2 out of 5

Developed by: Rob Thomas, Diane Ruggiero-Wright

covers season 1

An example must be made.

iZombie is not a bad TV show.  But: there’s nothing special about it, beyond it’s ‘hook,’ which unfortunately makes most of the plot a somewhat pointless sequence of events until a final 11th hour revelation and then conclusion.  As a surface description, this might not separate it from a slew of other shows – and if we’re going to stick to the realm of procedural, which iZ mostly is, then Law & Orders are a good comparison – but the difference is that there’s no sleight of scripting hand here to make you blissfully willing to ignore those predictable deus ex machinas: the show is all too willing to let everyone cutely bumble around for 40 minutes and then wrap it up with an “all’s well that ends well” voiceover from the un-unlikable Rose McIver as Liv.

The blame, for sure, rests partially with the comic book source material which, while maybe a tad more cluttered with plot extras, has that same “hook” format: I’m a zombie, eat a brain, get some memories, solve some shit.  That it’s drawn by the crowd-pleasing pop culture master Mike Allred and still exists in the “primed for popularity” vacuum publication arm of Vertigo (which, admittedly, seems to be getting some revamping lately, which I appreciate) all adds to the vibe of style over substance, as does co-creator Chris Roberson’s writing style, which is heavy with the tropes (and thus works best when tropes are the point, like in Edison Rex).  The book is meant to be easy to swallow, so the show, really, is only following suit.

And again, it’s fun.  It’s got a great title sequence and theme song (featuring Allred’s work), and the zombie bandwagon handling is genius: our lead was bitten, now she works as an assistant to the ME, and that all happened before the first episode so just read the cards to catch up and let’s jump right into our crime-of-the-week format.  In other words, the show gets all the boost of the zombie framework but doesn’t have to worry about the setup.  Oh, sure, Liv and her boss (Rahul Kohli) are working on a cure, but wink wink that would end the show, so we can ignore that perhaps until cancellation looms.  The cast is all beautiful and deliver their dialogue with convincing 1-dimensional emotions as needed.  A new corpse is delivered each episode, Liv eats some brains, and gets some flashes of memories doled out at appropriate points throughout the episode that solve whatever mystery is tied to that corpse, rendering detective Clive (Malcolm Goodwin), who works with the ME Office, completely pointless.  At no point does it feel like he offers any helpful copliness except to arrest the badguy at the end with a tip o’ the hat to Liv, who he’s accepted right away as a psychic – her cover for her zombieism.

Sure, there are other zombies; maybe the outbreak is tied to a particular drug, a particular company; Liv hems and haws over whether or not to tell her ex (Robert Buckley) about her condition; whatever other distractions you need to get you through the episode.  I’ll underline once again that none of this is too different from a billion other series, past and present, and that the show is absolutely not hard to watch.  It’s just so transparent as to be laughable, and when I translate that into value as viewing time, it means I can walk away after 15 minutes of episode 1, walk back in for the last 15 minutes of the season ender, and not really have missed much.  There are other shows that entertain and also make me feel like there’s a reason to watch those moments in-between.  Thus: you look good, you sound fun, but – iZombie – you’re empty.

And god fuck that fucking name.