Why Don't You Ever Suggest Anything Whimsical?

This week, Liv snacks on the brain of a sociopath and gets to experience the pros and cons of having absolutely no social conscience.

This week's cold open is two high school kids shooting "some quality b roll" out by the docks for their spooky film project.  They hear a noise and realize that there is a person trapped at the bottom of some kind of hole.  Film Nerd A thinks it's a hobo that they can cut into the movie; Film Nerd B thinks it could be a serial killer planning to cut them into "stupid virgin stew."  They split the difference and Film Nerd A sticks his arm in the hole to film whatever he can get.  Just as you're expecting him to start screaming or be dragged in, we cut to the credits.

At the morgue, Ravi is explaining to Liv that he set up a zombie early warning system, aka a Google alert for the terms "Seattle" and "zombie."  In addition to a movie screening and a new cocktail, he gets a hit about a teenager who posted a picture of a zombie on Facebook.  So no stupid virgin stew, then?  But now Liv is sarcastically interested - "Is it me?"

The picture is pretty grainy, but seems to be a pretty typical looking movie zombie.  Ravi notes that the location is only a mile or so from where Liv was turned.  Liv turns from snarky to serious - "there are already two zombies, me and [Zombie Uncle Snark Daddy].  Now there may be a third?  Two's company; three's a horde."  Liv, that is basically the equivalent of someone sticking their fingers in their ears, closing their eyes, and chanting "I can't hear you, I can't hear you."  In other words, I don't think ignoring this is going to make it go away.

Ravi attempts to learn more about Liv's personal life, which Liv interrupts by mentioning that she's hungry enough that his brain is starting to look appetizing.  Ravi reviews the info they have on the corpse Liv is working on - family man, business owner, victim of a hit and run.  They deign his brain "safe" enough for Liv to snack on.  What could go wrong?

ZUSD drops by to ask why Liv stood him up for brain delivery the night before.  Their truce from last week falls apart pretty quickly as Liv admits that she believes that, at heart, he's still the same creepy drug dealer who hit on her and turned her into a zombie.  He tries to earn sympathy points by pointing out how difficult it is for zombies without access to bone saws to get brains, but in the end they agree that it's every zombie for themself.

At home, Roomie Peyton (apparently an ADA) has popped some champagne to celebrate being assigned to her first murder trial.  Wally Walker, a tech genius, was mugged and murdered in a park.  An "angel investor" offered a large monetary reward, which is now being collected by Freddy Brown, who appears to possibly be a homeless guy who lives in the park.  In pre-zombie days, Liv used to help Peyton practice her cross examinations, and she agrees to do so again tonight.  Liv will be playing the part of Gus Williams, the "cold, detached loner" murderer who was carrying around the victim's wallet and shoes.

Oops - when Peyton shows "Gus" a photo of the victim, Liv flashes back to shooting him in the head in the park.  Since actual Gus is too alive for Liv to have eaten his brain, she realizes the hit and run victim was actually the murderer.

Liv heads to the police station to fill Detective Clive in on the connection between his hit and run and the high profile, slam dunk murder case just about to go to trial.  He's not amused.  Liv points out that while it isn't surprising that a drifter like Gus Williams would steal a dead man's belongings, it is highly unlikely that he would also be carrying around a Glock.  She explains the Glock, with a silencer, was the murder weapon, then gives a shortened version of the Wikipedia entry for a silencer.  And we have identified the first of Liv's quirks for the week - reciting inane trivia.

Followed quickly by another - she tells off Detective Clive before realizing she doesn't even care, she just has a superiority complex.  And zero empathy.  And was a hitman.  Former doctor Liv Moore diagnoses herself with "antisocial personality disorder" - the combined category of what used to be sociopaths and psychopaths, according to the DSM and her trivia-filled brain.

