iZombie – Twenty-Sided, Die

By: Emily Cross

At the zombie truthers meeting Harley Johns (Andrew Caldwell) shows the crowd his video of Justin (Tongayi Chirisa) in full-on zombie mode. He correctly assumes that Baracus (Kurt Evans) is a zombie because of his incarceration in Max Rager’s basement lab. Harley gives the truthers a task: he assigns people to keep tabs on suspected zombies. All of this alarms Ravi (Rahul Kohli), but all he can do is listen.

Blaine (David Anders) gathers the staff of The Scratching Post to inform them of his new ownership. He promises to keep them alive if they do their jobs correctly. He also designates Don E (Bryce Hodgson) as his second-in-command, giving him a burner phone so they can be in contact 24/7. When the rest of the staff leaves, Blaine shows Don E and Tanner (Nathan Barrett) the new product: blue juice soaked brains from Ravi’s recipe. He wants Don E to give it a trial run, but Don E isn’t up for it. Tanner volunteers and agrees to give Blaine the information he wants (how long the visions last and how soon they begin post-ingestion).

Back at the zombie truthers meeting, Harley and his brothers lay out their plan: have their members capture the zombies they’re tracking, and then starve them out on a livestream, letting the whole world see the monsters they become. Ravi boldly stands up and admits he works for the police. He tells Harley that capturing a zombie is not the best idea because the zombie’s contagious scratch could trigger the apocalypse they are trying to prevent. He tells them he is developing a vaccine to protect humans from the zombie contagion. Harley agrees that the truthers won’t make contact with zombies while Ravi works on the vaccine. This will hold them off for a few weeks, but it’s only a temporary fix.

After the meeting is over, a woman named Rachel (Ella Cannon) offers Ravi a ride. She’s also against the whole kidnapping plan, because she’s a photographer, and only wants to photograph a zombie. Ravi is surprised to learn her ride is a motorcycle. A new love interest for Ravi? I’m down!

A group of friends play Dungeons and Dragons. After they all drink, Dan the dungeon master (John Stewart) chokes and dies.

On their way to the crime scene, Ravi fills Liv (Rose McIver) and Clive (Malcolm Goodwin) in on the zombie truthers’ plan and his utterly fictional vaccine. They arrive at the crime scene of Dan Harbinson. Clive meets the witnesses who work at the station. Jimmy (Ryan Beil), our recent sketch artist, tells Clive and Liv that Dan had been the DM at their weekly D&D game for seven years.

Back at the morgue, Ravi determines that the wine that Dan drank was poisoned with gelsemine, an extremely rare poison. Any of the players could have slipped the poison into the open wine bottle. Liv cooks up some brain pot pie with Dan’s brain and then goes to interrogate Steve (Kett Turton) with Clive (after rolling for successfulness, of course). Dan made his living playing online poker, but Steve doesn’t know how much he made. He must have been making a lot, because he recently bought original cover art for a book that has gone for as much as $10,000. It’s not in the crime scene inventory, but Steve said it should be hanging above the fireplace. He also reveals that last week the group’s high-level characters were all killed by poison. Clive doesn’t think this is a coincidence and wonders whether one of the group members was upset enough by their character’s death that they killed Dan. When Liv rolls for likelihood, she has a vision of Dan telling the group that their characters all died. They are upset with him, losing their minds. After Steve leaves, Liv tells Clive about her vision and says they should proceed with interviewing Zoe.

At The Scratching Post, Tanner reports back to Blaine telling him that the visions started five minutes after he ate the brain and the vision lasted two hours. After Blaine leaves to go to Shady Plots and Tanner leaves to restock the bar, Don E tries a piece of the blue-soaked brain. His vision starts almost immediately.

Ravi returns home to learn that Major (Robert Buckley) has found all of the hate mail that Ravi had hidden. Ravi implores Major to stop torturing himself, but Major won’t stop. He finds a letter from a woman named Shawna who believes he’s innocent because she knows what it’s like to be accused of something she didn’t do. Major isn’t affected, but Ravi’s interest is piqued.

At her office, Peyton (Aly Michalka) meets with Dr. Danforth (Catherine Lough Haggquist), James Weckler’s prison psychiatrist. She’s still trying to get to the bottom of why he killed himself. Dr. Danforth tells her that she was treating Weckler for apparitional hallucinations, aka ghosts. Just one ghost, actually: Weckler’s dead wife. Dr. Danforth thinks it is unbelievable that Weckler was a client of the dominatrix he allegedly killed because he lost all interest in sex after his wife died.

