One Blaine, Two Blaine, Bad Blaine…Good Blaine?

By: Paige Zinaman

When you think of David Anders what is one of the first characters that pops into your head? The first one that pops into my head is Blaine DeBeers on the popular CW show “iZombie.” Now, like many characters on the series, Blaine starts out with an air of mystery of who he truly was which is a testament to how David Anders taps into Blaine’s world and brings this confusing and complex character to life. When we first see Blaine it’s in the pilot episode of Season One in flashback mode. He’s first fully introduced in episode Brother, Can You Spare a Brain? (Season One, Episode 2) where he confronts Liv (Rose McIver) who has been looking for him ever since the boat party where he turned her into a zombie. Blaine and Liv talk while Ravi (Rahul Kohli) runs some basic tests on him. He tells Liv that up until they met he believed he was the only zombie. Blaine asks Liv for help in getting brains for him since he has no access to them and she works for the Medical Examiner. She agrees to help, which is great for him until she spots Blaine going back on a promise of being a changed man as he meets with Dougie (Sean Owen Roberts) and Hutch (Chris Burns) and leaves just as Blaine gets in the car and kills both men. In fact, after Blaine has a one night stand he turns Jackie (Sarah-Jane Redmond) into a zombie. Blaine comes to her with a deal for a good chunk of money he will supply her with the brains she needs. So, just which Blaine DeBeers can we trust?

Throughout Season One Blaine has had many chances to change his ways. Some may see his new zombie life as a way of reevaluating the non-existent second chance, but it’s not always the case. As the season progressed so did Blaine’s desire to be in control, wanting to become big man in charge not caring who is in his way or who he must manipulate in order to accomplish it. So much so, in fact, that in Liv and Let Clive (Season One, Episode 4) we see Blaine with Jackie getting cozy while dealing with the zombie side of their partnership. We see her being a part of Blaine’s plans as we watch him giving brains to the local shop and sending some of his men off with a list for more. When he finds out that the men he had hired were looking to quit and start their own business, he shoots them and places them in the freezer and pushing two others out. Blaine is using a new worker and cutting the brain out of Jerome (Christopher Meyer) who is a buddy of Major’s. Before he cuts into Jerome he answers the text from Major then smashes the phone to the ground. Blaine’s business takes a hit when the bodies of Eddie, Jerome and countless others start piling up. That’s when people like Major start asking questions. When confronted about it, Blaine tells his people to stop worrying about it because he has it under control.

Blaine’s journey in Season One was from the start all about business and how he can make the cash no matter what the cost may be to telling Liv and Ravi that he needs them focused on a cure. When Ravi finishes the exam on both Liv and Blaine she asks Blaine if he knew about a zombie video his friend Scott E. getting shot. Blaine and Julien (Aleks Paunovic) set fire to Scott E’s apartment to hide evidence of any zombie related info, but what they didn’t expect was Major snooping around and hiding in the trunk of their car. When he gets out he is across the street watching Blaine talk to Julien. We discover that Blaine had killed Alan York, the famous Astronaut, for a client who gave him two hundred thousand dollars for the brain. As they are packing up the brains, Luta runs in and tells Blaine that some of the brains are missing resulting in Blaine stabbing Luta in the neck and telling him to get up because they have work to do. Julien and Blaine hold Major hostage because he knows too much about their plans when Evan (Liv’s brother) comes in to turn in the job application their mom picked up for him when he was leaving Blaine took notice of Liv’s name and hired him on the spot.

In the episode titled Blaine’s World, Blaine keeps Major in the freezer until he is willing to talk about where he stashed the brains he took from them. He tells Major that he can and will keep him in the freezer suffering until he gets what he needs. This once again shows that he will do anything to keep the power he has and receive the money he wants. Through the episode we see Blaine taunting Major and pushing him the extreme for answers including bringing the body of one of Major’s runaways in. Blaine uses Major as leverage when he finds out she has the brains he wants; telling her he will cut open Major and eat his brain if he doesn’t get what he wants. When he meets up with Liv for a tradeoff he gets the brains, but left Liv with a decoy. Blaine’s business comes crumbling down at the hands of Major; however, not without Blaine stabbing Major because of the mess he made of his building and leaving him to die. When Blaine shuts the music off he gets shot by Liv who believes he killed Major. Blaine tells her there is a reason Liv can’t kill him and that’s because he feeds the zombies of Seattle and if he dies then everyone she loves dies. Liv stabs Blaine with a syringe of the zombie cure and tells him that he’s cured now, explaining that he’s the guinea pig now.

