iZombie – Wag the Tongue Slowly

By starrymag | May 2, 2017

By: Emily Cross

At the morgue, Ravi (Rahul Kohli) checks up on Blaine (David Anders). Blaine shows no signs of deterioration, nor has he recovered his memories. Ravi tells Blaine that if there’s no change by Saturday, they’re out of luck. Ravi also suggests that Blaine find someone to look after him if things turn for the worse. Liv (Rose McIver) arrives and Blaine thanks her for appearing at his set the night before. This isn’t welcome news to Ravi, who is looking a little worse for wear. After Blaine leaves, Liv recaps the night for Ravi, who needs no reminder of his mistakes.

At a dental equipment supply company called Dentelco, a woman named Cheryl Warren (Fiona Hogan) gossips with and about her coworkers. Later, two women find her dead body in the bathroom, on the toilet.

Clive (Malcolm Goodwin) reviews the case with Liv and Ravi when Cheryl’s body is in the morgue. Ravi’s lab results show that her death was caused by yogurt spiked with utopium which reacted with Cheryl’s prescription antidepressants. Since Cheryl had just booked a vacation to Hawaii, Clive theorizes that this could have been an office prank gone wrong. An unscheduled fire alarm supports this theory, because reports say it was triggered by a pull-box on Cheryl’s floor. The team’s working theory is that someone pulled the fire alarm as a diversion so they could slip utopium into Cheryl’s open yogurt when everyone else was out of the building. Clive leaves to start bringing in all of the Dentalco employees, and Liv cooks up a nice chili out of Cheryl’s brain.

Major (Robert Buckley) plays video games while Ravi drinks his sorrows away. Major can’t believe his Fillmore Graves unit could have an assignment soon, but quickly devolves into a coughing fit. Ravi gives him an inhaler, which helps calm him. They both agree it’s time to have the cure as an option and Ravi calls Liv. He then gives Major one of the seventeen vials they have, and instructs him to always have it on him. Liv arrives and can’t keep her busybody brain in. She informs them that she spotted Peyton and Blaine sneaking off into the alley after his set the night before, and can’t help but wonder what they were doing.

Speaking of Peyton (Aly Michalka), Blaine visits her at her office to ask her to watch over him. This probably isn’t what Ravi had in mind…

At the precinct, Clive gives Liv her half of all of the zombie-related comments from the message board for the Tuttle-Reid murders. She can’t concentrate though because she’s too distracted by wondering what Cavanaugh and Devore are talking about. Clive redirects the conversation. He thinks it’s important to go through the comments because any of these people had reason to believe Wally’s family were zombies and would have known where they lived.

The two then go into the interrogation room to work on their case of the week. First up is Felicia (Brenda Critchlow), head of Dentelco HR. She tells them that Cheryl was a huge gossip, which makes a lot of sense to Liv and Clive. Her gossipy nature led to complaints from other sales associates and reprimands from HR. When Clive asks to look at them, Felicia has a huge binder ready to go.

Next is Jim Davies (Gregory Calpakis), who sat in the cubicle next to Cheryl. Thanks to Cheryl’s gossiping, Jim’s wife found out about his affair, leading her to divorce him. Jim claims he wasn’t mad at Cheryl and was just relieved to be done living a lie. He was the first person to arrive at the gathering spot during the fire alarm. The last person to arrive at the gathering spot was a man named Pete.

So, they bring in Pete (Graeme McComb) next. He was the last out of the building because he was on a sales call. Liv focuses more on the motive because he had a long history of stealing Cheryl’s food. He claims it wasn’t malicious, just to rile Cheryl up. Pete then explains that the sales call would have been a big sale for him because his numbers were down. The sale was to a new dental group in Portland until the woman Pete was talking to, an Italian woman named Georgina, pulled out of the deal. According to him, they were talking for about ten of fifteen minutes after the fire alarm started.

Ravi is wallowing (playing video games once again). Major gets a text from Blaine, who received a brain order from Osborne Oates, the guy who they suspect has Natalie. Major invites Ravi to stake out Osborne’s place. Ravi refuses at first, but Major eventually convinces him.

Clive and Liv interrogate Vicky Ernst (Alison Matthews), who Cheryl reported for abusing company sick-leave policy and cost Vicky a promotion. Vicky saw Jim after she left the bathroom and they exited the building together. A woman named Rhonda Diaz (Yolanda Pecoraro) was already at the gathering spot when they arrived and wasn’t in the building when the alarm went off.

Rhonda shows them a receipt that verifies she was making a coffee run. She also verifies Vicky’s story. Clive then launches into motive. Cheryl found out Rhonda was a former porn star and outed her to the other coworkers. Rhonda doesn’t seem bothered by it. Clive gets a message, which prompts him to want to bring Pete back in.

While Major and Ravi stake out Osborne’s house, Major tells Ravi his theory: that Natalie is being held in a second location. His plan is to put a GPS tracking device on Osborne’s car. The only problem is that the car is parked behind a locked gate.

Liv gossips to Peyton about how rough Ravi looks (and smells apparently). Peyton clearly doesn’t want to hear it. Liv soon realizes that they have company: Blaine. Peyton explains that she’s keeping an eye on Blaine in case of the memory loss cure going wrong.

On the stakeout, Ravi has fallen asleep, but Major is alert enough to see Osborne (Steve James) leaving the house with what seems like a bodyguard (Tommy Europe). Major wakes Ravi up, and they follow the car as it leaves.