Returning to the apartment, Liv gets more good news.  Roomie Peyton found a video on Facebook of Major making out with some new girl.  Liv does her best Data from Star Trek impression while watching it, then shares more trivia – December 11 is the most common day to get dumped on Facebook.  Roomie finds this (lack of) reaction "impressive, yet concerning."

Ravi and Liv go check the docks for zombies.  They pretty much immediately discover the same zombie Film Nerds did.  Liv quickly identifies her as Marcie.  Aka the fellow resident who invited her to the boat party from hell.  Man, that hospital must have taken a huge staffing hit after the zombie party.

Marcie, having been trapped in a hole with no brains to snack on since the accident, is worse off than Liv.  Sociopath Liv throws rocks at Marcie and contemplates that this could be her fate if she goes too long without feeding.  Optimist/Scientist Ravi thinks they may be able to "fix" Marcie by feeding her some brains he conveniently brought along.  They leave her to chow down and make a plan to come back later to see whether their experiment worked.

Liv tries to get Detective Clive to connect the Wally Walker (dead guy in woods) and Marvin Webster (hit and run hit man) murders by explaining that Wally Walker had significant gambling debts.  Which she learned by sneaking a peak at Roomie Peyton's files.  Liv's theory is that someone hired Hit Man Marvin to kill Wally because of his gambling debts, then took out the hit man to tie up loose ends.

Also purloined from Peyton's notes?  The name of Wally's bookie.  Detective Clive knows him - he's a former cop and bookie to most of the current force.  Liv thinks this means his center of operations is a cop bar and they'll "blend right in."

Cut to zombie and black man walking into a honky tonk bar.

Where it's Trivia Tuesday.

Hosted by a fake "I Dream of Jeannie."

Liv can't resist participating, and names their team "Piggy and the Brain."  Not bad, though I still like week one's Cagney and Pasty better.  They win with a perfect score, and Jeannie comes by to snap a Polaroid with them while they talk to the less than happy bookie.  He confirms that Wally owed him money, but says Wally was about to sell his company and come into more than enough cash to pay off his debts.  The night Wally was in to ask for more time was June 8, the night he died.  That casts suspicion on the bookie until Liv sees the Polaroid of who won trivia June 8 - hit man Marvin Webster.

Liv and Detective Clive visit Webster's widow to see if they can learn anything more solid that might help the investigation.  In Webster's basement office, Liv flashes back to the hit and run.  It was definitely intentional - he was run over more than once (shouldn't Liv or Ravi have noticed that during the autopsy?) and she gets a partial plate of the car that did the deed.  Detective Clive finds a Glock with a suppressor in Webster's toolbox.  Productive visit.

Roomie Peyton comes home pissed that Detective Clive ruined her case.  And becomes even more pissed when she realizes Liv went through her confidential case notes.  The entire purpose of this scene is to show that Liv is becoming more of a psychopath because she doesn't really care that Peyton's feelings are hurt or that her career may be negatively impacted.  This purpose is somewhat undermined by the fact that Peyton doesn't really seem to care that the guy she was prosecuting was actually innocent.

Anyway, Liv complains to Ravi about her lack of empathy.  His suggestion is to eat another brain to overwrite her newfound psychopathic tendencies.  This makes me very curious about the mechanics of how this whole “brain eating leading to memory flashes” thing works.  Ravi makes it sound like if Liv eats another brain, it will just wipe out the hit man brain and take over.  But since Liv had previously said the intensity of the connection fades over time (and she still has artistic abilities this week, so maybe not completely), I would assume there would still be some hit man left, just more of the new brain.

This is important because Ravi says the downside of eating another brain would be that Liv would lose the Marvin Webster memories, which could likely lead to whomever killed Wally Walker getting away with murder.  Hence, my confusion.

They are interrupted by Major and a kid, because of course Major is a counselor at a halfway house for troubled kids.  The kid's roommate has been missing for four days, but the cops are ignoring their concern.  Liv brings the pair up to talk to Detective Clive.

