iZombie – Pour Some Sugar, Zombie

By: Jamie Steinberg

A passed out Blaine is sprawled out in a chair. His lackey attempts to wake him only to find Blaine (David Anders) is a bit confused and maybe – dare I say – suffering from amnesia thanks to the cure?

Rita/Gilda (Leanne Lapp) is officially a zombie. We find her back at Liv’s home foraging her fridge for what we can only assume is a secret stash of brains. While Liv showers and Rita/Gilda gnaws on a frozen treat, she is surprised from behind by a bad guy that injects a paralyzing agent in her neck. As we see her getting carried off, she drops her head scarf that is discovered hours later by Liv. With the arrival of her best buds helping Peyton move back in, the besties get interrupted when Peyton (Aly Michalka) receives a call from a woman she had previously tried to convince to testify against her baddy boyfriend. Just as Peyton offers her aid, we hear the woman on the other end meet her demise.

Liv, Ravi and Clive suspect the bad boyfriend of the murder and attempt to track him down. Down in the morgue, Liv (Rose McIver) is excited to enjoy a healthy dose of hiker rather than a munch on the murder victim. Peyton arrives and hopes that Liv is willing to take a bite out of crime for her so they can snag some info that Cassidy (the victim) had on Mr. Boss’ operations. Time to take one for the team…

An uninspired Liv has not gotten any visions yet that could help Peyton on her case so a bit of a nudge is needed. Cassidy was a stripper so where is the most logical place to possibly be pushed into a vision? The strip club. After an awkward lap dance by Liv, the girls want to head to the bar. The mission gets derailed when stripper whips her hair and ends up smacking it right into Liv’s face. Heading to the restroom to confront the culprit, Liv knocks on the stall doors only to get a vision of Cassidy trying to track her boyfriend down only to find some sketchy guys in a safe house. Well, I guess inspiration can strike at any time!

At home, Ravi (Rahul Kohli) finds Major in his room and notices he has a safe. Ravi asks if Major is willing to store some documents for him, but is turned down – the safe is full according to Major.

Still at the strip club, the stripper that assaulted Liv apologies and says that while everyone thinks it was Cassidy’s boyfriend responsible for her murder, but she thinks it was someone else. That night Cassidy had a massive fight with a regular customer who happens to be at the club that night. Cue Johnny Storm! The weatherman admits that he was a regular of Cassidy’s and that the fight was over money. She had his credit card (his secret card that he didn’t want his wife to know about for “special” purchases) and when the bill came in an excessive amount he confronted her about her stealing.

The gal gumshoes have had enough of the club when Peyton mentions she has received one too many odd texts from Blaine. They decide to head over to his place to pin him down as he keeps blowing off his appointments with Peyton. Plus, as a bonus, Liv can possibly get some scoop on her missing in action boyfriend Drake (Gregg Finley). When they arrive, Blaine’s buddy says that he isn’t around, but he quickly comes strolling out from around the corner offering the girls some caffeine. Still out of sorts, Blaine seems to not know who Drake is when asked, but the lackey is quick to say it’s been a few days since he’s been around. Peyton also tells him to stop blowing her off to discuss his testimony. Due to his missing memory, he doesn’t seem to know what she’s referring to when she plays him some voice mails where he is trying to track her down as he doesn’t recall why they are to be meeting. Peyton does remind him that his immunity doesn’t come free so he’ll have to be more active in their investigation.

The next morning, Ravi is sipping some coffee when he opens the paper to see a diagram of the deaths linked to the Chaos Killer. He recognizes the dog from the photo as their former dog Minor, but Major (Robert Buckley) plays it off like Ravi is making a mountain out of a molehill because that couldn’t possibly be their pooch.

Back at the morgue, Liv meets a VICE cop named Vega who is looking for Drake. She lets him know that it has been some time since she’s seen him when Clive (Malcolm Goodwin) heads in to chat with Liv. He says that he is having trouble finding Cassidy’s boyfriend and figures they should head over to the strip club to see who else he has been messing with. The girls mostly waste their time taking digs at one another so Clive takes that as his cue to cut out. He does notice that one stripper though has been texting and has a feeling they should find themselves following her. Hearing someone nearby speaking in Chinese triggers a vision in Liv who sees that the man was a witness to the murder. Through a translator, he is able to tell them the kind of car involved in the accident. Clive has a list of customers and says he’ll run it past the DMV to see if any of their cars are a match. Meanwhile, the two head out to the car to stake out the texting stripper and follow her to Nick.

