iZombie 4×07 Review: Don’t Hate the Player, Hate the Brain

As soon as I realized that Liv was going to be on player brain in “Don’t Hate the Player, Hate the Brain”, I had a feeling that I wouldn’t care for this brain of the week. And while the rest of the episode was good, it didn’t quite bounce back from the bad brain decision.

One of the best things about “Don’t Hate the Player, Hate the Brain” was the pacing. Even if I had to suffer through Liv acting like a jerky pickup artist, at least the rest of what happened moved the overall plot along quite a bit. And along the way we got some great Clive scenes, too – as we chatted about on our last episode of FEELINGS…with The Geekiary, he’s such a well-written introvert, and watching him fail at ‘dating’ (for lack of a better term) was quite entertaining.

Unfortunately, Major’s character hasn’t been getting such good treatment, and if you ask me, his actions in “Don’t Hate the Player, Hate the Brain” put a few more nails in his coffin. Granted, I suppose there’s a chance that Major is faking being so behind Chase Graves and everything he’s doing, but for now I have to assume that he’s just become a big jerk. I mean really, I could almost-but-maybe-not-quite forgive him standing by and doing nothing when they executed Mama Leone, but now he’s not only taken part in shooting up a newspaper office, he *lied* about doing so…and not to just anybody, to Peyton. Ugh.

Speaking of people acting like jerks, what was up with Bozzio? Even though we don’t see all that much of her, she’d really grown on me (albeit gradually), but in this episode she definitely took a turn for the worse. Listen: all Clive knew was (a) they agreed to be in an open relationship, at least physically and (b) she had been seen out on a date, and seen making out with said date. He then paid a sex worker for sex, but because Bozzio didn’t know this detail – all she knew was that he was out all night and not answering his phone – she got on his case! I’m guessing the writers were trying to convey that she attempted the open relationship thing and decided it probably wasn’t for her, but the problem is SHE NEVER TOLD CLIVE THAT. Or maybe rather, she told him – in this episode – but only AFTER she realized he had probably slept with someone else. Bad form, Bozzio. Bad. Form.

In other relationship news, I do like that they are taking things slow with Liv and Levon (does anyone else giggle a bit when they put those two names together like that?). It’s been pretty obvious since they met that something was going to happen between them, but I like that the show is giving them more build up than I thought they would. And I suppose that was the one good thing that came of Liv being on player brain – Levon refused to hook up with her while she was on it, which means we’re still getting a bit of a slow burn with them. Kudos, iZombie.

One surprise in “Don’t Hate the Player, Hate the Brain” was that Liv and Angus met for the first time. I honestly assumed they already knew each other, though looking back I realize that nope, they never met (and never really had any reason to meet). Thankfully, Liv finding out that Angus was Blaine’s father was enough for her to step back from asking him to help her get brains. I still don’t trust Angus and am assuming he has some nefarious plan that we will learn about eventually, so I’m glad this particular situation worked out the way it did…although it did lead to Liv taking one hell of a risk stealing the ID printer from the zombie ID card offices. Though that maybe wasn’t as risky as printing new IDs in her bedroom in the apartment she shares with a lawyer, without locking said bedroom door AND while wearing headphones that kept her from hearing said lawyer enter the apartment and call out Liv’s name before opening said bedroom door and catching her in the act of printing said IDs. At this point I’m just hoping that between Peyton being a good person, caring about Liv, and also witnessing the newest Fillmore-Graves nonsense, she will be on Liv’s side in this.

How did you feel about this brain of the week? What about these other developments? Let us know in the comments!

Author: Tara Lynne

Tara Lynne is an author, fandom and geek culture expert, and public speaker. She founded Ice & Fire Con, the first ever Game of Thrones convention in the US, and now runs its parent company Saga Event Planning.

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