Compared to Season One, the second season shows a whole new side to Blaine. Well, in the sense that he is now human and running a funeral home. In the episode Grumpy Old Liv, we see a new human side of Blaine as he is now the new hot shot funeral director at Shady Plots Funeral Home. When he gets a visit from Liv, not one to completely change Blaine goes downstairs where he has men unloading a crate of Utopium. Blaine confronts Don E (Bryce Hodgson) on how he cut the Utopium at the boat party only for Don E to tell Blaine he knew who cut it. In the fourth episode of Season Two we are shown Blaine being brought in by Peyton (Aly Michalka) who wants information on Stacey Boss – Blaine’s employer. Blaine tells Peyton the information she wants in exchange for immunity agreeing to give Peyton all the credit. But while he helped Peyton, Blaine was nowhere near changed. He went back to the funeral home and dangled fresh brain in front Gabriel in return for information on the Utopium. Season Two shows Blaine working with Ravi and Liv on finding a cure which results in Gabriel agreeing to cut the Utopium, but only if he gets the cure. Unfortunately, the attempted cure Ravi has ends up being made of tainted Utopium causing Gabriel to die in a matter of seconds when Blaine realizes he created an anti-zombie drug – causing him and Ravi to fight for it. When he doesn’t get, it he leaves the morgue like nothing happened.

One major point for Blaine in Season Two was in the episode Max Wager (Season Two, Episode 6) When Angus, Blaine’s father, shows up declaring that Blaine now works for him. Angus (Robert Knepper) knew that Blaine wasn’t a zombie and he also knew all of the clients Blaine had. Therefore, Blaine either had to do as Angus said or become a zombie again; once Angus tells Blaine who he wants the brains of Blaine leaves. To get back at his father, Blaine actually visits his grandfather and smothers him with a pillow and brings him back to the funeral home and removes his brains. Blaine’s journey the rest of the season is based on him having to find a way to be who he is while also dealing with being a zombie again to working with Liv and Ravi. He has to trust them to make a cure, which is not easy for him. Soon enough Blaine starts having memory problems that comes to light in episode Pour Some Sugar, Zombie when Peyton asks Blaine when he’s going to testify against Boss with her. Blaine doesn’t remember the meeting he planned with her. When the season comes to a close, Blaine helps Ravi save Peyton from Kenny. It’s there that Peyton and Blaine seem to make a connection.

In Season Three Blaine is all sorts of the character he molded together from seasons one and two. Blaine starts season three being accused once again of lying about his memory loss. Saying that it was a ploy to keep other zombie from taking the cure therefore closing down Blaine’s business it seems like something he’d do, ruin the cure yet finding a way to make Peyton fall for him. Cunning, right? Going further into the seasons, Blaine and Peyton’s “friendship” goes from friends to something more in a matter of a few episodes despite everything being said of Blaine. She offers him the chance to have a life and do good in the third episode of season three, Blaine is still suffering amnesia as Ravi tells him it’s best someone stays with him leading him to be with Peyton; the two make dinner and flirt and nearly go to third base. Blaine admits that he doesn’t want to remember who he was before. This lead to so many questions like was he truly sincere or was he faking and just seeing what everyone has been seeing before? But seeing Blaine with Peyton, who has become excepting of Blaine is a change, we see him being sweet and respectful towards Peyton – something we’ve not seen before. In Some Like It Hot Mess (Season Three, Episode 6) it is revealed that Ravi’s cure works and Blaine steals it, but it also proved that Blaine had been lying this whole time. Once he took the cure his memories returned to him and that he was faking amnesia for months. Peyton finds out and ends what they have going, leading Blaine to go back to his criminal ways. As the episode ends, he’s making his own batch of serum he stole from Ravi. This leads to Blaine and Don E. going into business together in episode Looking for Mr. Goodbrain, Part 2 (Season Three, Episode 13). Here we see Blaine discovers that a supply of brains was intercepted by government officials, trying to fix it. Blaine offers his brain services to militant organization Fillmore Graves. Leader Chase Graves (Jason Dohring) wants no involvement and bans his zombie officers from going to Blaine’s bar, damaging livelihood. Blaine and Don E. wallow about The Scratching Post being officially over. Don E. helps Blaine out by offering blue brains to zombies around town; resulting in The Scratching Post packed with people eating the blue brains.

Blaine’s journey continues as the series progresses. Looking back on the past three seasons we’ve seen Blaine go from big bad to a guy who fell for Peyton only for him to go back to his old ways. So, we ask ourselves, is Blaine really capable of being a true good guy and giving up his criminal ways or will he always be the bad boy who wants the money and power? We will have to wait and see what Season Four has in store. What we do know is we will enjoy the ride just as much if not more than we have from the beginning.