I'd be fine with the odd episode focusing on it, but having a show where people are actively hiding all the time would get old really fast.
It works better with vampires as they 'only' drink the blood of the living, not even killing them. But with True Blood it was all about how they had invented a synthetic replacement for blood so they'd no-longer need to drink human blood. Something similar could work with making synthetic brains.
But then again, I don't care for that kind of story much at all. I find the mechanics of how the zombies get their brains and survive while remaining hidden far more interesting than what would essentially be a generic discrimination and acceptance story.
If I was to watch a show about a supernatural / alien race integrating with humanity, then I'd like it to be one where we just didn't have the whole "sorry we used kill you and eat you" thing at all. It just unburdens you from so much crap that would overshadow anything else.
I generally like hidden worlds. I like allowing myself to believe these things could be happening under our noses. I love the idea that one day my letter from Hogwarts might arrive. I enjoy the escapism of it, so I'm fine with it.
However, the one thing that I don't like about hidden worlds is the hiding part. I'm very much OK with the Buffy method of hiding in the open because normal humans just refuse to accept anything strange going on so they just continue as if it didn't. The Dresden Files books do it more or less the same way. I'd be fine with the odd episode focusing on it, but having a show where people are actively hiding all the time would get old really fast.
I'm not talking about individual zombies "coming out," though. I'm talking about the tendency of shows like this to treat the very existence of its supernatural phenomena as a secret from the general public, to have the masses totally clueless that any of this is happening at all. If the general public knew zombies were out there and was afraid of them, that would give an added urgency to Liv's need to keep her true nature secret, and probably make it more of a challenge to do so.
I just think it's a missed opportunity. The interesting thing about science fiction or "real-world" fantasy is exploring how the extraordinary phenomena transform the world and society. And the stories can be bigger if they can have a large-scale effect. One of the best things about The 4400 -- which I found mediocre overall -- was that its sci-fi elements were out in the open, affecting and affected by the law and politics and society. That gave them more stories to tell than just the same old secrecy/hiding beats over and over again.
Besides, the more pervasive the hidden thing gets, the more ridiculous it is that it manages to stay hidden. It just strains credibility the sixty-seventh time the coroners report that they have no idea how the latest bizarre death happened, but still haven't realized there's something paranormal in the world. (Thank goodness this is one show where the coroner is the one who actually can see what's going on. It stands to reason that the people who see the most deaths are going to be in the best position to recognize that there are monsters secretly killing people.)
I don't see that. It happens all the time on shows that don't have hidden supernatural worlds. Like Richard Kimble hiding the fact that he's a wanted fugitive. Or Dexter what's-his-name hiding being a serial killer.
Thank you! I was going nuts trying to figure out where I had seen him before!
I recognized Bradley James's name right away in the credits -- "Wasn't he Arthur?" And then I saw him and it was definite, even more so once he spoke. I'm glad they let him keep his accent.
Oh, but the fun of it is how perfectly this parodies what most of us unthinkingly do for food. It's really not necessary for small children to even know what "meat" is - trust me, disturbed as it is I've watched parents dance around that. That's how insulated we are.
What someone like Liv does is not only morally equivalent in most respects to what us carninvores (you vegans may superiorally ignore this), in some ways it's arguably morally superior - yes, she eats people but she's never complicit in their suffering or death.
Blaine, OTOH, is a cog in the McDonalds' supply chain.
Okay, that bit with the liquefied brains was amusingly gross. Talk about taking one for the team; Liv obviously takes her crime-fighting zombie obligations very seriously if she was willing to slurp up that mess to solve a murder.
And the "were-terrier" bit was a cute homage to the comic book.
And the "were-terrier" bit was a cute homage to the comic book.
I found it, err, hard to swallow from a credibility standpoint. The neural connections that store memories and personality traits are tenuous things. The more a brain decays, the more those connections would be eroded. After a week, there'd probably be very little viable memory left.
Then again, as long as we're bringing credibility into it, Liv's stomach acids would probably destroy any useful neural connections quite effectively anyway. So I suppose the whole thing is basically fantasy. Still, it would've been nice if they'd at least paid lip service to the idea of the information she received being more degraded than usual.
Also, why were there so many gawkers outside the guy's house, seemingly glad he was dead? It was a plot point later on that nobody knew where he lived except for the killer. And if he was a shut-in, the neighbors would've had little reason to know him or have any interaction with him. So why were those people there?
And was that Liv's mother who came into Blaine's butcher shop at the end and talked about her son needing a job? I haven't seen the character often enough to be able to recognize her yet. If so, that's a massively Dickensian coincidence.
I made the mistake of watching this during lunch today. The frequent close-up shots of the bloated corpse's face were even nastier than the decayed brains, especially since they kept showing it during the episode credits so I couldn't easily look away, devoted credit-reader that I am.
Yeah, that could have been sentence one.
I was happy I decided to watch Flash during dinner last night before Izombie. Bleech!
Yes, that was Liv's mother.
CSI taught me a long time ago that you shouldn't eat while watching shows where autopsies are shown.
Darn! I missed that bit.
Reading your post and thinking about science fiction that integrated zombies into the real world and everyday life, the first movie that popped into my head was Fido. I'm sure a couple people here must have seen it a few years ago when it came out. Pretty darn entertaining movie. I'd recommend it to people reading this thread.
As for iZombie, I just looked it up and it looks like there are 13 episodes scheduled for season 1. I think this week's epsiode was only #6, so we've got a ways to go in this season still.
Of course according to the latest renewal/cancellation predictions, we have a pretty good chance of getting a second season anyways, so I'm not sure how much resolution I should expect by the season finale.
I'm not even sure what kind of resolution or changes I'd want. I like the zombie murder solving bit. That's fun and the idea of a different personality each week seems to be working well so far. I loved the bit this week where she was online and looking at some other character and blurted "who's this asshole?!" Fun bits like that. Quantum Leap had fun mixing it up for years and years, so this show could too.
But we're clearly headed towards some sort of zombie showdown and possibly even a zombie apocalypse. There are so many zombies in town and we've already seen them kill the living to eat their brains, so I just don't see how it can go any other way.
Thanks for pointing out that the lady in the butcher shop at the end was Liv's mom. Totally missed that.
One thing that surprised me was that musician/boyfriend zombie has apparently been a zombie for a few years now, but has never encountered any other zombies before Liv. (If we believe him.) On the one hand, we're given hope that this zombie stuff is still pretty rare, but on the other hand, just based on what we see with our own eyes, they're all over the damn place, and musician/boyfriend must be a liar.
By the way, I know it's corny as hell, but Liv is a really easy name to remember, isn't it?
Not necessarily. It looks like Blaine has been actively "recruiting" over the past few months, turning lots of people into zombies in order to create both customers and employees for his business. So it could be that they're rare in most places, but he's been responsible for a recent, local increase in the Seattle zombie population.
I'm reminded of John Holmes, who after he was kicked out of the American Porn Industry for having AIDS and continuing to make movies after he had been diagnosed, couldn't cope with not being a "star", so went to Europe to spread AIDS there in their porn industry intentionally.
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