iZombie 1×10 Review: Mr Berserk

I don’t feel like we really had adequate time to mourn Lowell’s death during this episode, nor did Liv up until the final few moments.  I had grown rather fond of his character, so last week’s surprise headshot really affected me to the point of losing sleep (and I’m not ashamed to admit that).  Instead of spending an episode sorting through our feelings, we jumped right into the next Brain-of-the-Week, which tied into the overarching plot involving Max Rager. Throughout the entire episode I was hoping and praying that somehow he’d be revived, but when Liv had her final moment of closure at the end I knew that it was finally over.  Lowell is dead.  Bradley James is no longer part of this show.  We have to collect ourselves and move forward, just like Liv.  That doesn’t make this hurt any less, though.  And it also made it super hard to concentrate on an arch-heavy episode that I feel like we were supposed to be paying close attention to.

The Brain-of-the-Week was actually a journalist we had met a few episodes prior, marking this as one of the rare occasions where Liv actually knows the victim before consuming their brain.  The journalist was working on a story involving the Max Rager energy drink, which is what set of the series of events that turned Liv into a zombie in the first place.  It turns out that the company is aware that their drink can trigger violent episodes in people, but has a massive conspiracy to keep the story under wraps.  Anyone who is close to uncovering the story winds up dead.  Thankfully for Liv, she’s already dead and, thanks to a well timed zombie rage out, manages to fight back against her assailant.  She makes it out ‘alive,’ but that can’t be said for the rest of the people involved in the assault.  The secretary who had been leaking information about Max Rager ends up at the bottom of a lake, and the man who murdered her, well… more on him later.

Then we have Major. Poor poor Major.  Sort of.  Even though I feel like I’m supposed to like him, I just can’t really bring myself to care about him as much as I should.  He’s funny.  He’s caring.  He’s empathetic and determined.  He’s perfect.  But man, I don’t really care.  Regardless of my guilt over not really caring much about Major, I have to acknowledge that he’s consistently getting the short end of the stick.  Nothing good has happened to him since the vast zombie conspiracy sprung up around him and now he’s committed himself to a mental institution because of it.  Will he believe his fellow institution resident that the creature he saw was a zombie?  Probably not.  But hey, at least the z-word has been floated to him now so when he inevitably finds out later on it won’t be completely out of left field.  I can’t help but thing something else horrific is going to happen to him before the season is up.  We’ve already had a fake out on his death and the threat of being zombified.  He’s been arrested, lost his job, and is now institutionalized.  Major is truly the punching bag of the show at this point… but man I still miss Lowell, you know?  I realize that this makes me a bad person.  I am self aware, at least.

The end of the episode brought somewhat of a cliffhanger leading into next week.  Now there’s a recently turned zombie on the loose in the forests of Washington.  Could this be the start of an outbreak?  Will the lid be blown off the Max Rager secret?  Will we head into a zombie apocalypse?  I’m sorry, I can’t think over the sound of myself crying over Lowell.  Maybe I’ll get over it and can watch this episode to concentrate on the plot elements later, but I haven’t been able to move past last week yet.  I’m sorry.  But not sorry.

Even though we saw Liv mourning Lowell at the end of the episode, I’m still clinging on to some small shred of hope that he’ll somehow be revived.  I’m 99% sure that I’m wrong, but I just can’t let this go.  I loved his character too much and that short scene at the end was not nearly enough closure for me.  But I don’t feel like I’m going to be afforded that closure.  Instead I have to pick myself up and carry on with the plot.  iZombie is incredibly well written, but I don’t feel like they’ve tied up this plot thread in a truly satisfying way.  But maybe that’s the point.  Maybe our grief is meant to mirror Liv’s as we go forth and try to unravel the Max Rager conspiracy.  Maybe I’m supposed to feel this massive hole in my chest right now.  After all, this is the same writer who brought us Veronica Mars and when that show hurt, it hurt with a reason.

Author: Angel Wilson

Angel is the admin of The Geekiary and a geek culture commentator. They earned a BA in Film & Digital Media from UC Santa Cruz. They have contributed to various podcasts and webcasts including An Englishman in San Diego, Free to Be Radio, and Genre TV for All. They’ve also written for Friends of Comic Con and is a 2019 Hugo Award winner for contributing fanfic on AO3. They identify as queer.

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