NOTE: Full spoilers for this episode of “iZombie” are present in this review
iZombie’s second season continues to maintain its hot streak with, “The Whopper” this week, an episode that once again delivered an especially clever case-of-the-week that also managed to effectively tie into the overall season conflict with Blaine and Stacey Boss. We also got some more solid brain humour to boot, resulting in another winning episode that proved to be both great fun and effectively dramatic to watch.
Things begin with the latest bout of Ravi and Major digging for the necessary corpses to provide their stash of tainted Utopium necessary for the zombie cure. Major believes he finds one of the bodies while digging, though Ravi is disappointed to see that the guy hasn’t been dead long enough to qualify, and is an entirely different man. Turns out, they’ve accidentally stumbled on to another murder victim, which results in Liv and Babineaux being called to the scene, and Ravi and Major both amusingly lying to Babineaux about why they were digging in the field, claiming it was for a, “Geo caching” hobby.
There’s virtually no leads on the latest victim at first, though after Liv eats his brain, following a hook-up identifying him as an FBI agent, Liv finds herself telling outrageous compulsive lies for seemingly no reason. Turns out, the murder victim was a compulsive liar who would tell a woman anything to get them to sleep with him. Naturally, that’s a pickle, especially since it means that he’s not actually an FBI agent, and that puts everyone back at square one, despite a proven connection to Stacey Boss that comes soon after.
While this is going on, Blaine manages to capture Major, and places him in a coffin, threatening him with permanent zombiehood for all eternity if he doesn’t co-operate, since Major has been killing Blaine’s customers as the Chaos Killer. If Major does co-operate, Blaine promises to kill him quickly. Fortunately though, Major proves himself to be useful, telling Blaine just enough to spare his life, without outright giving away that Max Rager is behind the zombie killings. Major also reveals that he doesn’t actually ‘kill’ his victims, but rather, simply freezes them, and hides them away.
This ends up coming into play very well, when Blaine sits in for his father’s will reading, only to find that the nasty housekeeper that bullied him as a child ended up with a bunch of money, and all of the property that Blaine was awarded ended up coming with the stipulation that it’s null if Angus was murdered by any means of foul play, and in that event, it goes to the mean housekeeper. Naturally, Blaine is furious, and thus enlists the help of Major to recover his father’s body.
Liv meanwhile is getting ever closer to the bodies in the field, though time is running out, as the re-zombified test rat has died, and both Major and Blaine appear to be on borrowed time as well. Liv also begins to grow ever more suspicious about Drake, who has recently been promoted as a more regular enforcer of Stacey Boss, essentially putting him on both sides of the Blaine/Boss conflict. This is still setting up to be an awesome emotional battle for Liv later in the season, especially when she has a vision that confirms Drake obstructing the investigation into her victim’s killing, making him an accessory to the crime.
After Drake flakes on Liv, she goes to visit the mother of one of the Utopium smugglers, confirmed to her in another vision, and finally has a vision that reveals to her where they’re buried. This leads to an especially superb ending for the episode, as Liv, Ravi and Major all finally discover the bodies, allowing them to finally dig out the hidden Utopium condoms in their stomachs! This was also off-set by an equally satisfying, though significantly more twisted victory for Blaine, as he masquerades as an older version of himself from far in the future, only to later confirm that Angus has been frozen for less than a month, before siccing two of his zombie cohorts on Angus, allowing them to get revenge on him for torturing them, until he agrees to make a new video will. This was a fantastically sinister reminder of how amoral Blaine really can be, since the torture of his father isn’t for anything more than another shot at some prime property to inherit. It’s a chilling combination of petulance and greed, though one that still doesn’t come at the expense of the charm behind Blaine as a character.
With Babineaux and Bozzio chasing the assassin that appeared to be linked to the case as well, Liv, Major and Ravi finally discovering the Utopium stash that they need, and Blaine even getting a chance to exact sweet revenge on Angus, every major iZombie personality seemed to end the show’s latest episode with an especially strong bout of good fortune. This was also true for viewers, who got to enjoy another standout episode of the show this week, one that continued to perfectly balance humour, drama and horror, while continuing to build up to the season’s climax in a fantastic way. Season Two is really hitting high notes now, and it’s finally completely measuring up to the stellar Season One, so hopefully, it keeps that up over the next several weeks, now that everyone has taken big steps forward in their separate agendas!