Kyle’s Thoughts

iZombie hasn’t figured out how to integrate its story arcs. Come to think of it, the CW may not know how to integrate its story arcs. For the second week in a row—I didn’t review last week’s “Eat, Pray, Liv” for reasons I’ll explain later—iZombie front loaded its episode with the weekly mystery, rushing the process, so it could focus on something else the second half of “Wag the Tongue Slowly.”

The solution to this week’s mystery left a lot to be desired: everyone’s involved. No one likes a gossip so it made a little sense that more than one person would plan the victim’s murder. iZombie even offered that the murderers didn’t know they were killing her either by giving her Utopium. That almost makes sense, too. But if Cheryl’s coworkers wanted to teach her a lesson, a laxative in her pudding would’ve worked as well as, if not better than, an illegal street drug. I can’t buy into the coworkers’ ignorance. Headlines like thousands of people die from Utopium overdose would make me reconsider putting it in someone’s food as a prank.

I didn’t review “Eat, Pray, Liv” because iZombie turned full CW: insta-romance. I got invested in Blaine’s reform. He didn’t need a love interest in Peyton. Ravi pining for Peyton was okay. His jumping in bed with a character reintroduced for the sole purpose of Ravi jumping into bed with her and ruining his chances with Peyton was pointless. Major and Liv work as friends. They haven’t expressed feelings toward each other in years. Again, it makes some sense he’d have feelings for her, the two were engaged before they turned zombie, but iZombie didn’t need it, and “Wag the Tongue Slowly” dropped the story the next week. Enough with insta-romance.

And insta-romance during “Wag the Tongue Slowly” was the main plot point that rushed the week’s mystery. Major discovers Natalie. He forgot about Liv when he fell in deep, like-like for her and gave her his only zombie cure dose. Unless Ravi has another dose hanging around, Major just sacrificed his life for Natalie’s. The two characters have known each other for a few days. That’s a huge leap, especially since Major fell in like-like with Liv last week. Enough with insta-romance.

The zombie-topia showed up during the last five minutes this week. The moment at the end presented and interesting angle but iZombie has added a lot of plots to juggle. The show has a history of juggling plots better than any other CW show, season two had several plotlines on the stove to boil at different temps, but iZombie’s third season is playing out a lot like Supergirl this season. Let’s backload the final fifteen minutes of episodes with romance or an ongoing plot. It’s clumsy.

iZombie’s season is still young. The show just needs a few strong episodes to right itself. Let’s hope we’ve seen the last of insta-romance for a while.

Thanks for reading.