iZombie 3×10 Review: Return of the Dead Guy

The opening of “Return of the Dead Guy” had me thinking that the episode would mostly feature Mr. Boss, but it turned out that the dead guy in the title hinted towards least two people.

Yes, of course, Mr. Boss is back when many people (his wife included) thought that he was dead, but this whole situation just seemed to be a side note to the far more important things that were going on in “Return of the Dead Guy”. In fact, even the other dead guy who showed up – Liv’s former boyfriend Drake – was more important to her personal struggles than to the overall plot (at least at this point).

Now, one would think that the main character’s issues with the death of her boyfriend would have a bigger overall effect on things, but unfortunately that isn’t the case here. To be honest, while it was nice to hear Liv admit that she’d been diving into all these other brains to escape from her own – to escape from her feelings/sadness about Drake’s death – I’m not sure it did viewers much good to have Drake reappear so suddenly and then disappear again (apparently for good this time), all in the same episode.

Speaking of Liv’s boyfriends, though, I have to wonder whether I’m the only one who wishes that she would just stay single for a while. Her current dalliance with Major’s zombie friend Justin is…well, boring. I don’t really understand how they started liking each other, or why they’re pursuing a relationship of sorts (outside of the obvious “well they’re both zombies, might as well” reasoning). Of course, I wasn’t sure about her relationship with Drake at first, either, and that definitely grew on me…although at this point, knowing how things tend to end for Liv’s boyfriends, I’m not sure I want Liv x Justin to go much farther…I just think it would be neat for Justin to stick around for a while so that we [hopefully] get to see more of/learn more about him outside of Liv.

In case it isn’t obvious yet, I’m not overly fond of “Return of the Dead Guy”. Sure, it was silly (but also a bit uncomfortable) watching Peyton play dominatrix to try to trigger Liv’s visions after she ate some of Weckler’s brain, but in the end what was the point? Because it seems that Weckler *did* kill Sweet Lady Pain, and although we also learned that he in turn was killed by a prison guard (who then almost immediately died in a ‘mysterious’ manner)…are we really supposed to be surprised by that? Clive’s comment that it “sounds like someone is trying to clean up a mess, but making an even bigger one” was right on the nose.

The only thing about the Weckler situation that had me raising my eyebrows was Clive and Liv’s run-in with his daughter Tatum. At first I thought perhaps Tatum wasn’t staying with a friend but had actually been forced into a situation by the same people who had orchestrated her father’s murder…until Clive and Liv left and her friend rejoined her outside to watch them go, and then made the observation that zombies were working with the police. Of course this left me wondering how she knew Liv was a zombie, and whether that was the real reason Tatum was acting strange around Clive and Liv. Hopefully the writers won’t abandon this story line next season, because otherwise the show actually introducing Tatum as a character could end up pointless.

While Liv and Clive are on this sort of wild goose chase, Blaine was ‘convincing’ Mr. Boss that they should work together, Major was having a kind of weird and very sudden love fest with the woman who doesn’t think of him as the Chaos Killer/Kidnapper, and Ravi was stuck with the Zombie Truthers and Don E. And hey, speaking of which, while the combination of extra blue juice soaking time and the amount of the brain that Don E ate probably wasn’t a good idea, my concerns that he was stuck in forever full-on zombie mode were apparently unfounded. (Though if Liv and Blaine don’t show up to rescue him soon, he might end up there anyway thanks to the Zombie Truthers essentially starving him.) And while I agree with Ravi that the Truthers are being jerks, the cliffhanger ending of “Return of the Dead Guy” had me far more concerned about Ravi’s fate than Don E’s.

As you can see, this episode was kind of all over the place, with a lot happening – too much happening, if you ask me. I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see if they have a good reason for cramming so much into one episode.

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.

Twitter

Help support independent journalism. Subscribe to our Patreon.

Copyright © The Geekiary