Another week with good long-term plot development and a killer last few minutes.
We pick up right where we left off (28 milliseconds later according to the chyron), with Liv having Jerome visions in the elevator leaving Lowell's place and Zombie Uncle Snark Daddy approaching from outside with a meal. Liv hides her face with her hoodie as she exits the elevator. ZUSD seems to notice that something is up, but the two don't make eye contact.
Outside, Julian is being scolded for parking the Meat Cute delivery car illegally. When Liv sees him, she flashes back to Jerome trying (unsuccessfully, obviously) to escape ZUSD's clutches. Liv then sees another eight or so brain meals in the back of the car. She is starting to put together ZUSD's "brains on wheels" operation and is understandably freaking out.
Ravi is in the lab recording notes on his possible zombie-ism. The good news is that it's been twelve hours (and he never called Liv?) and so far there are no signs of physical change. Liv comes into the lab and Ravi hides what he's doing. Not sure I approve of the secrecy, Ravi.
Ravi notices that Liv is freaked out and asks her about it. She seems to have put all the pieces together, since she explains to Ravi that ZUSD "murders teenagers and delivers their brains to zombies" and that Lowell is one of the recipients. They realize that even though they know from Liv's visions that ZUSD killed Jerome, they can't explain how his body was then found at the cult house two weeks ago and start to realize that the police may be involved. Liv resolves to track down ZUSD (with no clear plan what she'll do when she finds him), but the only person she knows who knows how to contact him is Lowell.
Major is sitting in his bedroom watching YouTube "how to shoot a gun" videos while playing with his newly purchased weapon. Ravi enters and tries to distract him with video games, but then Ravi gets distracted himself. Major did manage to shut down the shooting demo video on his computer before Ravi entered the room, but that left up a web page about brains. When Ravi asks about it, Major explains that there is some performance enhancing drug that comes from human brains. He think this may be why Julian was carting a brain around with him.
Liv has zipped back across town to Lowell's place. She starts to confont him in the elevator.
But before we get to see that discussion, we cut over to a paintball game. One player refuses to leave the field after he's hit. That ends up being because he was previously hit by an actual bullet.
Back at Lowell's, Liv is interrogating Lowell about how to find ZUSD. Liv pulls no punches, berating Lowell for being willing to turn a blind eye to how ZUSD obtains brains and for lying to her about it. One piece of zombie mythology we learn here - part of the reason Liv has so many and such extreme visions is that she goes seeking out people and places ("triggers") from the victims' lives. Lowell doesn't do this, so he has had a lot fewer visions from which to figure out that all of his meals began with their owner's tragic death. We also learn that ZUSD is the one who turned Lowell, which makes sense but is not something I think we knew for certain. Oh, and Lowell tells Liv that he loves her. Just then Liv gets a text from Ravi about the paintball body, so she heads out without resolution on any of the fronts.
At Meat Cute, ZUSD reveals a previously unknown appreciation for nineties alternative music, specifically Nirvana. (Side note, he mentions being 13 in 1994 when Kurt Cobain dies, which puts him in his mid-thirties. Wait, do we have any idea whether or not zombies continue to age after being turned?) Julian tells ZUSD that one of their wealthy clients has a business proposition that he wants to discuss over lunch. ZUSD's interest is piqued.
At the murder scene, Detective Clive tells Ravi and Liv that the victim's name is Everett Adams. He is a former Army Ranger sniper and now works at the paintball facility. Forensics has identified a nearby tree as being where the bullet was shot from based on the angle with which it hit a tree trunk, but there are no casings there or near the victim.
The group Everett was with was a Big Brothers organization. His "little brother" from the program, Harris, is sitting off to the side, repetatively firing his paintball gun. Detective Clive and Liv come up to ask him some questions. The kid is in a (possibly sociopathic) daze, but tells them that Everett was in a custody battle with his ex-wife and her new husband, which sounds like motive to him.
Detective Clive decides to bring in the ex-wife and her husband Sean and wants Liv to join him. She says she needs to swing by the morgue and have lunch first (though she of course says it like they are two distinct activities, not one and the same). Her voiceover tells us that she's selfishly grateful for the opportunity to help solve Everett's murder because eating his brain means no more flashbacks of Jerome.
At the station, they talk to the ex-wife, Penny. She admits that she left Everett for her new husband while Everett was stationed in Afghanistan, but says that war changed Everett, who had untreated PTSD. Her only alibi for the time of Everett's death is that she took their daughter to a park.
At the same time, her new husband (WALLACE! Why must you be evil here? Sorry, spoiler alert.) is also being questioned. He is a tech geek who got a phenomenal job offer recently that would require them to move to Silicon Valley. He wanted to take it, but that would mean moving Anna (the daughter) with them, so Everett fought it in court. So more motive, but husband has an alibi - he was in a multi-hour meeting with several coworkers as witnesses when Everett was killed.