The roommate used to hang around a skate park, but had been going less because a sketchy dude had started hanging out there.  The skaters call him the Candy Man because he hands out Utopium like candy, but only if you're willing to go back to his van with him.  That doesn't sound sketchy at all.  Detective Clive promises to look into it.

Detective Clive has also identified the car involved in the hit and run from Liv's description.  It was sold the day before the crime, and the seller is down at the police station to help out.  He says the buyer tried really hard to hide his identity, but it didn't work since his picture had been all over the news.  He identifies the buyer as the "angel investor" who offered the monetary reward for evidence in Wally's murder.  He continues his helpfulness by sharing that the car still has LoJack.  So even if it was dumped somewhere, they can track it down.

Next, Detective Clive brings the angel investor (Don Watts) in for questioning.  Watts and Walker were partners in some type of a tech company.   Due to his gambling debts, Walker wanted to sell the technology now, but Watts wanted to wait and eventually go public.

Watts gloats that they don’t have any evidence tying him to Walker’s murder, and that if he “accidentally” ran over a hit man, he should really be considered more of a hero than a criminal.  And we may have found our second psychopath of the episode.

Liv and Detective Clive go searching for evidence to directly implicate Watts.  They figure Webster (why does everyone’s name start with a W this week?  Apparently because they are all named after '70's Seattle Supersonic players?) would have met with whoever hired him in person, so they use the GPS on his car to track down his last few destinations before he was killed.  They end up in a park, where Liv surreptitiously snacks on some more of Webster’s brain in the hopes of activating a vision.

Another logistical question – hasn’t Liv eaten the entire brain in one sitting in the past?  Maybe if she’d done that here she could have solved the mystery a little more quickly and spent a little less time being all sociopathic.

Anyway, it works.  Liv flashes back to Watts and Webster arguing over Webster’s fee.  A sanitation worker comes by and asks them to move their cars so he can get his garbage truck through.  If they can find the sanitation worker, he can prove Watts and Webster were meeting, implicating Watts in Walker’s murder.

Liv and Ravi head back to the docks to check up on Marcie.  Her condition appears unchanged.  Liv, fresh off her psychopathic brain snack, flatly declares that they have to kill “it.”  Ravi is still holding out hope that there may have been some small changes in the right direction and has rigged up equipment to take a biopsy on a long pole.  Ravi proves less adept at avoiding danger than Film Nerd A.  As he tries to biopsy Marcie, she pulls him into her zombie pit.

After a few seconds of Ravi screaming, Liv, who has been in full-on uncaring psychopath mode, snaps out of it and into full-on zombie mode, jumping into the pit to brain Marcie with a rock and save Ravi.

Back at the police station, Detective Clive uses quotes Liv remembered from the conversation between Watts and Webster, as well as Ravi dressed as the sanitation worker hanging out outside the interrogation room, to convince Watts that they have a witness who will testify against him.  Peyton offers him a plea deal that is only good if he signs it immediately, which he does. 

It ends up the sanitation worker actually remembered nothing, which is why they had Ravi dress up and why Petyon’s plea deal was a one-time only offer.  But the ruse works and justice is served.

Liv contemplates the upsides of having no feelings while deciding whether to snack on the rest of her apparently endless supply of hit man brain.  Despite the pain of losing Major, killing Marcie, and almost letting Ravi die, she decides to take her name to heart and dumps the rest of the brain instead of eating it. 

As her feelings come back, she sends Marcie’s family heirloom pearl necklace to Marcie’s mother and watches her cry upon receiving it.  Then she heads home and rewatches the video of Major and his new paramour.  This time she does get upset, and Roomie Peyton is there like a good friend to console her.

We end at the skate park, where the kid Major took to the station earlier is wandering with a  photo of his friend, trying to find out if anyone has seen him.  Enter ZUSD (of course).  ZUSD tells the kid that his friend is at a party a few blocks away and offers to bring him there.  Why do I get the feeling that the Candy Man is actually luring the kid to his van of sketchiness?