At the police station, Ravi runs into Bozzio (Jessica Harmon) who he asks for help. He wonders who took in the pup from the Chaos Killer case. She also asks him if he recognizes someone from a photo (Blaine), but Ravi smoothly says he’s never seen him.

Arriving at a local motel, Liv and Clive catch Nick in a room with Lorelai (the blonde from the club). They take them back to the station where Lorelai sobs through her confession. She explains that she is afraid her grandmother will find out she’s a stripper. Taking a break from the sobs, Clive gets a call that says the DMV came up with the name…Johnny Storm (Daran Norris)!

We return to the morgue where Ravi is spending some quality time with Blaine and his bud. Ravi reveals that Blaine is having some memory issues and is doing some lab work to try to find the cause. Blaine doesn’t recognize Liv and she wonders if it could be a symptom of the last brain he ate, but he doesn’t even seem to recall that he is a zombie! Ravi reveals that the memory loss is less of a brain issue as he is back to human form – which means he must have taken the cure! This zombie news seems to be blowing what little mind he does have.

Back at the station, Clive and Liv talk to Johnny about the car in question. He says that the car was purchased by someone who stole his credit card. He has a copy of the license that the perp used thanks to a PI that he hired. Liv recognizes the guy as an employee of Mr. Boss and takes the picture over to Peyton to identify it for sure. He’s also Nick’s best friend. Peyton also has some photos for Liv to look through in order to spark a vision that might lead to the safe house belonging to Mr. Boss. Liv recognizes one from her vision, which is a big help to Peyton’s investigation.

Pulling up to Pablo’s residence, Clive catches Pablo with Destiny – one of the strippers from the club. At the station, but he has no idea what happened with the car because he was at the hospital at the time of the murder. Nick says that night he got blackout drunks o he doesn’t recall anything that happened. It seems Destiny is the only one without an alibi, but tries pinning the problem on Nick. She wants to make a deal though so doesn’t face much prison time and says she is willing to testify as to who she saw get into the car that night.

Ravi is back home and trying to figure out the code to Major’s safe. After many an attempts, he is actually able to open it. He finds a journal, paint cans and a paralyzing agent.

Clive and Liv speak with Lorelai (Jessica Lu) about Destiny’s confession. They speculate that she was driving Nick at the time and he got the idea to make his problems go away by killing Cassidy. Lorelai says that Destiny is lying because she actually helped her put Nick in Pablo’s car and then helped to drive him home. We see a flashback to Destiny talking to a driving Lorelai. Destiny explains that if Cassidy testifies against Nick that her boyfriend Pablo would also go down. Grabbing a tire iron, Destiny claims she is just going to scare Cassidy, which leads to her being hit in the head on the side of the road. Lorelai is even willing to give them the location of the tire iron.

Blaine’s lackey speaks with his silent companion as they watch news footage on a raid that took down the safe house Liv had identified earlier. Bad boy #1 says that this is a sign because Blaine isn’t up to the task any longer to help takeover Boss’ business and that it is up to them to do the dirty work. He tells his buddy that now is the time and pushes him to make him into a zombie. With one scratch, the wheels get set in motion.

Liv heads over to Drake’s mom to see if she has had any news. His mom is sobbing, saying that he is dead and she knows that Mr. Boss killed him. She hasn’t heard from him, but they always talk multiple times a day so something has to be wrong. She tells Liv that she was just looking through some pictures of Drake when she spots one of him in a uniform. Liv is confused, but suddenly things start to make sense when Drake’s mother explains that he was a police officer and she warned him not to go undercover.

Major arrives home find his hidden items from the safe on full display. Ravi says that it took him a long time to understand what the journal meant, but he now realizes that they were Major keeping tabs on victims. Major doesn’t understand why Ravi would do this to which he responds, “Because I have the right to know if I’m living with a murderer! I should know if my friend is killing people!” Major says that he isn’t killing people, but Ravi explains that just because they are zombies doesn’t mean they don’t matter. Ravi knows that Major hunts and drugs his victims so he doesn’t understand where Liv plays into his scheme. Major begs Ravi to stop and turns around only to morph into full zombie mode. Before any mayhem might happen, Ravi uses Major’s paralyzing gun to fend off his friend.