Detective Clive and Liv go to the couple's home to interview the daughter about mom's alibi. Daughter is not having it. First she hysterically asks Liv why she is so freaky looking. Then she randomly freaks out and "doesn't want to do this." I call inexplicable tantrum for no other reason than to set off a Liv vision of Everett visiting the house and being violent with new husband until ex-wife threatens him with a large knife. Anna is crying throughout the flashback.
That night, Liv dreams what looks like flashbacks, but are apparently actually part of Everett's PTSD symptoms. So she goes for a midnight run. Which somehow leads to a decision to take out her aggression on the paintball field. Lucky for Liv, the game she arrives for is a "free for all." Using Everett's real life sniper training, she easily wins. During the course of the game, she finds a (real) bullet casing about halfway between where Everett died and the tree where they thought the shooter had hidden.
Liv fills in Ravi on her findings - the shooter would have had to be fifteen feet in the air for the casing to land where it did. Ravi then does an impressive job of segueing from Liv using sniper brains to win the paintball trophy to asking her about the early stages of realizing she was a zombie. Poor, worried Ravi, though I still wish he would have filled Liv in from the beginning. Backstory - after waking up in the body bag, Liv identified herself as a medical professional to get away (how . . . does that work?). On her way out, she came across a body whose brain was half eaten and helped herself to the rest as her first zombie meal.
Liv's phone buzzes and she ignores another call or text from Lowell. Ravi is understandably feeling a bit sympathetic towards zombies at the moment, so tries to get Liv to imagine what she would have done without the morgue job. But Liv is still taking the high ground of not eating murdered teenagers.
Detective Clive shows up and wants to borrow Liv. He somehow found out that Everett's shrink recommended that he keep a journal, so they are going to go search his place for it.
Oh boy. Major at the gym. He enlists a trainer and heavily hints at wanting "cutting-edge" answers "no matter how crazy they may sound." Aka, brains. Which he finally just comes out and explicitly tells the trainer.
Liv and Detective Clive search Everett's place until they find his journal, but it's bascially empty. Liv pulls out Everett's rifle from under the bed and flashes back to Everett finding little brother Harris sneaking a look at it. Everett was not happy, and Harris' lack of affect now looks like it may be less because he was in mourning and more because he's a psychopath.
Side note - it makes me laugh that Neutrogena always runs Kristen Bell commercials during iZombie. They know Rob Thomas fans.
Second side note - every week I swear I'm going to tighten up these recaps so they aren't crazy long. You can see how well that's working. I'm going to try a new tactic next week, but for this week bear with me.
Detective Clive has had Harris come to the station for questioning. He's your typical troubled kid - family trauma, acting out, violent drawings (of soldiers injured in war), etc. But Liv notes that he's actually been getting better since he started the Big Brother program, so she's voting against the sociopath option.
They get a lead that Penny and WALLACE/Sean's neighbor filed a noise complaint about the couple, so they go talk to him. He notes that since filing the complaint, his house has seemed "possessed" - lights and sprinklers going off randomly.
Liv is home polishing her army boots when Lowell stops by. He's brought an apology brain that he dug up himself after attending the funeral. Lowell has realized Liv was right about him being willfully ignorant about the source of his brains. So he's been doing some zombie soul searching and is in a pretty self-hating place. He'd compartmentalized enough to forget that each brain he ate actually used to be a person. He can't do that anymore and it's hitting him hard.
We're still not 100% clear on how complicit Lowell has been in ZUSD's whole scheme, but he sells this speech pretty well. Well enough to convince Liv, so they make out. Meant to be together couple or bad guy effectively pretending to be racked with guilt? I'm going with the former, but won't be surprised either way.
Back at the gym, the trainer is entertaining everyone with stories of his new client who wants to eat brains to get jacked. Julian is bench pressing nearby and overhears. He gets Major's contact info from the trainer. (Who is probably like, yeah, if anyone I know eats brains it's that guy.)
Post-coital (didn't I get enough of this last week?), LivWell is cuddling. Lowell is a trust fund kid turned musician. He thinks ZUSD liked his music and knew about the money, which is why he turned him. If that ends up being the only reason, I am going to be seriously disappointed. How many rich kids in grunge bands are there in Seattle? I'm guessing more than a few. But the one ZUSD turned happens to cross paths with Liv? Either there's more to the reason (maybe the Max Rager connection?) or it's not a coincidence (Lowell has actually been working with ZUSD all along). I hope.
Anyway, Liv and her sniper brain decide that she needs to kill ZUSD.
She and Lowell come up with a plan. It involves Lowell inviting ZUSD over to hang out and bond over music while Liv waits on a nearby roof with Everett's sniper rifle to take ZUSD out. What could possibly go wrong?