Liv and Clive poke around a comic shop, looking for Zoe. Clive comments that he loved The Flash as a kid (Some CW corporate synergy for you!) and Liv spots the original cover art that was missing from Dan’s apartment on sale for $5000. She has a vision of Zoe (Morgan Taylor Campbell) dressed as the character from the cover art, seducing Dan. They speak to Zoe, who tells them that she won the cover art in a bet with Dan. She admits she was sleeping with Dan, but it was a secret. She thinks that Jimmy saw a naughty text between them, and assumes that’s how Clive and Liv knew they were sleeping together. She was worried about it because she suspected Jimmy had a crush on her.

Liv and Clive speak to Jimmy at the precinct. He claims that he didn’t have a crush on Zoe, but they have proof: his sketchpad that is full of drawings of him and Zoe together (there’s also a choice one of Liv as a dominatrix…yuck). Clive theorizes that Jimmy was jealous of Zoe and Dan’s relationship and wonders how far Jimmy would go to win the object of his obsession. Jimmy tells them to check out Diego’s back. When they bring Diego (Harvey Guillen) in, they see that he has a back tattoo of a dragon breathing Zoe’s name in fire. He tells them that Steve was also in love with Zoe (seriously?) and dyed his naturally blonde hair and became Vampire Steve to try to attract her.

Clive and Liv interrogate Steve again and he tells them that he came to vampirism of his own accord. After he leaves, Clive laments that none of these guys feels like a murderer.

Liv, Clive, Ravi, Major and Peyton play a game of D&D with Liv as Dungeon Master to try to trigger a vision for Liv. Surprisingly, they get pretty into it (even Clive). At the mention of a secret room, Liv has a vision of Zoe finding Dan in a secret room in his apartment.

At Dan’s apartment, Clive can’t help but drone on and on about how awesome the game was. They find the secret room behind a bookshelf. It’s a computer geek’s paradise. One of the many screens displays blueprints for a Russian nuclear power plant. Liv tries to type in a password to access the rest of the computer, but gets it wrong and everything shuts down.

At the precinct, they ask Zoe about the secret room. Before they can get much information, Devore (Marci T. House) shuts the case down. The FBI is taking over because they suspect that Dan was killed by the Russians in order to prevent him hacking into their system. Of course, it’s not just any FBI agent that’s taking over the case. It’s Clive’s ex, Dale Bozzio (Jessica Harmon)! He runs out to the street to find her. Not much has changed since they parted ways at the end of last season, but Clive makes a bid to get her back. Seeing as he can’t tell her why he tanked her case (zombies), it doesn’t work and Dale leaves.

At home, Liv eats some tube-brains (thanks to Major) because she really wants to be herself for her upcoming date with Justin. Justin arrives to escort Liv to a political fundraiser for Baracus and they both look smoking hot.

At The Scratching Post, Don E is fully in the throes of a World War II gunfight vision, somewhat scaring the customers. The visions might be a little too intense…

At the fundraiser, Justin leaves Liv to work the first shift guarding Baracus. On her own, Liv runs into Carey (Anjali Jay, who introduces her to Chase Graves (Jason Dohring). Chase makes it perfectly clear that it’s important that D-Day doesn’t happen before Fillmore-Graves and Zombie Island are ready and Liv and her team play an important role in making sure Harley Johns and his group are taken down.

When Baracus enters, Peyton approaches him with her suspicions about the Weckler case. He tells her that since they won the case, she should let it go. This obviously doesn’t sit well with Peyton. Liv thinks that Baracus is eager to let the dominatrix case go because he was one of her clients. This is news to Peyton.

At the morgue, Ravi gets a visit from Harley. They tell him that they’ve captured a zombie, from the zombie bar that all of the suspected zombies’ security details hang out. It turns out that the captured zombie is Don E, because of course it is.

Justin finally rejoins Liv and they spot Chase and Baracus chatting. Liv isn’t sure what to make of him. When Liv finds out that Chase shot Justin in the chest, she makes a move to talk to him. However, the room erupts into chaos when a gunman tries to take Baracus out, shooting him in the stomach. Liv helps calm him down so he doesn’t go into full-on zombie mode while Justin and other Fillmore-Graves soldiers look for the shooter.

Major gets a visitor at home: Shawna (Sarah Jurgens), the woman who wrote the letter.

The next day, Blaine sits by the well dropping bits of brain in for Angus while he reads about Baracus’ heroic act of taking a bullet for his son boosting his poll numbers. All of Blaine’s wishes are coming true.

In the closing scene, Mr. Boss (Eddie Jemison) arrives back in Seattle, just to get his money and settle some old debts.