Trailing behind the car, Major loses sight of it around a curve. When they drive around the curve, the bodyguard is standing in the middle of the road and threatens them with a gun. He takes their wallets to get their names, and promises that if he ever sees them again, he will kill them. As soon as he turns his back, Major tries to attack him, and gets beat up a bit. After the car leaves, Major seems pretty happy, and reveals he slipped the tracking device in the bodyguard’s pocket. Ravi is less than enthused, and tells Major that Natalie is not his responsibility. He’s worried about Major’s quasi-suicidal tendencies. Major promises to stay away. But, of course, he doesn’t. The next day, Major is still tailing Osborne as he leaves an apartment building.

At the morgue, Liv keeps gossiping to Ravi about Peyton and Blaine. Clive enters and tells Liv that Pete’s whole story was a lie. Neither the dental group in Portland nor the Italian woman exist. Clive and Liv go through the company’s phone logs and cell phone records, to see if Pete lied about being on a call during the fire alarm. After digging through the phone records, Clive finds Pete’s mystery call. He was talking to a woman named Georgina who sounded like she was trying to keep him on the phone, so it looks like Pete was the one being played. Liv also found a text from Jim to Vicky the minute before the alarm went off.

Clive brings Vicky in first and asks her why Jim texted her a single exclamation mark before the fire alarm went off. She tries to explain it away as a common occurrence, but Liv looked through the records and found no evidence to that effect. Jim is in next, and he pretends to feign ignorance, claiming it must have been a butt dial.

Despite the pair’s obvious conspicuousness, Clive can’t nail down exactly what is going on, as he tells Liv on the phone. When Clive tells Liv that she won’t believe what he’s seeing (office gossip), that triggers a vision of Cheryl watching one of Rhonda’s pornos in which she adopts a stereotypical Italian accent. Liv instructs Ravi to find the right pornos.

At the funeral parlor, Peyton tries out a coffin while Blaine considers his dark past and whether or not he wants to be the old him again. Peyton assures him that he’s got to have some good memories. They both hope that if his memories do come back, he stays this new and improved version of Blaine.

Liv arrives home to see Peyton and Blaine cooking together. When Blaine leaves the room, Peyton tells Liv that he still remembers nothing. Liv reminds her of the stakes, and thinks Peyton is losing sight of the big picture.

Liv and Ravi show Clive the porno she saw in her vision and compare it to the recording of “Georgina.” The voices match up. Rhonda didn’t show up in the phone records because she must have been using a burner phone. But Clive needs blueprints for the building to confirm his theory. When he gets them, he lays out his theory to Vicky, Jim, and Rhonda in separate interrogations. When Cheryl returned to her desk and opened her yogurt, Jim took notice and signaled Vicky via text to pull the fire alarm. Jim acts like a hero, making Cheryl set down her yogurt. Meanwhile, Jim and Vicky hide in the bathroom, waiting for the coast to be clear. Rhonda, on her coffee run, uses her Italian accent to stall and frame Pete. While Pete is distracted, Jim slips the utopium into Cheryl’s yogurt. Then, he and Vicky take the freight elevator, enabling them to reach the gathering spot before anyone else. All three suspects confess and make it clear they just wanted to give Cheryl a taste of her own medicine and make her the butt of office gossip.

Major is scoping out the apartment building from earlier and sees Natalie (Brooke Lyons) on a balcony. He enters the building carefully, although the doorman sees him on the security camera. He knocks on a door and Natalie answers. She is surprised to see him, and wonders why he is there. She pulls him into the room so he doesn’t get caught by the doorman, but seems shady.

Major starts packing up Natalie’s stuff. She insists that if she runs, she has to get far away from Seattle or Osborne will find her. She tells him to not worry about her, but Major’s guilt is not assuaged. From the window, she sees Osborne and his bodyguard arrive and insists Major leaves. Before he does, though, Major gives her vial of the cure that Ravi gave him and tells her about the memory loss side effect. He wants her to start life as a new person. She takes the vial, and lets Major go.

It’s the night before Blaine will know, one way or the other, about his memory. He’s hanging out with Peyton, who tells him that despite their budding relationship, she wants Liv and Major to be human again. He understands and that’s why she likes him. Whatever happens, this might be the last night she spends with the good Blaine and she wants to take advantage of that. She kisses him, but Blaine stops her before anything can happen. If he wakes up as the old Blaine, Peyton would hate herself and he doesn’t want that.

Major’s unit is officially deployed in a real-life, non-training situation. He seems a little glum, but at least he knows that Natalie has a chance at a new life.

Liv looks through the message board posts and finds a post from a Harley Jones, whose signature links to a local gun range. Clive checks out the website for the gun range, and finds a banner advertising a “zombie apocalypse special.”

Blaine wakes up to a pacing Peyton, who is nervous to find out which Blaine is sleeping on her couch. Surprising to no one, Blaine has not regained his memories. Peyton is upset, and Blaine comforts her, by going to her bedroom with her.

Clive and Liv go to the gun range, and speak to Harley Jones (Andrew Caldwell). Harley admits killing a zombie is on his bucket list, but claims he was at a family picnic when Wally and his family were murdered. However, he knows zombies exist because his brother Dave showed him a photo of one. He can’t show Clive and Liv this photo, because Dave took it to the grave. Dave died in the Max Rager massacre, and Harley thinks he was killed by zombies. He also claims that if he ever runs into a zombie, the police can’t concern themselves with what he does about it, because you can’t murder something that isn’t alive.