Wednesday, February 10, 2016

iZombie 2x12 "Physician, Heal Thy Selfie" (Undead Man Walking) [Contributor: Isabella]


"Physician, Heal Thy Selfie"
Original Airdate: February 9, 2016

Blah blah blah. Millennials are always on the phone. Blah blah blah. They're always posting pictures of their food on Instagram. Blah blah blah. They tweeted over 27 times today? The horror!

If you can't tell, I'm absolutely done with this idea of how millennials are oh-so self-obsessed or how all they care about is how many followers they have on Twitter. And yes, I'm a millennial. I recognize the fact that some people really are incredibly absorbed with social media or their phones. But frankly, I'm completely over belittling millennials for the sake of an already-overused joke. In fact, those "jokes" seem like word vomit you would spew on an essay you forgot was due in an hour. You write these jokes to get them done, but they're a stereotype that has been used far too frequently already.

... Also, IM talk? Who even uses that anymore? Whatever. As you can see, I was not pleased with the "character" Liv became this episode.

And so we begin...


The case this week involves a triple homicide, which gets Liv a little more excited at because of the prospect to have a variety of brains to choose from. But there's a catch — all of these victims are missing their heads, thus rendering Liv's "psychic" abilities useless.

Liv's still pretty hungry, so she turns to eating the brain of another corpse: a girl who was hit by a bus while crossing the street. She never even looked up from her phone. Liv immediately becomes that girl, never looking up from her phone and posting #brainfood pictures to Instagram.

What I did like about this case is that it connected Peyton's larger scope investigation of the Max Rager drug with Liv's weekly investigation. The three men who lost their heads were on Peyton's clue board. Not only that, but Peyton's boss, District Attorney Barakas, has been missing for awhile. Through her investigation, Liv realizes that he's been hiding under the floor of his cabin. As a zombie, he killed those three men for their brains and kept the heads stored away in the fridge. When the police found the bodies, they obviously went looking for the heads. Barakas knows that now that they've found the heads on his property, there's simply no way for him to resume living a fairly normal life.

#NOTSORELATIONSHIPGOALS


Both Liv and Peyton made some pretty big mistakes by sleeping with men they didn't know too well. Peyton and Blaine got it on, but of course, once Peyton found out that he was the one who turned Liv into a zombie, she was disgusted. She essentially gets rid of him by telling him he was just a "giant mistake" to her. I'm proud of her.

Peyton turned to Ravi for some consolation — by drinking. I've always liked them, but I always have an issue with couples that either start off a show already dating or get together but we don't get to see the natural build-up of them getting together. Peyton and Ravi's relationship is the latter, while Major and Liv's relationship is the former. 

We were able to see plenty of Liv and Major this season, with their hook-ups and break-ups, but Peyton and Ravi have yet to actually get back together since they broke up. They're still flitting around each other and you get the sense that there's still something there, but nothing has come from it. In fact, it's like we're seeing the beginning of their relationship — their "friendship phase" if you will — blossom. The writers are giving us the scenes we never got a chance to see. The iZombie writers seem to really like to pair up the characters, then break them up, but not for good. The characters work their way back into a romantic relationship, a much stronger and emotionally bonded relationship at that.

It seems like Ravi's becoming more in tune with his own feelings for Peyton. While watching Zombie High, Peyton tells him that her first instinct if she ever became a zombie would be to turn him into one because she wouldn't be able to do it without him. 

As the episode progresses and Ravi's faced with the probability of Peyton getting hurt by Stacey Boss while investigating this case, he now, more than ever, wants her to continue living with him and Major, seeing they could offer her some sort of protection while she's home from work. Despite this, Peyton decides to go live in her new place, but not before thanking Ravi for everything he's done. Their goodbye is cordial, but as Ravi watches her go, the reality that she'll be practically gone from his life seems to sink in. The smile disappears from his face as he realizes that he's actually going to miss getting drunk with her every night, even if his body doesn't like it the next morning.

As for Liv, she finds out much more about Drake. Feeling like he's hiding something, she discovers that he was imprisoned for almost two years for aggravated assault. Despite this, she still likes him. She confronts him about the known issue, but he doesn't seem too fazed by her questions. He explains that when his father walked out, his mother had horrible boyfriends. One time, he came home to find his mother had been hit by one of her drunk boyfriends, so he lashed out. Liv finds it completely understandable and she's willing to continue with their relationship. So much so, in fact, that she promptly meets his mother in the next scene.


MAJOR


It seems to be business as usual with Major — evading Vaughn du Clark's suspicions that he's letting some zombies he's supposed to kill slip through the cracks. du Clark only becomes curious when he finds out that Barakas, Peyton's boss, was killed and was also a zombie. Major admits to not having killed him because he saw Barakas hugging his 5-year-old kid once and it struck a chord with him. He couldn't kill the little boy's father and have left him alone. Apart from this, Major swears to du Clark that he's killed all the other zombies.

But du Clark doesn't care about all the others. To ensure that Major will go ahead and kill Barakas himself, every day, he will send for one of the trolls who wrote mean comments on their Max Rager YouTube video to be killed as punishment.

To further save those innocent lives, rather than killing Barakas, he sedates him, takes him to his storage shed along with all the other zombies, and then explains the situation to him (much like how he did with the zombie hooker a few episodes back). Barakas complies and is placed into the freezer.

For the rest of the world, it was staged as a suicide, leaving his son with all his money.

Brainy Quotes and Undead Notes:
  • "Looks like a no brainer to me, Liv." — Ravi
  • #brainfood
  • "You need to be careful not to overshare on social media." — Ravi. I feel like this is also meant for us.
  • "Murder and chill." — Liv
  • "For the record, all you are to me is a giant mistake." — Peyton to Blaine. YES, you tell him.
  • "But stay here! You know, you'll have two men living with you. One's practically a Greek god who's turned his body into a finely tuned weapon. And of course, Major." — Ravi
  • "I'll bet Peyton still made it to six a.m. spin class." "Big deal. I've been spinning since 4:30." — Liv and Ravi.
  • The football coach from Glee is in this!

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