iZombie 1.13: "Blaine's World"

“I mean the hair, and the eyes, and the complexion. You thought those were, what? Questionable style choices?” -Blaine

And we have (finally) reached the first season finale of “iZombie.” This episode doesn’t have its own case. It basically continues all the drama from the previous episode. Blaine’s got Major held hostage, and the case of Sebastian and the four teenagers continues. We also start to get a bit more of a sense of Max Rager’s role in all of this. Steven Weber also gets to have some more fun as villainous Max Rager executive Vaughn DuClark. DuClark has big plans, and he’s not going to get a little thing like his product causing zombieism stand in his way. There were quite a number of shocking moments in this episode, especially as it reached its conclusion. More people in Liv’s life know about the truth of her condition, and even more may know soon, so it will be interesting to see how Liv’s life changes in response next season.

We begin this episode with Major held captive in the big freezer at Meat Cute. Blaine is trying to torture him to figure out where Major hid the astronaut brains that he stole (they’re worth quite a lot of money to Blaine, of course). The Candyman has been snooping around Major’s car and such, and while he can’t find the missing brains, he does figure out that Major used to work for the shelter from which they’ve been getting much of their supply. Meanwhile, Teresa, one of the teens from the last episode, has shown up dead at the morgue. She’s been bludgeoned. Liv eats her brains as per usual, and as you might expect, the change isn’t as pronounced this time. Liv just becomes slightly snarkier and with slightly less of a filter than usual.

When he’s not doing his autopsies, Ravi is continuing with his zombie rat experiments. He has created another de-zombiefied rat, and he and Liv are hoping this one will last longer than the previous one. He’s got about two doses of the “cure” left, because he’s out of tainted utopium. He wants to do some more testing on the cure before he finds more supplies, though. Liv wants her old life back right away, but Ravi has to try and convince her to be patient. I don’t blame Liv for being impatient, really. She lost her fiancé (who has now dedicated himself to being a zombie hunter) and her best friend, and if other people find out, who knows who will disown her next. Her life has pretty well fallen apart.

Max Rager, meanwhile, has hired a new head scientist, since the previous one was pretty much eaten by Sebastian. Vaughn shows him videos of interrogations with Sebastians, including the scientist-eating one. Vaughn knows that Sebastian is a zombie, and he knows that Liv created him. To Vaughn’s good fortune, Liv and Babineaux decide to visit Max Rager that very day to talk about the death of Teresa and the other teens. The conversation doesn’t last long, though, because Liv and Babineaux get called away. The police have been alerted that someone has used Cameron’s (the one teen still alive) credit card. They head to the gas station where the credit card was used and view the surveillance footage. The footage shows Cameron paying for some items (enough for two people) and mouthing “help me” at the camera.

Cameron really, however, seems to be doing just fine. We see him enter a diner and sit down with a woman in a bright green dress. It’s clear that this isn’t social. It’s a business exchange. The woman is kind of annoyed with how obvious Cameron is being. Anyway, Cameron trades a thumb drive, presumably with the incriminating Max Rager information on it, for a backpack full of cash. He goes outside to speak with the homeless man he had employed to cause a distraction, and his car blows up. This is way more attention than Cameron wants, and he runs.

Meanwhile, Liv and Babineaux have followed the signal from Cameron’s phone to a junk yard, where the find a phone inside a tire. It’s all too perfect, so they know it was a setup. Cameron wasn’t really kidnapped – he just wanted it to look that way. Cameron is caught at the Canadian border by border patrol, and when he arrives back at the Seattle police station, he tells Liv and Babineaux that he killed the others. Liv and Babineaux also have an opportunity to look at the files, and they see the company is planning a new product called “Super Max.” Liv is, understandably, worried about the effects of an even stronger Max Rager product.

Ravi calls Liv worried because he hasn’t seen Major in about a day. Liv decides to text Major and tell him that the brains he asked her to test were actually monkey brains. Blaine’s got Major’s phone, of course, so he knows the significance of Liv’s text (she’s got the astronaut brains), and he calls her back. They agree to exchange Major for the astronaut brains, but of course Blaine doesn’t keep his word. The person who is exchanged is definitely not Major. Major is still in the Meat Cute freezer, but he manages to escape with urine and a lighter (the lighter causes a distraction to a guard opens the door, and the urine makes the door slippy so the guard falls). Blaine and Major have a confrontation, and both Major and Blaine are injured.

When Liv arrives to confront Blaine about the phony handoff, she quickly figures out what has been going on, including Blaine’s injury. She decides to hurt Blaine in the most poetic way possible. She gives him a dose of the cure, and he immediately becomes human (a vet stitches up his wound later, unfortunately). She then has to tend to Major. He is slipping away, so she decides to scratch him and turn him into a zombie. Suzuki then arrives on the scene, and he’s tired of being Blaine’s pawn, so he blows the whole place up with himself in it. Unfortunately, Evan is showing up for his first day of work just as this happens.

Back at Liv’s apartment, Major comes to, and he’s livid about Liv being a zombie and turning him into a zombie. He accuses her of being selfish. Liv decides to give him the last dose of the cure. In better news, a big article about the Max Rager scandal is published, and Vaughn is going to be under fire for a little while. At the very end of the episode, Liv gets a call from her mother to let her know that Evan was in the explosion at Meat Cute. Liv rushes to the hospital, where Evan is in surgery. What’s odd about this is that the family seems to be watching the surgery through a window. No hospital I’ve seen works that way! Anyway, the doctor says that Evan needs a blood transfusion, but he’s Type O negative, so that may be difficult. Liv’s mom mentions that Liv has that blood type, but Liv, looking pained, has to say that no, she can’t donate. Explaining why, it appears, is for next season!