Meat Cute. ZUSD tells Julian to take care of their "little gym rat problem." Great, Major is in for another beatdown. ZUSD himself is heading out for that business lunch mentioned earlier before his music date with Lowell.
ZUSD gets in the car meant to drive him to lunch but is suprised to see his client waiting for him. The "business proposition" is actually just that mogul guy is sick of paying so much money for traumatized teenage brains. He has decided to design himself a brain wishlist, starting with a famous astronaut, which he expects ZUSD to fulfill so that his flashbacks are more "seeing Earth from the moon" and less "seeing Julian's foot kick a kid's face." (Additional side note - ZUSD turned this guy as well. So have we met any zombies ZUSD didn't turn? And what does that mean for our mythology?)
Back at the morgue, Ravi is sniffing some of Liv's leftovers to see if he finds them appetizing. The answer seems to be no. When Liv interrupts, he is excited to share his most recent finding - zombie-ism does not appear to be able to jump across species. Liv is confused as to when and how they tested this theory, and she gets quite mad at Ravi once she figures it all out. Good. All for one and one for all.
Detective Clive interrupts this sweet moment. WALLACE/Sean's tech company does work for "UFreightEaze."
Paragraph aside because this recap isn't already longer than the freaking bible. UFreightEaze = Euphrates = historic river = Amazon = online site to buy anything and everything.
Much like Amazon, UFreightEaze is experimenting with drone delivery, which is where their work with WALLACE/Sean comes in. Yup, WALLACE/Sean works at a company that creates drone guidance systems. Which could, theoretically, hang out fifteen feet about the ground with a gun. Just saying.
So our case of the week is resolved fairly early and cleanly - the custody battle meant WALLACE/Sean couldn't accept the previously mentioned huge promotion. Dead ex-husband? No more custody battle. Oh, and he printed the gun on a 3D printer, just to make it super high tech.
Liv breaks into Everett's place to steal the rifle, then heads to the roof near Lowell's. Lowell and ZUSD are on Lowell's roof sharing some "prime cuts" of brain (wrapped in bacon - ha!). But when it comes down to it, with ZUSD's head in her sights, Livvie can't go through with it. Lowell makes an excuse to exit and texts her to figure out what's going on. She explains. He heads back up to the roof.
Oh, and in the meantime, Major comes home to no working electricity. (Where's Ravi?) He and Julian fight, but Major eventually gets upstairs to his (illegal) gun. He shoots Julian (IMPORTANT) in the gut/torso several times.
Major then makes his first good decision in weeks and calls Detective Clive. But by the time Detective Clive gets there, Julian is gone. And, being a zombie, left no blood behind (for the millionth time, did we know that?). More evidence in the "Major looks crazy" category. Funnily enough, it actually works to Major's disadvantage that he attacked Julian before Julian was able to do any major (ok, ha ha) damage to him. If Julian had smashed a finger or something similar, Detective Clive and co. may think it's self-inflicted, but it might lend some credence to Major's claims. Escaping unscathed actually hurt him.
NONONO!!! Back on the roof, ZUSD gets a call from Julian about Major. Lowell sees the picture caller id and flashes back to the same scene of Julian taking part in Jerome's murder that Liv did at the top of the hour. Lowell has figured out where everything stands. He's still feeling guilty, still (hopefully not faking) in love with Liv, and gets that she can't assassinate anyone, even a deserving zombie killer. ZUSD still has no remorse and no reason to change. So Lowell looks to where he knows Liv is and mouths "I love you." She figures out where this is going before I do and starts to yell at him to stop, but is too far away to make a difference. Lowell attacks ZUSD. Anyone who has seen either of them in action knows this will not end well for Lowell. ZUSD whips out a gun and holds it to Lowell's head. We don't see what's next, but we hear a gunshot and see Liv's anguished reaction.
Booo!!! I liked Lowell, and even if he was double crossing Liv (in which case I need to point out that we didn't see him dead and don't really know what zombie "dead" is), he was interesting. And I hope the Ravi being bit storyline wasn't just a fakeout last week - there could be some symptoms that are different than full zombie-ism due to the cross-species thing. And what would it take to rehabilitate Major at this point?
Liv: To have shot from there, the killer would need to be fifteen feet tall.
Ravi: Should be easy to find then, shouldn't he? Or she.
Detective Clive: Doctor C, mind if I take your assistant on a field trip?
Ravi: I'd sign her permission slip, but my hands are covered in viscera.
Trainer: You'll eat human brains to get bigger muscles?
Major: I'm open to that as an option.
Detective Clive: Is that a good thousand yard stare or a bad thousand yard stare?
Rich Client: You're going to get me the brain of Alan York.
ZUSD: Alan York? The astronaut? One of the first men to walk on the moon?
Rich Client: I want to eat his brain.
ZUSD: I think he's still using it.
[Video of drone shooting watermelon]
Ravi: And I'm officially never going outside again.
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