by Gregory Barton

If you were a zombie, could you eat the brains of someone you knew? Well, in iZombie when you eat brains, you gain some of the memories and take on some of the personality traits of the person whose brain you consume. That has been easy for Liz Moore up until now. And by working as a medical examiner in a morgue, she has an endless supply of brains at her pleasure to eat. Brilliant, right?  But, up until now, they have all been strangers. Liv and Ravi are in the woods waiting to do their ME thing on a body skewered by a tree branch. The deceased is apparently the result of a skydiving accident. While waiting though, Liv receives a distressing phone call from her roommate, Peyton, who tells Liv that their former sorority sister, Holly (Tasya Teles), had just died after jumping out of a plane. Liv realizes who she’s waiting to examine.

Even though Holly’s death is ruled an accident, Liv is not so sure, because the other three divers seem to be agitated. Ren (Blair Penner) is blaming Lowell (Bradley James) for the accident because Lowell was supposed to jump before Holly and didn’t. Eliza (Summer Bishil) seems indifferent. Interesting thing though is that Lowell locks eyes with Liv and takes an interest in her from afar. Liv convinces Clive to interview the skydivers, where she has a vision giving more info as to who was sleeping with who.  This pretty much makes all the skydivers suspects.

Liv is conflicted. Eating the brains of the deceased is like reading their diary. We have so many things in our lives that we may not share with others. Would eating Holly’s brain be an invasion of privacy? Possibly. Do the deceased even deserve the right of privacy? Not sure, but Liv wants to get to the bottom of Holly’s death even if the experience is uncomfortable.

Peyton and Liv reminisce about Holly and all of her exciting adventures over glasses of wine. Holly’s online profile pictures display Holly in exotic places and doing amazing activities like deep sea diving, mountain climbing, sky diving, etc. Peyton chastises Holly for taking too many chances and being reckless. But, Liv recalls Holly describing herself as a “dying as a consequence of life” sort of girl. And when Liv was having a bad day in class, Holly would remind her to start “sucking the marrow” out of life. Everyone knows those types of people…the risk takers who bounce from excitement to excitement without regard to stability and security, and the “straight and narrow” who punch the clock every day building careers slowly and playing by all the rules. Can we really say that the risk takers are foolish if they are getting so much out of life? Or should we chastise ourselves for not grabbing all that life has to offer before we’re too old to enjoy it?

Both Peyton and Liv had voted Holly out of the sorority because she wouldn’t follow the rules and reflect on how un-important those rules are now in their later life. Liv, either affected by Holly’s brain, or as a new lease on life, starts to change her daily habit and rides her bike through traffic in town, instead of driving her boring car.

Clive is getting lectured by his lieutenant about working on Holly’s case since it was not ruled a homicide, just when Liv reveals that Holly was given GHB right before she jumped, which would have caused her to black out during the jump, leading to her death. That scene kind of explained why Clive was so hesitant to help Major when he came by the station earlier. Major was trying to report the boys from the half-way house going missing. Clive’s hands are tied, but offers to refer Major to the missing persons department. That doesn’t satisfy Major, who is frustrated with the bureaucracy.

During the skydiving group interrogations, Lowell finally mentions the word play on Liv’s name and says “Liv Moore…Do you?” We were all waiting for that. And after Clive leaves the room, Lowell connects with Liv even more, with his charming British accent. He seems as though he knows more than he’s letting on.

Liv runs into Lowell again at the memorial, and now he is overtly flirting with her.  He makes her a very spicy drink…something a zombie would enjoy. And ah, ha! Lowell is a zombie, too, and wants to date Liv. While sharing a moment between them, Major walks in and sees the two together. He tells Liv he’s not bothered, but we’ll see what happens.

It really starts to make you wonder how Liv will find happiness. At first, maybe we think that Liz can patch things up with Major and try to have a normal life.  But that would involve telling Major her secret.  Even if she told him, would he be able to accept it? Could Major deal with having a girlfriend that eats noodle brain bowls with sriracha sauce? Or is it more natural for Liv to fall for Lowell, who is also a zombie and already understands Liv at a personal level with all of the secrecy and frustration there is to be a zombie? And so it begins. Team Major vs Team Lowell.

Yet another word on zombie appearances. More and more zombies are being revealed to have darker hair and fake-tanned skin. Liv on the other hand has white blond hair and is pale. It’s becoming clear that even if humans don’t recognize Liv as a Zombie, other zombies can pick her out of a crowd because of her appearance.  Liv is going to have to change her look.

On other fronts, the plots are thickening. Trying to help out Major, Clive tries to investigate the missing homeless boys on his own time and finds tons of missing person flyers, not just two. Major tries to do his own investigation and gets beat up and knocked out by one of Blaine’s zombie associates. And we see the disgruntled lieutenant who’s been giving Clive a hard time pull a bottle of hot sauce out of his desk and add a generous portion to his coffee.

The ep ends rather strangely, because as they figure out the Eliza was the one who gave Holly the GHB, she goes missing. It doesn’t look like she left on her own accord and so we, the viewers, get very little closure on this story. Maybe they will pick up the storyline in the future, but next week’s previews don’t seem to address the open questions posed this week.

And the bigger question, what’s going to happen in the Liv/Major/Lowell triangle? Was Liv’s interest in Lowell genuine or only a result of her temporary wild-side reaction of absorbing Holly. We’ll have to see.

iZombie airs Tuesday at 9/8c on The CW. Wathc full episodes on CWTV.com, Hulu Plus, Amazon Instant Video and On Demand (checkwith your local cabel provider.)